Salad Is Slaughter

I did much better than Jim…

Troy McClure Film or Actual Terrible Movie?

Score: 80% (12 out of 15)

Hairspray  A+  It’s a good bet that if Queen Latifah is in a movie I’ll like it.  It’s also a good bet that if John Travolta is in a movie, I won’t like it.  Turns out that I liked Hairspray a lot and Travolta was very good in drag.  The year is 1962, John Glenn is in orbit (”you won’t get me to believe he’s up there”), television is black and white, and society is segregated.  It’s the story of a chubby girl who’s trying out as a dancer on a popular local TV dance show.  The overt racism in 1962 society is both funny and jarring to modern sensibilities. (”If we had any more white people here, we’d have a suburb!“)  The dance show is all white, but they do have an occasional “Negro Day” hosted by Queen Latifah. (“If I were President, every day would be “Negro Day”.”)  The school dance is not only segregated, but the dance floor has a rope separating the white and black students.  So in the end, Hairspray is a musical about fairness and equality.

National Treasure 2 - Book of  Secrets  A-  In this installment, our heroes have to try to prove that Ben Gates’ (Nicolas Cage) ancestor was not involved in the Lincoln assassination.  Along they way they find clues to a treasure that the Confederates were planning to use to continue the Civil War.  I thought the location of the latest treasure was less plausible than in the first movie but NT2-BofS was good enough to let you suspend your disbelief and be entertained.

Mad Money  C-  Mad Money is a movie with a strong cast - Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes, Diane Keaton, Ted Danson - but extremely weak writing and is the first movie with Queen Latifah in it that I didn’t like.  Mad Money is about some women who figure out a way to steal the cash destined to be destroyed at the Federal Reserve.  It’s predictable, cliché and just not that good.  It’s more of a network Movie of the Week than a major motion picture and I came away disappointed.

I’ve started spending the night with George now that she’s slightly bigger.  Last night she decided that midnight was a fine time to wake me up to play with her.

I saw part of the movie Psycho this weekend and say what you will about the Bate’s Motel, at least they don’t use those damned low-flow shower heads.

A couple of years ago I tossed some Bermuda grass seed in to the back yard because it spreads to cover the bare spots that the dogs tear up when running around.  Unfortunately it also spreads to where you don’t want it.  I spent several hours pulling weeds on Saturday.

A 1.5 pound kitten smacking a 60 pound poodle because he got too close is one of the funniest things you’ll ever see.

Watching the same 1.5 pound kitten walk on top of the poodle and a yellow lab comes in second.

Scientific American is piling on the latest propaganda film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed staring Clear Eyes spokesman, game show host, has-been actor, and former Nixon speech writer Ben Stein.

Links here. Excerpts below the fold:

Ben Stein’s Expelled: No Integrity Displayed

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed–Ben Stein Launches a Science-free Attack on Darwin

See also: Expelled Exposed

More below the fold: Read the rest of this entry »

Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - A A musical comedy about a serial killer? Yep, and it works. Johnny Depp plays Sweeny Todd, a man who returns to England to find his beloved wife dead and his daughter imprisoned by an evil judge (Alan Rickman). It’s your basic “princess in the tower” story. Sweeny hooks up with a woman who makes the worst meat pies in England and sets up his barber shop to extract his revenge on those who wronged him, and on anyone else who gets in his way. The movie is dark, haunting, and at times bloody but it’s funny as well. And you’ve got to love a Broadway song about cannibalism.

Bee Movie - C+ Forget everything you know about bees like the fact that the workers are female, the male drones don’t do much of anything, bees don’t have different parents, and so on. Then forget the fact that pollen is for plant reproduction and not keeping them alive. If you can get past these annoyances you can watch Bee Movie, a film filled with B-list actors. Jerry Seinfeld decides he doesn’t want to work the same job for the rest of his life and heads out of the hive with the pollen jocks where he meets a young woman and discovers that humans are taking bee’s honey. This results in a court case. All the plants die. Jerry and his human friend have to save the day. Chris Rock (a mosquito) gets the funniest line in the movie near the end. When a client can’t believe he’s a lawyer Rock replies, “Well I was already a blood sucking parasite.” Sadly, the rest of the movie isn’t as well written.

Alvin and the Chipmunks - B Dave (Jason Lee) is a wannabe song writer who can’t get his songs sung. After tossing his musical equipment out in to the rain, he finds three young chipmunks have invaded his home and it turns out that they can sing. He writes a Christmas song for the chipmunks and the boys become an overnight sensation. A record label mogul takes Alvin, Theodore, and Simon on tour, exploits them, and lies to keep them away from Dave. Alvin and the Chipmunks is a story about family and was better than I thought it would be.

Knocked Up - A Saturday night conversation as I was putting the DVD in to the machine:

Janet: “Is this going to be a stupid movie?”
Me: “Yeah, probably.”

We were expecting a movie filled with juvenile humor, sophomoric sex jokes, and gratuitous nudity. What we got was completely different. Alison is hot. So hot she’s just been given an on-air job at E television. And she’s also a stuck-up bitch. Ben is a loser. He’s failed at everything in life: jobs, relationships, everything. Ben and his buddies sit around the house, get drunk, get high, and look for nudity in movies for the website they’re developing. Alison is at the club celebrating her promotion and meets Ben. One night of drunken, unprotected sex later, she’s pregnant. Knocked Up is a story about responsibility, maturity, and relationships, with the occasional juvenile humor, sophomoric sex jokes, and drug references thrown in for good measure. Knocked Up is surprisingly good. It’s well written with interesting characters and not at all what I expected.

Dan in Real Life - F Steve Carell’s worst movie ever. Dan is a widowed advice columnist who is raising three daughters. He takes them to Rhode Island for the extended family vacation where he falls for a woman who turns out to be his brother’s girlfriend. The writing in Dan in Real Life is dull and plodding, the characters one dimensional, the story is boring, and there’s really nothing to recommend it. I ended up pulling out an old issue of National Geographic and read about the war in Sudan and deforestation in the Amazon. Dan in Real Life was awful.

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