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Mar 22 2024
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Movies

Classic Movie Review – Some Like It Hot (1959)

Put on your dress and run from the mob, 3.5 readers. BQB here with a review of this classic film.

SPOILER WARNING! SPOILERS ABOUND. If you haven’t seen it yet, and you’ve only had 65 years to do so, I’d suggest seeing it first, then come back here to read and discuss.

I’ve been meaning to watch this flick for awhile now. Why? Because YouTube of all places has been telling me to. I’ve developed an interest in Broadway shows as of late and there’s a new one based on this classic film. Watching showtune clips gave way to clips of this flick that left me in hysterics and finally, I got around to watching the whole shebang on HBO Max. You can too if you have it.

The set-up? In 1929 Prohibition Era Chicago, an illegal speakeasy (i.e. a club where banned alcohol flows freely) is raided thanks to a tip by police informant Toothpick Charlie. Spats Colombo (George Raft) doesn’t take kindly to rats in his outfit, so he and his boys rub TC and his boys out.

Alas, down on their luck jazz musicians Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon) were in the wrong place in the wrong time and accidentally witnessed the entire tommy gun session. They swear they won’t tell anyone but Spats doesn’t like to leave loose ends and so a hot pursuit begins.

The Jazzsters need to get out of town and fast. The only way out? Donning wigs, makeup and dresses and joining an all-female big band on a train trip to Florida. Hilarity ensues as Joe is very uncomfortable with the get-up, opting to keep it simple and going with “Josephine” so as to not stray too far from his real name, Joe. Meanwhile, Jerry gets comically too comfortable with the situation, lets his imagination run wild and while Joe thought Jerry would call himself Geraldine (thus keeping it simple), Jerry calls himself Daphne and gets way too elaborate.

On the ride, the dudes are on sensory overload. As he ogles all the women in their underwear, Jerry remarks to Joe that he feels like his childhood dream of being a kid locked overnight in a candy store, free to feast on all the sweets without repercussion. Joe, a bit more sensible, reminds Jerry to “go on a diet” lest they get discovered, have to come out of hiding and Spats gives them a bad case of lead poisoning.

The lads meet Sugar Kane (the one and only Marilyn Monroe), a ukulele player and singer in the band. Joe is smitten but Sugar relates that her whole life, she’s has nothing but trouble dating lousy bum saxophone players. Joe as Josephine listens to Sugar’s tale and sympathizes but secretly is miffed that his true self, Joe, doesn’t stand a chance, seeing as how Sugar has sworn off bum musicians and has pledged that once she gets to Florida, she’ll only date well-respected millionaires.

Further hi-jinx ensue in sunny Florida. “Daphne” i.e. Jack Lemmon in drag, is relentlessly pursued by pervy millionaire Osgood Fielding (Joe E. Brown), who won’t take no for answer. At first, no is Daphne’s only answer until Osgood proposes and Daphne/Jerry falls in love, obviously not with Osgood but with Osgood’s money, fantasizing about bilking the old perv for a big settlement and fat alimony checks once Osgood realizes he’s been duped into marrying a dude and demands a divorce. Joe reminds Jerry that, you know, there are laws against that sort of thing. Hey, it’s a movie made in 1959 about 1929 after all.

Double meanwhile, Joe disguises himself as an eccentric billionaire, claiming to be the heir to the Shell Oil company fortune, and only referring to himself as “Shell Oil Jr.” He dons a yachtsman’s outfit complete with the hat and speaks with a phony Cary Grant accent, all to impress Sugar.

The fun climaxes when it turns out the mafia has a yearly Florida retreat under the guise of “Friends of the Italian Opera.” Jerry and Joe spot Spats and manage to hide just in time to avoid being rubbed out. Alas, the big boss of all American organized crime, Little Bonaparte (Nehemiah Persoff doing an impression of Mussolini as a mobster) thinks Spats went too far and draw too much heat on the organization when he rubbed out Toothpick Charlie back in Chicago, so he has his men rub Spats and Spats’ goons out.

And…boy, Joe and Jerry and the mob need to stop meeting like this because they just witnessed another murder! So off on the lam they go again. Jerry as Daphne accepts Osgood’s proposal just to get safe passage aboard his yacht and get the heck out of Florida. He convinces Osgood to bring Joe and Sugar along as bridesmaids.

At some earlier point, Sugar discovered Joe was a fraud but has since forgiven him, realizing that deep down he’s not such a bad guy. You do have to suspend disbelief and you know, forget the part about how he pretended to be a billionaire just to get into her pants. But anyway, the truth is out and they’re in love now and all is forgiven.

Safe on the launch boat and on the way to the yacht, Daphne/Jerry has a heart and realizes he doesn’t really want to defraud Osgood for his cash. He comes up with a series of excuses as to why he and Osgood can’t get married, hoping that Osgood will dump him/her and be the bad guy. I smoke, I’ve been living with a saxophone player, I can never have children, the list of excuses goes on and on while Osgood, each time, says he doesn’t care and will accept Daphne.

Finally, Jerry removes his wig, drops the girl voice and says in his regular voice, “I’m a man” and Osgood ends the film on a humdinger of a line – “Nobody’s perfect.”

It’s funny on so many levels, especially when you consider this movie was released in 1959. It’s funny if you’ve ever been in a situation where you want out of a relationship, but you want to let the other person down easily, so you come up with all these criticisms of yourself, but they won’t take the bait, and Osgood’s that hard up that he won’t let Daphne go even upon realizing that she is a he.

But then when you REALLY think about it, yeah, it becomes obvious that Osgood knew Daphne was a dude all along and was totally into it. The movie ends with a befuddled Jack Lemmon mumbling to himself in confusion, trying to make sense of what is happening, trying to figure out why this dude won’t let him go even after learning that he is a dude and being shocked to realize that, you know, this probably means that Osgood is totally gay.

Big for 1959. I’m surprised they got away with it.

So, there you have it. I gave the whole movie away but in my defense, I did give a spoiler warning.

Tony Curtis is great as the brains of the duo, the guy that keeps reminding his partner to commit to character lest they get shot by pursuing mafiosos. Jack Lemmon, who was nominated for an academy award for this role, is hilarious as he commits way too much, at times forgetting that he’s a dude. The scene where he dances about the hotel room, periodically stopping to shake a pair of maracas (he’d just come in from a long night of salsa dancing) and tells Joe about his plan to marry and divorce Osgood for a pile of money had test audiences laughing so hard that they stuck the maracas in so Lemmon could shake them for a few beats between lines to give everyone a chance to laugh as he moved from line to line (so I read online).

And Marilyn? What can we say about dear, sweet Marilyn. How sad she died so soon. I have to believe she was chosen for this film because there was some underlying message that while some dudes might like to dress up like ladies, nothing beats the real thing. As Jerry fumbles about in a dress and in heels, he constantly complains about the draft on his undercarriage, how he feels like he’s constantly about to fall over – how do women put up with it all? How do they do it? Women move “like jello on springs” i.e. there’s a gracefully sashaying to it all that men can’t replicate. Add to that Jerry/Daphne gets unwanted gropes and advancements and complains about having to fend off Osgood’s undesired perversions and you’d think this movie was made in 2024 with how it puts men in women’s shoes and asks them to sympathize with what the fairer sex has to go through.

Marilyn really was more than a dumb, blonde bimbo. She was the heart of this picture and really brought it home. The underlying theme is Joe and Jerry put on dresses and wigs and sort of got a glimpse about what its like to be a woman, but Sugar has to live with it daily – all the hopes, dreams, disappointments that go along with it. It was woke before anyone knew what woke was.

I have yet to see the Broadway remake so I’ll reserve judgment. I can already tell based on previews that at least one of the dudes comes to embrace drag as in “Oh wow having to put on this dress because the mafia was chasing me helped me to discover I was really a chick in a dude’s body all along.” I guess its 2024 so the showrunners feel they have to do that but I don’t know…there’s a lot of humor in the original with Joe and Jerry not really wanting to dress up like chicks at all. Yes, true, Jerry got a little too comfortable with it but no, he never wanted to bang Osgood. He just wanted his money, but then had a heart and decided not to put the old coot through that.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. This movie has inspired me to start watching other Marilyn Monroe movies, so I’ll let you 3.5 readers know how this goes. And I’m not sure what praise from this blog is worth, but praise to Billy Wilder who made this and several comedies like this in that era.

SIDENOTE: As I watched this, I couldn’t help but see it as an early roadmap to many of the zany comedies we know and love today. Many a comedic film finds the protagonists having to embrace some ridiculous premise. From Weekend at Bernie’s, where the dudes had to pretend like their dead boss was alive, to Me, Myself and Irene where Renee Zellwegger had to go on the run with schizophrenic Jim Carrey – humor is found when characters have to put up with something comically stupid but there’s no way out but through so they just keep putting up with X absurd premise until its conclusion. I don’t know that Some Like It Hot was the first comedic film to do this but it was definitely an early adopter that paved the way and made it popular.

Double sidenote – After watching this movie and googling, I learned Tony Curtis is Jamie Lee Curtis’ father. IDK how I was a movie fan all these years and didn’t know that.

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Jun 10 2023
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TV Reviews

TV Review – Barry (2018-2023)

Let’s put a hit on this dark comedy, 3.5 readers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6TZdk1t8Zo

I have been avoiding this show for a while. I love comedy and I have long believed that comedians are the unsung heroes of Hollywood. Laughter is an involuntary response, you can’t hold it back when the humor floodgates call, so anyone who can make it happen has a gift.

One such gifted person is Bill Hader, who I would argue is perhaps one of, if not the best celebrity impressionists of his generation. Like Dana Carvey, who I admired as a kid, Hader was SNL’s go to guy for mocking the famous. He just has that uncanny ability to change his face, to change his voice, to mimic another person, make you think he’s them for awhile, then make you laugh as he does funny things as that person.

But Dana Carvey, the great SNL impressionist of a previous generation, made cinematic forays outside of SNL and flopped, with the exception of his Garth character in Wayne’s World. Sometimes comedic actors go the dramatic route with great success, as Adam Sandler did in Punch Drunk Love or Uncut Gems, then again their dramatic efforts flop, like Adam Sandler in Spanglish.

All of this is my longwinded way of explaining why I avoided this show for years because I felt like by trying to do drama, Hader was like Michael Jordan who could have given us a few more seasons of his great NBA career, but decided to fizzle as a baseball player instead. Surely, Bill should do his own sketch comedy show and keep capitalizing on his comedy gift rather than do something different.

But honestly, this show works and I’m glad I finally started watching it. Alas, I started watching it a few weeks ago only to discover it ended this year. I’m half way through so if you know how it ends, don’t tell me.

The premise? Hader’s protagonist Barry is a battle-hardened Afghanistan war veteran, having seen and done some awful things that haunt him to this day. He is emotionally crippled, distant and depressed, yearning for a happier life but happiness is an emotion that eludes him. From the start, I wondered if this character choice was on purpose, as it allows Hader to play a dramatic role without having to display a range of emotion as usually the best comedians can only play a funny person but struggle when they have to play someone who is up, down or in the middle. Make no mistake that throughout the series, Barry experiences a range of emotion, but in such a frazzled way that you can tell he’s such a depressed guy that we should all just applaud him for getting out of bed in the morning.

The show rests that on that old Hollywood cliche that war veterans can’t function in a civilian job that doesn’t require killing. I would argue that there are cops, firefighters, security guards, veterans working in paramilitary jobs and doing well but ok, Barry doesn’t have their mental stability. Got it.

And so, at the start of the show, we learn that Barry is a hitman in the employ of his handler/father figure Monroe Fuches (Stephen Root, another veteran character actor you might know as the voice of Bill on King of the Hill).

To the show’s credit, the life of a hitman is not sugar coated. There are so many hitman shows/movies where the hitman is very suave and sophisticated and conveniently only dispatches bad people so that the audience doesn’t dislike him. All the people who ever get killed are very bad, usually criminals and killers themselves.

Sure, Barry deep-sixes plenty of baddies, but as a murderer for hire, he kills plenty of people who arguably don’t deserve it. Spouses who want revenge on a cheating spouse or the spouse’s lover, people who would stand to benefit if someone else was out of the picture, bottomline if you want someone dead and you know how to reach Fuches, and you’re willing to pay, then Barry will kill that problem person in your life, zero morality questions asked.

Oh, and if there’s a witness, just some poor schmuck who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, Barry will shuffle that person off their mortal coil as well. We even get a look into the sad lives of family members of those whose loved ones were taken from them by Barry. Their suffering is very real.

All in all, this isn’t your standard hit man show. The real consequences of a death for cash biz are seen.

Then how, you might ask, is this show funny? Truth be told, it is a very dark comedy.

As our show begins, Barry tracks a target to LA, only to discover the dude he’s been hired to snuff is an aspiring actor. He stalks said target to an acting class run by the wacky Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler in literally his best role since Fonzi.)

As he sits back and watches the fledgling thespians work on their craft, Barry instantly falls in love with the acting profession, seeing it as a way to work through his own emotional problems as what is acting other than humans trying to understand and recreate emotions?

And thus our anti-hero’s journey begins. Much to Fuches’ dismay, Barry dives into the world of acting, going to acting classes, trying out for parts in plays and movies, the works. Not the best move for a man who has committed multiple heinous crimes because you know, the more famous you get, the more people will sniff around your past.

Somehow, Barry must learn to juggle his acting work with his hitman work. It’s not a profession that is easily quit. Fuches keeps dragging him back in, as does NoHo Hank, Anthony Carrigan in a show stealing role as a Chechen mobster who is a fan of Barry’s murderous skills and won’t take no for an answer when it comes to dispatching his rivals. The humor in this character comes from a guy with an outlandish Russian accent saying very silly American things. The best description I can give is if Dan Akroyd and Steve Martin’s hard partying, East European accented “wild and crazy guys” from 70s SNL had a grown up son.

As if he didn’t have enough to hide, Barry finds a love interest in Sally (Sarah Goldberg), a fellow struggling actor from Cousineau’s class. If you divide the show into two halves, one part is about Barry’s murderous secret life and the other part is about Barry and Sally navigating the ins and outs of Hollywood, from those early years where they struggle to get any part, to those later years when they find success but have to deal with schmuck executives who want to water down their success in the name of profits. And of course, Barry is always murdering people between auditions and then going to great lengths to cover it up.

The true show stealer here is our beloved Fonz. Cousineau is portrayed as one of the most despised and reviled actors in Hollywood, his behavior so boorish that he was blackballed from ever getting a part again and subsists on his own personal acting studio where he overcharges young naive wannabes for copies of his lousy book, his lessons and other products unlikely to get them anywhere. “No refunds” is his constant refrain.

As the show progresses, occasional real-life actors playing themselves stop by just to dump on Cousineau and relay to the audience the horrors of what this self-absorbed prick has done to them. People who work behind the scenes also have tales to tell. One producer humorously recounts a story about how as a young production assistant, Cousineau threw an omelette at him, plate and all, because he forgot the chives.

But like Barry, Gene is on his own journey toward growth and change, trying to make amends for the wrongs he did in his youth and convince the industry that he offended to give him one last shot as an old man. Barry becomes torn between dueling father figures, the handler that wants him to keep killing for money, the acting coach who wants him to be a success, and of course, the girlfriend/love of his life who would be horrified if she knew about his night job.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Again, don’t tell me what happens if you know, but I’m wagering the ending is not happy. While I can’t say the show is realistic (I don’t think anyone could kill as many people as Barry has without being caught in the first season) it doesn’t sugar coat things and it recognizes that bad deeds lead to bad consequences so those who do bad eventually get theirs.

My one criticism would be the episodes are a half hour and the whole series feels like it could all be just one season. It all centers around Barry trying to be an actor and being with Sally but getting pulled back into crime by Fuches and Hank and if the show had been given more seasons, who knows what villains Barry might have encountered by day while he scores those big parts by day.

Watch on HBO Max, which is now just Max. How pretentious. Bonus that some of Hader’s past SNL friends stop by once in a while.

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Nov 26 2022
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Movies

Movie Review – A Christmas Story Christmas (2022)

A Christmas Story…Story? No way. Come on, Hollywood. You’ll shoot your collective eye out.

BQB here with a review.

Actually, it’s not so bad.

If you own a TV, then surely you have seen 1983’s A Christmas Story. TBS runs it 24 hours a day on Christmas and I can still recall laughing up a storm the first time I saw it. Even years later, having seen it a zillion times, it’s hard not to leave it on in the background while you go about your holiday merriment.

Alas, the sequels didn’t come until much later, presumably because the film didn’t really become the much beloved classic until cable TV started blasting the crap out of it over the airwaves in the 1990s. By then I can only presume all involved had moved on and unable to make a sequel. Either that or is a single ever possible for such a great film?

Ah but once the film grew a big fanbase, the sequels were attempted. 1994’s My Summer Story is largely unknown. 2012’s straight to video A Christmas Story 2 was cute but ultimately forgettable.

Thus I was surprised a new sequel was attempted this year.. It stars original Ralphie Peter Billingsley, though when I first learned that I doubted if that was enough to save it. Turns out, the answer is a resounding, “Not bad.”

The plot? in the 1970s, Middle aged Ralphie lives in Chicago with wife Sandy (Erin Hayes) and kids Mark and Julie. Ralphie has taken a year off to write an epic sci-fi novel, which seems like something Ralphie would do, given his love of pop culture and all things nerdy as a kid in the original film.

Alas, the publishing houses have all told Ralphie to eat the proverbial big one and as the end of the year draws nigh, he knows he needs to either publish or perish, to make money on a writing career or give up and take a boring old job and get a steady paycheck.

At least he has a planned Christmas visit with his parents to look forward to, but sadly, his old man, “The Old Man” passes and a loving tribute to the late Darren McGavin, who passed in 2006, is paid.

Ah, but the older we get, the more adults tend to, well I was going to say they don’t fear death but they still do, it’s just, by the time you’ve hit the elderly stage, you’ve run out of tears to cry, for you have experience so much loss already. This, Ralphie’s mom (played by Airplane comedy legend and owner of the sweetest voice ever Julie Hagerty who takes on the role as Melinda Dillon has retired from acting) urges Ralphie, Sandy and the kids to buck up and have the best Christmas ever, for this is what the Old Man would have wanted.

Comedy hijinx are mixed with somber moments. There are plenty of Easter eggs and references to the original film, while this one tries its best not to so much repeat old gags but play homage to them, or at least repeat running themes. Adult Ralphie still has a wild imagination that gets him into trouble and riddles him with anxiety as he pictures the smallest hangup leading to horrifying consequences. Bullies go to war with Ralphie’s kids who must learn to stand up for themselves. Comical injuries abound. Ralphie still wants to be an old west sheriff because what Baby Boomer didn’t?

A cavalcade of ex-child actors from the original film, now all grown up and in the middle of life, stop by, and it is surreal. Not knocking anyone but as you see adult actors reprise roles like Flick (the kid whose tongue froze to the light pole) or Schwartz (was he the kid who double dog dared him? I forget) and the once evil bully Scott Farkus (can bad kids mend their ways in adulthood?) you can’t help but think time is really a bastard. All these kids were so cute once and Hollywood was happy to capitalize on their cuteness, but sadly none of them really grew up with the looks that Hollywood wants to see in leading men. Even so, as a fan I’m happy to see them, like walking around your home town and bumping into an old friend. Even Ralphie’s little bro, an all grown up Randy drops by.

Does it all add up to something? I don’t want to give it away but if you think about how adult Ralphie yearns to be a famous writer, and author Jean Carroll leant his iconic voice to the original film but did so in the role of adult Ralphie telling the story of one wacky Christmas in his youth…OK I’ll let you figure it ou.

STATUS: Shelfworthy. If you have HBO Max, it’s free and worth your time. It won’t win awards. It won’t be something you’ll want to watch again and again. What it is is a loving tribute, a rare sequel that straddles the line between capitalizing on your love of the old flick but still remaining true to its spirit. There are sad moments, funny moments, emotional moments. If you’ve ever lost a parent, you know the pain adult Ralphie experience, the expectation of an adult to keep moving on even though a person who comprised a large part of their world has shuffled off the mortal coil. Everyone involved did well here.

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Nov 05 2022
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Movies

Movie Review – Barbarian (2022)

Barbarism and Detroit, but I repeat myself! Zing!

BQB here with a review of what may be the year’s best horror film.

Generally, I’m not a big horror movie fan. I have enough horror going on in my own life to invite more.

However, once in awhile there’s one that gets good buzz and you watch it and discover it is crafted well enough with enough mystery and intrigue that you have to tell the 3.5 readers of your blog about it.

So let me tell you about it, 3.5 readers.

Actually, I can’t tell you much. Like many horror movies, there’s a house with a scary basement. When a visitor makes the dumb decision to venture into said scary basement, even scarier things happen. If I were to tell you what scary things are lurking down there, it would give the whole movie away.

However, most horror movies aren’t just about the monsters, killers, or creatures that kill with reckless abandon. They are allegories for something deeper. Halloween was about an America where it was becoming less safe to leave your doors unlocked. Scream was about 1990s angsty teenagers with no purpose finding evil purpose in murder. Saw in a macabre way was about appreciating life, and if you’d be willing to murder others if trapped in a sadistic puzzle box just to save your precious life, then why don’t you, you know, do the good things every day to preserve your life like eating your veggies and working out and making good decisions for yourself and those you love?

Here, the twin horrors are “toxic masculinity” and the urban decay that allows bad things to go unnoticed by the police and government.

Georgina Campbell stars as Tess Marshall, a documentary researcher who has rented an Air BNB while in town for a job interview. Alas, the property has been double booked, for when she arrives, she finds the house already occupied by Keith (Bill Skarsgard). Amplifying how women have to worry more than men about certain situations, Tess finds herself having to make the difficult choice between going back out into a dangerous neighborhood or staying in the same house as a complete stranger.

Blah, blah, blah, shenanigans ensue and as it turns out, there are stranger, worse doings afoot in the basement. Justin Long rounds out the cast as AJ, a pervy Hollywood director and the rare horror movie victim you might actually cheer for when he gets got.

STATUS: Shelfworthy, but just remember, you might want to go into this one on an empty stomach. Catch it on HBO MAX.

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Oct 11 2022
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TV

House of the Dragon – Season 1, Episode 8 – Lord of the Tides (Review) (2022)

Wow, 3.5 readers. Just wow.

I did something Sunday night that I haven’t done in a long time. I sat down at the time when a show aired and watched on the first airing, rather than just wait until I was ready to stream it. Such has been my growing interest in this show and I haven’t done any appointment TV viewing since its predecessor, Game of Thrones, was on the air.

SPOILERS abound, so look away if you don’t want any.

My thoughts:

#1 – Paddy Considine really nailed this sendoff episode where his character, King Viserys dies. The king suffers from leprosy and old age, though more the former. I found out later he is only supposed to be in his 50s but being in your 50s and having leprosy were both dangerous things in ancient times. Yes, I know leprosy is bad think to have now but we’ve pretty much gotten rid of it with modern medicine and hygiene haven’t we?

The King spends his last day of life trying to protect his family and bring them together to avoid an all-out war, not to mention a family conflict that would tear the house apart. Addled by opium, he foregoes this ancient pain med to keep his mind as clear as possible. In one of the greatest underdog wins the day scenes on television in recent years, the down and out king surprises everyone when he staggers, clearly in pain, into the king’s chamber and up to the throne, thus thwarting an attempt by his hand/chief advisor and his queen to undermine his daughter, who he has named his successor, a dangerous move in olden times, for in those days, the people really preferred their leaders to have ding dongs and were willing to go to war to make that happen.

Paddy Considine deserves an Emmy for his performance. Online debate abounds as to whether Viserys was a bad king, a weak king, maybe too kind for the job, or perhaps the time period just handed him a great big lump of crap and he did the best he could with it. To be honest, I think he did the best with the info he had and made the best choices out of a series of options that weren’t the best.

Appoint your daughter the next queen and risk a civil war or name your unscrupulous, wife murdering brother who has shown signs he might be a tyrant if crowned?

#2 – In true GOT style, no one is completely wrong or right and GRRM shows us how bad people turn good and good turn bad. Ultimately, any quest for power is a dangerous game.

#3 – Vaemond lost his head! You know, Corlys just got a bad fever and suddenly, everyone starts fighting over his stuff. They didn’t even wait to see if he’d pull through. I suspect he will and will a) be pissed his bro tried to subvert his wishes but b) that was still his bro and he’s not going to take to him being beheaded lying down.

That was quite a scene, wasn’t it? Vaemond really, really leaned into shouting that Rhae’s children were “BASTARDS!” and their mother was a “WHORE.” Treasonous language that he had to have known was going to end badly for him, but in that moment, the second son of Driftmark went full on IDGAF and you could tell this was building inside him for years that it was a total catharsis for him to say it just before he lost his dome.

Note the king was only going to cut out his tongue though. Losing your tongue is apparently the remedy for slander in the GOT-verse so Corlys, if he pulls through, may likely think Daemon went way too far.

Bottomline: I think a lot of people assumed this show was going to stink. So many prequels and sequels and cinematic universe/in the same ballpark shows end up being silly fan fiction, explaining things no one cared about in the first place. This one really builds a world and characters (albeit the world was already built) but like its original, has us fans back online, spinning our wacky theories and debating the issues of the realm once more.

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Oct 09 2022
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TV

Are You Team Alicent or Team Rhaenyra?

Hey 3.5 readers.

Let’s admit it, GOT fans. We all thought House of the Dragon was going to be a stinkburger.

So many of these sequels and prequels are absurd fan fiction. The Many Saints of Newark gave us the life story of Tony’s uncle, as if we were clamoring for it. Disney is going all out, telling us the tale of an obscure Rebel spy in Andor, a character in a prequel that itself was based entirely off a brief line in the first Star Wars film about a bunch of rebels who stole the Death Star plans. In short, Hollywood couldn’t finish these series properly so they hire new writers to take little details and spin them into, well, something.

But this House of the Dragon has been great thus far. I believe this is largely due to it being based on just one book by George RR Martin. Unfortunately, the original GOT started to suffer when the plot expanded past the last book in GRRM’s unfinished book series.

The time jumps are difficult and often leave plot holes. However, HBO is learning from past mistakes. They don’t have the time, money or patience to tell the story forever, so they need to make time leaps and at least give us some semblance of a complete story from beginning to end rather than focus on the beginning in great detail and then shrug off the end in true, “Meh, I guess Bran can be king” style.

HotD takes us 172 years before GOT, in super woke times for a medieval age. Irony is where the wokeness is often heavy handed in most shows, this one works it into the plot well. King Viserys (Paddy Constantine) lacks a male heir, so to quell bickering amongst the various scheming lords, names his daughter, Rhaenyra, his heir. Alas, things get complicated when he marries Rhae’s BFF, Alicent and has a son, Aegon. Double alas, the show is set in a time when men would rather burn the country down then bend the knee to a queen.

Civil war looms when, after a long time jump, we see that Rhae is popping out kids a plenty, none of which look like her half-black husband (I’d say half African American but Africa and America don’t exist in this fictional world). BTW, while this world is unwoke when it comes to women being in charge, it is hella woke when it comes to interracial marriage and people of color being in charge. It’s nice to think that maybe, when you look up at the sky and see the perhaps infinite number of other worlds that could exist, maybe one of them had people who, at the beginning of their world, shrugged and said, “Eh, what does color matter? Let’s all just be friends.”

Ultimately, former friends Alicent and Rhae become bitter enemies. While Rhae is boldly indiscrete about her out of marriage dalliances (a move that can cause civil war in a country where the monarchy’s secession depends on parentage), one wonders if Alicent’s challenge is motivated by her simply trying to protect her children or if she sees her former friend defying convention and rules and is angry she didn’t. (She was pretty much forced to become the king’s second wife and what young girl wants to be married off to an old geezer?)

Disgust abounds on this show. Lords and ladies openly talk of betrothing (making a marriage engagement) between adults and children, cousins with cousins, uncles with nieces, brothers with sisters and so on. Perhaps the most fictional part of a show (where people ride dragons) is that the children that are the product of these incestuous and gross relationships end up beautiful and healthy. See the paintings of outlandishly deformed European royals who were the products of inbreeding for the non fictional version.

Anyway, never has there been a fictional drawing of battle lines like this since the 2000s Team Jacob vs. Team Edward. Which side are you on, 3.5 readers?

I have noticed the internet seems largely pro-Rhae. I have been Team Alicent because I felt Rhae was very indiscrete, practically begging the world to challenge the legitimacy of her kids, but then again it seems as of late that Alicent is the only one making that challenge publicly. Everyone else seems to be going along with it, at least for now.

What say you, 3.5?

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Dec 28 2021
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Movies

Movie Review – The Matrix Resurrections (2021)

Jesus Fucking Christ, this movie makes The Room look like Citizen Kane.

BQB here with the horrid poopy stinkfest that is the fourth installment of the Matrix franchise.

Let me begin by saying please support your local movie theater. If you’re (understandably) afraid to take in a show due to Covid concerns, maybe just buy a gift certificate and throw it in a drawer to spend on tickets on that long-awaited day when the rona becomes about as dangerous as a bad case of gas. Or what the heck? Just buy a seat online and don’t go.

I know. I’ll never do such things and you won’t either. Neither of us has the money to waste.

My point is this movie is the type of schlock you get when streaming services reign supreme and theaters go bye bye. As long as they meet their subscriber quota and have enough people paying monthly fees to keep the service going, they don’t give a shit if you actually like the movie. They can make it as dumb or stupid or preachy or lame as they want.

Meanwhile, the latest Spiderman flick is breaking box office records and doing the unthinkable, putting butts in theater seats, the moviegoing masses uncaring they might catch a debilitating illness because apparently the movie is that awesome and therein lies the rub – for a movie to make it at the theater level, it must be good, like, really good…so good that Hollywood suits might put in actual effort.

But I digress.

Way back in 1999, The Matrix was a surprise hit, a new twist on the sci-fi genre about a world where the machines have won a war and turned the defeated humans into batteries, placating their minds with a false simulation. Those smart enough to figure out the world is an illusion gain superhuman like abilities, which they’ll need to fight the system’s evil agents designed to keep free thinkers down.

The underlying message and/or food for thought? Life is a game and if you figure out how to hack it, you can break all the rules and do whatever you want.

I don’t think any of us fans blamed the Wachowskis for making the shitty 2003 back to back sequels. They stunk big time though the second had a few cool moments, the fight scene on the big rig in particular. The then brothers (now sisters because apparently they took their own message about hacking the life game’s code quite literally) had wowed us with a pretty awesome flick so who could begrudge them a 2 sequel cash grab?

But this latest one? It is truly an unmitigated pile of horse manure, covered with pig manure, drenched in pigeon poop, and then like, a dozen syphilitic hobos peed all over it and then the whole thing was left out in the hot sun to rot and fester and grow mold and mushrooms on it and then a bunch of rats and mice and assorted vermin burrowed into it and called it home and that’s before a bunch of drunk frat boys puked all over it.

No, really. It’s that bad.

The plot? It’s a super meta Matrix movie about the other Matrix movies. The main villains are Neal Patrick Harris and the literal Warner Brothers Corporation. (You read that right, as in the studio that gave us Bugs Bunny. No one thought it was funny when WB made itself a central plot point in Space Jam this summer so I don’t know why they thought it would work this go around.)

SPOILERS ABOUND

NPH is an evil psychiatrist who seeks to keep Neo (Keanu Reeves) under control by convincing him none of the stuff from the first three films ever happened and that it was all dreamed up by Neo’s real life identity Thomas Anderson, a video game designer who put elements of his life into a super realistic video game, ranging from his controlling boss (Agent Smith) to the soccer mom he likes to oggle at his favorite coffee shop (Trinity.)

When Warner Brothers, the parent company of Anderson’s gaming company, orders an unnecessary sequel (the studio only gets so many points for making fun of itself), Anderson goes into a deep state of depression over having to return to a bunch of stories he’d grown tired of until a plucky band of cyber warriors led by Bugs (Jessica Henwick in a dual reference to the rabbit that leads Alice down the rabbit hole and WB’s perennial carrot chomping mascot and seriously, whoever it is at WB who thinks it is a good idea to make WB a key part of movie plots needs to be both fired and publicly shamed, preferably at the same time)….

….where was I? Oh, right. They break Neo out of his funk and into a whole new world of data driven conspiracies.

Fan favorite characters Agent Smith and Morpheus return, but in different digital bodies played by Jonathan Groff and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. They try but they don’t hold a candle to Hugo Weaving and Laurence Fishburne who, I like to think (or hope) they turned down this crap because there wasn’t enough money in the world to make them lower themselves enough to be associated with it.

Meanwhile, Carrie-Ann Moss reprises her iconic role as the leather clad biker babe Trinity and the gang must save her from the life the Matrix has cruelly assigned to her, that of a suburban soccer mom, because apparently, she would be better off getting sucked out of a pod full of goo and forced to live as an underground freedom fighter aboard a stank ass, dank, dark tunnel dwelling ship than, God forbid, raise children and be the important matriarch figure in their lives.

STATUS: To quote John Lovitz’ the Critic, “it stinks.” I watched it so I could tell you that you shouldn’t. To be fair, the final 20 minutes is a fun special effects bonanza, so if you want to put up your HBO MAX app and fast forward to the last 20, I wouldn’t blame you. You certainly shouldn’t sit through the first 40 where very little action happens and NPH and Keanu just pontificate over Mr. Anderson’s depressed state as a video game designer forced to make an undesired sequel. What about us fans who were forced to watch an undesired sequel? Will WB pay our therapy bills?

Oh wait. Now that I think of it, no one forced us to watch it and if we’d stop watching them, the studios would stop making them. Perhaps the system really can be hacked after all.

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Aug 10 2021
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Movies

Movie Review – The Suicide Squad (2021)

Crazy clown women! Super sucking starfish! Genuinely weird and wacky nonsense!

BQB here with a review of The Suicide Squad.

I’ve ranted about how DC totes wrecked its movie universe before, but let me sum it up with this early quote from Amanda Waller (Viola Davis), the hard ass G-Woman who bosses the squad around, in her intro of Bloodsport, an assassin played by Idris Elba:

“He’s in here for putting Superman in the ICU with a kryptonite bullet.”

Yeah, I know, right? My reaction upon hearing that was, “Wow, I’d much rather be watching that movie right now. An assassin who bests Supes with a krypto-bullet? I’d buy a ticket and munch some popcorn to that.”

But alas, DC handles its movies the way Marvel handles its shows. You want to see Iron Man and Hulk and Thor and Captain America? Not in a Marvel Show. In a Marvel show, some ancillary character will be like, “Oh you just missed Thor. He stopped by to grab a tea and a scone and bounced.”

But that’s ok. It’s just a show. You’ll see Thor in a movie.

Meanwhile, how long has it been since we seen Superman and Batman in a movie in this latest attempt at a DCU movie universe?

But I digress.

Long story short, these films are fun in the moment. Worth a watch. You’ll be entertained, but you won’t be wowed. They’re good movies, but they aren’t great and that’s sad because they could have been great.

For the uninitiated, SS is about super villains who get conscripted into service on dangerous missions to save the country, the world, the day or what have you. Agent Waller runs the show with a device that lets her explode the baddies’ heads with an implanted chip if they try to run or disobey orders. Word has it that Amazon is testing a similar device that will ‘splode employees if they even think about taking a pee break. (I kid, I kid. Wait, do I? Yes! Yes of course. I kid. I kid. Amazon would never do such a thing. Look, just because Jeff Bezos has a net worth that is more than most small nations and can travel into space whenever he wants does not mean he is a supervillain, OK?)

Moving on.

These aren’t the good villains though. You’ll never see a team-up between Joker and Lex Luthor, although to the film’s credit it, the SS comics feature the bottom of the barrel villains too (except Harley of course, she’ll always be number one to geeks everywhere.)

OK no more rambling. A fictional banana republic nation if under new, Anti-American management after a violent coup, and Waller dispatches her flunkies to secure the data behind U.S. involvement in a clandestine research facility where ghastly experiments are underway.

All hell breaks loose, and boy howdy does this film earn its R rating. So much blood. So much dismemberment and body parts flying everywhere. So many gratuitous F bombs. Now, I’m no teetotaler and I’m not against the occasional well-placed F-bomb, but I feel like all the comic book movie makers are trying to copy Deadpool, with the idea that they can just stuff dummies into costumes, make them say “Fuck” and the result will be as funny as DP and no, no it will not because Deadpool is a comic genius whose F-Bombs are strategically timed for optimal hilarity.

Rounding out the crew are Ratcatcher Two (controller of rats and daughter of Ratcatcher One), King Shark (voiced by Sly Stallone in his best work yet) whose power is that he can eat people, mostly foes but occasionally friends and not always on accident, Polka Dot Man (the power to hurl killer, colorful dots), The Peacekeeper (John Cena stealing the show as he says hilarious things in a deadpan serious tone. He is basically an evil Captain America. Very righteous. Very patriotic, loves peace but unlike Cap, he doesn’t care how many people he has to kill, often quite unnecessarily, to get it.

Cena really shines here and while I understand F9 wasn’t a comedy, I still don’t get why they didn’t give him more to work with in that latest FF offering.

STATUS: Shelf worthy. It’s fun but also gross and not for the feint of heart. Part of me enjoyed it and part of me wondered what has become of adults? Why were adults of previous generations so hard that studios knew not to bother making such nonsense for them because they wouldn’t want it. What has changed today? Does this mean that today’s adults are silly and less serious for lapping up such drek? Because this one is definitely not for the kids. Sure, it has a shark man and a polka dot man and a clown woman but nope….not for kids. Don’t let the kids watch this one.

I was one of a handful of people who thought the 2016 version was good and I don’t think this one lives up to it but it’s a good time just the same.

My last complaint is I didn’t like what they did with Waller’s character. She is usually portrayed as very calm, cool and collected. She speaks matter of factly, never loosing her cool. She plays chess while others play checkers and is adept at forcing, blackmailing and pushing people to do bad things, literally nothing is too bad if it will keep America afloat, but she is rather stoic while doing it.

Here, she’s a screaming, obscenity spewing mess and I didn’t like it. It’s just not the badass Waller we came to know in the original.

Stream it on HBO Max…whenever HBO Max is working (which for me, isn’t often. They def have some kinks to work out of that service.)

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Jun 06 2021
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TV

TV Review – Harley Quinn – (2019 – ?)

Grab your baseball bats, 3.5 puddins.

It’s time for a review of Harley Freakin’ Quinn.

At the outset, I have to say this show is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Some thoughts on why that is, in no particular order:

#1 – It’s a Gotham based, DC character infused show, that’s for adults and when I say it’s for adults, I mean, it’s for adults. It’s weird. Watch with the sound down for a minute and you might be lulled into thinking it’s a kids show. I mean, superheroes are for kids, right? But no…there’s swearing and sex and uber violence like very serious graphic violence. You don’t want to let your kids watch this. I know, Batman and Co. are for kids, right? Nope, not this show, which brings us to…

#2 – It’s a parody of the DC Universe and the comic book genre. It focuses on Harley (Kaley Cuoco) and in season one, we see Gotham’s top she-clown break up with The Joker (ala Birds of Prey) and come out from Mr. J’s shadow, fighting to be thought of as a supervillain who stands on her own evil merits and not as the Clown Prince of Crime’s sidekick. Along the way, DC’s long laundry list of main characters (heroes and villains) are trotted out and poked fun of…but the best jokes are reserved for the lesser knowns, the goofy characters you’ve unlikely ever heard of before, or maybe heard of once in passing.

Examples? Harley’s BFF Poison Ivy dates Kite Man, and that’s his power. He has a kite that pops out of the back of his suit so he can fly around. Pretty useless character, right? You’d think so until you meet such lackluster Batman opponents as Calendar Man, Condiment Man, and so on.

Overall, the writers had a fun time pointing out the silliness of the comic book world and yet…

#3 – The plots are well laid out and surprisingly riveting. In season 1, we see Harley recruit a crew of lesser knowns like Dr. Psycho, King Shark and Clayface to take on Gotham’s worst villains and fight her way up to the top of the food chain. In season 2, Gotham lies in ruins and Harley and Friends team up with Commissioner Gordon, Bat Girl and yes, even Batman to prevent the city from meeting its doom. This leads me to…

#4 – It saddens me what DC decided to do with its theatrically released movies. Here, in this cartoon, the writers set out to parody DC and comic book culture and yet, created a more coherent plot than the DC films did. As you watch, bread crumbs are laid out and they lead to something. There’s a laundry list of characters yet they all get their time to shine. Slowly but surely, the writers introduce you to their silly versions of these characters and then build up their silly version of Gotham. Watching actually pays off and you don’t leave feeling like you were jerked around. Ultimately, that’s all the fans wanted from the DC movies.

#5 – At first, I did wonder whether maybe an adult version of the DC universe was something worth making. After all, aren’t these characters for kids? Shouldn’t adults grow up and put away childish things? Drop the F bombs, cut out the uber violence and naughtyness and create something the whole family can enjoy? But then again, that leads me to…

#6 – This is the hands down funniest thing I’ve seen on TV in awhile. Somehow, it walks a fine line between keeping the wokesters happy and delivering jokes that push PC boundaries. For more of what I’m talking about, see Poison Ivy’s takedown of the Condiment King with the help of her sidekick, Frank the Plant (JB Smoove stealing the show as a man eating Venus fly trap). “Change of plans, sauce fucker.”

FINAL THOUGHTS: In the end, all we fans ever wanted is for writers to build a world. Yes, the DC characters reside in a world that we know ad nauseum, so no, we don’t need to see young Bruce Wayne’s parents get shot by a mugger outside the theater for the 1,000 time. We don’t need to see Superman’s baby sized space ship crash in a cornfield behind the Kents’ house for the 1,000th time either. With new TV shows and movies comes new versions of old characters and all we ask is to be introduced to your new versions, get to know them, then let things build. Comedy writers did that here and one day DC might figure out how to make a cinematic universe that the whole family can enjoy.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Bonus points for Kaley Cuoco who I think is great in everything she does and is underutilized by Hollywood. See this show on HBO Max.

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May 17 2021
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Movies

Movie Review – Tenet (2020)

I have no freaking idea what this movie is about, but let’s give a try, 3.5 readers.

At the outset, let me say this. Tenet isn’t a movie you watch. It’s a movie you study. It’s work, like actual hard work. It doesn’t have to be. You can just sit back and watch the pretty pictures fly by, but if you are one of those people who feels a need to understand what they are seeing, good luck.

I love Christopher Nolan films and applaud him for being ambitious. Even so, I postponed watching this one for awhile. Even when it was like one of the first blockbusters you could rent at the height of the pandemic, when Hollywood wasn’t really offering anything, I put it off because the trailers seemed so confusing and I knew it would be a lot of effort.

I actually did try watching it one time and after 20 minutes was like, “Nope!” Click. Not that it was bad, just that I’d had a long day and when I’m down for the count, I need something mindless to stream. Bring on the silly cat videos.

But I finally got through it. (BTW it’s two and a half hours long). So let’s talk about it. (SPOILERS – I think they are spoilers. Honestly, I may have no clue what happened here and what I’m saying doesn’t make sense).

John David Washington plays “The Protagonist” and that’s a pretty cool name for a secret government agent. He’s been recruited to serve in the Tenet program and as explained early on by a scientist, people from the future have figured out how to send objects from the future into the past. In this movie world, things from the future and the past have different energies or “entropies” meaning, and I’ll botch this, but meaning that everything is opposite. Things from the future, when they reach the past, move backward. (Why doesn’t this mean that things from the past move forward when they reach the future? Well, they do, but why isn’t it like fast forward? Well, things from the future that reach the past don’t move in super slo mo so alright, I just answered my own question.)

The scientist urges the Protagonist to not waste too much time trying to understand how this all works but just accept that it is happening. Personally, I have to believe that quote is also Nolan’s invitation to his viewers to feel free to just sit back, chomp on some popcorn and throw your notes and flowcharts away and just have a good time watching all this hullabaloo happen.

And a lot of wacky stuff does happen. You have bullets that have been already shot going backwards, from the hole in the wall where they are lodged, back into the gun. Car chases where cars drive in reverse (could happen now if the driver looks over his shoulder the entire time). Car crashes in reverse. People traveling through time to fight each other.

Oh, right, there’s some sort of overall plot about people from the future who hate people from the past so that’s why they are trying to kill everyone in the past and you might ask, well won’t that kill everyone in the future and the answer is the people from the future don’t believe that will happen so maybe they’re right and it won’t or maybe they are dummies and it will. Belief or “tenets” i.e. key parts of faith that you hold close and trust are true even during the darkest of times when no light can be seen is a big part of the film.

Add in a Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh) the arms dealer who sells the backwards bullets and is pitting the future and past sides together. His wife/hostage Kat (Elizabeth Debicki) and the Protagonist’s BFF/fellow agent Neil (Robert Pattinson in a role where it looks like he’s really grown into himself as an actor and shed off his youthful Twilight years.)

I think the idea of past and present at war is an interesting concept. I think the idea of future people sending lethal objects to the past to kill the past peeps and vice versa is interesting and a new take on time travel. It gets confusing when our heroes and villains travel between past and future and there are rules, like you have to wear an oxygen mask because the air moves differently on so on.

I don’t know. It’s a new, different take on the time travel genre and I suppose we can’t give Nolan guff for being original in a world of reboots and sequels but wow, I have no idea what happens in this movie. While the effects are cool and it was intended as a summer blockbuster where the big screen explosions would have made up for the what the heck is going on plot and unfortunately it got sidelined due to covid.

John David Washington is really coming into his own as an actor too. Criticism is that they didn’t really tell us much about who The Protagonist is or any personal details but perhaps there just wasn’t enough time with everything else going on. He does have a budding romance or friendship or romantic friendship with the villain’s wife. There’s no sex scene (wouldn’t that be cool to see in reverse?) but and not to give a spoiler but there are times when she is in peril and you can tell the Protagonist really cares. That caring is just based on emotion rather than sex because they haven’t had any which makes it interesting. He wants to save her because he cares about her. There’s no promise of booty to come later upon risking his life for a successful rescue. Good for you, Protag. What a stand up guy.

STATUS: Shelf-worthy. Give a try but take the scientist’s advice and don’t try to understand it. Some of your questions will be answered if you watch long enough. Others won’t be unless you watch it again and again and honestly, I don’t have the time or brain power to do that. Others won’t be unless you venture into articles and videos by people who took the time to parse through it and figure things out.

A final thought. We do need faith, or to believe in tenets. Faith gets us through our darkest hours. Believing your happy ending is on the way – to keep exercising though the pounds never drop, to keep applying for jobs when the HR reps laugh at your resume, to keep writing blogs even when only 3.5 people read them…and yes, to keep watching a movie that begins with a scientist telling you to not attempt to understand for it defies explanation.

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