It’s a simple equation.
Also, Marsellus Wallace finds your lack of faith disturbing, Brett. (via Samblr)
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It’s synonymous, you see. (via Fukung.net)
Relatedly, Violent J Is John Goodman is apparently (and sadly) no longer being updated, but it’s still pretty great if you have not yet had the pleasure.
I, too, dabbled in pacifism once … not in ‘Nam, of course.
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Homer Simpson is a simple man. He likes enormous portions of everything that he likes. Donuts. Bacon. Beer. And all of the other things that make life worth living. Homer, as a good many of you know, also has some experience with ex-plo-zhe-uns.
I didn’t learn gluttony from Homer. But I probably learned how to do it better from watching back-to-back episodes of The Simpsons during the early days of its syndication. On the occasion of the US soccer futbol team getting bounced from the 2010 World Cup, I chose to mute my sorrows by engaging in at least one act of gluttony. Fortunately for my liver, that act did not involve quarts of rum. (Only a single quart.) It did involve an incalcuable number of ex-plo-zhe-uns.
This weekend, I bought one ticket to get past the ticket taker at the 48-screen movie theatre near my house. On the other side of that ticket taker, three of the theatre’s auditoriums screened Knight and Day, Jonah Hex and The A-Team, respectively. All of them probably cost a bunch of money to make because each of them overflowed with ridiculous stunts and, you guessed it, ex-plo-zhe-uns.
(Okay. I’m done with that word now. I promise.)
I started my movie marathon with Knight and Day. I’m not sure why that film was titled that way. One character’s real name was alleged to be Knight. As for Day…there wasn’t any plot device I remember that relied on anything having to do with that word. Maybe the title tested well. Maybe some marketing person thought the phrase would be easy to remember. If I were in charge of naming the picture, I would have called it: Two Giant Movie Stars Who Are a Little Bit Out of Their Prime Who Will Do Some Cool Stuff Together for Two Hours. ‘Cause that’s pretty much what that movie was about. Nothing else about the film mattered. Not where the characters come from. Not what their arcs were. Not even whether the story ended happily or not. What you get is a double dose of crazy–Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz–that has almost come to terms with their lack of sanity and still has decent chemistry together. Also, both of ‘em are in really, really good shape. Like, the kind of shape that is a walking advertisement for whomever their trainers are. If I was a kajillionaire with at least four hours of free time every day, I would definitely hire Cruise’s trainer. Although Diaz’s trainer would suffice. Oh yeah…one last thing about the movie…a whole lot of shit got blown to bits.
I wanted to stick around for The A-Team, but it started about an hour after Knight and Day ended so I needed a bridge movie to keep me in the theatre. Jonah Hex wasn’t on my itinerary, but it did span the two flicks I wanted to see. I missed its first 20 minutes or so. And I left before its final reel unspooled in order to see The A-Team. During the hour or so I watched, I saw John Malkovich blow up a Civil War-era train. I also saw Josh Brolin burn down a 19th Century pop-up arena. And I saw not nearly enough of Megan Fox’s body. The short summary of my Jonah Hex experience: some of the dynamite went boom and some of it fizzled.
And that brings me to The A-Team. Did you see the trailer for this one yet? (Hell, maybe you’ve already seen the film itself.) In any case, there’s a scene where a tank is dropped from an airborne airplane. It’s a great, thunderous absurdity. And it was one of several bursting exercises in the ridiculous that made it into the final cut of the movie. Which is the only thing anyone should have expected from that flick. And that’s not a bad thing either. Sometimes, the ridiculous and the absurd is exactly what you need.
I’ve seen plenty of films that moved me. Films that explained life to me when I struggled to figure it out on my own. Films I have come to quote like some kind of Dead Sea Celluloid. Films that have become…my friends. Consequently, I know what qualifies as great fuckin’ art. And I appreciate that shit. Like, a whole, whole lot. But art isn’t always necessary. Sometimes, you need a cheap thrill. A cliche, even. Something that’s really big. And kinda dumb. And, hopefully, a little bit of fun.
‘Cause when it’s a million degrees outside and your favorite team lost the most important game of its season…big screen ex-plo-zhe-uns are one of the few things that can make you feel better.
Well, that and a quart of rum. And, possibly, a meatball sub. ‘Cause there’s never a wrong time for a meatball sub. MMMMMMM…meatball sub.
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On Friday, July 2, Airplane! will celebrate its 30th anniversary. I personally — slightly — prefer Anchorman, but despite my modern leanings, Airplane! is easily the finest comedy ever made. Its gags, puns and sequencing are all perfectly done, sure, but what really sets it apart is that, unlike many of the other comedies that come off as Airplane! wannabes (as well as Anchorman), the Zucker brothers’ and Jim Abrahams’ comic masterpiece also has a fully realized and engaging plot throughout.
Patton Oswalt sums it up perfectly in this great New York Times piece about the anniversary.
“A lot of comedies in the last 30 years have wanted to be ‘Airplane!,’ ” said Patton Oswalt, a comedian and actor and the voice of the hero in “Ratatouille.” “But most of those movies took the wrong message from ‘Airplane!’ They were gag, gag, gag, gag, where ‘Airplane!’ is really structured, driving the story along all the time. In a weird way it’s like a Beatles movie. It looks like the easiest thing in the world, but there’s a lot of sweat and blood that went into it.”
Comparing Airplane! to a Beatles movie is a little insulting, frankly, but I get Patton’s point.
I really don’t have a lot else to add in celebration of this momentous achievement. If you haven’t seen Airplane!, go do that right now. If you have seen it, you know how great it is. And if you have seen it and don’t think it’s great, I hate you.
One thing I may as well point out for the uninitiated and confused, is that the silly name of this humble blog derives from this comedy classic. You see, during the flick, a young boy comes to tour the cockpit and meet some real-life pilots. And the pilot is really happy about this — something he reveals through a series of increasingly awkward inquiries. And, of course, one of the questions he asks is “Do you like movies about gladiators?” So since this was a movie blog and I had no other title in mind, we just defaulted to this line.
OK, that’s not the best story in the world, but it was a helluva lot better than the origin story you paid to see in Daredevil, so give me a break.
Luckily, the Times piece also offers some actually interesting background for us on how the whole Peter Graves/Joey-interaction thing came to be.
When the creators of “Airplane!” were lining up actors for their rollicking parody three decades ago, some of the straight-arrow character actors that ended up in the cast worried about the harm it might do to their careers. One of the most skittish participants: Peter Graves, the taciturn “Mission: Impossible” star who played the movie’s pilot, a kindly veteran who welcomes a little boy named Billy into the cockpit and asks questions like “Ever seen a grown man naked?”
“His agent got him the script, and he was totally turned off by it,” Jerry Zucker, who wrote and directed the film with his brother, David Zucker, and their lifelong friend Jim Abrahams, said recently during a phone interview with his erstwhile partners. “He thought it was tasteless trash.”
Mr. Abrahams interjected, his voice perfectly deadpan: “I don’t understand. What did he think was tasteless about pedophilia?”
That’s funny … Dustin once asked the cops the same thing.
Also, the fact that the no copy editors at the Times caught the error of this piece calling the kid “Billy” instead of Joey is appalling. Surely, worse than that whole Jayson Blair thing. Probably the yellow cake in Nigeria thing, too.
A copy editor? What is it? … It’s an archaic term for a professional who used to ensure that newspapers had accurate facts and grammar back in the 20th century, but that’s not important right now.
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Early in the second act of Get Him to the Greek, intern Aaron Green (played by Jonah Hill) is hungover and squirming nervously as the limo carrying him and Aldous Snow (played by Russell Brand) inches through the morning rush in London. Green meekly asks the driver to drive faster or take another route. The driver answers smarmily. Green whispers to himself, “We’ve got 30 minutes to make an international flight. That’s enough.”
With that line, Get Him to the Greek seems to define itself as a fantasy. There’s no way in h-e-double-rugby-sticks that you can get to Heathrow, clear security and get to your gate in 30 minutes when you’re still crawling through London traffic. (Full disclosure: I’ve missed a flight facing exactly that scenario.) There’s also nothing at all wrong with this kind of fantasy–as long as the rest of the film gets the memo that it is supposed to take place outside of reality. Unfortunately, that memo didn’t complete its rounds.
If you missed the trailer for Get Him to the Greek, the executive summary goes like this: Green, the intern, is dispatched by manic record label chief Sergio Roma (played by Sean “His Momma Name Him Sean, I’ma Call Him Sean” Combs) to retrieve formerly massive rock star Snow from the UK and escort him to LA for a career-reviving anniversary show at the Greek Theatre. Green must complete the retrieval in 72 hours. Snow kinda knows what is going on, but behaves without enthusiasm and does not appear at all prepared for the gig. Additionally, Snow is estranged from his baby mother. And from his own father. And Snow is known the world over as a world-class debaucher who abuses every known substance. And Snow is Green’s musical hero. And Green is really unfulfilled by his live-in girlfriend (played by Elizabeth Moss) who is a workaholic nurse. And…I think that’s about it. The tangential story lines pile up kinda high in this film. But I’m pretty sure that’s all of them. (Unless you count Sean Combs doing his best Les Grossman impersonation that may actually be an impersonation of…Sean Combs.)
The part about escorting the rock star drives the film. It’s an obvious fantasy that delivers exactly what you’d expect: booze, boobs, belly laughs and some songs you can kinda sing along with. The part about the torture of the rock star is not fantastic at all. Poor relationship with his pops. Betrayal by his special lady friend. His ego sabotaging his art. Those parts feel very real–and very tacked on. Almost as if they belong to a different film. Something darker and more indie. I suppose we need some kind of conflict other than the ticking clock recording the battle versus the ridiculous deadline. But if we’re being asked to overlook all the impracticalities of the travel itinerary–and the insulting implication that music is a job you don’t actually have to work at–then why not commit completely to the zany in the way The Hangover did? I understand the urge to ground a fantasy in something relatable, but the un-fantastic tangents in Get Him to the Greek are distracting. They made me wonder if we were really watching a Russell Brand biopic. (Which would be pretty cool. That guy is sneaky intelligent.) They’re also a bit of a bummer. We really could have used more boobs. And more of whatever Sean Combs was doing.
Get Him to the Greek is not a bad film. It’s entertaining in places. It just feels disconnected from itself. Like it’s a series of YouTube clips that really want to grow up to be a whole movie. They wanted to, but they didn’t.
DYL MAG Rating: A 6 that kinda wants to be a 5.
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Looks like a bunch of divers have achieved something that women’s suffrage, Civil Rights, the Americans with Disabilities Act and, most recently, a bunch of racist lawmakers in Arizona could never do: find diversity.
A great wooden steamship that sank more than a century ago in a violent Lake Michigan storm has been found off the Milwaukee-area shoreline, and divers say the intact vessel appears to have been perfectly preserved by the cold fresh waters.
Finding the 300-foot-long L.R. Doty was important because it was the largest wooden ship that remained unaccounted for, said Brendon Baillod, the president of the Wisconsin Underwater Archaeology Association.
“It’s the biggest one I’ve been involved with,” said Baillod, who has taken part in about a dozen such finds. “It was really exhilarating.”
I know I’m exhilarated.
Or perhaps that’s just the pleats.
I believe diversity is an old, old wooden ship, which was reportedly located near Milwaukee after Baxter barked twice.
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