Thighs Wide Shut

Howl
Causing An Obscene
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

By nature, poetry is like totally gay.  Even gay people know it.  Even Gaylord Perry knows it.  Even Perry Mason knows it.  Even Mason Crosby Stills & Nash & Young know it!!!  Allen Ginsberg was both gay and a poet, so the dude had his finger way on the pulse, and all over men’s bodies!!  When he wrote his seminal Howl, it not only spoke to the Beat-off Generation, but to many a future generations to come.  Of course not everyone agreed that it could or should be considered a work of written art and thus a court case against its publisher to cease publication went public and pubic words came forth!!!!!!!  Rob Epstein (he made The Times of Harvey Milk doc, which was FARRRR greater than the movie Milk) & Jeffrey Friedman have ventured out to capture the essence of Ginsburg, the meaning of Howl and the fight for free speech, all rolled into one wild bizarre ride to the pharcyde, in crisp black & white, candy-colored color and wondrously stark animation

Their Ginsberg is pan-sexual James Franco, and while he might not look exactly like him or David Cross with a beard, he’s got the sound down, and juss about everything else.  Hell, we wanted to bang him the instant we heard the Howling words spew from his pretty mouth!  The courtroom drama features attorneys Jon Hamm (looks like he juss walked off of one Mad Man set and onto another) & David Strathairn, judge Bob Balaban, and expert literary witnesses Jeff Daniels, Mary-Louise Parker, Alessandro Nivola and Treat Williams, which is by far the weakest part of the triptych, but necessary lessthenone.  As for the animation, that shiz was more moving than Howl’s Moving Castle!!!  Disclaimer:  we’ve never seen Howl’s Moving Castle!  Straight or gay, poetry is here to stay, and Howl will forever have its say!  And now will forever have its sight!  Hip-hip who-Gayyyyyy!!!!!!!!

Is He or Isn’t He?: if you haven’t already warrick dunn so, DO read this NY Mag article on the hard to figure/finger out James Franco

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Howl is currently screaming at the moon in limited release!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger
Lucy Punch Drunk Love
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Woody Allen has made his fair share of winners, duds, mehs and yeah-yeah-yeahs.  You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger falls under the yeah-yeah-yeah category.  It’s nothing special, like Corky from Life Goes On, nor flat out retarded, like Lindsay Lohan’s lifestyle choices, it’s juss a delightful lil London love trifle wrapped inside no enigmas wrapped inside a comfy blanket that eventually becomes an uncomfortable one, cause some of our characters make poorer decisions than Todd Margaret, but we’ll never know the full outcome of em as the movie finishes open-ended! Bastardo cheerio!  Moist importantly, it’s not Whatever Works 2, cause #1 was dreadful!!!  And thankfully, there isn’t even a character playing the nebbish Woody Allen role in Stranger!  Basically it’s lecherous men (Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas) versus their insecure, neurotic women (Gemma Jones, Naomi Watts, Freida Pinto, Lucy Punch), with some fortune telling, failed artistic careers and marriages strewn about.  Whatevs.  It’s a Woody Allen movie, and at this point, you’re either a person who sees and mostly enjoys his movies or one who doesn’t.  What kind of person are you?

What’s Next?: Midnight In Paris – 2011.  but when will Allen make a movie in Norway so we can read the headline ‘Norwegian Wood’????????

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Stranger is currently light, not dark, in limited release!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Let Me In
Swede Child o’ Mine Comes To America
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

In an era of vampire-overload, not much has really stood out as being exemplary, even if yer teeny Twilights and Southern-burnt True Bloods have proved to be popular beyond reasonable belief.  The chilling little 2008 Swedish film Let The Right One In (LÃ¥t Den Rätte Komma In) was a step in a better, more human direction, and yet we barely thirsted for the blood lust put on display (maybe it was that unforgettable yucky crotch shot that left a bad taste in our eyes!).  A darling of the critics and winner of numerous awards, Hollywood took notice too and decided to give the material a spin on our shores, with Cloverfielder Matt Reeves helming the ship.  The time remains in the 80s, the holm has been shifted from Stock to Los Alamos, New Mexico, but everything else pretty is much the same (the snow! the eerie lighting and dull colors!  the killer pre-hipster hipster wardrobes!), although any sorta Swedish fishes have been replaced with Now & Laters (one of our personal flavorite candies), and thankfully no crotch shot.  And so????  Although it’s basically a carbon copy,  Let Me In > Let The Right One In

YES, the remake works the material better than the original Swedish entry!  And no, the answer has nothing to do with reading subtitles vs not!!  So how then? Somehow, someway, the connection between the bullied, timid, lonely mortal Owen (The Road‘s Kodi Smit-McPhee, dang, this kid sure loves dark material!) and his mysterious, distant and equally lonely immortal new neighbor/playmater Abby (Chloe Moretz, who is the very definition of kick-ass, and the true star of Kick-Ass) is juss stronger, in English, and in New Mexico!!  Maybe it’s the magic in Smit-McPhee’s scared wider-eyes??  Or the uncanny charm of Moretz’ crooked smile???  Put those together and that kind of bond is WORD!!!!!!!  Then there’s all the bonus goodness, like Richard Jenkins, who plays her guardian devil, and occasionally dresses up like a ghetto Zodiac, and is involved in an amazingly filmed car crash scene, from the point of the view of the auto’s interior!  Or how about the always dependable Elias Koteas, who’s dressed eggzactly like Kubrick on the set of The Shining?  Can’t hurt!  And how about the main bully (Dylan Minnette)??  Um, bestestestest teen a$$hole cruising for such a bruising since Scut Farkus, that coonskin capped chap in A Christmas Story!!!!  Let yerself into Let Me In, regardless if you saw the original or not!

Birds of Prey: Cara Buono shows her face and hot bod as Faye Miller on Mad Men, but as Owen/Kodi’s absent onscreen mom, they barely even show her face!!!  luckily we do get to look at Sasha Barrese, and even get to see her boob!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Let Me In sucks blood but doesn’t suck at all at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Waiting For ‘Superman’
Fighting For Truth, Justice
& Against The American School System Way
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

America’s school system isn’t working!!!!!!!!!!!  Did you not know this?  Maybe yer one of the lucky ones (or yer kids) who goes/went to a good school, has/had teachers who care, and have/had a future so bright that you have/had to wear 17 pairs of shades.  Apparently we used to be the cream of the crop in education, but have lost our way over the past few decades.  Boo us!!  Presidents, lawmakers, and overly concerned communities have tried their best to right the ship and raise our math & science test scores, but this is America, where bureaucracy always stands in the way of progress!!!  But try we muss, for if we fail, China will beat us in the race to Uranus and 4-D movies!!!!!

Luckily there are people who care, A LOT, like reformers Geoffrey Canada (love that name!!) and Michelle Rhee, who are bucking conventional wisdom and seeing stunning results in Harlem and DC respectively.  And yet it’s virtually impossible to change the system as a whole with folks like Randi Weingarten and the heavily influential American Federation of Teachers union preventing the firing of horrible educators and rewarding the best ones.  If only ‘Superman’ could save the day!  Or Al Gore!

Al Gore isn’t up to the task, so his Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim (with writing help from Billy Kimball) has donned the cape and the cause and spreading the word the only way he knows how: documentary stizz.  He follows 5 kids across the country and their quest to get into a charter school, as what seems for the underprivileged (and in some cases, the privileged), the only gateway for a better tomorrow.  For the first hour, the info presented, and the usual getting to know our cast of characters better, is a wee bit dry, and spread a bit wee too wide (maybe he should have incorporated some Gore PowerPoint magic!), but by the end, when we learn the make or break fate of these little rascals, there won’t be any dryness in yer eye sockets!!!!!!  Plus, who would ever speak ill against a movie trying to do good for the children?!?!??!!?

The Other Guys: haven’t seen, yet already feel sorry for the doc The Lottery, which covers similar ground, but may be a more focused look inside the charter school selection process.  Guess they juss didn’t have the Oscar weight and pull that Guggenheim carries for wider distribution

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

don’t wait on ‘Superman’, unless you live outside of NY & LA, where it opens this Friday, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Catfish
The Catfish Hunters & Their Whopper of A Tale
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Nev Schulman is a real person.  He looks like Sacha Baron Cohen and acts like 80 normal dudes we all went to college with.  He’s a photographer who takes pictures of dancers.  He also has a Facebook account (that’s not a ‘duh’ statement.  our brother and parents don’t have one).  He also has an admirer, in an 8-year old girl from bumblefork Michigan named Abby.  She takes his photos and makes purty decent paintings out of them and then sends them to him.  In the process, he has become friendly with Abby’s mom Angela, and even more overly friendly with her half-sister Megan via Facebook.  Nev’s brother and BFF, Ariel and Henry Joost, are real too (Ariel may actually be dating Sting’s daughter Mickey Sumner in real life) and they decide it would be a grand idea to document Nev’s relationship with his web pals.  For awhile, it’s cutesy to watch Nev’s reactions to his deep flirtations with Megan, a girl he knows only thru the web and smattering of late night phone calls.  And yet, something doesn’t seem 100% right with Nev’s other-end user(s)

And then??????????????  No, not Zardoz, we promise! And then, Nev, Ariel and Henry take to the road in search of these people, and what they find is the truth… and it’s a secret!!!!  Spoiling their discovery is verboten, but based on the chilling trailer, this trio disappointingly aren’t chainsawed massacred by a family of freaks.  And yes, we did hactually want that to happen to them, especially since these guys are chasing internet-based vagueness that they could have probably figured out if they juss used the internet a bit more!!!!  Regardless, what hactually does unfold in Michigan is curious enuff stuff to keep interested piqued, but what, WE CANNOT TELL YOU!!!  The question is, how real is this ‘documentary’?  To us, it was less real than I’m Still Here, and others smell something fishy too.  Maybe you’ll just have to force yerself to see both and decide which is faux real (we love that term maybe more than we love fried chicken) and which is faux fauxever

UPDATE: now that I’m Still Here has been dubbed faux foreals, it’s only a matter of time before Catfish is caught in the same act

Beach Boys & Girls: what’s the story with that eerie and yumcredible ‘Good Vibrations’ cover version sung by a children’s choir?  it’s no hoax, it’s The Langley School Music Project!!! watch this!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Catfish reels(/reals??) it in NY/LA/SF this Friday and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

links to click ONLY after seeing the movie

10 Reasons why the documentary movie Catfish is Fake, and 5 Reasons it is Real

art link

Megan

Karate with Nev (although you can click this one whenever you like)