Thighs Wide Shut

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work
Oh Can She Talk, And We All Should Listen
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

We’ve never cared much for Joan Rivers and her schticky schtick, and we expect you feel the same, but if you see Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg‘s lovely and lively doc Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, and you mos certainly should, you will walk away caring about her (even if her jokes still blow).  Without Joan there aint no Sarah Silverman, no Kathy Griffin, or really any other bitchy female comedienne (we also don’t care for) going today.  Picking up the torch from Rodney Dangerfield, Joan feels she gets no respect, and by what we encounter in this ‘year in the life of’ piece, she basically doesn’t

The doc tries hard to make us feel sorry for her, and it does, when the focus is on the past (Johnny Carson turns his back on her, her husband’s suicide), but when we peer into the present, it’s hard to cry for a woman that’s consistently working (even if it’s in places like Minnesota) and keeping in the public’s eye at age 77 (even if it’s for Celebrity Apprentice), especially since she loves doing it and the monies that comes along with it.  OK, we do feel sorry for her ever growing list of plastic surgeries, and for her daughter’s Melissa Rivers‘ lips, but they’re nowhere near as pitiful as Jocelyn Wildenstein (where’s the documentary on her???).  This Rivers still flows, and Piece of Work lets us know, and knowing is half the battle

Gwar & Remembrance: when Joan meet Gwar

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Joan works in NY/LA/SF this Friday and elshwere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Double Take
Torn Curtain Call
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Alfred Hitchcock loved the idea of the double. It was a theme that ran through many of his films, including Vertigo, Strangers On A Train and Shadow of A Doubt. It is also the theme, doubled and doubled again, times 2, and then some in the highly fascinating, thighly experimental Double Take, by Belgian filmmaker and artist Johan Grimonprez and writer Tom McCarthy. And no, this has nothing to do with the 2001 ‘action/comedy’ starring Eddie Griffin and Orlando Jones. What it has to do with is with death, fear, paranoia, television, consumerism, communism, capitalism and Folger’s Coffee, all playing against each other and with each other in a hot & cold war of our world. Crimonprez and McCarthy crazily juxtapose existing footage from Hitchcock’s films, promotional material and his hosting duties on his own eponymous TV show, with Cold War era news clips (Nixon and Khrushchev loom large) and… Folger’s Coffee commercials, with newly constructed pieces featuring a Hitchcock a impersonator and a faux narrator (who’s not very good at sounding like Hitchcock). I confess that this aint for the birds, or for every man for that matter, but don’t be the wrong man who knew too little and be the one who knows too much. Grab a rope, head north by northwest and let yerself get lost and found up in the notorious, spellbinding frenzy of Alfred Hitchcock’s mind, and the doubled troubled one that Grimonprez and McCarthy have dreamt up for him on his behalf

Gooooooooooood Evening: make every evening a goooooood one, by watching eps of Alfred Hictchock Presents for free on Hulu. tis one of the finest shows to ever grace a television screen

Verdictgo: Mos Def Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Double currently takes it in NY only at the Film Forum

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

MacGruber
Forte Winks
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

MacGruber is Saturday Night Live‘s first skit turned big screen adventure released in over a decade, and it happens to be the funniest one since Wayne’s World.  Granite, we didn’t bother seeing any of the flicks that came between the two (ok, we saw Wayne’s World 2), but we’re gonna venture a logical guess that none of them were even remotely good or co-starred Powers Boothe or Val Kilmer.  MacGruber as a skit was overly repetitive and mildly amusing at best, but as a 90ish minute feature, it worked well enuff, even with the new, dirtier jokes getting recycled several times over.  And as an action movie, it wasn’t half bad neither!  Credit Will Forte and Kristen Wiig (and Ryan Phillippe?), who put a serious face on some not so serious bidness, and to SNL for not giving up on their characters, which have always been their bread and butter.  Here’s hoping that Lorenzo McIntosh gets his named called up to the big leagues/screens next

Our Forte: our mos flavorite Will Forte bit doesn’t hail from SNL, but from Flight of The Conchords, as an aspiring actor/dry cleaner and record producer Mr. Gucci

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

MacGruber is currently playing at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Robin Hood
The Man Who Hood Be Bilking
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Yoooooooo! (or in ye olde English, would that be Yooooooooooooe?)  What up with everyone dissin and pissin and eatin Nissin about Ridley Scott/Brian Helgeland‘s totally passable, plausible, and entertaining enuff Robin Hood?  Yes, we all know Russell Crowe is a cockmuffin, and so is that d-bag from Lost, but here they aint d-cockmuffin bags.  As Robin Longstride or Stridelong or Strongbow or Strongcockmuffin and Little John, they fines as they is, and even aints the focus of the entire movie (there’s other stuff, like castles!  and wars!!  and crowns!!! and old chicks dressed like nuns who say things!!!!  and for some reason there are kids in the woods who wear scary masks and steal seeds!!!!)

Sure, RH & LJ and the merry mens aren’t all that merry here, when compared to the ones we all know and humped from any previous incarnation, cause this aint’s a previous incarnation, this is new one!  One that goes all backstory and no frontstory! It’s no mind blowing or arrow splitting shazzle badazzle, but at least it’s realistic (they have beards and sometimes bleed AND sometimes bed chicks OR sleep with dogs)!  It’s like The Tudors (we always have to compare, sorry), but with better actors (Cate Blanchett, Max von Sydow, William Hurt, Danny Huston), but with no boobs (SHIT!!!)!!  And guess what, Mark Strong plays a bad guy!  That’s the smallest shock since a dwarf tried to give a frog a shocker!!! Hollywood, give Mark Strong a vacation from a movie set and our lives!!!

What more do you people want?  Gladiator sucked and this was far more fun than that cause that’s the truth. What, you want Kevin Costner talking about baseball in Sherwood Forest?  Look, all we want is Disney’s Robin Hood put back onto the big screen, but we don’t run Disney, a movie theater, or the world, so that aint happening, but Ridley’s Hood is happening enuffffff!  Well, enuff to tide us over until something that’s both ye olde and mo mammoth comes to a screen near jews, like The Hobbit, or a 3-D version of John Wayne Bobbitt’s life story with theme song by the Bee Gees!!!! [SFW]

Sure Wood: did you ever watch the 80s British series Robin of Sherwood, later starring Sean Connery’s son (and Mia Sara’s one time hubby) Jason? probably not, but it was so 80s good!!!  and the theme song by Clannad kicked nads!!!

Clannad – ‘Robin (The Hooded Man)’ [empeethree]

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Robin is currently gettin medieval in your HOOD

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Looking For Eric
Guardian Angel Dusty
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

All men have sports heroes, and if a man doesn’t, then he probably isn’t much of a man.  Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) is a man, a weak one, but still a man, and his main man in the footballin world is the French former Manchester United colossus Eric Cantona.  Eric B’s life is going in an endless circle of nothingness, and after driving a car literally in circles, in the wrong lane, and nearly killing himself, his postal co-workers try to set him straight, and from going postal.  The boys get him to meditate and try to imagine if one of his idols showed up and lent him sum guidance for all of his worty-worries.  Eric B looks for Eric C and Blammmm-o, Eric C shows up to help Eric B!  (it’s amazing that either man can understand the other, with their accents thicker than porno vag hair from the 70s)

Looking For Eric is billed as a Ken Loach comedy, yet outside of a few trips to the pub and a pivotal scene towards the end where a gang of men all don the same silly mask and break stuff, there’s not much to laugh at.  Remember, this is a Ken Loach film, not a Jay Roach motel.  Eric B’s life is pathetic and sad.  Even when he makes amends to his former flame whom he left in the dust years before (Stephanie Bishop), and bails out his troubled gangsta wannabe son (Gerard Kearns) and sweetness starts to seep in, it’s all still soaked in distress and agony

All of these ups and downs + downtime with Eric B’s imaginary friend don’t fully add up to a thrilling game on the pitch, but this aint no unwatchable blowout neither.  It’s like a series of whiffs that almost coulda been goals.  Olé?

Hall Pass: Laura Ainsworth plays the younger version of Eric B’s old sweet-tart, and plays with our heart cause her eyes could melt ice caps on Pluto!!!!

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Eric looks in NY only today, and elsewhere elsewhere

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…