Thighs Wide Shut

Citroën’s Karin

the car that wasn’t there [ISO50]

was it powered by an Apple Lisa?

Julie & Julia
Child’s Kid & Play
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Julia Child lead a most fruitful life, making a name for herself in introducing French cuisine to the plebeian American suburbanites in both print and later in television (do we have her to thank for Yan Can Cook and Justin ‘I gar-on-tee!‘ Wilson?), while privately maintaining a loving relationship with her cherished diplomat husband. There was one thing she always wanted, but could never have, a child (irony?). She may not have been able to procreate, but she indirectly created a monster in the form of Julie Powell. Mrs Powell was looking for a purpose in life and found it in Mrs Child’s cookbook. Since fresh creativity doesn’t really eggsist anymore, Powell made like a hip-hop ‘artist’ and sampled Child’s work into her own. The result was a blog chronicling her attempt to make all 524 recipes from Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the span of a year. Yawn. Almos more yawn is the design of her blog (her current blog aint munch butter). All talk, not bite. Well nothing screams motion picture quite like a woman’s struggle in the kitchen and blogging about it, right?

You go girl writer/director Nora Ephron tries her damnedest to turn this ‘story’ into a movie, cross-cutting from Julie’s struggles (food falls on the floor! her husband’s grows tired of her being annoying! oh my!) to Child’s own culinary education and the process of making her cookbook while living in France. Naturally, the more watchable bits revolve around Child’s life, tenzillion-fold over Powell’s. It also doesn’t hurt that Meryl Streep‘s sporting Child’s apron, and like the true artist that she is, Streep embodies her role, instead of making a parody of it (they let Dan Aykroyd do the dirty work). Stanley Tucci plays her husband Paul, and not only does an affective job demonstrating the Child couple’s perfect pairing, but also the second pairing (after The Devil Wears Prada) of he and Streep. They’re magical together, and we hope the two continue to unite onscreen again and again and again. On the other side of the flick, Amy Adams (making her second pairing with Streep as well, after the YUMcredible Doubt) is tasked with the thankless job of playing the pouty Powell, with Chris Messina having an even more thankless job of portraying the supportive hubby. Without her and her blog and her ‘troubles’, this movie wouldn’t eggist, but after further review it seems like Child’s mostly carefree life, with Streep walking VERY tall in her shoes, is so colorful and delightful that it’s worthy enuff to warrant its own film. Anywho, to all the guys out there, have no fear if yer ladies drag you to this cause the bon appétit bits well out weigh the au bon pain in the ass ones

DCeiving: like Julie Powell, you too can (cook) visit Child’s kitchen at the National Museum of American History in DC, but yer better off skipping it, cause it’s boring, and instead indulge in the cuisine of astronauts, freeze-dried ice cream, which is available at every gift shop on the Smitshonian grounds

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Cold Souls
Soul Kauf(man)ing
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Sophie Barthes‘s Cold Souls is like a more clear-headed mix of Being John Malkovich, Synecdoche, New York and Enternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. That’s quite good Charlie Kaufman company to be in for Barthes’ full length feature debut, wouldn’t ya say? The idea for the film regarding a man having his soul extracted was dreamed up from one of her own dreams, and the man in question was Woody Allen. Obviously it aint no easy task to have him star in a movie these days (guess he’s waiting for Scenes From A Mall II), so in steps Paul Giamatti, who brings his own brand of neuroticism to the playing field. In Souls G-mat plays… Paul Giamatti, a crazed actor having much trouble gettin through Uncle Vanya rehearsals, and after reading an article in The New Yorker he finds himself in a Total Recall-type lab (run by David Strathairn) where his soul will be removed and placed into a jar. His soul turns out to be the size and shape of a chickpea, and without it, he feels quite empty, especially around his well-aware wife Emily Watson, so he has the option to take someone else’s soul. After giving a troubled new soul a spin, he decides he wants his old one back, but it’s been stolen! and shipped off to Russia! by way of the soul black market! and all so some Russian dude’s aspiring soap opera actress wife (see Win-Winnick below) can get a bit of stage cred! The first half of Cold Souls is a brainy, but not too heady joy, and the second is a little more adventurous, although not as interesting as the first half, as Paul heads to mother Russia, with the help of sympathetic soul trafficker Dina Korzun, in hopes of gettin
g his soul back. It’s a mixed bag, but a rather curious one lessthenone, so you should feel free to place your hand in this bag for a lil soul II soul searching

A Win-Winnick Situation: Katheryn Winnick plays the Russian actress hungry for the soul of Al Pacino, but gets Giamatti’s instead. we all wanna play Russian and be in a mad hurry (get it, rushin’) to make sweet hand love to this kick glass Maxim babe

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

J&J creates heat in kitchens across the country today, while Cold Souls gets icy hot in NY & LA only

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

now that The Old Man of the Mountain has crumbled more than a presidential campaign run by his brother John Kerry, a new thing hath since becometh the bestest thing to hail from our 9th state, New Hampshire, and it goes by the name of Funspot

fo those of yous who saw the franztastic doc King of Kong, you probably remember this as the place Steve Wiebe earned his crown, but fo the rest of you alls, lest this serve as a giant wake-up call as it’s a place (right behind Graceland and the Kingdom of Thighland) to make a pilgrimage to befive you dies. if you were an arcade gamer in the 80s, or ever wanted to know what it was like back then (we pity the fool you), then you MUSS get yer a$$ to Mars Funspot, and specifically, to their American Classic Arcade Museum section. LOOK AT THIS FRIGGIN FARGIN LIST O GAMES!!!! tits a gamer’s wet dream come true and all over one’s pants (the only ones missing in our books be Baby Pac Man and Haunted House pinball). most of the old schooly games are only a token. $20 gets you 80 tokens + a bonus of 50!!! that’s MO than a enuff to keep you busy for hours and hours of powers and powers!!!!

all hail the King of Kong!!!

WIEBE!!

anywho, Kid Kadoji and we used a visit to our pal Tom Welling: Greatest Actor EV‘s Shirehamp lake house paddy-pad as an eggcuse to go to the F-Spot (or was it the other way around?). everyone had such a gay olde thyme there (sadly we didn’t have enuff gay olde thyme for duckpin bowling, air hockey, kiddie bumper cars or bingo. yes Funspot also has BINGO!) that we’re gonna invite ourselves back to TW:GAE’s place next summer so we can keep feeding our Crystal Castles addiction (BK’s splendid Barcade will fill in our arcading void in the interim). anywho rd2, we took some fotos, and here they is, but fotos could never replace the actual experience of slipping money into metal slots. THE LOOSEST SLOTS IN ALL OF NEW ENGLAND!!!

doesn’t get more klassic than the OG Star Wars game

cause nuttin beats blowin up the Death Star over & over & over

another of our balls thyme faves, esp the mine car riding part

too bad there aint a level where you get to whip George Lucas

man, we’re juss as awful at Paperboy as we used to be!

hactually, all these old games are forkin umpossible!!

TRON!

almos as confusing and as lame as the original movie!

we gots more Elevator Action this July

then we did regular action

SKATE OR DIE!!!

eat it Anderson Cooper & yer 360 BS!!!

biggest waste of tokens mt EVERest: Dragon’s Lair

but nuttin beats its look, spanks to Don Bluth!

2nd biggest waste of tokens mt EVERest: Space Ace

which is D Lair’s flashier, butter playing brother

wait, they made a real game out of the fictional game in C & D?

either way, that game sucked!
but the movie didn’t!
go Dabney Coleman!!!

POOYAN!

it sez POO!!!

pee es – we were a lil depressed that the Crossbow and Fire Truck games were out of order :(

pee es 2 – the folks over at Joystiq made a visit as well and took an a$$ load of (butter) pics!

biped beavers, herds of brown quadrupeds, Vespertilio-homos and a strange amphibious creature, of a spherical form

The Great Moon Hoax of 1835

Public Enemies
The Touchables
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Tommy guns, riding on the sides of cars and bank robberies rule the day, while hiding out, gettin drizunk and womanizing rule the night in Michael Mann‘s fun, yet not too deep look at the life of John Dillinger (a steady, but unspectacular Johnny Depp), his gangsta cronies (Faramir! Stephen Dorff!!!!!!!! + an electrifying, but little screentimed Stephen Graham as Baby Face Nelson) and the G-men who sought to bring them all down (anyone else getting sick of Christian Bale? + a scene chewing, James Cagney impression spewing Billy Crudup). Mann’s well suited for this job, having made many a memorable gun fight friendly ficks over the past 3 decades, and with a cast overloaded with talent and beauty (Marion Cotillard, John Ortiz (loves him), Branka Katic, Rory Cochrane, Carey Mulligan (loves her, and we lovesed her first!!), Giovanni Ribisi, Emilie de Ravin, Lili Taylor, Shawn Hatosy (he’s like a fake Brad Renfro), Leelee Sobieski & Channing Tatum, juss to name 1/16th of the cast), it’s a catastrophe of the highest order that the film looks like absolute hell. We aint talking about the costumes, hairdos, props or sets, cause they all are flawless, especially since they shot at the real locations, but wees talkin about how the film was shot using HD cameras and not ye olde film stock. That kinda 80s camcorder home video look worked to great effect with his gritty ditties Collateral and Miami Vice, but for a period piece like this, it almos ruined the whole affair. You probably won’t care or notice, but we certainly did, as any scene that included light bulbs or bright outdoor light resulted in a whoreriffic motion blur appearance that completely drove us insane mad batty crazy. Zodiac was also shot in HD, and that’s one of the mos beautiful, warm colored films we’ve ever seen, so what gives? C’mon Mike, next time be a Mann and make yer solid period piece movie look like a movie and not like a solid piece of shit

No Harmon No Foul: there have been several Dillinger related flicks that came before, but none of them sound that memorable, esp the TV one starring Mark Harmon, but we’re quite curious to take a look at John Milius’ 1973 entry, starring Warren Oates as JD + Ben Johnson, Michelle Phillips, Cloris Leachman, Harry Dean Stanton, and Richard Dreyfuss as Baby Face Nelson!!

Verdictgo: despite our moanin & groanin tis still Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Homecoming
A Futile Attraction
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

We pity poor Mischa Barton, and it has nothing to do with looking eggszactly like her brother Falkor. She left our beloved OC on her terms, the show fell apart w/o her, and her career fell apart w/o it (somewhere Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows are raised in disappointment). Most of her post-‘California, here we come‘ work has either gone straight to video or should have if it didn’t in the first place. Homecoming is yet another brick in her unwatchable wall that keeps growing by the year. In this amateurish movie, she plays Shelby, a girl stuck in her hometown with a mountain of debt and a mountain of love for her star quarterback ex-boyfriend (Matt Long), who shipped off to college months prior and already shacked up with a 90210 hottie mcgee (Jessica Stroup). Things come to a head, and a bore fest, when the b-friend & his new g-friend come home for… HOMECOMING and Barton thinks she can woo him back into her arms. Obviously that aint happening, and after some unhappy coincidences, Mischa traps her rival in her house, ties her up to a bed and drugs her aplenty. Sounds familiar? Yeah, we liked it too when it was called Misery, and this teen-y version is simply miserable. Sure wish that Annie Wilkes had chopped up the screenwriter of Homecoming to bits before one word of it had ever been put to paper. The only solution we see to turn around Barton’s fleeting career is to call on a voodoo priestess and bring Marissa Cooper back from the dead

Coop de Ill: there were two Marissa Cooper shirts we always wanted to get, but never did. the former Thighmistress got us this one, which always gets us odd looks by passersby (as do our manboobs)

Verdictgo: Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

Died Young, Stayed Pretty
Poster Children
Official Website & Trailer

Posters sell and advertise stuff. Some are used to do just that for bands and their concerts (looky here at GigPosters.com for a ton of em). It’s an art form fo sho and the artists who art them art’nt necessarily swimming in riches and fame. Died Young, Stayed Pretty is a documentary aiming to give ’em some of dat recognition that they deserve, but it’s not nearly as interesting as director Eileen Yaghoobian‘s last name. After about 15 minutes, you get the entire picture, so for the rest of the time you get more of the same: look at this poster, OK, look at 32838 more, OK, now lets talk to the poster designer about designing them, OK, now repeat, repeat and poster, peat, re, designer, talk, poster, things, stuff, is this thing still on?, hey, there’s Frank Kozik, but why are they only talking to him for 8 seconds when he was like the semi-forefather to these poster peoples? repeat, repeat, more posters, chit chat, some wit here and there, even more posters, aiiight, wait, how come they’re only talking about today’s poster makers? what about a lil history, like the dudes in the 60s who started it all, like Milton Glaser? Oh yeah, he has his own separate doc, and peeps like Kozik and many others were dones up in another called American Artifact. So what’s the point of all this dying young and staying pretty? Don’t really know, but we think it has something to do with posters

Poster Haste: outside of movie posters and this set dedicated to Yiddish words, here lie our mos flavorite posters mt EVERest (with much respek to Uncle S & Rosie the R)

Verdictgo: for poster addicts only, so Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Enemies be already playings at a theater near jews, while Stayed Pretty gets ugly in NY only, and Homecoming will soon be leaving screens in NY, LA and KY?

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…