Thighs Wide Shut

Forks Out
to
Timothy John Russert
‘Potatoes’

1950 – 2008

Stan
‘& Deliver’
Winston

1946 – 2008

Trevor Linden being a Canuck
sportscaster Charlie Jones
Eight Men Out author
LBJ death petal ad man
bridge over the River Kwai builder
Super Bowl II Raiders coach
Philadelphia Museum of Art’s main bizatch
WKRP writer
sum old dude that was in Sweet Home Alabama

&
the architect of the Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel

Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Whip It Good!
Trailers & Mo

We were 3 1/2 years old when Raiders of the Lost Ark redefined what an action-adventure movie is, 6ish when our babysitter took us to see and vomit at the food and bugs of Temple of Doom, and at the ripe (and right) olde age of 11teen we bid a mos fond farewell to Dr Jones and his proud poppa (+ Sallah and Marcus Brody, who once got lost in his own museum) as they rode off into the glorious sunset that was The Last Crusade. So what is a grown up at 30earlysomething to make of a fourth adventure that was released way too long after the last one? Going in we didn’t expect perfection, and coming out, we now know that perfection is not what #4 hands in. And in all honesty, how could it?

Lettuce not even bother comparing the new one to the original trilogy (we need to see it at least 38912548 more times before doing such a thing), especially since those took place in the Naziriffic mid to late 30s and Skull exists in an entirely different era of post-atomic red menace. Speaking of menaces, at least Lucas and Spielberg had the right idea to go forward in time, and not back, which was a main reason the Star Wars prequels blew burrito chunks. We mean, where’s the fun in digging up a past that we already know the outcome of (Anakin Skywalker turns evil??!!? WHO WUDDA THUNK!)? Rest assure kiddes, cause Indy 4 delivers enuff of the goods to tickle yer fancies, and does indeed make up for those 3 Jar Jar stink bombs. Our screening pal Time Werespanko summed it up to a teet: Indy 4 was great cause it was like catching up with a set of dear old friends

About 20 minutes into Skull, you’ll give up questioning whether this is indeed an authentic Indy flick or not, cause at that point, the familiar look, sound and feel are all present and accounted for. Outside of Dr J and his long lost love Marion Ravenwood (the always radiant Karen Allen), all the other peeps are brand spanking new. LaBeouf-cake, as a greaser teen, and Blanchett, as the Soviet comradinatrix, are welcome additions to the long line of fab Indy characters, while Ray Winstone, John Hurt and Jim Broadbent will ultimately end up to be as memorable as Wu Han (wu who?). So what about the story? You won’t find any details or spoilers here folks (although it did remind us of the very first five episodes of DuckTales, culminating with the classic ‘Too Much Of A Gold Thing’ [watch]), but we will admit that this may not have been Indy’s mos memorable adventure to date. Nonetheless, the pacing is solid, as this thang zips right along juss like the first 3 joints did

We could go on and on and on til the break of dawn (real qwikly though, we loved the Paramount logo, the Marcus Brody Love and the rumble in the jungle, and the only shiz we coulda done without were the digital ILM animals), but we know yer gonna see it anywayz (unless yer a giant loser or are a Nazi). Like we said before, it’s certainly not perfect, but it’s still Indiana Mothersticking Jones and it won’t disappoint (or it will if yer anticipating the second coming of Raiders). Hell, put that fedora, leather jacket and whip onto Harrison Ford’s person and we’d still line up to see him each and every time, even if his next adventure involves 2 hours at the proctologist. We smell a fifth Indy, and a finger that smells like poop!

Poster Haste: Drew Struzan may not be a household name, but he mos def should be. He’s the fellow who’s designed some of the greatest movie posters of our modern times, including, but not limited to, all four Indys, the modern the Star Warses, The Goonies, Better Off Dead, Johnny Dangerously, Cannonball Run, Big Trouble in Little China, Adventures In Babysitting, DC Cab, the first four Police Academies and our personal fav Back To The Future

Nepotism Rules: Steven and Cate’s daughter Sasha Spielberg notches her fourth screen credit as the ‘slugger’ in Skull. The other three movies she has appeared in where Munich, The Terminal and the last theatrical film her mum acted in, The Love Letter

Seeing Red Carpet: Harrison, Karen, Shia and plenty of other special guests attend the very same screening we did. Lucky them!

Xtra Xtra: what, our mammoth post about Indy shiz wasn’t good e
nuff for u? Click here and den keep on clickin!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show for now, and we’ll give you a second opinion after we see it again this weekend

Indy is currently playing at a theater near Jews, and not that anyone should care, but War Inc opens on Friday, and juss in case you didn’t hear, it was more like War, STINKS!

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

ahhhh New Mexico, the land of enchantment, and tender vittles that will give you diarrhea for weeks! we, as well 3 of the Whitest Kids you may know, descended upon our 47th state for Nipsy Newbsy‘s nuptials in Albuquerque and left with plenty of memories, not to mention plenty of diarrhea. did we mention diarrhea? LOVES IT! Adrian Grenier was there too, but he wasn’t there for the wedding, juss to sell his own shampoo line, Grenier Fructis. enuff with the diarrhea telling and on with the diarrhea showing!

everyone gets their kicks on Route 66

even Nikki Six

who doesn’t love the sun symbol that adorns the state flag?

we bought a shirt with the logo
that’s almost as busted as this tee

did we mention diarrhea?

then you muss try La Placita‘s & Frontier
for maximum Old El Gaso

is there anything butter than a ‘CARWAS’?

yeah, whatever the fred funk a ‘LLOИUH’ is

we voted for Pueblo

the Acoma Sky City‘s pueblo that is!

where the ladder’s are as white

as a Neil Diamond concert audience

where indoor plumbing doesn’t exist

and Porta-Potties rule the sky

there’s plenty of crap to buy from the Natives

including the same shitty ceramic pottery over and over!

the gawds hate wastewater

but the Porta Potties love dumping!

fry bread is a nice

but maybe not as nice as Stephen Fry

what’s more insulting than the term ‘Redskins’?

a Native’s pick-up truck sporting a Redskins decal
+ a Dallas Cowboys one as well
wtf?

here’s me and my boy Leroy

who appears to love food a lil more than we do!

Santa Fe was lovely

and so is Iron, whose symbol is ‘Fe’

czeching out the Loretto Chapel’s miraculous staircase is a muss!
even if Snopes sez false

hispecially for those of us who first saw it on Unsolved Mysteries

it took 10 minutes to go thru O’Keeffe’s museum

cause we’re really not into vagina paintings

when it comes to gastronomical food
we put our faith in Rachael Ray and her burrito farts

that’s why we hit up Cafe Pasqual’s
and hit up the bathroom many hours afterwards

Owlbuquerque?

only in New Mexico will you find a van outside of an Injun casino
with an owl, a falcon and tons of bird shit juss chilling out

we may not go with gawd

but we’d go back to New Mexico
cause we still need to eat at the UFO Micky D’s
and find those missing Atari ET cartridges

My Blueberry Nights
Tasty Snoozeberries
Trailers & Mo

Director Wong Kar-wai‘s first foray into the English tongue is very pretty, and pretty boring. No real shock there since that’s how we felt about the only other two of his films we’ve seen, In The Mood For Love and 2046 [TWS review]. Normally style doesn’t make-up for little substance in filmdom, but there’s juss something so beautiful about WKW’s love of glowing neon lights and sped-up slow-motion shots that we’ve now made this exception for a third time. Blueberry Nights marks Norah Jones’ acting debut, and after taking it in, it’s hard to tell if she’s any good or not. Why? Well, she spends most of the movie barely speaking, as she and we stand by and watch the other actors act, and damn fine ones at that (David Strathairn, Rachel Weisz, Jude Law and Natalie Portman). The film’s story is hers, but it doesn’t feel that way. She’s traveling across America to mend a broken heart, meeting all these other lonely souls, and we tend to be more interested with them than with her. Luckily their bits make up for her empty stares, although together as a whole, the bits don’t add up to much, but boy are they pretty. A more interesting debut is pitched in by Chan Marshall, another singer who you may know better as Cat Power. She shares a quality short scene with Jude Law that seems to come outta nowhere, yet her brief contribution made us wonder if maybe she shoulda been cast in the lead. Oh well, maybe WKW will throw her more of a bone if he decides to follow this up with My Blueberry Days

Memphis Belles Yes!: a 1/3rd of the film is set in Memphis, Tennessee (mostly at the Arcade restaurant), and if you’ve never been to this franztastic southern city, you owe it to yourself to visit. there’s Graceland, Sun Records studio, the Civil Rights Museum (amazingly built behind the Lorraine Motel, where MLK Jr was killed), gettin sloshed on Beale Street and mos importantly, sum of DE breast fried chicken we’ve ever had, GUS’S

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): if we can give Run Fat Boy Run a Jeepers Worth A Peepers, then Blueberry should get it too

Sex and Death 101
Sophomoric Class Exercise
Trailers & Mo

Roderick Blank (pretty boy Simon West) has got probably the greatest dilemma on earth. Right before he’s about to wed, he’s magically emailed a list of women he’s previously bedded, plus the added bonus of 70 more names that he will eventually get to kiss kiss bang bang. With a list like that, does one go ahead and get hitched or seek out these other ladies and start crossing off their names? Blank wisely chooses not to shoot blanks and tackles the list (with some assistance from his assistant, the long forgotten Mindy Cohn, aka Natalie from Facts of Life, and of Peabs face-down in her Honey Bunches of Oats fame). Wonderful premise, eh? Indeed so, and there’s some solid raunchy NSFW goings on here, but the execution is too clunky for it to fully work. Obviously we’re going to see him finish out his list of 101 names, but did we really need to see almost all of these sexcapades played out? There are some montages, but the movie runs a little too long, and could have benefited from a few more montages. And who doesn’t love montages? They even reference them in the film

So the real question is, who’s the last name on the list (and when the hell are we gonna get there already)? We won’t tell you, but we will say there’s a subplot about a killer of sexual deviants that appears to have nothing to do with our protagonist’s journey through the valley of the dolls. Or does it? Enter Winona Ryder, who re-teams with her Heathers (best teen movie EVERRRRRRR) writer, Daniel Waters, on his second directed joint. The two have a lot in common, a solid start to the early 90s and then tossed aside by the Hollywood machine. Ryder’s been able to bounce back a bit, although she really needs some better movies, but Waters? Being the dude who penned Hudson Hawk and Batman Returns won’t get you a lot of meetings in any town. There’s been talk of a Heathers sequel, and if that’s true, lettuce hope Waters takes a course on Directing 101

O Brother, Where’s Your Art: Daniel’s younger brother Mark has had a munch better go of things in Hollywurst. He started off with The House of Yes and went on to direct Freaky Friday, Mean Girls and a bunch of other pedestrian fare

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges

The Flight of the Red Balloon
(Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge)
Full Of Hot Air
Trailers & Mo

Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 Oscar winning The Red Balloon (Le Ballon Rouge) is a 34 minute gem that anyone of any age would love. Hsiao-hsien Hou‘s homage to that short, The Flight of the Red Ballon,
is an almost 2 hour borefest that anyone of any age would slit their eyes out to if they’re even able to sit through all of it. All the innocence and charm of Lamorisse’s piece apparently didn’t make the flight as it’s been replaced by nothingness and lots of it. If you’re dying to see the ‘adventures’ of a Taiwanese babysitter in Paris + Juliette Binoche lend her voice to a puppet show, then this is the movie for you. If not, then make the le voyage to Netflix, rent the original short and watch it 4 times instead of taking in this celluloid equivalent of NyQuil

VH99: in 2006, for one whole hour, VH1 Classic aired the video for Nena’s ’99 Luftballons (99 Red Balloons)’ to help raise money for Hurricane Katrina Relief

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

Priceless
(Hors De Prix)
MasterCard Declined
Trailers & Mo

Gad Elmaleh is the most loveable loser in French cinema today. Anytime we’ve seen him on screen, our hearts go out to him, and our mouths end up errupting with laughter. He stole the show in the average Valet [TWS review], and he keeps Priceless from going completely bankrupt. Here he plays a simple barman who, by way of mistaken identity, literally charms the pants off of sugar daddy hunting Audrey Tautou. A whole movie coulda been built around this, ending with the revelation that he’s a pauper and not a prince, but that bubble bursts earlier in the flick than expected. Once Tautou discovers that he doesn’t have the Midas touch, she instantly loses interest in him. Elmaleh doesn’t give up and tries hard to re-charm her pants off. Tats starts up her old ways again with another rich dude, and while Elm waits for her to change her mind, he decides to jump into the gold digging game as well. You know it will be only a matter of time before Audrey breaks down and realizes that Gaddy is the man for her, even if he’s only rich at heart. Priceless is down right cute like its stars, but too darn predictable to be worth the trip to the art house

Gadamn: Gad, as a woman, scary shiz indeed

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

all flicks open in limited release today, cept for Priceless, which already be in theaters

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

the 2008 Whitney Biennial blew more goats than Balki Bartokomous and more sheep than Gene Wilder did in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask). either the artists have given up on trying to make interesting art or they’ve given up trying to make art interesting. whatever the case, they aren’t trying hard enough… or maybe they’re trying too hard… about as hard as we get when we watch Madonna’s ‘Vogue’ video

first and foremost and foreskin: unless yer Nam June Paik, can hack Nintendo games or directed this NSFW Gore Vidal Caligula trailer, no one wants to see your video art, so please don’t bother making it. as soon as we see a black curtain leading to a dark room at any museum, we run for the hills, even if they do have eyes, and hispecially if they have thighs! mussta been slim pickens this year on that front cause they had to drag Spike Lee’s uber-brills When The Levee Broke into one of dem dark rooms. sure, the film is art, but we’d rather watch it on our HDTV at home than in a box the size of the closet where Patty Hearst was kept by the SLA

so what about the non-video shaz? there’s blue paint without a title. wow Oliver Mosseetttt, you really gotta show us your technique!!! and then there’s skinny shizzles that looks like wads of spitballs. Oh, Charles Long, you be more like Charles WRONG! and what about crap everywhere on a floor with some neon tossed in? good luck trying to sell that piece (of crap) Jason all Rhoades lead to sucks! don’t even get us started on the dude with the scary blue eyes! the Gatorade feeding plants thing was sorta-amusing, but so was watching My Two Dads when we were 10 years old and didn’t have many thoughts in our brain. Urgggggggh. what a bunch of crap on a stick AND stick on a crap! the only thing we really cared for was Robert Bechtle‘s photorealism paintings, but his work isn’t very cutting edge considering he’s been doin this kinda stuff since the late 60s

mo photos from da show hear

lucikly the next biennial isn’t for another two years. maybe by that time the artists will come up with something other than nothing and video art will start hacking Nintendo games again. in the meantime, we’ll JO to a different Whitney and look fwd to these two eggzibitions ee comings up that we hope will wipe the bongwater taste left in our mouth: Henry Darger @ the Folk Art Muse and Takashi Murakami @ the Brook Muse

and an oldie but a moldie: Thigh Mizzle’s Top Hill-even Art-ease-its of Balls Thyme