Thighs Wide Shut

1984
Hudson Theatre
101 Minites
now through October 8th

1984 – the book is usually required reading for all high school students.  I personally consider it an essential read for all human beings.  In fact, although I have only read it once, it remains the best book I have ever read (that isn’t Chicken Soup With Rice).  The new 1984 play on Broadway isn’t required or even essential viewing, but it never hurts to take a fresh look at the material, regardless of how painful it is to do so.  The play is both fresh, and painful.  I’m sure you’re asking – where do I sign up??

To me, plays are usually a too stage-y and static for my enjoyment.  I prefer musicals cause the songs keep the pace going, in between the slower talking expositiony bits.  Well, there is no music in 1984, but there’s nary a lull or dull moment.  If you somehow find yourself napping during the show, the constant yelling, sirens and blackouts will jolt you back into the surreality being performed on stage

1984 isn’t a happy place or time, but you know this cause you’ve already read the book (or seen the underloved film).  If you haven’t, I don’t think you can sit through the play and appreciate Orwell’s text.  You may get the message, but you won’t get the details.  Also, you will be served a Winston Smith that wasn’t really to my liking.  Don’t get me wrong, Tom Sturridge gives it his ALL in this adaptation, and I actually feel for him that he has to endure the fake pain he encounters night in and night out on the Hudson Theatre stage, but there was something totally off about his interruption and diction of the character.  He sounded like a bro that was rad + cool, and not a radical brother.  Maybe I just picture Winston to be more like the stoic, and recently departed John Hurt, which hurt Sturridge’s chances of being my new Winston Smith

But Sturridge isn’t alone.  I didn’t really care for Olivia Wilde’s Julia (she didn’t get naked), or Carl Hendrick Louis as whomever he was, or Robert Duvall’s cousin (who doesn’t seem very Duvallian) loud loudness.  I did care for Reed Birney and Cara Seymour‘s work, and all else that went into the production.  The staging in the early parts was pretty fixed, but as things got more fcuked up in the story, so did everything else with it.  As Winston got stripped down, so did the production.  As the tension mounted onstage, it did the same for its audience.  And you know your play is working its intended magic when the lead has his teeth pulled, spits waterfalls of blood from his mouth, and your wife turns to you and says ‘this is the worst play I’ve ever seen!‘  She didn’t say anything like that after the show was over, but I’m sure she was thinking that she was happy to live in a society that wasn’t 1984 (no matter how many of you Trump revilers think we are)

that’s some goodthink right there, so to newspeak

TRON: Legacy
Mild Digital Penetration
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

You should care less what we, you and everyone we bloat thinks of the TRON sequel, delivered 28 years after its first light cycle. Only one man’s opinion counts and that’s Tron Guy‘s.  Slain and pimple, he loved the first one, and the rest of us didn’t really.  That’s what qualifies him above us, and he could straight-up tell us whether the 2.0 disc hits the target or strayed too far off the grid.  But Disney wanted nothing to do with Jay Maynard and his male camel toe, 5reals, and we haven’t yet heard him have his say even with that jilt, T-Guy still found the new one to be ‘In-f****ing-credible‘.  Do you really need to know anything else?  Do you????  You don’t cause nothing else matters but that man’s opinion, and happiness [his full review is HERE!!!]

But you want our opinion, right?  And?  And juss like the original, it’s breathtakingly boring.  Not necessarily a misfire, but not necessarily setting our minds ablaze (getting blazed before a showing is recommended).  In a byte-shell, it’s TRON 1 with better turb-grafx times 16.  That’s that.  OK, it’s a little bit more than that, like this…

Jeff Bridges is stuck in an old computer, but the computer aint no Jessica Tandy anymore, and so instead of doing stuff, he lives like an Obi-Wan-Lebowski hermit, cause his younger alter ego self runs shiz, and he has a clue, cause his name is Clu, and ya know what, it’s purty ammazin how far CGI has come from the Jar Jar stinkage to the curious case of Jeffrey Buttons’ younging in Legacy (see above photo)

so while Obi-Wan-Lebowski Flynn plots his next move, he engages in a lot of yoga and hangs out in a 2001 style glowing cave home

and occasionally, he’ll take a trip to the big A.I. city to catch his favorite discus team, The TRON Toe Maple Leafs!!!

but he stays away from the shady bars filled with overly hammy and overly glammy David Bowie fanatics like Michael Sheen, or something

but why would he want to stay home since Daft Punk isn’t playing there, cause they’re playing at the shady bar, that’s a lot less shady than the one filled with death stickers!!!!  btw, Daft Punk were the bestest characters in the whole movie.  9reals!!!  And anytime we hear their score used in the film, we sorta care about those bits, and when we don’t, we don’t.  if there’s one reason TRON 2 had to eggist, it was so that we the people could see what it would look like if Daft Punk DJed in the world of TRON!!!!!

and at the Daft Punk party, there are like wicked hot Metropolis machine-man women (below, Beau Garrett) that you’ll want to make love to, but they’re all about the 1s & 0s and less about 69s (it’s a Disney movie, for Pete’s dragon’s sake!)

but that matters little to Obi-Wan-Lebowski, cause his bland son Garrett Hedlund transported into the computer by way of his Dad’s old arcade that isn’t as dope as Funspot, but what is?  you can even play TRON there!!  (note to you-self: GO TO FUNSPOT b4 you die)

and so dad & son are finally reunited, and both totally want to get wet & Olivia Wilde with her faux-Louis Brooks do, and the three of them have to like save discs and get back to the real world or else!!! or something!!!!

but where’s Tron from TRON?  We see Scarecrow (Bruce Boxleitner), but only in the real world.  in the Tandy world, he’s there, but he isn’t, but he is.  And where’s Cindy Morgan????  Is Cindy the real Mrs King?

and what is the deal with James Frain being a 7th rate Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg???

The end!  OR IS IT??????????????

Oh wait, did we mention that Doogie Howser’s mom was in it?

Punk’d: there were a lot of fake Daft Punk TRON tunes floating about over the past year, and some of them were hactually really darn good

Verdictgo: how you feel about 1 will dictate how you feel about 2, and thus, for eye poppin technical wizardry alone, we say low low low low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

TRON legates at a theater near jews this Friday

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Next Three Days
Prison Broken
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Elizabeth Banks has the ultimate angel/devil smile, and often employs it to keep us guessing as to which one she is.  In Paul Haggis‘ messy, yet whole heartedly entertaining The Next Three Days (a remake of a 2008 French film of a different name), that patented Banks grin is on full display, and we can’t seem to figure out if she’s a cold blooded murderer of a co-worker or an innocent loving mother and wife.  Well, her hubby Russell Crowe knows she’s incapable of being a monster (or is sheeeeee????), and after exhausting ever possible legal option to get her released, he turns to plan b: BREAK HER OUT!!!!!  He’s no expert on the subject, being a community college prof and all, but luckily the guy (Liam Neeson, for all of 1 scene!) who wrote the book on it is, and so Crowe picks his beautiful mind (get it???) and then stuff happens!!!!!!  Most of this stuff is preposterous, and borders on recockulous, and all the secondary characters (Olivia Wilde, Brian Dennehy!!!!, RZA, Kevin Corrigan and Trudie Styler???) have about as much character as an extra with no lines, but still, once this thing gets going, it gets going, and it is so mad tense to like the tense degree!!  And it all takes place in Pittsburgh!!!!!  PITTSBURGH!!!!

Holy Moses!!!!: Moran Atias is Hebrew for ‘please touch my kosher wiener now‘

google has plenty on her work of body!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Three Days condors today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…