Thighs Wide Shut

Superbad
McWhatevs
Trailer & Mo

There’s nothing pardickularly special about Superbad. It’s basically American Pie reheated, with a lot less high school seniors, and sadly, no nudity in sight. C’mon guys, you mcnabb an ‘R’ rating and you don’t even have one boob to show for it? I’m sure Shannon Elizabeth and her NSFWness were available for W. Superbad runs way too superlong, thanks in most part to the two bumbling keystone cops that bring the film to a grinding halt, just when the story was actually starting to take shape. There are indeeds laffs, but they’re of the easy South Parkesque ilk, and are spread way too superthin throughout this 2 hour teen sorta-sex comedy. The only real bright spot in this run-of-the-mill flick is the superdweeb Fogell, aka McLovin, played by superraw talent Christopher Mintz-Plasse. He’s the only one bringing something new to the table here. He’s essentially a more developed, sweeter version of AP‘s the Shermanator. Since the box office has been mos kind to Superbad, I wouldn’t rule out a sequel. Well, if that is the case, Mr Producer Apatow, please ditch everything that isn’t McLovable, which does not include supercutie Emma Stone, who’s totally Laura Prepon for the late aughties!

Shiz Is Fo Real: Mintz-Plasse isn’t the only star to come outta El Camino Real High School. He joins the not so superlong list that includes Brad Garrett, Peter Brady, America Ferrera and ex-Falcon RB Jamal Anderson

Underage Against The Machine: make yer own McLovin ID

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But Not Stinkin Badges

Death At A Funeral
Love Death Actually
Trailer & Mo

While the rest of you folks are out there anointing Superbad as the next best thang with your hard earned dollars, yer truly missing out on not only the funniest film of the summer, but quite possibly of the year. And that’s no joke. Frank Oz, the infamous voice of Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Grover, Cookie Monster and Yoda, has shown over the years that he has quite voice of his own, as a film director. Besides two Jim Henson related joints, his resume consists of only 10 feature films, but some of them will be providing laffs for decades to come, like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, In & Out, Bowfinger, What About Bob and unintentionally, the mos painful Stepford Wives remake. Wellski, you can easily add the laff riot that be Death At A Funeral to that list. Bee leave me folks, I had the lowest of low eggspecations for this broad British comedy of hijinks that ensure at a funeral, but I was quickly won over by the snappy writing and ensemble of colorful characters that populate it. Three of whom, I’d like to quickly give some props to: Daisy Donovan, who’s like a younger Emma Thompson, Andy Nyman, who’s like a shorter Ricky Gervais, and American Alan Tudyk, who’s probably the finest actor you’ve never heard of

1 Wedding & A Funeral: Matthew Macfadyen, who played Mr. Darcy in Knightley’s P&P, is married in real life to his screen wife Keeley Hawes. The two met on the set of the BBC’s drama Spooks

Aint Yer Average Jane: Jane Asher, who plays the recently windowed matriarch, was once engaged to none other than Paul McCartney. Supposedly, she’s the inspiration for the songs ‘Here, There and Everywhere’, ‘I’m Looking Through You’, ‘And I Love Her’, ‘For No One’ and ‘We Can Work It Out’.

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Breast In Show

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Stardust
From Dust Til Yawn
Trailer & Mo

Rob Reiner won’t be havin any restless evenings knowing that Stardust is not only NOT in the same league as his beyond brills Princess Bride, but not even in the same Species, Genus, Family, Order, Class, Phylum and/or Kingdom! Stardust is somewhere between Zardoz and MS-DOS. I don’t really know what that means, but what I do know is that the man who produced Snatch & Lock Stock and basically put X-3 into Brett Ratner’s fumblin hands decided to follow-up his yummy Layer Cake [TWS.org review] with this over baked Danny Ferry tale. Stardust mos certainly tries hard at entertainin, but it’s way too whimsy and not enuff cool. Hell, this pic of Mr Vaughn on set is the coolest thang that had anything to do with this kiddie pic. All the actors do a fine job, hispecially DeNiro as a gay pirate, but they’re having all the fun on screen and leaving little for the audience. And there’s two things that really peeved me. Numba one was the cheesy special effects. Young Sherlock Holmes had better CGI than Dust did, and that came out in 1985 for out loud cryin! And numba two, what on earth (and the heavens for that splatter) is goings on with Claire Danes’ blond eyebrows?

Hammer Time: hopefully Vaughn’s next project Thor will be more cool than whimsy. And who would make the perfect Thor? How bout Vincent D’Onofrio who played him in Adventures In Babysitting

Netflix Capacitor: want a Stardust that you’ll actually remember in years to come? Hit up the Woodman’s klassic Stardust Memories [trailer]

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

No Reservations
Send My Compliments To The Chef
Trailer & Mo

Lettuce waste no time here folks. This shoulda been a giant terd on a stick. Smarmy Aaron Eckhart uses all the right ingredients to get uptight Catherine Zeta Jones Douglas the III (the greatest Sorority Ever) to open up her kitchen and her heart, all while she tries to play mum to her recently orphaned niece, Olive Hoover. But ya know what? It wasn’t a terd, and not even close! To put it in laid-man’s terms, there are far worse movies to be dragged to by a woman. One of them is Stardust, but in that parDICKular case, I was the dragger, not the draggeeeeeeeee

Wurstest Date Movie Mt EVERest: my boy Gulf of Sonkin had his first and last date when he took a lady to go see Sleepers. Same thing woulda probably happened had it been Sleepwalkers, although that flick didn’t contain any Kevin Bacon raperific fun!

Be Wear: if I could buy one sorta offense Native American shirt, tis would be the one

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Jeepers Worth A Peepers

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Inside Paris (Dans Paris)
Inside Out
Trailer

I always say that foreign films can get away with a lot more than American ones can just because they’re in another language. But at the end of the day, or the week for that matter, even if yer speaking Esperanto, you still have an obligation to entertain your audience. Well, like Dans Paris‘ troubled protagonist Paul, I too was contemplating jumping off a balcony after I struggled to stay awake through this self-indulgent French film. This wasn’t a complete snoozefest, as I did like all of the characters in the film, but I just didn’t understand where they were coming from or where they were going to. Dans Paris tries to put all the jigsaw pieces together in its emotional third act, but by that time, the audience is closer to drained, than being entertained

Game For This Gamine: Joana Preiss may be a model, but she looks too much like Sandra Bernhard to get our mr mojo risin’. That’s why we pledge our amour to cutie patootie Alice Butaud, who on second thought, kinda also looks like Sandra Bernhard. In that case, we throw our baguette in the general direction of Marie-France Pisier, who may be an oldie, but still a NSFWie

Been There, Done Him?: don’t confuse this film with the male porn Inside Paris, ‘where you’ll find your tower just as erect as the Eiffel‘

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Un Certain Mérite, Mais Ceci Ne Mérite Aucun Insigne D’Odeur

Inside Paris (Dans Paris) opens in limited theaters today
and opens elsewhere elsewhen

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Ten
Unlike Spinal Tap’s Amps, This One Doesn’t Go To Eleven
Trailers & Mo

What if I told you that there’s a film starring Jessica Alba, Adam Brody, Bobby Cannavale, Paul Rudd, Famke Janssen, Gretchen Mol, Rob Corddry, Winona Ryder, Liev Schreiber, Oliver Platt, Ron Silver, Justin Theroux, the entire cast of The State (sans Michael Patrick Jann), and it’s written and directed by the dude that gave us Wet Hot American Summer (yeah, I know he was in The State, so shut the front door!)? With a power line-up like that (maybe 2nd best to the NL All-Star team on RBI Baseball), you’d say how could this not be the comedy feast of the year? I was spraying the same thing to myself, going into a screening of The Ten, a set of sorta-intertwining sketches about the ten commandments, like Kieslowski’s Dekalog, cept their ‘version is much shorter and (mostly) does not take place in Polish apartment building.’ That line was taken from the press notes bit entitled Ten Things You Need To Know About The Ten, which sadly, is almost funnier than the entire movie. Not to say that The Ten doesn’t have it’s moments (Wynona Rider! Stealing! A ventriloquist’s dummy! AND having sex with it!), but all around, it’s just not as funny as it could have been. Where Paris, Je T’Aime [TWS review]’s vignettes had an even hits to misses ratio, The Ten could only wish it could break even. Maybe Gawd shoulda added an 11th commandment: thou shall not waste a golden opportunity to make one fargin beerlarious movie. Amen and awomen!

I Command You: to rewatch Mel Brooks as Moses deliver us some helpful tablets

10 Things I Hate About Bo Derek: dem cornrows, dem cornrows, dem cornrows, dem cornrows, dem cornrows, dem cornrows, dem cornrows, dem cornrows, dem cornrows & dem cornrows… wait, how’d those last two get in there?

1 Thing I Don’t Hate About Bo Derek: when she gets all NSFW on us!

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But Not Stinkin Badges

The Ten opens in limited theaters tomorrow and elsewhere elsewhen

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Hairspray
Tracying
Trailers & Mo

Ever see John Waters’ funtastic ’88 salute to hair-dos and hair-don’ts called Hairspray? Then you’ve seen Hairspray. If you haven’t then you should rent it. If yer nearest Netflix shipping facility aints gots in stock, then you should wait cause everything else bein called Hairspray is not really Hairspray. Now I haven’t seen the Broadway musical, not cause I’m not gay, I’m actually 1/16th gay, but do the no-brainer math here folks: 1 theater ticket costs $110 and 10 movie tickets costs the same amount. Unless you see Chuck & Larry 10 times, yer gonna get a better value at the movie theater. Anywho, as a staged musical, I’m sure the songs are great and a rip-taylor roaring time will be had by all (although I’ve heard that no one in the play has blue hair, which confuses the living day and nighlights outta me), but what passes on stage doesn’t always on screen. Hairspray, like The Producers before it, is making its way back to celluloid, via the Great White Way. And like The Producers, yet not even close to the monstrosity that that was, the songs add NOTHING to the original source material that shoulda juss been left original. Tits not for a lack of trying, cause everything in this jazzed-up version is even jazzier than Jazzy Jeff giving Maxi Jazz an HJ during Jazz Week: THE CAST! THE DANCE NUMBERS!! THE COLORS!!! THE AMOUNT OF GAY PEOPLE WORKING ON THE FILM!!!! Don’t spank me wrong, there’s credit to be doled out (hispecially for that thumbmazin cast), but why bother giving props de leon when New Line should juss re-release the original next year, for its 20th annie verse airy!

Everybody Must Get Stoned: visit the Cold Stone Creamery in Great Neck, Strong Island, where star Nikki Blonsky went from selling scoops to becoming one!

The Beaver Monologues: the thought of Tony Danza in a Broadway show is beyond scary, but Jerry Mathers, aka Beaver Cleaver? He’s in the midst of a 3-month run in Hairspray that sounds so purrfect that we may have to fork over $110! The key word is ‘may’

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But Not Stinkin Original Hairspray

Rental Round-Up Dawg: if you Bestflix one movie that isn’t Hairspray make it David Fincher’s bestest work, and by far, one of the bestest films this year, Zodiac. And whatever you do, don’t BUY it cause in the ’08 there’ll be a director’s cut with more features than Zodiac suspects!!