Guilty Pleasure No. 109: SST — Death Flight (dir by David Lowell Rich)


In 1977’s SST: Death Flight, we follow a supersonic jet as it makes it’s maiden flight, going from New York to Paris in just three hours.  Not surprisingly, there’s an “all-star” cast waiting for the plane to take off.

Regis Philbin appears as the reporter who breathlessly covers the excitement at the airport.  Lorne Greene plays the owner of the jet who is staying behind in New York.  Burgess Meredith is the plane’s designer.  Robert Reed is the hard-driving pilot.  Peter Graves is a businessman who is surprised to see that his former secretary (Season Hubley) has boarded the plane with her stick-in-the-mud fiancé (John De Lancie).  Doug McClure is a disgraced pilot who will also be on the flight.  Billy Crystal is a bowtie-wearing flight attendant.  Bert Convy is the PR man who is traveling with his pregnant mistress (Misty Rowe).  Martin Milner, Tina Louise, Susan Strasberg, they’re all on the flight!  Finally, there’s a epidemiologist (Brock Peters) who is transporting a box that contains a sample of the Senegal Flu.   Now, you might question why anyone would transfer a sample of a highly infectious disease that has a 30% fatality rate on a commercial flight and that’s a good question.

Unfortunately, a disgruntled executive (George Maharis) tries to sabotage the plane, which leads to an explosive decompression that causes the Flu box to burst open.  Uh-oh, people are getting sick!  And now, Paris refuses to let the plane land in their city because they don’t have time to set up a quarantine.  London, however, is willing to let the plane land at one of their airports.  However, London hasn’t finalized their quarantine plans so there’s a chance that landing there could lead to British people getting sick.

Brock Peters suggests that they land in Senegal, which already has a quarantine going on.  When it is reasonably pointed out that the plane might not have enough fuel to make it to Senegal and that everyone, including those who are not sick, might die in the resulting crash, Martin Milner gives a speech about morality and demands that all of the passengers agree to further risk their lives by going to Senegal.  John de Lancie argues for London.

And you know what?

Watching the film, I agreed with John de Lancie.  De Lancie points out, quite correctly, the no one on the airplane knew that they were going to be traveling with a deadly disease, that London is preparing a quarantine even while the plane is in flight, and that it’s unfair to demand that everyone on the plane agree to possibly die in a horrific crash.  We’re supposed to really hate de Lancie’s character but he makes sense!

The passengers and crew vote 3 to 1 to go to Senegal.

And, of course, the plane crashes.

“Did we do the right thing?” Susan Strasberg asks.

Well, the plane crashed.  I think that kind of answers your question.

Some survive and some don’t.  The epidemiologist survives without a scratch on him and somehow, no one in the film ever gets mad at him.  Seriously, though, what was he thinking bringing his deadly disease samples on a commercial fight!?

Why is this a guilty pleasure?  Well, first off, it’s a terrible movie but the cast is full of so many familiar faces that it’s hard to look away.  Just the casting of Peter Graves in a “serious” disaster film about an airplane makes this a guilty pleasure.  Secondly, the film is the epitome of both the 70s and the disaster genre.  The supersonic jet can break the sound barrier but it still looks incredibly tacky.  I’m surprised it didn’t have shag carpeting.

Finally, there’s a moment where Bert Convy tells his pregnant girlfriend, “Don’t worry.”

She replies, “That’s what you said last time and look what happened!”

Convy looks straight a the camera and shrugs.

Best guilty pleasure ever!

Previous Guilty Pleasures

  1. Half-Baked
  2. Save The Last Dance
  3. Every Rose Has Its Thorns
  4. The Jeremy Kyle Show
  5. Invasion USA
  6. The Golden Child
  7. Final Destination 2
  8. Paparazzi
  9. The Principal
  10. The Substitute
  11. Terror In The Family
  12. Pandorum
  13. Lambada
  14. Fear
  15. Cocktail
  16. Keep Off The Grass
  17. Girls, Girls, Girls
  18. Class
  19. Tart
  20. King Kong vs. Godzilla
  21. Hawk the Slayer
  22. Battle Beyond the Stars
  23. Meridian
  24. Walk of Shame
  25. From Justin To Kelly
  26. Project Greenlight
  27. Sex Decoy: Love Stings
  28. Swimfan
  29. On the Line
  30. Wolfen
  31. Hail Caesar!
  32. It’s So Cold In The D
  33. In the Mix
  34. Healed By Grace
  35. Valley of the Dolls
  36. The Legend of Billie Jean
  37. Death Wish
  38. Shipping Wars
  39. Ghost Whisperer
  40. Parking Wars
  41. The Dead Are After Me
  42. Harper’s Island
  43. The Resurrection of Gavin Stone
  44. Paranormal State
  45. Utopia
  46. Bar Rescue
  47. The Powers of Matthew Star
  48. Spiker
  49. Heavenly Bodies
  50. Maid in Manhattan
  51. Rage and Honor
  52. Saved By The Bell 3. 21 “No Hope With Dope”
  53. Happy Gilmore
  54. Solarbabies
  55. The Dawn of Correction
  56. Once You Understand
  57. The Voyeurs 
  58. Robot Jox
  59. Teen Wolf
  60. The Running Man
  61. Double Dragon
  62. Backtrack
  63. Julie and Jack
  64. Karate Warrior
  65. Invaders From Mars
  66. Cloverfield
  67. Aerobicide 
  68. Blood Harvest
  69. Shocking Dark
  70. Face The Truth
  71. Submerged
  72. The Canyons
  73. Days of Thunder
  74. Van Helsing
  75. The Night Comes for Us
  76. Code of Silence
  77. Captain Ron
  78. Armageddon
  79. Kate’s Secret
  80. Point Break
  81. The Replacements
  82. The Shadow
  83. Meteor
  84. Last Action Hero
  85. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
  86. The Horror at 37,000 Feet
  87. The ‘Burbs
  88. Lifeforce
  89. Highschool of the Dead
  90. Ice Station Zebra
  91. No One Lives
  92. Brewster’s Millions
  93. Porky’s
  94. Revenge of the Nerds
  95. The Delta Force
  96. The Hidden
  97. Roller Boogie
  98. Raw Deal
  99. Death Merchant Series
  100. Ski Patrol
  101. The Executioner Series
  102. The Destroyer Series
  103. Private Teacher
  104. The Parker Series
  105. Ramba
  106. The Troubles of Janice
  107. Ironwood
  108. Interspecies Reviewers

The Oscars of my youth and now!


When I was a teenager in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I didn’t know a single person who loved movies like I did, not even close. I’d watch the Oscars by myself every year. The next day I’d have no one to talk to about my enjoyment of the show and my favorite winners or biggest disappointments. My family and friends loved me, but movies just weren’t their thing. As such, I couldn’t really talk to anyone about how happy I was that Sean Connery had won an Oscar, or how upset I was that GOODFELLAS didn’t win an Oscar, or then how excited I was that my hero Clint Eastwood had dominated the awards with UNFORGIVEN! This was the day and time where there was no social media so I was truly alone in my obsession. Being alone didn’t matter though, because there was just something about the world of film that I was fascinated with from the moment our family got our first VCR. Seeing my favorite stars all together in the same building was just so fun. My favorite host of my youth was Billy Crystal. He was just amazing, and I even remember him riding a horse off the stage at the 1991 show, the year I graduated high school. 

I guess after heading off to college and then starting a family a few years later, the Oscars became less and less important to me over the years after that. I still didn’t know anyone who loved movies like me, but now I had a career to focus on and little league baseball games to coach. As much as I still enjoyed the cinema, I guess it’s fair to say my priorities changed. And then I got involved in the world of cinema on social media in 2021. I met people like Eric Todd, who shares my love for the actor Charles Bronson. I met people like Lisa Marie Bowman, Jeff “Who is not Joseph Cotten,” Stewart Moncure, and others on Twitter who love to watch movies together and tweet about them. This is the first time in my life that I actually know a group of people who love movies like I do. These folks take cinema seriously and don’t make fun of me for doing the same. I found my movie people. So I started watching the Oscars again. Watching OPPENHEIMER win 7 Oscars, including Best Picture, a couple of years back was especially enjoyable for me since one of my favorite actors of my youth, James Woods, served as an Executive Producer. I’m watching the Oscars again tonight. It’s just more fun knowing that there really are people out there who care about movies, and the people who make them, just as much as I do. 

Live Tweet Alert – #MondayMuggers present RUNNING SCARED (1986), starring Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal!


Every Monday night at 9:00 Central Time, my wife Sierra and I host a “Live Movie Tweet” event on X using the hashtag #MondayMuggers. We rotate movie picks each week, and our tastes are quite different. Tonight, Monday, August 11th, we’ll be watching RUNNING SCARED (1986), starring Gregory Hines, Billy Crystal, Steven Bauer, Darlanne Fluegel, Joe Pantoliano, Dan Hedaya, Jon Gries, Tracy Reed, and Jimmy Smits.

The plot: Two street-wise Chicago cops have to shake off some rust after returning from a Key West vacation to pursue a drug dealer who nearly killed them in the past.

Peter Hyams directed RUNNING SCARED, and it’s one of the very best “Buddy Cop” films out there. So, if a night full of action and laughs sounds good to you, join us on #MondayMuggers and watch RUNNING SCARED. It’s on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and PlutoTV! I’ve included the trailer below:

I Watched 61* (2001, Dir. by Billy Crystal)


61* is about two baseball player and two friends who couldn’t seem to be more different.

Roger Maris (Barry Pepper) is an introverted family man who doesn’t like it when reporters show up at his house in search of a story or a quote.  He’s a good ball player, one of the best, but he doesn’t want to be a celebrity.  Mickey Mantle (Thomas Jane) is a larger-than-life personality, a beloved figure on the field and in the dugout.  Mickey loves being famous and the fans love him.  Both Maris and Mantle are members of the New York Yankees.  Because Mantle is struggling with his drinking, he becomes Maris’s roommate when they’re on the road.  In 1961, the two friends both go after Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a season.  The press presents their season as a battle, a race to see who will be the first to hit the sixty-first home run of the season.  Mantle and Maris, though, are just swinging the bat and making plays.

I really enjoyed 61*, which is a baseball film made by and for people who love baseball.  I liked the contrast between the quiet Maris and the charismatic Mantle.  Even though Maris is a hard worker and a good ballplayer, Mantle is the fan favorite and the one that people actually want to break the record.  I appreciated that Maris and Mantle remained friends even when the press tried to turn them into rivals.  That’s what teamwork is all about.  Barry Pepper and Thomas Jane were great as Maris and Mantle and the movie showed how each man dealt with the stress of possibly breaking Babe Ruth’s record.

(Why is there an asterisk in the title?  Babe Ruth set his record in a season that only had 154 games.  The 1961 baseball season was 8 games longer.  The asterisk was added as a reminder that Maris and Mantle had 8 more games than Ruth did to try to break the record.  Baseball fans understand how important accurate statistics are to a player’s career and a team’s season.)

61* celebrates the way baseball used to be, a game played by athletes who had to depend on skill and teamwork instead of performance enhancing drugs.  The movie opens with Maris’s family watching as Mark McGuire closes in on breaking the record.  McGuire would only briefly hold the record.  He would lose it, for 48 minutes, to Sammy Sosa and then, three years after winning it back, he would lose it a second time to Barry Bonds.  Of course, Roger Maris won the record without using steroids so, as far as I’m concerned, it still belongs to him.

If you’re a baseball fan, 61* is a film that you have to see.

Retro Television Reviews: The Love Boat 2.6 “Mike and Ike / The Witness / The Kissing Bandit”


Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past!  On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing the original Love Boat, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1986!  The series can be streamed on Paramount Plus!

This week, I learned that there’s no way to escape the Bradys!

Episode 2.6 “Mike and Ike / The Witness / The Kissing Bandit”

(Dir by Allen Baron and Roger Duchowny, originally aired on October 21st, 1978)

This week, The Love Boat continued to be a floating HR nightmare as Newton Weems (a very young Billy Crytsal) donned a mask and spent his nights running around the ship and kissing every single woman that he came across.  Fortunately, Newton’s such a fantastic kisser that no one demands that the police be alerted.  Unfortunately, with every woman on board eager to get kissed, that means that no one is reacting to the lame flirtations of Doc, Gopher, and the Captain.  The Captain decides that the best way catch the Kissing Bandit would be to use Julie as a decoy.  If I was Julie, I would point out how reasonable I was about the Captain’s uncle and demand more money.  Instead, Julie allows herself to be kissed and soon, she’s in love with the Kissing Bandit as well.

However, Newton eventually realizes that he’s actually in love with another passenger, Roberta (Laurie Walters), and that he doesn’t have to wear a mask to be romantic.  Though this disappoints his biggest fans (played by Nancy Kulp, Pat Carroll, and Sharon Acker), it does make the rest of the crew happy.  It seems like the Captain should be worrying more about running the ship than hitting on every woman who comes aboard but I guess big luxury liners pretty much run themselves.

While this was going on, Isaac was reconnecting with his old friends, Lenore (Marilyn McCoo) and Mike (Billy Davis, Jr.).  When they were younger, they used to perform on street corners for spare change.  Now, Mike is an executive vice president and he’s so work-obsessed and stuffy that his own son (Todd Bridges) thinks that his father doesn’t love him!  Fortunately, things work out in the end.  Mike realizes that there are things more important than business.  Ted Lange gets to show off his dance moves, though it’s hard to forget that Isaac once accused another passenger of being a sell-out for doing the same thing.

Finally, Frank McLean (Robert Reed) is taking a cruise so that he can avoid testifying in a murder trial.  He is spotted by Suzanne (Toni Tennille), who knows Frank from the old neighborhood.  At first, Frank denies even being from New York but, eventually, he tells Suzanne his story.  Suzanne falls for Frank but she has a secret of her own.  By Love Boat standards, this story is fairly dramatic but it ultimately fails because there’s not a hint of chemistry between Reed and Tennille.  In fact, Robert Reed looks even more miserable after he falls in love than he did before.

On a personal note, I just can’t escape The Brady Bunch, can I?  Last week, even as I was finishing up The Brady Bunch Hour, Robert Reed showed up on Fantasy Island.  This week, Eve Plumb went to the island while Robert Reed boarded the ship.  There’s just no way to escape those Bradys!

The Films of 2020: Standing Up, Falling Down (dir by Matt Ratner)


Having failed to achieve his dream of becoming a comedy superstar in Los Angeles, 34 year-old Scott (Ben Schwartz) returns home to Long Island.  How bad are things for Scott?  Consider this:

When he left for Los Angeles, he left behind Becky (Eloise Mumford), despite thinking that he was in love with her and despite her asking him to stay.  While he was in L.A., he purposefully chose to not respond to her attempts to get in contact with him because he was determined to move on with his life.  Now, he’s back and he’s wondering what could have been.  As for Becky, she’s now an acclaimed photographer and she’s married to a surfer named Owen (John Behlman).

All of his old friends are now married and have families and don’t really have time to hang out with a 34 year-old who is still struggling with adulthood.

When Scott returns home, he moves back in with his parents.  His mother (Debra Monk) spoils him while his father (Kevin Dunn) barely says a word to him.  Scott announces that, even though he knows he needs a job, there’s no way that he’s going to go to work at his father’s lumberyard.  His father says that’s not a problem because he wasn’t planning on offering Scott a job in the first place.

Scott’s sister (Grace Gummer) is also living at home and is stuck in a less than glamorous job but she’s dating Ruis (David Castaneda), an extremely charming security guard who is loved by everyone who meets him.

And, to top it all off, Scott has developed a rash of some sort in his arm!

In fact, the only positive development in Scott’s life is that he’s made a new friend.  Marty (Billy Cyrstal) is a bit older and he’s an alcoholic but he also has the best weed and he’s full of good advice.  On top of that, Marty’s also a dermatologist and is willing to just give Scott the medicine for his arm free of charge.  Marty becomes a bit of a mentor to Scott.  Of course, Marty has demons of his own.  His first wife committed suicide and his second wife died of stomach cancer.  His own son refuses to speak to him and won’t allow him to see his grandson.  Marty’s drinking isn’t the quirky character trait that it first appears to be.  Instead, it’s what he does to deal with the pain and the guilt that he carries around with him every day.

Standing Up, Falling Down is an occasionally effective and occasionally awkward mix of comedy and drama.  As a character, Scott can occasionally be a bit hard too take.  It’s one thing to have trouble accepting the fact that you’re getting older while it’s another thing to be in your mid-thirties with the maturity level of a 13 year-old.  At times, Scott seems to be so helpless that you find yourself wondering how he survived in Los Angeles for as long as he did.  Fortunately, Ben Schwartz is an appealing actor and the film doesn’t make the mistake of trying to idealize Scott’s lack of direction.  You find yourself sincerely hoping that Scott will finally manage to get his life together, even though you know he probably won’t.

The big surprise of the film is Billy Crystal, who gives a genuinely good and complex performance as Marty.  Like Crystal, Marty is a bit of an attention hog and occasionally seems a bit too satisfied with his jokes.  However, the film also explores why someone like Marty always feels the need to be “on.”  The best moments in the film are the ones where Marty quietly considers why his life has reached the point that it has.  In the film’s quieter moments, there’s a lot of sadness in Crystal’s performance.  The scene where he unsuccessfully tries to get his son to talk to him is absolutely heart-breaking, all the more so because Cyrstal downplays the scene’s potential for sentimentality.  Right when you’re expecting schmaltz, Crystal instead holds back.  With just the slightest change in his facial expression, Crystal immediately tells us everything that’s going on inside of Marty’s head.  It’s a truly good performance.

Standing Up, Falling Down is a low-key, occasionally effective dramedy.  Not all of it works (I could have done without Scott harassing his sister’s co-worker at the pretzel place) but it has a good heart and an unexpectedly great performance from Billy Crystal.

Insomnia File #33: The Comedian (dir by Taylor Hackford)


What’s an Insomnia File? You know how some times you just can’t get any sleep and, at about three in the morning, you’ll find yourself watching whatever you can find on cable? This feature is all about those insomnia-inspired discoveries!

If you were having trouble getting to sleep around two in the morning last night, you could have turned over to Starz and watched the 2016 film, The Comedian.

It probably wouldn’t have helped.  It’s not that The Comedian is a particularly interesting movie or anything like that.  Abysmally paced and full of dull dialogue, The Comedian would be the perfect cure for insomnia if it just wasn’t so damn loud.  Robert De Niro plays an aging comedian named Jackie Burke and, in this movie, being an aging comedian means that you shout out your punch lines with such force that you almost seem to be threatening anyone who doesn’t laugh.  However, the threats aren’t necessary because everyone laughs at everything Jackie says.

Actually, it’s a bit of an understatement to say that everyone laughs.  In The Comedian, Jackie is such a force of pure, unstoppable hilarity that all he has to do is tell someone that they’re fat and literally the entire world will shriek with unbridled joy.  The thing with laughter is that, in the real world, everyone laughs in a different way.  Not everyone reacts to a funny joke with an explosive guffaw.  Some people chuckle.  Some people merely smile.  But, in the world of The Comedian, everyone not only laughs the same way but they also all laugh at the same time.  There’s never anyone who doesn’t immediately get the joke and, by that same token, there’s never anyone who can’t stop laughing once everyone else has fallen silent.  The Comedian takes individuality out of laughter, which is a shame because the ability to laugh is one of the unique things that makes us human.

Anyway, The Comedian is about a formerly famous comedian who is now obscure.  He used to have a hit TV show but now he’s nearly forgotten.  Why he’s forgotten is never made clear because nearly everyone in the movie still seems to think that he’s the funniest guy in the world.  Jackie’s an insult comic and people love it when he tells them that they’re overweight or when he makes fun of their sexual preferences.  This would probably be more believable if Jackie was played by an actor who was a bit less intense than Robert De Niro.  When De Niro starts to make aggressive jokes, you’re natural instinct is not so much to laugh as it is to run before he starts bashing in someone’s head with a lead pipe.

Anyway, the plot of the film is that Jackie gets into a fight with a heckler.  The video of the fight is uploaded to YouTube, which leads to a scene where his manager (Edie Falco) stares at her laptop and announces, “It’s going viral!”  Later on, in the movie, Jackie forces a bunch of old people to sing an obnoxious song with him and he goes viral a second time.  I kept waiting for a shot of a computer screen with “VIRAL” blinking on-and-off but sadly, the movie never provided this much-needed insert.

In between beating up the heckler, ruining his niece’s wedding, and hijacking a retirement home, Jackie finds the time to fall in love with Harmony Schlitz (Leslie Mann), a character whose name alone is enough to The Comedian one of the most annoying films of all time.  Harmony’s father is a retired gangster (Harvey Keitel) and you can’t help but wish that Keitel and De Niro could have switched roles.  It wouldn’t have made the movie any better but at least there would have been a chance of Keitel going batshit insane whenever he took the stage to deliver jokes.

I’m not sure why anyone thought it would be a good idea to cast an actor like Robert De Niro as a successful comedian.  It’s true that De Niro was brilliant playing a comedian in The King of Comedy but Rupert Pupkin was supposed to be awkward, off-putting, and not very funny.  I’m not an expert on insult comics but, from what I’ve seen, it appears that the successful ones largely succeed by suggesting that they’re just having fun with the insults, that no one should take it personally, and that they appreciate any member of the audience who is willing to be a good sport.  Jackie just comes across like a cranky old misogynist.  Watching Jackie is like listening to your bitter uncle play Vegas.  I guess it would help if Jackie actually said something funny every once in a while.  A typical Jackie joke is to refer to his lesbian niece as being a “prince.”  Speaking for myself, when it comes to Robert De Niro being funny, I continue to prefer the scene in Casino where he hosts the Ace Rothstein Show.

Perhaps the funniest thing about The Comedian is that, when it originally released into theaters, it was advertised as being “The Comedian, a Taylor Hackford film,” as if Taylor Hackford is some type of Scorsese-style auteur.  Taylor Hackford has been making films for longer than I’ve been alive and he has yet to actually come up with any sort of signature style beyond point and shoot.  The second funniest thing is that The Comedian was billed as a potential Oscar contender, up until people actually saw the damn thing.

Though it may have failed at the box office, The Comedian seems to show up on Starz quite frequently.  They always seem to air it very late at night, as if they’re hoping people won’t notice.  

Previous Insomnia Files:

  1. Story of Mankind
  2. Stag
  3. Love Is A Gun
  4. Nina Takes A Lover
  5. Black Ice
  6. Frogs For Snakes
  7. Fair Game
  8. From The Hip
  9. Born Killers
  10. Eye For An Eye
  11. Summer Catch
  12. Beyond the Law
  13. Spring Broke
  14. Promise
  15. George Wallace
  16. Kill The Messenger
  17. The Suburbans
  18. Only The Strong
  19. Great Expectations
  20. Casual Sex?
  21. Truth
  22. Insomina
  23. Death Do Us Part
  24. A Star is Born
  25. The Winning Season
  26. Rabbit Run
  27. Remember My Name
  28. The Arrangement
  29. Day of the Animals
  30. Still of The Night
  31. Arsenal
  32. Smooth Talk

A Movie A Day #263: Running Scared (1986, directed by Peter Hyams)


Running Scared is weird but good.

Ray Hughes (Gregory Hines!) and Danny Costanzo (Billy Crystal!!!) are two tough detectives in Chicago.  All they want to do is three things: retire, open a bar in Florida, and bust Chicago’s most ruthless drug dealer, Julio Gonzalez (Jimmy Smits).  Their captain (Dan Hedaya) wants them to leave for Florida as soon as possible but they are determined to take down Julio first.’

There are two strange things about this otherwise formulaic crime film.  First off, the two tough cops are played by Gregory Hines and Billy Crystal.  According to the film’s Wikipedia page, director Peter Hyams realized that Running Scared‘s plot was nothing special so he decided that the only way to make the movie stand out was by doing it “with two actors you would not normally expect to see in an action movie.”  The other strange thing is that Hyams’s gambit worked.  Gregory Hines may have been best known as a dancer and Billy Crystal as a comedian but both of them were surprisingly believable as Chicago cops.  Running Scared is actually one of Billy Crystal’s best performances.  For once, he’s believable as being someone other than a version of himself.  Even his frequent one liners seem like something that a detective would say instead of Crystal recycling punch lines from his act.  Whether they are chasing down perps and firing their guns at a moving vehicle, Hines and Crystal are never less than credible as action stars.  Lorenzo Lamas has got nothing on the team of Hines and Crystal.

Predictable though it may be, Running Scared is one of the better late 80s cop films.  The action scenes are exciting and Hyams does a good job capturing the grittiness of Chicago.  Jimmy Smits is a good villain and Joe Pantoliano, Steven Bauer, and Jon Gries all shine in supporting roles.  Keep an eye out for the always underrated Darlanne Fluegel, playing Danny’s ex-wife.

What Lisa Watched Last Night: The 84th Annual Academy Awards


Last night, me and my BFF Evelyn watched the 84th Annual Academy Awards.

Lisa and Evelyn at the Oscars

Why Was I Watching It?

As if you had to ask.

What Was It About?

It was about honoring some good films and making a lot of catty comments about rich people who don’t know how to dress themselves.

What Worked?

You know who is adorable?  Bret McKenzie, who all good people as a member of The Flight of the Conchords.  He won an Oscar last night for best original song for Man or Muppet and he gave exactly the type of wonderfully sincere acceptance speech that you would expect from Bret McKenzie.

You know who else is adorable?  Jim Rash.  The script he co-wrote for The Descendants is overrated but it was still good to see Community’s Dean up there accepting an Oscar.

And you know who is really, really adorable?  The little Emma Stone.  Loved her dress and loved her whole little skit with Ben Stiller.

Jean Dujardin, Christopher Plummer, and Octavia Spencer all gave wonderful acceptance speeches and Uggie got to go on stage when The Artist won best picture!  That was so cute!

What Didn’t Work?

Much like the Golden Globes last month, the Academy Awards were a rather somber affair,  It was as if everyone couldn’t get over the fact that they had actually nominated Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close and everyone was muttering under their breath, “Let’s get this over with before anyone remembers that we nominated a film that not even those people at the Golden Globes were impressed by!”

As much as I enjoyed two of the nominees for best picture (The Artist and Hugo), respected one of them (The Tree of Life), and enjoyed another almost despite myself (The Help), the majority of the nominations this year went to movies that we will probably never watch again and to performers who will probably never have a year as good as this one.  Perhaps that is why the various Academy montages all seemed to feature scenes taken from films that received not a single Oscar nomination.  (More time was devoted to the latest Mission Impossible than to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.)  It just gave the whole ceremony a rather odd feel.  It reminded me of when I was in high school and the drama club would give out little trophies and certificates at the end of the year.  I received a little trophy for being the Best Actress in Advanced Theatre during my junior year.  I also got a certificate for “Biggest Flirt.”  (My acceptance speech, by the way, was: “Couldn’t it have been for best lay?”  Ahhh, High School.)

As host, Bill Crystal was pretty bleh and he kinda looked like Robert Blake from Lost Highway.

Whenever Rooney Mara popped up on screen, me and Evelyn would yell, “You need boobs to wear that dress, honey!”

Meryl Streep’s acceptance speech was long-winded and she came across as being a bit full of herself, I think.  Now I know that you’re saying, “Well, gee, Lisa, she’s the greatest actress ever so she’s earned the right to be full of herself!”  Actually, if you really pay attention to Streep’s performances, you’ll see that the main reason she has a reputation for being a great actress is because she never allows you to forget that she’s acting.

I missed James Franco.

“OMG! Just like me!” Moments

As I mentioned on twitter, Evelyn and I have decided that we were the Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz of my living room.  We’re still debating on just who exactly was Cameron and who was J.Lo. 

Lessons Learned

Everything is better with James Franco!

Billy Crystal and the Holy Grail?


So, here I was all excited and everything because I had an excuse to start another one of my never-ending polls and what happens?  Less than 24 hours after I set up my poll asking you who you think should replace Eddie Murphy as the host of next year’s Oscar ceremony, Billy Crystal tweets that he’s got the job.

Seriously?

They couldn’t just leave us in suspense for an extra day or two?

Anyway, Billy Crystal isn’t really a surprising choice as people were mentioning his name from the minute Murphy stepped down.  However, he is a rather boring choice and I guess that the show’s producer, Brian Grazer, has decided not to do the whole “edgy” thing.  Which is probably a good thing since the Academy Awards version of edgy tends to be … well, it’s hard to say what it is but it’s distinguished by smoothed corners and a definite lack of sharp edges. 

I guess what I’m saying is that the Oscars are a big round table and apparently, Billy Crystal is going to be King Arthur next year.  Though, according to our poll, you would have much rather seen either myself or the Muppets holding court.