bride of best movie thread ever

[Greg Nog]

Pootie Tang is my favorite comedy of all time, and within my top three favorite films of all time in any genre.

[hannah]

i saw Melinda and Melinda last night and it was all well and good (will ferrell was particularly good i thought) but probably would have been better without the funny little guy from the princess bride popping up every so often to comment to his friends about some bullshit or other.

Sir, you have no right to make fun of Wallace Shawn, who trumps all of us in just about every single way.

And, if you are going to make fun of him, at least know enough to refer to him properly! Not "funny little guy." He is, in fact, a "homunculus."

Thank you.

[alistarr*]

i stand corrected. however, it was not he but woody allen at whom my criticism was directed. the acting was fine; it was the script that caused me trouble.

[kadiekatRN]

Pootie Tang is my favorite comedy of all time, and within my top three favorite films of all time in any genre.

I really love Pootie Tang, too.  Sa-da-tay!

[YojimboMonkey]

The presence of Wallace Shawn can only make a movie better.

Trying to think about stuff to rent for tonight, since I'll likely be on painkillers nothing requiring deep thought too much.  Good movies but fun.  Dunno.  Going through some of your suggestions, they don't all seem like movies to watch on norco   I've got The Big Lebowski sitting on the table next to me as well as Monty Python "Personal Best" DVDs for Terry Jones, Graham Chapman, and Michael Palin.  Those will be fun too.  Maybe I'll branch out to some action stuff as well.

[das kranke Tier]

You should watch that movie where Steven Segal is the cook on the submarine...Under Siege?

[YojimboMonkey]

That is the only worthwhile Seagal movie I admit but that's not much of a recommendation   been a while since I've seen it

[das kranke Tier]

Well in that case, I wish I were closer so I could lend you my copy of Zardoz

[Greg Nog]

Huh.  Now I'm trying to think of recommendations that would work well with painkillers.  Overall, I think I'd just suggest tons of episodes of Samurai Jack.

[das kranke Tier]

Dude, everything works well w/ painkillers...

[nonotyet]

Or the Venture Brothers!

[Swimmy]

Pootie Tang is my favorite comedy of all time, and within my top three favorite films of all time in any genre.

I really love Pootie Tang, too.  Sa-da-tay!

Chiming in with more Pootie Tang love. People don't believe me when I tell them it's amazingly good.

[YojimboMonkey]

Damian and I just watched the Donnie Yen Iron Monkey movie.  Early wire fu but still a lot of fun.  Of course the best fights are the ones with the most minimal use of wires but then at the end when they go over the top that's fun too.

Damian is the best to watch kung fu with, we were both giggling like crazy.

[girl]

I would've sworn to you that I've seen The Naked Kiss before, but it arrived today from Netflix, and I just put it on and I guess I'm wrong, because I'm sure I would've remembered that opening scene.  This looks promising!

[girl]

The Naked Kiss doesn't quite live up to the first two minutes, it turns into a bit of a melodrama, but it's still pretty great.  I'm stumped as to what movie I have seen that I mistook for this one.  Samuel Fuller doesn't have another "kiss" movie. . . Next up, Leave Her to Heaven with the gorgeous Gene Tierney.

[YojimboMonkey]

Beers + painkillers + Big Lebowski = whoa

[YojimboMonkey]

also it makes me miss smoking up quite a bit

[girl]

Did you ever rent movies randomly, only to find a weird connection between them?  For example, one time I rented The Adventures of Sebastian Cole and Fight Club and freaked out a little bit when they both turned out to have Where Is My Mind by The Pixies on the soundtrack.  So, The Naked Kiss and Leave Her to Heaven both feature children on crutches, and Leave Her to Heaven and the next movie I have here, His Kind of Woman both have Vincent Price.

[Greg Nog]

Chiming in with more Pootie Tang love. People don't believe me when I tell them it's amazingly good.

Seriously.  The first time I saw it, I was with my college roommate, and girlfriend at the time.  We finished it, and my jaw was just hanging open.  They were like, "Well... that was kind of odd."  And I basically shouted, "YOU GUYS MUST SURELY ADMIT THAT WE JUST WATCHED ONE OF THE GREATEST FILMS OF OUR GENERATION."  I think they thought I was kidding.

[coldforge]

What I always find interesting about your deep love for Pootie Tang, Greg, is that other than that one movie you really don't seem to have any affinity for black culture at all.

[Greg Nog]

Wait, are there black people in Pootie Tang?

[YojimboMonkey]

I am not familiar with this Pootie Tang Greg, please provide me with a whit-esque critique so that I might judge whether I'd enjoy it.

[hannah]

Pootie Tang and Zoolander were released the same year and Zoolander got all the hype and love (b/c of white people) but Pootie Tang is better because it's funnier and it's also shorter and has no needless subplots or anything: just bam bam bam funny over.

[Greg Nog]

All right, here's what you need to know, going in:  The film starts with Bob Costas interviewing the titular character, Pootie Tang.  Through this interview, we learn that Pootie is probably the greatest celebrity of our generation, as he excels at everything he ever pursues.  Pootie has just made a movie called "Sine Your Pitty on the Runny Kine," and proceeds to show a clip of the film.  This clip is the movie that you the viewer then proceed to watch for the next ninety minutes.

So what follows is a story about Pootie's battle against an evil CEO who wants to sell cigarettes and liquor and junk food to children.  Pootie, of course, wants none of that, as he's an upstanding role model.  So okay, basic good versus evil kind of story.

But what comprises that story is this insane mishmash of martial arts, flashbacks, characters talking to the camera or Bob Costas, a magic belt, Pootie's mom dressed like a cow, extended dance sequences, a hit song that contains no sound, and Pootie's unique nigh-incomprehensible slang.  It's kind of like if James Joyce was assigned to write the script for a Farrelly brothers movie. 

Apparently, the director was mad that the studio tried to retool the film, but the thing is, I think that's part of what made the film such a joyfully anarchic mess -- there's no clear vision to it, just a chaotic mixture of cool things that have been shoehorned into a traditional comedic narrative structure.

I just checked on the film's wikipedia page, and learned that the Onion AV Club said it "borders on audience abuse" and "confus[es] idiocy for absurdity and randomness for wit".  But that only looks like confusion if what you want from the film is absurdity and wit.  If you're down with idiocy and randomness as virtues unto themselves, you'll probably dig the movie.

Again, stealing from wikipedia: Kevin Murphy, one of the MST3K writers, said: "Pootie Tang crosses all cultural barriers to become the dumbest movie I've seen in an entire generation. But it is also funny as hell...Pootie Tang strives for the dumbness it achieves, a feat few films can do...this is a good kind of dumb. Like mooning. Like a cat falling off a table."

So all right, you know how in 1984, one of the characters says, "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever."?

If you want to get a sense of what Pootie Tang is like, imagine a cat falling off a table -- for ever.

[joseph scott]

I'm about halfway through an old Hitchcock, Murder!, from 1930. It's a little tough to follow because everyone's accent is really thick, plus the sound quality is pretty terrible. It's in need of a little preservation. Anyway, so-so so far.

Also caught This Gun for Hire last week which was okay but was a bit of a letdown because I'd just read the book the week before, so I was too busy noticing all the things they'd changed.