July 2006 Archives

ENORMOUS ADVANCE ON PINK SHEETS

Fascination juggles perplexity in Monster House. Animation is top-notch, and the advances are plain even to a layman; a character like Chowder is sui generis and far more detailed than necessary, loveable even; the voicings are mostly bull's-eye etc. But the plot is boldly misogynist, and that black sidekick cop if inexplicable. Screenplay credits include two producers of Sarah Silverman's Comedy Central pilot, and they must have barred the doors -- this is material on a platter for her.

The moral of this story would be something like: "If you run off with the circus fat lady and build her a house in the proto-burbs, make sure she's mentally stable before she accidentally dies and terrorizes neighborhood for all eternity." Stranger precepts have been turned into decent flicks, although on the face of it that's pretty lousy all in itself. Am I missing some inside weight joke about Kathleen Turner doing the voice of "CONSTANCE"? At the end, "our hero" merges the terms "house" with "wife" for "housewife" ("CONSTANCE") and then crosses the street to confront his own clueless Mom, who wields a GINORMOUS toothbrush, a monster in the making.

Everybody underrate comics, and satirists have an even arder time of it. Lewis Black's recent HBO special made the leap -- long stretches of his routine traded laughs for righteous, hard-earned bile. Herry Shearer has a Masters in Political Science from Harvard, you can look it up, but you'd never guess it from how funny he is. He gets off the best kicker to the Supreme Court decision. (If you don't listen to le show every week, you are an ignoramus.)

NOBODY TOLD ME

Lion's Gate schedules The U.S. vs. John Lennon for September...

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Tom Verlaine compares himself to Perry Como on Wkd Edition Sunday.