Well, dear readers, yesterday I watched three motion pictures in a row. Have you ever watched three motion pictures in a row? How the motion pictures even fit in a row is beyond me, but then, what isn’t beyond me? In any case, I shall get to those motion pictures in a bit. As I sat down to write these here notes, I happened to glance around my kitchen table (where my handy-dandy laptop computer resides), looking for inspiration, trying to figure out a title for today’s notes. And what did I see? I saw Scotch tape. A pretty ordinary thing to see. But then I started to think (never a good thing), why is this stuff called “Scotch” tape? Why isn’t it called Swedish tape? Or Norwegian tape (well, it couldn’t have been called norwegian tape because Norwegian was already taken by wood). or even Greek tape. Why Scotch? Did the Scottish invent tape? So, naturally I was hell bent for both leather and doing a little research on the subject of Scotch tape. And here is what I found: Scotch tape was invented by Jamie MacDougal MacGregor MacConnahy MacPhearson, way back in the late 1800s. Mr. MacDougal MacGregor MacConnahy MacPhearson was in his native land of Scotland, and he was trying to affix an important piece of paper to the wall so he wouldn’t forget what was on it. He’d run out of little pins which is what he normally used to stick bits of paper onto the walls of his home (he named his little pins that he would push into the walls, push pins, very clever that), so he was at his wit’s end as to what to do. He had some cellophane lying around and an idea struck him – if he could somehow make one side of that cellophane sticky, then he could use that to affix bits of paper to the walls. He worked all day on this notion, and by the end of the day, by combining various ingredients such as bits of leftover porridge, rat droppings, and some sticky stuff from a plant located outside his door, he had a gooey concoction which, when applied to one side of the cellophane, made the cellophane adhere to both paper and wall. He was so excited that he danced a Scottish jig right then and there. He decided that his new invention should have a name. For some reason, the act of attaching the bit of paper to the wall seemed like “taping” to him. He didn’t know why that word came to him, since he’d never heard it before, but as he was attaching the bit of paper to the wall, he thought, “I’m taping this to the wall. I dunnot know why fer the life o’ me this act of adhering bits of paper to the wall with sticky cellophane should be called taping, and yet that is the word that popped into my head.” And so he named his “tape” MacDougal MacGregor MacConnahy MacPhearson Tape and the rest would have been history but no one could remember that unwieldy name. So, after his homeland, Mr. MacDougal MacGregor MacConnahy MacPhearson named his invention Scotch tape, and then the rest was history.
Wasn’t that a good and pointless story for a Sunday morning? Perhaps tomorrow we can have the story of Swiss cheese, American cheese, French fries and, best of all, the Russian lady. My goodness, this first section has become unwieldy, hasn’t it? Not to mention unseemly. Yes, you heard it here dear readers, this section has become Unwieldy and Unseemly, so I do believe we should all click on that Unseemly Button below so we can just all move on with our lives.
As I said earlier, I watched three motion pictures in a row. One of them I talked about yesterday, but I hadn’t finished it. And that was The Majestic. I’d seen a third of it, and now I’ve seen the rest of it. It didn’t get better. In fact, I would say The Majestic is a perfect example of many things that I hate about motion pictures today. We seem to get them in flavors – big, bloated high concept action pictures, big bloated thrillers with twist endings, big bloated yet small art films, big bloated comedies with very few laughs, and big bloated heavy-handed dramatic pictures. The Majestic falls into the latter category. This motion picture was directed by Frank Darabont, who gave us The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Mr. Darabont’s “thing” is to direct very long motion pictures, endless motion pictures, pictures that you think will never ever end. The Majestic is two hours and twenty-five minutes long, emphasis on the long. At one hundred minutes, it might have had a chance, if only it had had a good script. But, with a bad script and a long length, well, can we just give it a big bloated haineshisway.com rasberry and be done with it. I’m so tired of movies that underline every word, every emotion with a blatancy that is unbearable. The music in this film is non-stop – heaven forbid we, the audience, should be allowed to feel something or discover something without having it telegraphed to us and shoved down our throat. Jim Carrey tries hard, but can’t overcome the awful writing. The girl who played his girlfriend was bland and unmemorable – I find it hard to believe that out of all the actresses that must have been considered, that she was the best available. Martin Landau, good actor that he is, is shameless here. Only David Ogden Stiers comes off well, and he’s just terrific -understated and subtle. As to The Majestic itself – which, if you don’t know, is a movie theater in the small town where most of the film takes place. This town appears to have on main street, and on this main street is a run-down movie theater which they renovate during the course of the film. That renovation would do Hollywood Boulevard proud – it’s a palace, this one-street small town movie theater is. It’s also funny to me that in order to justify the title of the film being The Majestic, they call the theater The Majestic. How stupid is that? That would be like saying The Ziegield, or The Astor, or The Grauman’s Chinese, or The El Capitan. They simply don’t have “The” in front of a movie theater name. It would have been called Majestic, and yes people would have said, “Let’s go to the Majestic”. They didn’t call my childhood theater The Stadium, it was called Stadium. The final third of the film, the HUAC section, was unbearable, but not quite as unbearable as the treacly ending. These kinds of scripts are written by people who took and/or studied screenwriting courses. This happens in Act One, this arc happens in Act Two, in Act Three we get this surprise and this journey. It’s by the numbers and I’m tired of it. There is no original voice, no moment of true honesty.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? I need to get off my soap box. Perhaps I’ll get on my toothpaste box. In any case, the other two films I saw were Woody Allen’s The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, and the comedy Rat Race. Poor Woody. What has happened to Woody Allen? His “serious” films aren’t very good, and his comedies aren’t very funny. This man has made some of the best comedies in American cinema, and Manhattan, his masterpiece, is both funny and dramatic and lovely to look at. The Curse of the Jade Scorpion is, even at ninety-five minutes, twenty minutes too long, one joke stretched out and replayed over and over again. His “banter” with Helen Hunt is excruciatingly unfunny. However, as with all late Woody, he occasionally comes up with a line that has me laughing for ten minutes, and Scorpion is no exception. It’s just not enough. I’ve always loved Helen Hunt, but she’s not wonderful here, but neither is her material. As in The Majestic, David Ogden Stiers turns in an excellent performance. Woody looks like he’s had blonde highlights put in his hair.
Rat Race wants to be It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Three years ago, I said to my sometimes writing partner, David Wechter, we should write a Mad World kind of all-star comedy, because no one has done one for a long time. Oops. I also said we should write a heist/caper film because no one had done one of those for a long time. Oops. Anyway, Rat Race does have some genuinely funny moments, it’s pace is frenetic and it doesn’t flag too often, and the cast is pretty okay, too. I really liked Amy Smart, and Rowen Atkinson, who I have never liked, is really funny here. Jon Lovitz, who I normally can Lovitz or Leavitz, is given the film’s funniest sequence, and he is hilarious in it and I must say, even in my own den, sitting alone, I howled with laughter (the sequence involves Hitler’s car and an American veteran’s rally). The gags come fast and furious, so one tends to forgive the half that just lie there like so much fish. The film also has a weak opening and I, for one, don’t like old women falling down stairs, I don’t think that’s so funny no matter how the “joke” is capped (it does have a funny capper, but the actual act of the woman falling is sickening). Mr. Jerry Zucker is a competent director and the script gives the actors ample opportunity to clown. Someone please tell me that those are comedy teeth in John Cleese’s mouth.
What am I, Ebert and Roeper all of a sudden? Today I will be auditioning a young girl and boy for the Julius Wechter benefit. And then I shall watch more motion pictures because I need to catch up.
Keep those trivia guesses coming – you have until midnight tomorrow night. Also, I forgot to mention yesterday, that our very own dear reader, Mr. Robert Armin, had a play open in New York, a showcase, at a mid-town theater. And, that play stars Miss Susan Gordon, who Mr. Armin met because of these here notes. Apparently, the opening went very well indeed, and perhaps Mr. Armin can post something about it in the Unseemly Comment Box below. If anyone else has important events coming up, send me an e-mail and I’ll try to mention them. We do like to give these here notes the personal touch, you know. Well, I think I shall go and stick some bits of paper on the wall, using, of course, MacDougal MacGregor MacConnahy MacPhearson tape.