Year:  2011
Genre:  Drama, Comedy, Romance, Silent
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, John Goodman, Penelope Ann Miller, James Cromwell, Missi Pyle
Director:  Michel Hazanavicius
Run time:  100 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     I think that if the Oscars are ever going to retire, now is the time.  The Artist has given the Oscars the perfect out.  The movie awards are now perfectly bookended.  The silent movie Wings, a vapid but expensive action flick, won the first ever Best Picture Oscar in 1927.  The second silent movie to win Best Picture – The Artist, a deep and powerful low-budget movie about the end of the silent film era.

     In the 84 years of the Oscars, we’ve gone from a German actor, Emil Jannings, winning Best Actor, to France’s Jean Dujardin winning this year for The Artist.  We’ve gone from Americans of Austrian Hungarian and Russian descent to a French Lithuanian (Michel Hazanavicius) as Best Director, when The Artist took that one as well.

     So now, the Oscars have covered pretty much every country in the world, they’ve gone from silent films to talkies and back to silent films, they still love their black and white movies, and they still love artsy dramatic indie romance movies far more than blockbusters.

     And so I suggest to the Academy that NOW is the time to shut it down.  Before the Oscars become the Grammys.  Before the box office results of a movie makes it an automatic contender. Before The Avengers and The Hunger Games and the new Transformers battle it out for Best Picture the way Adele and Usher and Beyonce do every year for Best Album.  The Artist, on DVD and Blu-Ray June 26^th from Alliance Films, is not the best movie ever to win an Oscar. But it’s the best opportunity for the whole ceremony to walk away while it’s still at the top of its game.

Year:  2012
Genre:  Drama, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Armie Hammer, Lily Collins, Julia Roberts, Nathan Lane, Jordan Prentice, Mare Winningham, Sean Bean
Director:  Tarsem Singh
Run time:  106 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Mirror Mirror is a movie that’s all about beauty.  It is gorgeous film making, every scene wonderfully crafted and shiny and lovely and breathtaking.  Julia Roberts is stunningly beautiful as the evil queen, and young star Lily Collins has a sort of Audrey Hepburn hotness as Snow White.

     The problem with Mirror Mirror is that it is all about the sort of beauty you see in…well, a mirror.  The two-dimensional kind of beauty.  There is zero depth in this Snow White adaptation, and it’s as disappointing as it is lovely.  Oh, it hits all the bases – there are seven dwarves and there is a prince and the queen is evil and talks to a mirror and wields horrible magic and the townspeople suffer and so forth. 

     But really it’s just going through the motions, and there is no sense of wonder or foreboding or mystery or…substance.  At times it feels like the movie is trying to be a parody, with twinkling teeth and lines about focus groups.  But again, it’s just going through those motions as well.

     Another problem with Mirror Mirror is that Julia Roberts IS the hottest woman in the world. Still. And even doing a great Audrey Hepburn impression, Lily Collins is still not quite the fairest of them all. I realize, of course, that this is subjective, and it’s my own lust for Julia Roberts colouring my judgement. I just find it hard to let go of Julia Roberts, who has been the star of my prostitute fantasy since 1990.  But ultimately, whether you agree with that assessment or not, the movie is less Julia Roberts and more Kim Kardashian. Lovely to look at, but you’re REALLY a lot better off not paying attention to it.  Mirror Mirror comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray June 26^th from Alliance Films.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Daniel Tosh
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     On June 12^th, Paramount Home Entertainment releases a DVD set of episodes of Tosh.O called Hoodies.  I’m not sure if this is just a collection of random episodes, or if it’s the first season of the show, or what, exactly, Hoodies means.  I do know that I like it.

     It seems like a pretty easy concept and a great way to make a TV show without a whole lot of effort.  Take whatever’s trending on youtube, play the videos, and make jokes about the dummies who hurt themselves or the dog that caused an explosion or the fat lady singing Skynyrd tunes.  Like a dirtier, meaner America’s Funniest Videos.  The great thing about Tosh.O, though, is that it’s exactly that. A really mean, VERY funny comedy show centered around internet memes. 

     I think the absolute best, most inspired segment on the show is the Web Redemption segment.  Daniel Tosh finds someone who has embarrassed themselves in a youtube video, and gives them a chance at redemption. The drunk guy who slammed into the garbage cans trying a slam dunk. The girl who fell off her table singing. The man who got himself stuck inside a balloon.

     These people get interviewed, they get put on TV, and they get another chance to do the thing at which they failed so badly the first time. It’s a fantastic segment and funny as hell. Well, except for the one featuring Chris Crocker, the “Leave Britney Alone” guy. That wasn’t funny so much as horrific. I advise you to skip that decidedly uncomfortable and creepy bit. The rest of Hoodies, though, I highly recommend.

Year:  2011, 2012
Genre:  Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Matt LeBlanc, Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig, John Pankow, Mircea Monroe, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Richard Griffiths
Creators:  David Crane (Friends), Jeffrey Klarik (Mad About You)
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Episodes is a smart show from smart writers about smart people who once wrote a smart show and now have to write a dumb show for dumb people.  It stars Matt LeBlanc as himself, the guy who used to play Joey on Friends, trying to get away from his Joey character while playing a character who is almost exactly like Joey.

     Got that?  Alright, here’s a more concise version – Episodes is good.  It’s smart.  And Matt LeBlanc, playing himself, is very good at spoofing his own image while the show spoofs the whole television industry.  Season One of Episodes hits DVD June 12^th from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it’s well worth checking out if you haven’t yet seen it on Showtime. 

     A couple of British writers are recruited by a maniac TV executive to bring their successful show Lyman’s Boys over to America. Once in the States, the network makes change after change, turning a smart and successful British show starring the great Richard Griffiths into a stupid, painful pile of garbage starring Matt LeBlanc.

     Over the course of the first season Sean and Beverly, the British writers, have to come to grips with life in LA, they have to deal with stupid producers and stupider Matt LeBlanc, and their relationship comes unraveled as their show goes down the tubes. At the end of the season it appears the show will get dropped by the network because it’s terrible. But this is TV and that doesn’t seem to matter, because like 2 Broke Girls and Whitney, it gets picked up.

     Of course, that happens so that we’ll get a second season of Episodes. Which remains a very good, very funny show. So, by all logic, that means it should be canceled pretty soon. And if that happened, I don’t know if it would be disappointing, ironic, or absolutely perfect.

Year:  2011, 2012
Genre:  Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Blake Anderson, Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, Kyle Newacheck, Maribeth Monroe, Jillian Bell, Edward Barbanell, and guest appearances by Clint Howard and Nicky Whelan
Creators:  Blake Anderson, Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, Kyle Newacheck
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     A couple of Workaholics releases June 5^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  The second season comes out on DVD, and also a Blu-Ray combo package of Seasons One and Two.  The second season of the Comedy Central show is as good as the first, and had me busting a gut over and over.  And I was totally sober when I watched it!

     The second season starts out with a stolen dragon statue, the subsequent RE-stealing of that same dragon statue, and a very funny undercover operation at the local high school.  Then they try to go sober, moon over a new smoking hot co-worker, Anders goes through a midlife crisis at the age of 25, and the guys hide out in sewers like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  It sounds pretty formulaic and easy when I say it like that, but I can’t convey the insanity or stupidity or sheer fun of watching Workaholics, even without a giant bong in the middle of the room.

     Of course, people who know the show likely have season one already.  And you’ll just go out and buy season two whether I recommend it or not because you know it’s great.  For the rest of you, get the combo package.  Season one and two together.  It’s like getting the munchies with a giant bag of popcorn in front of you.  I bet you watch the whole thing in a day.

Year:  1953
Genre:  Western, Classic
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  John Wayne, Geraldine Page, Ward Bond, Michael Pate, James Arness 
Director:  John Farrow
Run time:  83 minutes
Special Features:  Commentary from Leonard Maltin & others, The John Wayne Stock Company: Ward Bond, Profile: James Edward Grant (screenwriter), The Making of Hondo, From the Batjac Vaults
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The John Wayne classic Hondo comes to Blu-Ray June 5^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  I’m a giant John Wayne fan, but this is one of those movies that I never quite got around to seeing.  And for that, I felt properly chastised by Leonard Maltin when he came on the screen before the movie to tell me that it was good and I ought to have seen it before now.

     And he was right!  Leonard Maltin, you’re so smart! I should have listened to you before, because I really liked Hondo, despite the vaguely racist treatment of the Apache and the strange camera work.  Then again, Maltin explains that weird camera stuff before the movie begins.  See, the new trend of making every movie in 3D is not a new trend at all.  See, they did the same thing in the 1950s, and Hondo was made right in the middle of the very first 3-D craze. 

     But the Blu-Ray is not in 3-D.  Which is probably a good thing.  The high definition is wonderful for the vistas and the open plains and all those other things that made John Wayne movies fantastic.  And I think it would have lost something had I been forced to put on those cheesy crappy cardboard glasses. 

     So I just had to giggle at the hilariously dated three dimensional title and intermission sequences, and the occasional scene where someone points a gun directly into the camera.  The rest of the time, I just sat back and enjoyed the always enjoyable John Wayne in one of his good, solid westerns.  Hondo is not a classic on the level of The Searchers or Red River or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.  It’s more a generic Wayne western along the lines of McClintock! or Angel And The Badman.  But it’s a movie every John Wayne should watch, and one I regret took me so long to get to.

     It IS notable, and classic, for a few reasons – the main one being the film debut of Geraldine Page, one of the great actresses of the century.  Page was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Hondo, and then nominated for six more Oscars in her career, before finally winning one for The Trip To Bountiful in 1985.

Year:  2012
Genre:  Horror, Parody
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Danielle Panabaker, David Koechner, Katrina Bowden, Matt Bush, Chris Zylka, David Hasselhoff, Ving Rhames, Paul Scheer
Cameos:  Gary Busey, Christopher Lloyd
Eye candy:  Here’s a pretty good list
Director:  John Gulager
Run time:  82 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     I went into Piranha 3DD with fairly high hopes and expectations.  The first movie was such a bonkers good time, such enthusiastic pandemonium!  The best thing about the Piranha 3D was that it had an utter disregard for normal movie pacing.  The scene where the two impossible hot naked women frolic with each other underwater went on forever before the piranhas showed up!  The finale seemed like a full forty minutes of Piranhas eating drunk spring breakers.  It was a hell of a lot of fun.

     So I was figuring that, even with a little bit of a letdown, the second movie had to at least be gleefully enjoyable to some degree.  It turns out I was wrong.  Sadly, painfully wrong.  The biggest problem with the new Piranha is that the film makers don’t seem like they’re having ANY fun making this film.  They have the bases they have to hit, they hit them, then they go home.  It reminds me of all those made-for-TV sequels to surprisingly successful monster movies where some director whose biggest credit to date is a Jim “the Hammer” Shapiro commercial goes through the motions and comes up with a paint-by-numbers crap job. It’s probably no coincidence that David Hasselhoff mentions Anaconda 3 in this movie.  Both movies are working on the same level.

     Piranha 3DD opens with another bizarre cameo, just like the first one – only this time instead of Richard Dreyfuss, it’s Gary Busey.  And instead of being a (vaguely) subtle homage to aquatic monster movies of the past, this one involves an exploding cow and a very cheesy decapitation. 

     Okay.  So they got the cameo-setup scene out of the way.  What’s next?  Oh right, gratuitous naked chicks and boobs.  So we cut to that, as Chet (David Koechner) unveils his new water park, where strippers and prostitutes are hired as lifeguards and there is an adults-only section for naked swimming and close-up underwater shots of all the girly parts.  We get a few minutes full of boobs and a fair amount of gratuitous full-frontal, and despite the moderately-inspired positioning of one particular camera, there is absolutely nothing titillating about the nudity.  It’s just boobs and vaginas.  Then it’s done.

     Sidebar – this may be the worst business idea of all time.  Strippers earn about $1,000 a night just to take their clothes off and gyrate. Now you’re taking lifeguard-certified strippers, and getting them to work eight-hour days?  Even assuming they are still working for only $1,000 a day, this guy has hired what appears to be at least 25 of them.  That’s $25,000 a DAY in salary, not including the guy who cleans stuff up with a trident and the other employee who is there just to be fat or the guy at the bar or all the others.  The price list is posted, and at an average of $15 a head, they would need about 1,700 paying customers a day just to break even.  Not that I’m looking for realism in Piranha 3DD, or even vague plausibility, but couldn’t they have found a slightly better premise to get nudity shoehorned into this thing?

     Now they’ve done the cameo and the boobs…what’s next?  Oh yeah – we have to have a main character, a love interest and a bad guy.  Within a few minutes they have established  Maddy (Danielle Pannabaker) as the star of the movie, Barry (Matt Bush) as the guy who has pined after her since the 7^th grade, and some villains in her on-again-off-again boyfriend Kyle (Chris Zylka) and her step-father Chet. Okay, done.

     Cameo, nudity, love interest, bad guy…check, check, check, check. Paint by numbers #5 – the dire warning from the crazy man about the piranhas! Christopher Lloyd is actually pretty great as the crazy scientist, but his screen time is limited to a warning, a demonstration with a live piranha in a tank in his office, and some brief foreshadowing that fish might one day evolve to the point that they can – gasp! – walk on land!  Then his time is done.  He has another brief but disappointing scene later on, when the one thing we expect does not take place.

     Paint by number #6 – carnage.  Again, this is a HUGE letdown after that massacre scene in the last movie.  See, this one is taking place at a water park.  Which means that when the piranhas attack, it’s in pools.  So…all people really have to do is get out of the water.  Which means the only way they can be eaten is if they just stand there like dummies amid the carnage.  And of course, some of them do – but most of the piranha violence is limited to people running on the deck covered in blood and body parts floating around in the pools.

     Paint by number #7 – body parts.  Let’s see…what worked in the last movie…oh yeah – the severed penis! Let’s just do that again.  (Actually, the severed penis scene in the first movie was the only scene I felt was more stupid than fun, and actually detracted from the film as a whole.) This time, it was done even more poorly and stupidly with no inspiration whatever.  I’ll leave it at that.

     Paint by number #8 – Ving Rhames does something badass.  In this case he shows up in a wheelchair.  Piranhas ate his legs in the first one, you see.  He actually gets the best line of the movie – when he says “bring me my legs”, and shotguns are attached to his stumps, Paul Scheer asks him how he got the guns, and he says “I bought them with the money I saved on socks”.  That’s pretty funny. But then his two minutes are up and he too goes away.

     David Hasselhoff shows up, in what could be considered a parody of himself, the actor, and his failing career.  Or, a parody of his character on Baywatch.  In point of fact, it’s neither.  He’s given some terrible lines, his scenes are half-assed at best, and all he really does is wander around aimlessly in the movie, adding absolutely nothing to it.  Well, with the exception of the line “hello, rock bottom”.  Which probably sums up the movie better than anything I could say or write.

     Paint by number #9 – the finale. The bad guys have received their comeuppance (although it is very disappointing comeuppance, in that it does not come via piranha), the nerdy guy gets the girl, the destruction has stopped and the running boobs have stopped bouncing.  They need one last laugh/scare.  It might be the only really good one in the whole movie.  It just came an hour and twenty minutes too late. 

Final grade: DD-