CID DOWN, YOU'RE ROCKIN' THE BOAT! BQ TURNS UP THE 6 TRACK STEREO FOR 'EL CID'..........

                  Return with us to the glorious age when theater owners never heard of acoustic baffling when they stuck Stereophonic speakers across the auditorium walls.........

                   ...........making the soundtracks of multi-million dollar epics like El Cid (1961) wildly bounce, warp, wobble and reverberate all over the theater.....

                    Hot damn. It was like watching a movie inside those caverns from "Journey To The Center Of The Earth"........

                     This one kicks off just like you want it to.......with the blast, bombast and romance of Miklos Rozsa's most celebrated music score......

                     Then we're off to the Epic Races with the appearance of Islamic madman Ben Yuffuf (a black cloaked Herbert Lom, looking like he'd have a hard time getting vetted at any U.S. Immigration checkpoint.......maybe yelling "Kill! Kill!" wouldn't sit well with customs...)

                      Big Ben's out to conquer Spain.......which has a boatload 'o kings, princes and nobles all squabbling with one another......like a congressional committee with armor and broadswords.....

                     Cue the fanfare, here comes our larger than life hero El Cid......who could only be played by Charlton Heston, adding to his growing gallery of etched-in-stone legendary monuments......(we used to think his copy of the script must be carved on two stone tablets....)

                     Chuck's budding engagement to smokin' hot noblewoman Chimene (Sophia Loren) flies off the rails when Chuck and his future father-in-law fly off the handle at each other, with  broadswords no less.........ooops, scratch one father-in-law.

                     Killing the bride's dad puts a major damper on the marriage, not to mention El Cid's futile efforts to bring Christians and Moors together to battle Ben Yuffuf........ even worse, his unswerving loyalty to conniving, young Spanish royals entangles him in no end of lethal intrigues......

                      But you know what we're all waiting for in a movie like this........battle-time, baby!

                    Arrows fly, spears go a-flyn', swords slice up invaders like Deli pastrami........and El Cid suffers more than his share of outrageous fortune's slings 'n arrows.....

                   By the time we lumber into the film's third hour (and final battle) El Cid shows his mettle by charging into Ben Yuffuf's gang with a severe handicap..........strapped to his horse, already dead.

                    Proof positive that you can't keep a good man down......

                     Watching the DVD of "El Cid" gave us our first real listen to the dialogue.......(in the stereophonic echo chamber of our neighborhood theater, all the actors sounded like the grownups in Peanuts TV specials.....wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-.......but then who really cared what they said as long as they got around to gut-whacking each other with swords.....)

                      And with its voluminous United Nations cast of American, British, Spanish and Italian actors, movies like this ushered in the Golden Age of the BQ's most guilty-pleasure genres.......the international Tower-Of-Babble co-production.........oh please, bring 'em on!

                     We may kid the pomposity of such long lost epics......but the filmmaking on display here should be savored, always..........for taking the time, energy (and considerable 1960's cash) to create genuine spectacle.........real armies, real horses, real pageantry........and nothing created on somebody's laptop.,,,,,

                       So we say..... Cid yourself down for a wallow in the kind of gorgeous, colorful spectacular that you'll never see again in this day and age. 4 Broadswords......(****)

                 

ROSEANNE & THE AMERICAN SNAKEPIT.........COURTESY OF BABY ORANGE.........

                Madness.  Hatred. Unhinged behavior.  Racial bile spread openly.......

                The metastasizing cancer of Donald Trump has worked its way deep into the fabric of American life.

                 Having lived through 1968, we thought we could survive anything........

                 Now, we're not so sure.  We're not sure how much time it would take to heal a nation's wounds after the plague of Trump is finally eradicated........

                 In displaying the bottomless abyss of his character, Trump's brought out the worst in us.....and it's a frightening daily spectacle that may never stop until either the voters or Robert Mueller put an end to the festering evil......

                 It's as if insanity's been dropped into the water supply along with the flouride.......

                 Breaking news: it wasn't Ambien that forced Roseanne into her career-destroying tweet.......

                 It isn't sunspots, sugary drinks or pilates that has white people breathlessly jumping on to 911 to report black people walking in the neighborhood.......

                  It isn't alcohol, meth or too many multi-vitamins that has people believing in demented conspiracies that, in a more rational time, stayed safely tucked away in the pages of the National Enquirer, read only by mouth-breathers and people looking for a cheap laugh while they waited in the checkout line.........

                   All of this behavior, all of these people feeling unencumbered in releasing their inner demons.....all of it emanates from the ever growing cancerous rot that's infected the White House and threatens to engulf enough of the country in a second civil war........

                   Or maybe it's already happening.......... this creature who wormed his way into power with false promises and outright lies.......he couldn't care less how much violence, chaos and misery he inflicts upon the United States and world........

                   He feels nothing, sees nothing, understands nothing beyond his own overwhelming self-adoration.

                   In 1968, two people who dared to appeal to our better angels, to the best of us, were slaughtered. And a conniving gangster who appealed to no one ascended the Presidency......

                   Once again, the country's being tested to its very limits........with democracy under siege.

                   Can we come through it all again?

                   Stay tuned, stay strong..........and RESIST.

               

DAMN THE TORPEDOES N' FULL SPEED AHEAD! WE SAY SCREW THE CRITICS AND SALUTE OTTO'S 'IN HARM'S WAY.

                   Some of you might recall what a jolly time we had trashing Otto Preminger's "Hurry Sundown"........

                    We don't take it back......... with "Hurry Sundown" the wheels came off Otto's reliable template of all-star, big budget soap operas with a whiff of controversy around them........

                   But we loved us some "In Harm's Way" way back in 1965 and to hell with what any critic says, we still love it today.......

                  It's grand, ambitious dramatic storytelling on a scale that absolutely nobody in cinema attempts today........it's a five course meal anchored by two  Golden Age movie star icons who made the most unlikely pairing ever........and they were electric together.....

                  Black And White & Widescreen   Preminger may have been the last big budget filmmaker to embrace this odd combination of formats........technicolor would certainly have made the film gloriously ripe and splashy......but the monochrome gave the film a sense gravitas and immediacy..........(and let's be brutal and honest here, the combination of the black & white photography along with Jerry Goldsmith's muscular score,  made Preminger's use of miniature models in the naval battles a little less glaring and obvious....)

                   John Wayne and Kirk Douglas  What a duo for the ages.......the hard-charging, hard right Wayne and the intense, liberal Douglas...(who, along with Preminger, broke the Hollywood blacklist by hiring Dalton Trumbo to write their films "Exodus" and "Spartacus")   Supposedly avoiding politics, they played off beautifully against each other, even teaming again for "The War Wagon"......

                     Jerry Goldsmith   The MVP here, delivering a towering score that hits every note the film needs.......patriotic glory, poignant love, the churn of battle......and establishes the hallmark of every great score by becoming part of the film's DNA...........compare this music to the random noise that's being applied to films today and we almost want to weep for the lost art of composers like Goldsmith.

                      and one last salute to....

                     Saul Bass  Preminger leaves all the title credits to the end......and in the hands of the master of Main Titles guru and visualist Bass.  Bass, with the accompaniment of Goldsmith's score, creates a 2 & 1/2 minute crescendo of boiling ocean and cataclysmic fire.......a stunning visual representation of the entire World War 2 Pacific conflict, from beginning to end.   No war film could have had a better sendoff than this one......

                    We realize we should have posted on this film yesterday, for Memorial Day.......especially since the country was once again debased and disgraced by a Baby Orange tweet, in which he used the sacrifice of people who died in military service  to bleat about himself.

                   .......which made a return to a stirring old-fashioned exercise in honor and heroism like "In Harm's Way" so welcome and comforting. 4 stars (****)

                 

LET US EAT CAKE! SO SAYS IVANKA ANTOINETTE.........

                It is kind of laughable, if you stop to think about it........

                Ivanka Trump, floating in a bubble very similar to Glinda the Good Witch's conveyance in "Wizard Of Oz", harbors dreams of being America's social hostess........

                 With delusions that dwarf Marie Antoinette at Versailles Palace, Ivanka periodically takes to twitter and social media as if she's a combo of Disney Princess and Martha Stewart.....

                And justifiably, she's met with a mixture of nausea, scorn and derision.......

                You have to wonder if she's really that oblivious to her staggering epic failures.....in which her attempts at Americanized serene royalty invariably blow up in her face

                A few weeks ago she beamed, (along with her headed-for-indictment husband) at the new Jerusalem embassy while blood ran in the streets........

                And now she warms our hearts with the sight of herself cuddling her child, while her father's forces tear immigrant children away from their parents........

                 The brutal irony of all this (including Melania's hysterical stab at an anti-bullying campaign) is never lost on the twitterverse........

                 But we wonder of if all those raging tweeters will remember to put down their damn cellphones in November and move their behinds into the polling places to vote......

                 If they don't.......they'd better eat their cake and like it........and watch Ivanka Antoinette float down in her bubble from time to time..........

SPYGATE REVEALED! .......BQ UNCOVERS THE SPY IN TRUMPWORLD........MISS MARPLE.......

            Never mind the fact that Miss Marple's a fictitious character........

            Never mind thaat fact that Margaret Rutherford, who played Agatha Christie's sleuth Miss Marple would be 126 this year.....if, in fact she's still alive.......

            As Donald Trump would say..........well, you know. a lot of people.....many people are saying that Miss Marple's a real person........ and she's 126 years old........ so she absolutely could have infiltrated our campaign......believe me......      

             He's right. Look at the facts in Murder, She Said (1961)

              Miss M's minding her own business in a train compartment, when she sees a woman strangled in the compartment of a train running on a parralell track........

             Without the benefit of Google Earth, Scotland Yard, The FBI, the NCIS team or MI6, she quickly figures out exactly which country estate the body was dumped at.......

              Better yet, with the speed of a Trump cabinet appointment, she has no trouble inserting herself into the suspected household as a maid.......a one woman spy operation that puts Obama's tapping of Trump's phone to shame........

             And oh what a perfect murder mystery household, like a live-action version of the "Clue" board game.........irascible patriarch, (the lovably irascible British treasure James Robertson Justice) and host of semi-obnoxious family members, begging to be bumped off.....

              Sure enough, some of them are.....except, unfortunately, the family's resident weird child, who sounds like a "Village Of The Damned" kid every time he opens his mouth. (Turns out, we weren't hearing things.....the kid's voice was indeed dubbed in by none other than 'Village' leader Martin Stephens.......we've no idea if this was a really 'in' joke by the producers or the child they hired had laryngitis when it came time to re-record his lines.....)

                We hardly have to explain that Miss Marple quickly identifies, hoodwinks and entraps the killer.......goading the heartless criminal to blurt out the truth........a combination of Trump tweets and Giuliani TV appearances.....

              Margaret Rutherford's a comic gem as Miss Marple........as we promise you some further fun when we get around to covering the other three films she made in this series, "Murder At The Gallop", "Murder Most Foul" and "Murder Ahoy"......

               But we hold serious doubts as to whether an unearthed Maggie was actually the spy in the Trump campaign..........

               Cause if she was........the Fake Prez would already sport handcuffs.

               4 stars (****) for one undercover operative who really has a clue.

JABBA THE WEINSTEIN CHOKED AT LAST........(AND OTHER LEAST FAVORITE THINGS.....)

            Bye Bye Harvey..........you blew your chance at appearing in any future Star Wars spinoffs.....

             Morgan Freeman.......We've heard Christopher Plummer's now hard at work......re-shooting scenes form "Shawshank Redemption", "Unforgiven" and  "Driving Miss Daisy" (re-edited to make Freeman's character a white Uber driver....)

             NFL ban on taking a knee during the Anthem......Much to the delight of Baby Orange. Memo to all Players:    'Listen guys, you gotta realize this isn't America you live in anymore.....it's the Kingdom Of Trumpsylvania.......cops are allowed to pump as many bullets into black people as they deem necessary........even if for no reason whatsoever.  So suck it up and stand your son-of-a-bitch asses up for that anthem......God Bless Makin' America Great..."

              No Korean summit, no Baby Orange Nobel.......What a cool way to prepare for a peace summit to prevent nuclear war...........unleash your marionette Vice Prez and John Bolton, a dopey character from a deleted 'Dr.Strangelove' scene (....'to war! to war! With a Hey Nonny Nonny And a Hot Cha Cha!")........have them threaten Kim Jung Un with a 'Libya option', (meaning we kill him).....what could possibly go wrong?

               Solo: A Star Wars Story   We're waiting for the spinoff movie about that little blue elephant guy who played in Jabba's band........or how about "Star Wars: A Farewell To Arms" about that poor shmuck who tries to pick a fight with Luke in the Cantina......until Obi-Wan makes him forever known as 'Lefty'........

BREAKING NUKES....ER, NEWS: 2 WACK-A-DOODLES DECIDE THEY'RE TOO WACKY TO MEET......

                  Sadly unpacking the bags we had all packed for the Singapore Summit........including a basket of K-Pop boy group CDs we planned to give to Kim........

                  Not to mention a spankin' new Blu-Ray of "Die Another Day", which features a North Korean villain sucked into a jet engine.......

                   So the new Summer Blockbuster, "Clash Of The Psychopaths" won't premier this June...

                   Sigh.......

                   Doubly sad if it's really because the NK's called Mike Pence a "political dummy"......thereby infuriating Baby Orange.

                    Really? That's the reason?   Cause the entire civilized world has known for some time that Mikey's dead from the neck up........including Baby Orange.  Come on now.....why do you think Mikey's the VP?

                    ( To paraphrase Gene Hackman's line from "Superman"....."it's a wonder his brain's putting out enough energy to keep his legs moving....")

                  On the other hand, we understand the Tweeter-In-Chief is inundated with the business of the Presidency.........watching Fox & Friends for security briefings, chasing after the many spies who infiltrated his campaign......

                   (Yes, we do indeed possess a cellphone video of Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig sneaking into Trump Tower..........but as an active dues paying member of the Deep State Criminal Conspiracy, we're keeping it well hidden til after the mid-term elections....)

                   The world can rest easy.........the BQ, working quietly behind the scenes, arranged Baby Orange and Baby Nukes to compete on the Fall season of "Dancing With The Stars - Special Unhinged Moron Edition"........

                   You're welcome, world. Stayed tuned for further dipsy-doodle diplomacy.......

WE PROUDLY ANNOUNCE A BRAND NEW'ABOMINATION FROM HELL' WINNER!.......AND SHE'S ONLY 9 YEARS OLD........

                 An over achiever, to be sure......

                 Normally, it takes a lifetime of malignancy to win BQ's coveted Abomination From Hell award..........we're talkin' Trump-level evil.......

                  But this kid, an instagram/youtube sensation who goes by name 'Lil Tay', careened into our radar via a story this morning on 'Good Morning America'.....

                  The GMA reporter could barely conceal her utter disgust.

                 Neither could we.

                 And that's why we're illustrating this post with the Id Monster from "Forbidden Planet" instead of any image of the so-called 'Lil Tay'............this pathetic little kid and her primary repulsive enabler, her mother, are hooked on the opioid of social media fame.

                This addiction to media attention renders them no different than the worst emaciated, ruined creatures crawling around on the floor of a crack house.

                So no images........which, to a soulless, empty vessel like Lil Tay's mom, is akin to death itself.....

                Our photo is far more accurate anyway........'Lil Tay's peculiar shtick is to carry on like a mini-Id, behaving like a midget rapper......screaming out four letter words, sticking her face in the camera with mock attitude, flinging around piles of cash like a dope dealer in an urban action movie......

               Naturally, the roiling inferno of fellow Ids wasting their lives away on twitter and instagram responded with the expected explosion of vile hatred directed at the child, with vicious insults bubbling up higher in the air than the lava in Hawaii.......

                What a sorry, nauseating spectacle...........for everyone except Lil Tay and her mom, no doubt delighted with the numbers of clicks and comments they're getting.

                After all, what difference does it make what they say about you.......as long as they're saying something......then you're validated.

                 BQ now offers hearty congratulations to both Lil Tay and her Mom-From-Hell.......we award you both with our rarely given "Abomination From Hell"  award.

                You've more than earned it. We can only hope and pray that in addition to your blighted followers, you've also captured the attention of Social Services..........

                     

GAME OVER, MAN.....BQ READS.....YOU HEARD THAT RIGHT.....READS 'READY PLAYER ONE....THE ONE WITH THE PAGES AND WRITING INSIDE....

 Ready Player One by Ernest Cline (2012)    This book was never meant for us......

            But then again, it was.

            We'll explain.......the intended demographic for this book......rabid gamers with enough of an attention span to sit still and read a book........hardly exists.

             But we think the author knew that........the book itself mainly functioned as a huge billboard to attract a movie deal. Which it did. With Steven Spielberg, no less.

              But we most definitely belonged to the other demographic it appealed to.......everyone who ever remembered the mountains of 1980's pop culture........movies, songs, TV shows, animation.....

              Plowing through this book is akin to swimming inside an arcade claw machine stuffed with 1980's merchandise and toys.........

              Ernest Cline impressively imagines a vast virtual reality gaming universe created by a beloved high-tech guru who's sort of like a cross between Steve Jobs and the Wizard Of Oz.

              Depressingly, Cline also imagines a dystopian future so grim, poverty stricken and hopeless that everyone prefers ignoring the nightmarish squalor they live in..........opting to waste away their lives in OASIS, the VR world of infinite planets, games, monsters, spaceships, sorcerers and whatnot.

              Here's where the book's a huge letdown for us:   the tragedy of such a useless, destroyed society either eludes Cline or he chooses to ignore it.  He's way too enamored of the the fantasy universe he's meticulously created to help his characters avoid reality.

               Like the 1980's films it celebrates, it's all about stickin' it to the slimy authority-figure bad guys and getting to kiss the pretty girl you've been crushin' on.......(but in Cline's future, it also means giving little thought to the fact that the real world you're living in is slipping down the drain....)

                Since the gift of hand-eye coordination always remained out of our grasp, the book's endless, detailed descriptions of virtual gaming battles left us out of the loop.....(oh yes, we forgot to mention....the plot involves the late Tech Wizard setting up some giant contest for the gamers to win control of his empire......touching off furious videogame battles between game geeks and an an evil corporate tycoon....) 

               Hardcore gamers would certainly orgasm through these scenes if any of them took the time to read the book......

               But we're pretty sure the majority of them waited for the movie. Easier than reading......and you get one hand free to hold the tub 'o butter popcorn.......

              We didn't mind taking a few hours to zip through this book........but we do wish the author had spent as much time contemplating the ghastly future he predicts as the amount of time he spent happily building his fanboy/fangirl virtual Valhalla.

                2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).....and that extra 1/2 star only cause Ultraman, our personal geek-out favorite showed up at the climax........

           

TOMMY, CAN YOU HEAR ME?.......BQ TRIES UNRAVELING THE MASTER OF "DISASTER ARTIST"

              Maybe nobody will ever reach the truth of the impossibly enigmatic Tommy Wiseau, the weirder-than-weird auteur who filmed his dream project, "The Room", now declared as a modern successor to Ed Wood Jr.'s "Plan 9 From Outer Space" as the Official Worst Movie Ever Made.....

                Not that anybody will ever give a shit.......but we have to credit writer-director-actor James Franco for making such a strenuous effort to explore the impenetrable maze of Wiseau,......

                 Ultimately it proves a fool's errand......... Wiseau remains an elusive, practically fictitious character, a man who's dived so deep into his own re-inventions, he exists only in his own head......the living embodiment of the Beatles 'Nowhere Man'.......living in his nowhere land

               Franco can superbly mimic both Wiseau and his catastrophic film.......but he never really gets to the heart his subject,  settling for easy mockery.........as most of the film entertains us with the sight of Wiseau's dumbfounded, flummoxed film crew watching him create his supremely awful epic, with the self-satisfied madness that seems endemic to movie directors.

                We're invited to laugh at Tommy's unhinged behavior while he makes his movie.........but as far as we can see, there's really no difference between Tommy's insane antics directing "The Room" and Michael Bay directing 'Transformers: The Last Knight'.......

                 Neither of them understand the most rudimentary elements of their craft, but consumed with ego, they plow ahead anyway.......oblivious to the unwatchable chaos they wreak.....

                Only once does Franco's "Disaster Artist" script attempt to peel away at least one onion layer off Wiseau, when Tommy is told by an acting coach to pursue a career playing villains, given his mock-Transylvanian accent and mop of long black hair.  (Come to think of it, not bad advice......we could easily imagine Wiseau as a modern day Reggie Nalder, who played the assassin in "The Man Who Knew Too Much" and the totally Nosferatu vampire in the "Salem's Lot" mini-series.....)

                Deeply hurt and offended, Franco's Wiseau, in a rare moment of self-reflection, adheres to that Golden Rule of all actors.......no matter how strange and vaguely villainous people may judge him, he's the hero of his own story.

                And is "The Room" really worse than Ed Wood's "Plan 9 From Outer Space"?

                 Hardly. Wiseau, with a mysterious unlimited amount of cash at his disposal, treated himself to a 6 million dollar budget and a hired cast and crew........Wood barely scraped by with about $60,000  as impoverished as his decaying, dying star, Bela Lugosi........(in effect, Wiseau functioned as both Ed Wood and Lugosi combined........the blatantly incompetent director and his oddball, otherworldly star rolled into one person....)

                  "The Disaster Artist" contents  itself with ridiculing Tommy Wiseau, with only a few stabs at understanding him........and for the witty laughs it provides (coming almost entirely from Seth Rogan's role as the film-within-a-film's long suffering script supervisor), we'll give it 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).  But if  anyone's expecting a film to penetrate the many mysteries of Tommy........this isn't it.

               

CROSSWORD PUDDLE! OLAF & THE BQ PERFORM AN AUTOPSY ON "THE SNOWMAN"

               To quote the singing nuns in "Sound Of Music(and after three rum 'n cokes, we often do)......"....how do you solve a problem like "The Snowman"?"

                Top notch cast, skilled bunch of filmmakers........and the thing shows up dead on arrival.....like a pile of muddy slush still left on the driveway three days after a storm.......

                 Who better to ask than the star of "Frozen", "Disney On Ice" and the upcoming Lars Von Trier project, "Cold as F***ing Hell"..........Olaf.

BQ:   Hey, thanks for stopping by. We know your schedule's crazy these days-

OLAF:  You promised a book giveaway.......I get here and all you've got is a goddamn 30% off Barnes & Noble coupon you found in the mail.

BQ:     Sorry, we're still workin' on the promos......we have a Dalek throw pillow around somewhere if you want it....

OLAF:  Bite me. I coulda gone to Deadline.Com and scored a Moviepass out of 'em.

BQ:    So, let's get into the "The Snowman".I

OLAF:   Oh sure......you think cause I'm made of frozen water I'd sport a raging hard-on at the idea of dissing some f***ed up movie about creepy snowmen in Norway.

BQ:     Well, you were last on our wish list. All the olympic snowboarders turned us down......

OLAF:   Listen, BeachedBum or whatever the hell your name is........I'll make it ice-crystal clear for you........nobody in their right mind would try to make a movie out of one of those lose-the-will-to-live Scandanavian murder mysteries. People who buy 'em at the airport bookshops end up praying for death by the time the plane lands.........my advice: on 6 hour flights, stick with 'Us' and 'People' magazines....

BQ:    And yet......Martin Scorcese produced the film.....at one time, was even listed to direct it.

OLAF:   Go figure.  And I'm in talks with Marty's people about a project, too.

BQ:   Really?!   Any exclusive scoop for the BQ?

OLAF;  You're gonna have to cough up a helluva lot more than a B & N coupon. Otherwise, take a deep breath and hold it, numbnuts.

BQ:      Uh....back to "The Snowman"

OLAF:   Oh, Christ, what do you want from me already?  It blows chunks. Looks like they randomly cherry-picked scenes out of the book and threw 'em up on the screen in random order.  And those scary snowmen at the murder scenes?  Jeez, they all look like my Uncle Morty when we got him a space heater as a Christmas gag gift.........

BQ:   Didn't Val Kilmer sound dubbed?

OLAF:   (LAUGHS)  My favorite part! Like he wandered in from one of those 1960's Euro-Slush co-productions you're so fond of on this site.

BQ: Thank you for noticing!  How about J.K.Simmons' attempt at an accent-

OLAF:   Hey, I love me some J.K., even if he did beat me out for the role in "Whiplash".......but someone shoulda told 'im that his Academy Award didn't automatically turn him into Meryl Streep....Dirty Harry said it best....."man's got to know his limitations....."

BQ:   Also, we had a hard time figuring out-

OLAF:  That's the story of your life. Sorry, I gotta slide.......I gotta a thing at 4'0 Clock.....

BQ: Great to see you here. I think we can both agree on 1 star (*) for the movie.....

OLAF:  It's no 'Jack Frost', I can tell you that......

BQ:  You mean the one with Michael Keaton?

OLAF:   No, moron.....the horror one where Jack goes around killing people. Now there's an Oscar-worthy performance.

BQ:  Thanks again for the visit.

OLAF:  Don't think I'm leaving without the Barnes & Noble coupon.  Cough it up, bloghead.

BQ JUST GOT BACK FROM THE ROYAL WEDDING!.........UH.....,NO, NOT THAT ONE........

             At first we thought our invitation got lost in the mail........

             Then we realized Princess Meghan must not have cared for the spec screenplay we sent her...."Marnie 2: Count The Silverware".....

              .........with our note attached: 'Don't make the same mistake Princess Grace made and pass this one up!'

               Aw well, screw the Duchess of Sussex if she can't take a joke.......we consoled ourselves about our ouster from the guest list with a viewing of  1951's "Royal Wedding"........

               .........which is, as far we know, the only movie about the wedding of the Princess's Great-Grandparents which features Fred Astaire having a romantic affair with a hat rack before he dances on the ceiling of his hotel room without the aid of any hallucinogenic drugs........

                We should have sent Harry and Meghan a copy of this film........so many life lessons to pick up on........such as.....

                 When Your Boat's In Choppy Waters, Keep Dancin'......Astaire and Jane Powell try putting on a waltz exhibition while their ocean liner hits rough seas.  Talk about a metaphor for living your life in the public eye........swirling around while the floor tilts under you, forcing you to dodge sliding furniture and people.......

                 Don't let Royalty go to your head......people only think you can walk on the ceiling cause they don't know you're standing still and someone's spinning the room........sooner or later, you'll get nasty tweets that read....."you guys can't really do that any more than the Pan Am stewardess in "2001".....

                  but we also issue the Royal newlyweds one moment of caution when watching.........

                  Pay no attention to the final big musical number, "I Left My Hat In Haiti"........if Haiti was truly populated only by singing and dancing white people, Trump would have had a golf course and a hotel there years ago......

                 Congrats to the Royals.....(and seriously, Princess.....think about "Marnie 2", we got hold of a way better looking wooden horse for you to ride in the foxhunting scenes).....for "Royal Wedding", 4 regal stars...(****)

                  

             

              

           

OP OP AND AWAY! BQ DUCKS A FISTFUL OF BULLETS AND WADES THROUGH THE GORE OF 'RED HARVEST'

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammet (1929)    You might think while you're reading this......"what a cool movie this would make!"......an unnamed operative from the Continental Detective Agency (hence, the Continental Op) turns all a town's gangsters against one another......so they wipe each other out with wild abandon.......

             You're right. It would make a cool movie.

              And it did. Multiple times.

               The legendary Akira Kurosawa liked it so much, he turned it into "Yojimbo"....... with the Continental Op turned into Toshiro Mifune's wandering samurai......

                And the equally legendary Sergio Leone like "Yojimbo" so much, he turned it into "A Fistful Of Dollars"......with the Continental Op goin' way out to the Spaghetti West, transformed into Clint Eastwood's laconic, fast-triggered Man With No Name........

                What's amazing is that no filmmaker has ever gotten around to  making a movie from the original source material, Dashiell Hammet's blazingly violent novel.

                The Op, short, overweight but gifted with steely nerve and an iron will, arrives in a gangster-ridden hellhole name Personville (though more accurately referred to by one and all as Poisonville).

                Pissed off by his client's prompt murder and the corrupt police chief's attempts to bump him off as well, the Op cleverly arranges an all-out, blood drenched civil war between Personville's many rival, murderous factions. (......accomplished with the belligerent help of Dinah Brand, the town's dominant, domineering femme fatale floozy, forever on the prowl for quick cash and a snort of bootleg booze)

                The body count reaches the proportions of a Middle East war........even the hard-boiled Op succumbs to some rare soul-searching over all the death he's engineered.

               Not that any of that brief introspection stops the tidal wave of mayhem, as just about everybody gets what they deserve via knives, ice picks and good old fashioned bullets. 

                Told almost entirely in Hammet's rat-a-tat snappy dialogue, "Red Harvest" is a true American original classic, the darkest of urban fairy tales spun by a master of his genre.

                 If you haven't heard of this book or read it yet.......time to get Op and around......for one crazy ride through a corpse-strewn landscape, "Red Harvest" remains one of our favorite cups of blood.........we'll shoot out 5 on-target stars (*****), a BQ FIND OF FINDS.

           

THE BQ'S PROSTATE EXAM.......LIVE STREAMING.....(AND A FEW OTHERS WHO DESERVE THE SAME.....)

              Oooops.........sorry to disappoint everyone......

               We must have dropped the Selfie Stick while our Urologist was deep in mid-probe......

              But as long we've backed into this subject, here's a few worthy candidates for a thorough Prostate Plunge.......

               Donald Trump  Presumably, he would write his own test results......"I have the best prostrate you've ever seen in your life........so gorgeous, it could pose for a photo shoot, my prostate almost puts Melania to shame......and so powerful.....believe me, I could pee in a hotel room with the door open and drench all the Moscow hookers in the room across the hallway...."

               Rudy Giuliani   Doctors not only discovered an enlarged prostate, but multiple recordings of new excuses for how Stormy Daniels got her money.......

              Scott Pruitt......was heard to scream out in pain...."shit! this feels like what  I'm doing to the enviroment!:

               Michael Cohen  Tearfully, to his doctor....."are you sure you're not from the FBI? Stop, I'll tell you everything!"

                Donald Trump Jr    "Strange......this procedure's giving me a headache....."

ONLY CREAM AND BASTARDS RISE..........WHY WE CAN'T GET ENOUGH "HARPER"......

Harper (1966)   Once upon a time, my kiddies, there were screenwriters who wrote entire scripts worth of pithy, to-the-point, quotable dialogue.......

              .......and not just a handful of dumbed-down sarcastic one liners to pepper up the trailer.

               Novelist William Goldman was among them and this script, taken from the Ross Macdonald private eye tale "The Moving Target", was his first produced screenplay.

               Oh how we do adore this movie, which resurrected the 1940's Borgart-ish, wisecracking P.I. and plopped him down into both the uppercrust of lower depths of 1960's Los Angeles.

               What's not to love......

               Paul Newman......punctuates every weaponized line of Goldman dialogue with a gallery of self-amused smirks, grimaces,and eye-rolls.  And the cast of characters surrounding him seem to have no clue as to how much they're amusing him.......

                Robert Wagner and Shelly Winters......have a huge amount of fun exaggerating the standard templates of their most familiar roles.......the too-pretty-for-his-own-good smoothie and the gone-to-seed floozy

                Robert Webber  More perfect casting......using this sturdy, stalwart leading-man-handsome character actor as a cheerful, grinning, vile sadist.

                Strother Martin   Another master character actor working his familiar persona......the simpering, wimpering slimeball who can barely hide his nefarious ulterior motives. One year after this film, he firmly secured his place as a film icon.......once again as a villain tormenting Paul Newman in "Cool Hand Luke"......(his classic delivery of the line, "What we have here is a failure to communicate" eventually makes him hip enough to host 'Saturday Night Live')

                Janet Leigh.......adding to her gallery of brief but indispensable supporting roles as Newman's long suffering, bitterly estranged wife......(perfectly visualized by her murdering of the sunnyside-up eggs she's cooked him for breakfast....)

 

                Newman's Lew Harper cracks the case of a missing millionaire.....but only after the film, like its 1940's noir ancestors,  piles up a fairly sizable body count all over  LaLa land.....or as Newman describes these people in one of the script's best lines......"as bad as there is in L.A.....and that's as bad as there is...."

                 For the crisp dialogue and a top cast at the peak of their game.......this Private Eye beats any CGI hands down. 5 stars (*****), a FIND OF FINDS.

IS THAT A LIGHTSABER IN YOUR PANTS OR ARE YOU JUST GLAD TO SEE ME.......BQ USES THE FORCE TO KEEP HIMSELF AWAKE THROUGH "LAST jEDI"

     Bummer......we found out we're not officially the last person on earth to see "Star Wars: The Last Jedi".......

             Turns out there's Marty Hershheiser, a 26 year old, 400 pound guy living in his parents' basement in Waterloo, Iowa........the day before he planned to pitch a tent in front of the multiplex to wait for the premier, he crashed his electric Wal-Mart shopping cart into huge display of Froot Loops.......

               He's been in traction ever since, e-mailing an on-line community of fellow bedridden 400 pounders who've already sent out a complete list of who dies in "The Avengers:Infinity War" to 8 million Facebook accounts......

              Since the only kind of thoughts we have these days are random.......here's a few......

              Luke Skywalker  Aw, come on, Disney.....really?   You turned him into......us.......just another cranky old fart who yells at the neighbor kids to get off his lawn.   If we wanted to see that, we could look in the mirror,,,,,,

              Leia lolls around in deep space.......catching only a bit of a chill, like a stroll on a crisp autumn day. This kinda reminded us of  the 1978 Japanese rip-off, "Message From Space".......where the spaceships had sails on them, like pirate ships......well, you never know when a stiff breeze will come along in the black void of space.....

               Marvel snark.......one of the worst decisions.....to shoehorn Robert Downey sarcasm into the middle of galactic battles......borrowing crap from another franchise never, ever works well........similar to when the Bond producers ruined "Quantum Of Solace" by turning it into a poor, chopped-to-mincemeat imitation of the Bourne films......

                Battles, battles, battles......yeh, we get it.....it's the middle-episode "Empire Strikes Back" equivalent, where all the good guys must submit to having their asses perpetually kicked for two and half hours.....after about the l8th scene of  rebels yelping right before they're blown to smithereens, we began to nap........

               What sane parent would send their kids to Jedi schools?  Personally, as a dad, we never got over the startling turn of plot in Episode 3, where that whiny bastard Annakin wiped out an entire day-care class of Jedi tots......(presumably Yoda had a tough time explaining this to their parents...."Refund your tuition money, we will....")   And we hear that the always bubbly Kylo Ren wiped out a Jedi academy.........(thereby transforming his Uncle Luke into Cranky-Old-Fart-Get-Off-My-Lawn-Guy....)     You'd be better off signing up your kids for Trump University......as least the only thing they'd lose there is your money.......

                One Stunning Surprise......no, we're not referring to the reveal about Rey's parents..(we'll leave the fanboys 'n girls to agonize over that one).....the Big Shocker for us........Disney paying George Lucas billions for the franchise......then handing this film over to a writer-director not only woefully inadequate for such a task, but allowing him to either toss off the mythology of the series or trash it altogether.......what an odd, curious thing to do..........

                Never thought we'd apply such a rating to a "Star Wars" movie, but here goes......1 lonely star (*)........for the next one, they've got nowhere to go but up.......

BQ'S BOOK BLURBS FROM HELL!!.......AND WHY "LET ME LIE" ISN'T ABOUT A WHITE HOUSE PRESS BRIEFING.....

Let Me Lie  by Claire Mackintosh (2018)

           "Holy Twist-From-Hell!  I stayed up so late reading "Let Me Lie", I missed taking my kid to her dialysis appointment!  If only she'd lived, she'd have loved the killer twist at the end!".......New York Times Best Selling author Karen McMurder ("I Died 5 Times")

           "Quit your job, divorce your spouse and sell your kids off to Iranian sex-traffickers.....cause this book's going to take up all your time and leave you breathless as a 85 year old heavy smoker!"........best selling author Harlen ColdCase ("I'm Not Dead Yet")

              "When I reached the book's devastating climax, I convulsed into multiple orgasms.......then I turned off 'Fifty Shades Freed' and went back to reading the book".......best selling author Fiona Postmortem ("Drop Dead My Darling")

              "I haven't been so stunned and surprised since my husband told me he's had affairs with three men and our golden retriever in the last six years"........best selling author Rita Mortis ("I'm Alive, You Dumb Bastard")

               You get the idea, right?

               When you read stuff like this on the back cover of the latest thriller, take it in with more than one grain of salt........

                Not that we're complaining much about all the WTF twists in "Let Me Lie".......in which a young single mom discovers that the identical suicides of her parents.........involve.....uh......more than meets the eye.

                They're goofy, outrageous and fun enough........we guess.

               In books like this, with their jack-in-the-box plots, that's as far as we go without spoiling it for anybody......

               But we will say this much.........the grinding mechanics of all these twists force the lead characters into ridiculous, senseless behavior, especially in the big wham-bam movie-ready climax.

                And that last little sting the author delivers in the book's final sentence.........

                Not impressed.  Since it assigns complete out-of-character behavior for the sake of a last-sentence shocker.  It's nothing but a practical joke joy buzzer pressed into your hand before you close the book.

               We'll exhume 2 stars (**) and that's mainly for a touching parallel subplot about a retired detective and his long suffering mentally ill wife. They're both driven to perplexed distraction by the confused behavior of the lead characters.

               So were we.