July 11, 2019 · 1:16 pm

The Set of 400: #300 – My Favorite Healthy Choice Pudding Promotion

Today! Because I don’t know if there is anything wrong because I don’t know how other people are –

Punch-Drunk Love (2002)

Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson (x3)

Starring Adam Sandler (x2), Emily Watson, Philip Seymour Hoffman (x2), Luis Guzman (x2), Robert Smigel, Mary Lynn Rajskub (x2)

Paul Thomas Anderson’s smallest movie also easily qualified as his weirdest, until Inherent Vice came on the scene twelve years later. But this one is still pretty odd – Sandler (at his unhinged drama-comic best) plays a thoroughly damaged novelty item warehouse manager who simultaneously begins a relationship with a solidly damaged British women, while also contending with that most typical of film villains – scurrilous phone sex operators. He’s also got half a dozen sisters and periodically flies into violent rages, often at the expense of innocuous public restrooms or sliding glass doors.

The film features a weirdly wonderful use of color throughout

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July 10, 2019 · 5:45 pm

The Set of 400: The Quartermark Quiz! Win Valuable Prizes!

We’re a quarter of the way there! Congratulations, all! Has the Set of 400 established itself as part of your morning ritual? Have you joined one of the dozens of watch party groups around the country? Has the inclusion of a stray foreign language-r or two inspired a global viewing extravaganza? There is plenty more on the way, but thanks for your continued support! Our numbers are tremendous and your link clinks have nearly secured me a new revenue stream, thanks to the good people at the Patio Store, locations in Calgary and Red Deer, Alberta!

And now, time for the quiz! Get your No. 2 pencils ready, chumps, because the Scantron is warmed up and prizes are on the line! What prizes, you may ask? Oho, it’s gonna be winners choice here in Quiz Round I (Yep, there may be more! Who knows?) – delivered straight to your door from the American Post Office (Contiguous U.S. residents only, please!). You could have my large print copy of Joseph Heller’s unfortunate sequel to Catch-22, titled Closing Time! You could receive my Loot Crate plastic mini-statue of Rick from Rick and Morty flashing double middle fingers! You could win an luxury tour of my guest bathroom (no travel or lodging expenses included)! Numerous options available – see bottom of post for all prize options, and pictures of these dumb things, too! Plus, obviously, all winners receive a signed and extensively inscribed copy of my award-free masterpiece Parade Day, soon to fall out of print! Continue reading →

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July 10, 2019 · 1:18 pm

The Set of 400: #301 – My Favorite Opera Lovers Conference

Today! Because I always get the fuzzy end of the lollipop –

Some Like it Hot (1959)

Directed by Billy Wilder

Starring Jack Lemmon (x2), Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe, George Raft, Joe E. Brown, Pat O’Brien, Nehemiah Persoff, Joan Shawlee

We close out the first hundred list films with the movie the AFI declared the best comedy of all-time, on their list some 19 years ago now (19 years! Gah!). It’s a solid cross-dressing caper, with two on-the-run musicians joining up with an all-girl band, and sexy hijinks ensue. It’s the backbone of all comedy, before a certain point! It’s funny because they’re dressed as girls and they use funny voices! Plus, Marilyn Monroe’s acting doesn’t really destroy anything! But the best comedy of all-time?

I mean, I get it – the AFI is big into the history of film, as opposed to praising new, flashy things. And being the movie with the most jokes, or the funniest jokes, doesn’t necessarily make you the best comedy. But Some Like it Hot is so much like so many other movies that even though it does what it does very well, and with very high caliber performances from Lemmon and Curtis, is it really that amazing? Also, not to bang on the AFI too too much, but the number two movie on their comedy list? Also a cross dressing comedy. Come on, folks!

Funny as is it, Tootsie did not make this list

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July 9, 2019 · 1:05 pm

The Set of 400: #302 – My Favorite Bullet Removal

Today! Because in my last case, I had to throw my own brother out of an airplane –

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982)

Directed by Carl Reiner

Starring Steve Martin (x2), Rachel Ward, Carl Reiner, Humphrey Bogart, Alan Ladd, Barbara Stanwyck, Ray Milland, Ava Gardner, Burt Lancaster, Cary Grant (x3), Ingrid Bergman (x3), Veronica Lake (x2), Bette Davis, Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Fred MacMurray (x2), James Cagney, Joan Crawford, Charles Laughton, Vincent Price, George Gaynes, William Conrad, Edmond O’Brien

The great pairing of Carl Reiner and Steve Martin produced this noir spoof, intercutting Martin’s detective Rigby Reardon with actors/characters from hard boiled crime films of the ’40s for a new mystery adventure. Almost twenty different films compose Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid, including Suspicion, Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, The Big Sleep, and #370 Notorious, providing plenty of long-dead screen legends new comic opportunities, and new chances at joining the prestigious Two- and Three-Timers club!

Martin and Ward, as the femme fatale Juliet, make a great straight-faced team, and do all the heavy lifting in the movie, with the only exception maybe being the heroic work of career comedy film editor Bud Molin. The worry about this movie on paper (in retrospect) is how can any of this footage actually be matched up, using 1982 technology? Sure, at the time, it must’ve seemed like this was a possibility, but now – can you imagine hearing about this concept for a movie from 35+ years ago and thinking it would work? Is this the first you’re hearing about this movie, and you’re in some manner of disbelief right now? Well, rest assured, it totally pays off. The movie doesn’t do a lot of complicated inserting of characters into old footage – à la Forrest Gump – instead filming new scenes that function against the existing footage. A lot of it is funny phone conversations, but they’re almost equally effective with same room sequences. And Martin has the patter down, so that the mismatched conversations actually sound like they’re happening – not just in context but in style and rhythm. It’s a hell of an achievement.

It’s also the rare dark-haired Martin role

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July 8, 2019 · 1:17 pm

The Set of 400: #303 – My Favorite Snoring Conversation

Today! Because I don’t need anything in the world, darling, but you and a toothbrush –

After the Thin Man (1936)

Directed by W.S. Van Dyke

Starring William Powell, Myrna Loy, James Stewart, Elissa Landi, Joseph Calleia, Jessie Ralph, Alan Marshal, Sam Levine, Penny Singleton, George Zucco, Teddy Hart, Allen ‘Farina’ Hoskins, William Law

The best of the Thin Man sequels, and by some estimations the top movie in the series, After the Thin Man picks up where the first film leaves off – with Nick and Nora on a train heading west, replete with their boozy banter and dog Asta in tow. Sure, their comrades from the first movie two years earlier who were also taking this train are no where to be seen, but what of it? There are new mysteries to solve immediately upon arriving home in San Francisco! Forget that Thin Man case!

For the uninitiated, the Thin Man movies follow a pretty standard formula for film mysteries of the ’30s and ’40s – central master detective, tight running time, lots of punching, one or two gunshots. What made the Thin Man movies stand out – even from the other, previous William Powell mystery series, Philo Vance – was the light comedy injected by the leads, the married “former” detective Nick Charles and his socialite wife Nora, along with their Wire Fox Terrier Asta, occasionally embroiled in his own drama, due to Mrs. Asta and a neighborhood hound, as in this film. Fun fact – Asta was portrayed by Skippy, who had a robust film career in the ’30s, appearing in the first three Thin Mans, as well as The Awful Truth, Topper Takes a Trip, Sea Racketeers, I Am the Law, and Bringing Up Baby among others before retiring in 1941. In his heyday, he was pulling down $250 a week! Great Depression my foot!

Rin Tin Tin had nothing on Skippy

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July 5, 2019 · 1:22 pm

The Set of 400: #304 – My Favorite Misspelled Robbery Note

Today! Because nobody wears beige to a bank robbery –

Take the Money and Run (1969)

Directed by Woody Allen (x3)

Starring Woody Allen (x2), Janet Margolin, Marcel Hillaire, Lonny Chapman, Howard Storm (x2), Louise Lasser, Jan Merlin, Jacquelyn Hyde

Woody Allen’s first original feature – following the redubbed mashup masterpiece that is What’s Up, Tiger Lily? – Take the Money and Run has a rawness to it that is pretty endearing, while also being a solid signal of things to come. The loopiness of Woody’s early films progressively tones down with each succeeding movie, before they finally level out solidly balancing jokes with depth and a particular artistic sensibility. This evolution does create pretty distinct periods in his work, and the first – later described as his “early funny ones” in his own Stardust Memories – kicked off with this wacky, gag heavy crime caper.

It’s also an early example of the mockumentary, which really took off across comedy in the ’80s and ’90s, including other Allen films – Zelig, Sweet and Lowdown, etc. With the pervasively grim narrator – reminiscent of cops and robbers TV shows of the ’50s and ’60s – detailing the criminal career of inept bank robber Virgil Starkwell, the slapstick goings-on adopt a contradictory vibe and leave many of the actors playing the wacky scenes straight. The result is as many jokes per minute as any of his pre-Annie Hall movies, while maintaining a relatively straightforward story, avoiding some of the flightier moments of his early ’70s entries Bananas and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex*. In a lot of ways it works better than his other early films, by way of its seeming parody of crime story shows, even without a direct source to satirize, unlike a Mel Brooks or Zuckers/Abrahams movie. Continue reading →

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July 4, 2019 · 1:12 pm

The Set of 400: #305 – My Favorite Reversequake

Today! Because you’ll believe a man can fly –

Superman (1978)

Directed by Richard Donner

Starring Christopher Reeve, Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Ned Beatty, Jackie Cooper, Glenn Ford, Valerie Perrine, Phyllis Thaxter, Marlon Brando, Susannah York, Trevor Howard, Terence Stamp (x2), Marc McClure (x2), Jack O’Halloran, Sarah Douglas, Maria Schell, Jeff East, Larry Hagman, John Ratzenberger, Harry Andrews

For my entire childhood, this was the only superhero franchise we had. And like a number of other franchises I’ve mentioned, I get the Superman movies waaay mixed up. It doesn’t help that they filmed parts one and two back-to-back, so everyone looks the same, and all the villains from II cameo in I. These two movies are more a single movie than most films with their sequels. Sure, they cut Godfather I and II together effectively as the Godfather Epic eventually, but watching them one after the other in their original form doesn’t bind them together better. But hell, I really have a hard time distinguishing individual scenes from the first two Superman movies to this day. And parts of III, for that matter.

III is bizarre, but I watched it a ton as a kid

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July 3, 2019 · 1:18 pm

The Set of 400: #306 – My Favorite Latin Argument

Today! Because you are a good woman, then again, you may be the antichrist –

Tombstone (1993)

Directed by George P. Cosmatos

Starring Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer (x2), Sam Elliott, Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Dana Delany, Paula Malcomson, Michael Biehn, Charlton Heston, Stephen Lang, Thomas Haden Church, Billy Zane (x2), Jason Priestley, Dana Wheeler- Nicholson, Jon Tenney, Michael Rooker (x2), Billy Bob Thornton, Paul Ben-Victor, John Corbett, Terry O’Quinn, Frank Stallone, Harry Carey Jr. (x2), Robert Mitchum (x2)

In the hectic western revival of the early ’90s – following Clint Eastwood’s masterful return to form with the Best Picture winning Unforgiven in ’92 – we as a people had a serious choice to make. Would we adopt a Kurt Russell Wyatt Earp movie, directed by the man who brought us Rambo: First Blood Part II, as our one-and-only, or would we opt for the Kevin Costner version, an hour longer and directed by Empire Strikes Back screenwriter and Big Chill director Lawrence Kasdan? This was some kind of dilemma.

Thankfully, the first one to make it to theaters (by six whole months) was perfectly enjoyable, and we could all save ourselves three-plus hours of our lives, at the beginning of Costner’s rapid descent from stardom in the mid-’90s. Tombstone may be the glossier, goofier take on the old legend, but it is infinitely more fun, and features an arguably superior cast (Costner’s does have Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman, Bill Pullman, Isabella Rosselini, Michael Madsen, and Three-Timer JoBeth Williams, though). Plus, it doesn’t try to out-western Clint – while Wyatt Earp really thought it could bring the gravity by adding running time and a brooding Costner. But hey, Earp did earn that one Oscar nomination – more than Tombstone by one! Congrats, Best Cinematography nod! Continue reading →

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July 2, 2019 · 1:18 pm

The Set of 400: #307 – My Favorite Inspirational Kate Smith

Today! Because long before the age of Reason/Evil waged unholy treason –

The Return of Captain Invincible (1983)

Directed by Philippe Mora

Starring Alan Arkin, Christopher Lee, Kate Fitzpatrick, Michael Pate, Bill Hunter

Just your standard Australian musical superhero comedy, The Return of Captain Invincible is a pretty oddball production story that shouldn’t work as a movie as well as it does (which is debatable, too). While they managed to scrape together enough dough for effects and the likes of Arkin and Lee in the lead roles, the planned distribution company in America went bankrupt just before the movie’s release, resulting in it having virtually no all-time box office gross – figures have it around $55,000 worldwide. In Australia, the movie was tied up in litigation for a year – something having to do with tax credits and the producer re-cutting the film without the director’s input – before it got released. Thus, the whole thing managed to slip under the radar for a long time.

Or has it ever really emerged? I have no idea how popular this movie ever got. As of this writing, IMDB only shows 599 people having rated the movie – a few thousand being pretty standard for almost any film. This, despite our collective mania over superhero films in the last twenty years, and the world’s ever-long love affair with musicals? I’m not 100% sure when I first saw it – I want to say I acquired a VHS copy when some video store was going out of business when I was in college? Don’t know, but I’ve been squarely in the Captain Invincible fan club a long time. Continue reading →

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July 1, 2019 · 1:10 pm

The Set of 400: #308 – My Favorite New American Dream

Today! Because money talks, and bullshit runs a marathon –

New Jack City (1991)

Directed by Mario Van Peebles

Starring Wesley Snipes (x2), Ice-T, Chris Rock (x2), Mario Van Peebles, Judd Nelson, Bill Nunn (x2), Allen Payne, Bill Cobbs, Michael Michele, Russell Wong, Vanessa Williams, Tracy Camilla Johns, Phyllis Yvonne Stickney, John Aprea, Flava Flav, Fab 5 Freddy

Like every Catholic school attending twelve-year-old white kid in small town America, I was big into Mario Van Peebles inner city drug dealing crime epic circa the fall of 1991 (when it hit HBO). Another triumph of cable television in my youth! Look, I don’t have a good explanation why I watched New Jack City as much as I did in my formative years. It’s a movie that manages to effectively glamorize the super violent crime lord lifestyle while also digging into the gritty, crushing reality of addiction at the same time. And sure, it was fun that, like, Ice-T and Judd Nelson’s characters are partners and hate each other, and Chris Rock is way strung out as crackhead Pookie, but the only thing I can come up with for sure as a draw when I was a kid was that Wesley Snipes was the coolest motherfucker ever.

Yes, even rocking that fifteen pound necklace

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June 28, 2019 · 1:20 pm

The Set of 400: #309 – My Favorite Horace Greeley Mangling

Today! Because I was going to thrash them within an inch of their lives, but I didn’t have a tape measure –

Go West (1940)

Directed by Edward Buzzell

Starring Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, John Carroll, Robert Barrat, Diana Lewis, Walter Woolf King, June MacCloy

And then there are movies that, on the surface, are little more than trifles, and yet they have the ability to change your life forever. Movies so monumental in opening you up to new possibilities and avenues that the course of your interests is irrevocably altered from that point on. These come along very rarely – you can’t have your world shook to its foundation every week – but in early high school, on accident, I set the VCR to record something, and woke up the next day to find the first hour of Go West, and nothing has ever really been the same for me.

Sure, I was already way into comedies at this point. Mostly television, but also a lot of recent popular film that everyone would see in middle school. And then I discovered the Marx Brothers, and all of a sudden the scope of film comedy opened way, way up. There actually were funny movies before Airplane! and Mel Brooks! Go West was made in 1940, and it’s like the eighth best Marx Brothers movie! My mind was blown, and I became a die hard Marx fan basically that day. Continue reading →

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June 27, 2019 · 1:15 pm

The Set of 400: #310 – My Favorite Weaponized Slim Whitman Tune

Today! Because if the Martians land, they’re going to need a place to stay, just like everybody else –

Mars Attacks! (1996)

Directed by Tim Burton

Starring Jack Nicholson (x2), Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Danny DeVito (x2), Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox (x2), Martin Short, Rod Steiger, Lukas Haas, Tom Jones, Jim Brown, Natalie Portman (x3), Lisa Marie, Sylvia Sidney, Pam Grier, Paul Winfield, Jack Black (x3), Joe Don Baker (x2), Ray J, Christina Applegate, Barbet Schroeder (x2), Willie Garson (x2), Rance Howard (x3), O-Lan Jones, Brian Haley

I know some people were really turned off by Tim Burton’s trading card adaptation global invasion sci-fi comedy, but I really dug it in that epic winter of 1996. Ah, ’96! This is already the sixth movie from that landmark, okay-ish year for films! Coming a few months after Independence Day, I guess everyone really wanted a wild action comedy of international destruction, but Tim Burton is not that director. He can give you quirky odd-ballery, but as for fight scenes or action sequences, well, look at that track record. His Batman movies are far more mood and atmosphere than slam-bang thrills. Sleepy Hollow – better, I guess, what with Ray Park as the Headless Horseman, but the staging didn’t vastly improve. Planet of the Apes – come on. So really, anyone wanting more out of Mars Attacks! was probably kidding themselves a bit too much.

What you get is a pretty fun, funny, throwback spoof of cheesy alien flicks, which quickly devolves into a cheesy alien flick itself, blurring that parody line until it basically disappears. I was really amped for this film come my senior year of high school – figure, you’ve got Nicholson playing wacky duel roles, in a roundabout nod to Dr. Strangelove’s end-of-the-world grapplings, as the president and a huckster casino owner, plus it reunited him with his Batman director, never mind the all-star cast reminiscent of ’70s disaster films, including a James Bond, a Teen Wolf, Foxy Brown, Ed Grimley, and the Penguin.

Never mind Carrie Bradshaw’s terrific work as this dog

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June 26, 2019 · 1:18 pm

The Set of 400: #311 – My Favorite Hotel Check-In

Today! Because I just want to say one word to you. Just one word –

The Graduate (1967)

Directed by Mike Nichols

Starring Dustin Hoffman, Anne Bancroft (x2), Katharine Ross, William Daniels, Elizabeth Wilson, Murray Hamilton (x2), Buck Henry, Norman Fell, Alice Ghostley, Brian Avery, Walter Brooke, Richard Dreyfuss, Mike Farrell

One of the undeniable classics of the New Hollywood 1960s, and easily the most popular cougar seduction comedy of all-time, The Graduate didn’t come on my radar for some time. It was probably college before I really watched it – that being the obvious right time to see this film – but it is such a universally known and referenced film that I’m pretty sure all the major elements were already familiar to me. Mrs. Robinson. Ben sitting on the bottom of the pool. Plastics. Banging on the window in the church. It’s an across-the-board iconic movie.

But my first real exposure to it was almost certainly through its writer, frequent Saturday Night Live host of the 1970s Buck Henry. Even though he had a pretty decent writing/acting career, Henry’s big claim to fame in the late ’70s was still his Oscar nominated screenplay (and bit role as the hotel clerk) for The Graduate. Also, can you believe this didn’t win for Screenplay? This is the exact kind of movie that wins Screenplay and gets snubbed for everything else – funny, but with depth, that ten years later is hailed as a classic. And while In the Heat of the Night is a perfectly fine movie, did it win because Stirling Silliphant is the greatest name in the history of names? All he did after this was write action and disaster movies, including The Towering Inferno and Shaft in Africa. That’s right, the screenwriter of the third best Shaft movie once won an Oscar!

Silliphant, left, with In the Heat of the Night award winners Ashby, Steiger, and Mirisch

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June 25, 2019 · 1:22 pm

The Set of 400: #312 – My Favorite Wise-Cracking Lobster

Today! Because I’m not Jim Jimmy Jim Jim Jim Jim, he’s Jim Jimmy Jim Jim Jim Jim –

Muppet Treasure Island (1996)

Directed by Brian Henson

Starring Tim Curry (x2), Billy Connolly, Jennifer Saunders, Kevin Bishop, Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson, Bill Barretta, Frank Oz (x2), Kevin Clash, Louise Gold

By wide pronouncement the worst of the big screen Muppet films, Treasure Island gets a hugely unfair rap, in my opinion. If your argument is that the other Muppet movies are of such high caliber that something has to be labeled the worst, okay, I’ll accept that. Because there is little inherently wrong with Treasure Island, especially for hardcore Muppet fans.

Sure, the movie falls squarely on Gonzo and Rizzo to keep moving, a tactic used to such great success a few years prior in Christmas Carol. This time, they tag along with the novel’s Jim Hawkins to meet Long John Silver, get on the boat, get swept up in the mutiny and whatnot, and break into epic musical numbers. Really, the main gripe you could have about this – and Christmas Carol and the 2011 Muppets – is that there aren’t quite enough Muppets. At least Christmas Carol had the wisdom to make Kermit Bob Cratchit, considering Scrooge was a human. This movie takes both the main characters away from the felt gang, so Muppets have to fit into roles wherever they’re left, leaving the film decidedly light on Kermit, Fozzie, and Piggy, to say nothing of Rowlf, the Electric Mayhem, Statler & Waldorf, and the rest of the gang.

Uncle Deadly would’ve made a great Long John, just saying

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June 24, 2019 · 1:17 pm

The Set of 400: #313 – My Favorite Comeback in Sports History

Today! Because they’re here, every April, they’re here. 1:05 or 7:05, there is a game. And if it gets rained out, guess what? They make it up to you. Does anyone else in your life do that?

Fever Pitch (2005)

Directed by the Farrelly brothers

Starring Jimmy Fallon, Drew Barrymore, Willie Garson, Ione Skye, JoBeth Williams (x3), Lenny Clarke, James Sikking, Siobhan Fallon (x2), Andrew Wilson, Jack Kehler, Maureen Keiller, KaDee Strickland, Evan Helmuth, Johnny Sneed, Johnny Damon, Jason Varitek, Trot Nixon

And sometimes the movies on this list aren’t going to be about the movie at all. Okay, that’s not entirely fair. Fever Pitch is a perfectly fine movie. But there was a certain serendipity in the production of the film that makes it a classic in my estimation. You see, it was filmed during the 2004 baseball season, so they had no idea the Boston Red Sox were going to finally win the World Series that year. The movie – probably rightfully so – was supposed to end with them losing, as they had done for the previous 86 years. In 2003, the Red Sox were devastated in the ALCS by the Yankees, losing in Game 7 in extra innings, so why would anyone assume they’d finally get to the mountaintop in ’04? Continue reading →

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