Tag Archives: Chris Cooper

July 7, 2020 · 1:11 pm

The Set of 400: #42 – My Favorite Barbershop Quartet

Today! Because that’s nothing, I once waited a whole year for September –

The Muppets (2011)

Directed by James Bobin

Starring Jason Segel (x3), Amy Adams (x2), Steve Whitmire (x6), Eric Jacobson, Dave Goelz (x6), Bill Barretta (x3), Matt Vogel, Peter Linz, David Rudman (x2), Chris Cooper (x3), Rashida Jones (x3), Jack Black (x6), Alan Arkin (x6), Zach Galifianakis (x2), Bill Cobbs (x2), Mickey Rooney, Ken Jeong (x3), Jim Parsons, Kristen Schaal (x2), Sarah Silverman (x3), Donald Glover, Emily Blunt, James Carville, Whoopi Goldberg (x6), Selena Gomez, Dave Grohl, Neil Patrick Harris (x2), John Krasinski, Judd Hirsch (x2), Rico Rodriguez, Eddie Pepitone (x2)

Man, it is disconcerting seeing full-body Muppets with legs, right? Like, sitting is okay, but standing like that? Gah! Muppets on bicycles is such a cool trick that it was never visually an issue seeing their whole body, so why is the above picture so strange? And this was an actual poster for the movie – maybe not the most common one, but still!

It’s pretty ingenious puppeteering!

The 2011 Muppet film was the first big screen adventure for the gang in twelve years. They’d popped up in a bunch of TV specials, and started a pretty decent YouTube channel for music videos and song parodies and the like, but the days of major pop culture relevance were long behind them. Thus, when rumors started that there was this new, glossy Disney film with big stars attached and one-half of Flight of the Conchords doing the songs, I was excited but pretty skeptical. Would this actually see the light of day? Could a new Muppet film truly come to pass? There have been whispers of a Fraggle Rock movie for over a decade now, so it’s not like these things tend to materialize. And serious, the best Muppet product from the previous decade was a somewhat nausea-inducing Playstation game, Muppet Race Mania, so what kind of hope could I have?

Significant as being Frank Oz’s last full project with the Muppets, it was also a pretty fun game.

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Tagged as Alan Arkin, Amy Adams, Bill Barretta, Bill Cobbs, Bret McKenzie, Chris Cooper, Dave Goelz, Dave Grohl, Donald Glover, Emily Blunt, Eric Jacobson, Favorite Movies Ever, Jack Black, James Bobin, James Carville, Jason Segel, Jim Parsons, John Krasinski, Judd Hirsch, Ken Jeong, Kermit the Frog, Kristen Schaal, Mickey Rooney, Miss Piggy, Neil Patrick Harris, Rashida Jones, Sarah Silverman, Selena Gomez, Steve Whitmire, The Muppets, Whoopi Goldberg, Zach Galifianakis

March 23, 2020 · 1:15 pm

The Set of 400: #118 – My Favorite Dutch Mirror Interrogation

Today! Because you’re a malfunctioning $30 million weapon. You’re a total goddamn catastrophe –

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Directed by Doug Liman

Starring Matt Damon (x6), Franka Potente (x2), Chris Cooper (x2), Brian Cox (x7), Clive Owen, Julia Stiles (x3), Walton Goggins, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Gabriel Mann (x2)

That’s right, folks – all three Bourne films are on the list, and none cracked the top 100! Weird, right? First Toy Story, and now this travesty? Well, it wasn’t always this way. Without consulting past lists – I’m saving that for some unspecified time in the future of this countdown – I know at least two of the Bournes typically would crack the 100 – that was the entire size of the list in the past, you’ll remember. So what happened here? My guess is that as these movies tend to blend together for me, differentiating became harder and so they merged into this portion of the list – they all appear here between #118 and #195 – and could not push forward as a group or individually. As you’ll see when you finally get to the top 100 – starting day after Tax Day! Get your shit in order! – it’s comprised in near equal parts with gigantic films familiar to every living soul on the planet and an assortment of cult movies and/or downright disregarded household classics I’ve overcome my shame of admitting how much I enjoy them.

No matter how many times eight-year-old Joe watched it, Masters of the Universe wasn’t making the list, however

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Tagged as Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Clive Owen, Doug Liman, Favorite Movies Ever, Franka Potente, Julia Stiles, Matt Damon, The Bourne Identity, Walton Goggins

July 31, 2019 · 1:11 pm

The Set of 400: #286 – My Favorite Dropped Milkshake

Today! He may have advanced delusionary schizophrenia with involuntary narcissistic rage, but he’s a very gentle person –

Me, Myself, and Irene (2000)

Directed by the Farrelly Brothers

Starring Jim Carrey (x2), Renee Zellweger (x2), Robert Forster, Chris Cooper, Anthony Anderson, Jerod Mixon, Tony Cox, Richard Jenkins (x2), Mongo Brownlee, Traylor Howard, Anna Kournikova, Shannon Whirry, Cam Neely, Lenny Clarke (x2), Googy Gress

The second and last of the all-out comedies of Jim Carrey to appear on this list, Me, Myself, and Irene came along mid-college for me, and solidly connected, with its brand of hyper-aggressive vulgarity and over-the-top absurdism. Carrey is never better than in his rampant split personality portrayal of good-guy cop Charlie Baileygates and his psychotic alter ego Hank. And yes, Hank is a lot, but the movie manages to parcel him out well, so as not to overwhelm the audience with that intensity – it would almost certainly have led to weariness, and jokes not really landing.

But my favorite part of this movie has always been his sons – at the beginning of the movie, we see his wife run off with a black genius dwarf limo driver, Shonte (played by the always great Tony Cox), but not before leaving Charlie with the triplets he fully convinces himself are his, biologically: Jamal, Lee Harvey, and Shonte Jr. And as grown men, his kids have the best lines in the movie – with genius inherited from their father, they spout “Enrico Fermi’d roll over in his motherfucking grave if he heard that stupid shit,” “I can’t figure out the atomic mass of this motherfuckin’ deuteron!” and “You think polypeptide’s a motherfuckin’ toothpaste!” Anthony Anderson, Jamal Mixon, and Mongo Brownlee – my MVPs of this movie.