Aug 11-17 Whoopi Goldberg Week: She’s become a corny tv lady these days, but let’s not forget that at her peak Whoopi was one of the funniest people alive.

Man, the 2000s TV remakes and reimaginings always start dark.

Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose have had a sad life since their show was canceled in 1964. All the trees in Frostbite Falls have been cut down. Their narrator lives with his mother. Fearless Leader (Robert De Niro), Boris Badenov (Jason Alexander) and Natasha Fatale (Rene Russo) aren’t dangerous. And Rocky can’t fly.

Then the bad guys escape the unreal world and make it to Hollywood, becoming live action, and working with Minnie Mogul (Janeane Garofalo) to operate Really Bad Television, a cable TV network that is brainwashing people into voting for Fearless Leader for President. FBI Director Cappy von Trapment (Randy Quaid) assigns Agent Karen Sympathy (Piper Perabo) to bring Rocky (June Foray) and Bullwinkle (Keith Scott) into our world and save us.

The bad guys have Computer-Degenerating Imagery that traps cartoon characters online, but our heroes have help from Martin and Lewis (Keenan and Kel). Rocky learns to fly again and you get all sorts of people showing up in this: David Alan Grier, Carl Reiner, Jonathan Winters, Phil Proctor, Jeffrey Ross, Doug Jones, Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg as a judge.

Boris and Natasha: The Movie, Dudley Do-Right and Mr. Peabody & Sherman all had movies. None of them did well. That said, Boris and Natasha has Dave Thomas and Sally Kellerman as the villains, along with John Candy, Andrea Thomas and Sid Haig. It’s directed by Charles Martin Smith, who also helmed Trick or Treat.

I appreciate that they keep making these boomer movies, but no one would ever see them. Then again, this movie is 25 years old, so I am the old person now.

Aug 11-17 Whoopi Goldberg Week: She’s become a corny tv lady these days, but let’s not forget that at her peak Whoopi was one of the funniest people alive.

Scooter (Peter Billingsly, not just Ralphie) is a teenager ignored by his plastic surgeron father (Martin Sheen) and his sblings, Sterling (Ramon Estevez) and Tiffany (Cathy Podewell). He decides to work with two criminals, Clive (Burt Young) and Elmo (George Kirby), to kidnap him.

This was directed by Jim Sotos. Yes, a kid movie by the man who directed Forced Entry. Well, he also made Sweet Sixteen and Hot Moves. Again, not the guy I’d pick to make this movie for children. It was written by actress Terry Moore, along with her husband Jerry Rivers and Linda Silverthorn.

Whoopi shows up to say the name of the movie. You have to love that.

Tab Hunter and Henry Silva were originally going to be in this, and Peter Billingsley and Henry Silva are the buddy movie team that I never knew I needed.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Aug 11-17 Whoopi Goldberg Week: She’s become a corny tv lady these days, but let’s not forget that at her peak Whoopi was one of the funniest people alive.

Directed by Bill Duke — that’s right, Sgt. Mac Eliot from Predator — Sister Act 2: Back In the Habit was in theaters just a year after the first movie. Loosely based on the life of Crenshaw High School choir instructor Iris Stevenson, it finds Deloris Van Cartier (Whoopi Goldberg) now a success in Vegas when the sisters she befriended — Mary Robert (Wendy Makkena), Mary Patrick (Kathy Najimy) and Mary Lazarus (Mary Wickes) — visit and tell her that they’re now teaching in the same inner city school she attended. And the kids are, well, wild. They need her help.

Father Maurice (Barnard Hughes) seems nice, but the administrator, Mr. Crisp (James Coburn), just wants to retire. But if the nuns can get a choir together, well…

Rita Louise Watson (Lauryn Hill!) is the star singer, but has to lie to get in, as her mother (Sheryl Lee Ralph) hates music, as her husband and Rita’s father failed and ruined their lives. But you know, all ends well.

Reviewers at the time hated it, but Bill Duke was able to see this movie become a hit with audiences. He said, “The reviewers at that time could not really be linked to our communities or the message. As you know, the faces of the reviewers were very different than the viewers. So I was surprised, but not shocked, because they didn’t get us at the time. They didn’t get the message and did not relate on an emotional level.” It also helped that Hill and Jennifer Love Hewitt became big stars and this movie showed them before they became huge. Stars like Harry Styles, Katy Perry, Colbie Caillat and others were inspired by this movie — and Hill — to become singers.

Goldberg said, “For me, I thought the first movie was just stupid and this one wasn’t much better. When they asked me to do this one, I laughed. But when they agreed to fund Sarafina, I thought, “What the hell, I’ll make some more money off ’em.” But I think it’s fun, I think people like one and two, because they’re kind of the same film but very different.”

Aug 11-17 Whoopi Goldberg Week: She’s become a corny tv lady these days, but let’s not forget that at her peak Whoopi was one of the funniest people alive.

Directed by Emile Ardolino and written by Paul Rudnick, Sister Act was one of the most financially successful comedies of the early 1990s. It’s about Deloris Wilson (Whoopi Goldberg), who made fun of the nuns when she was in school, becomes a lounge singer dating organized crime figure Vince LaRocca (Harvey Keitel) and goes into hiding at Saint Katherine’s Parish as Sister Mary Clarence along with Reverend Mother (Maggie Smith), Sister Mary Lazarus (Mary Wickes), Sister Mary Patrick (Kathy Najimy) and Sister Mary Robert (Wendy Makkena).

The new Sister ends up leading the choir to national attention, which leads to the criminals finding her, putting a price on her head. Of course, everything turns out just fine.

Initially intended for Bette Midler, this was the subject of a major lawsuit. Actress Donna Douglas and her partner Curt Wilson filed a $200 million lawsuit against The Walt Disney Company, Whoopi Goldberg, Bette Midler, their production companies and Creative Artists Agency, claiming Sister Act was plagiarized from the book A Nun in the Closet. In 1994, Douglas and Wilson declined a $1 million offer as they wanted to win the case. They didn’t. Neither was a nun by the name of Delois Blakely, whose autobiography, The Harlem Street Nun, was similar and was sent to Disney several times.

Aug 11-17 Whoopi Goldberg Week: She’s become a corny tv lady these days, but let’s not forget that at her peak Whoopi was one of the funniest people alive.

Based on The Burglar in the Closet by Lawrence Block, this has Whoopi as former burglar Bernice “Bernie” Rhodenbarr, who is blackmailed into doing jobs for a corrupt cop named Ray Kirschman (G. W. Bailey, who is pretty much the go-to guy for bad cops after Police Academy). Then, Dr. Cynthia Sheldrake (Leslie Ann Warren) hires her to break into her ex-husband’s house, only for him to be killed. Another set-up, this time by her and her lawyer (James Handy).

With the help of her friend Carl Hefler (Bobcat Goldthwait), she investigates the case herself, learning that Christopher (Stephen Shellen), the dead husband, had plenty of girlfriends. Boyfriends, too, including the man who killed him, who ends up being — spoiler warning — the lawyer.

Is this a Giallo?

In an interview with Kevin Smith, writer Jeph Loeb — who went on to write comic books — said that this was going to star Bruce Willis with Whoopi Goldberg playing a neighbor. Bruce dropped out, and Goldberg moved into the lead. Not everyone was happy, as Roger Ebert said that Burglar was “… a witless, hapless exercise in the wrong way to package Goldberg. This is a woman who is original. Who is talented. Who has a special relationship with the motion picture comedy. It is criminal to put her into brain-damaged, assembly-line thrillers.”

Loeb wrote this along with Matthew Weisman and its director, Hugh Wilson, who created WKRP in Cincinnati and Frank’s Place in addition to directing the aforementioned Police Academy. He also made The First Wives Club and Dudley Do-Right. I bet Ebert loved that movie. Actually, he did! He gave it 2 1/2 stars out of 4 and wrote, “I did a little wincing the ninth or tenth time Dudley stepped on a loose plank and it slammed him in the head, but I enjoyed the film more than I expected to. It’s harmless, simple-minded, and has a couple of sequences better than Dudley really deserves.”

Aug 11-17 Whoopi Goldberg Week: She’s become a corny tv lady these days, but let’s not forget that at her peak Whoopi was one of the funniest people alive.

This is one of Becca’s favorite movies and she may have seen it hundreds of times.

Living up to its title, it has not just one but two versions of the theme: the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin.

Directed by Penny Marshall and written by David H. Franzoni, J. W. Melville, Patricia Irving and Christopher Thompson, this has Whoopi Goldberg as Terry Doolittle, a computer operator working for First National Bank. This is one of those very much The Net films where computers can do everything, including things they still can’t handle forty years later.

She talks to people all over the world and one of them ends up being “Jumping Jack Flash,” a British superspy who needs her help to deliver coded messages.

I loved this because so many SNL stars are in it: Jon Lovitz, Phil Hartman, Jim Belushi and Michael McKean, as well as Tracey Ullman. Sam Kinison was going to be Jack at the end, but Whoppi said no to this, ending the friendship between Kinison and Marshall and starting a feud between him and Goldberg. Supposedly, Kinison was dating Marshall! Plus, you get pre-cancelled Stephen Collins, Carol Kane, Annie Potts as a CIA agent, Jonathan Pryce and Teagan Clive as a Russian workout woman. Yes, the star of Alienator. How haven’t I made a Teagan Clive Letterboxd list yet? This would be the last of her films that I’ve covered.

Initially, this was to star Shelley Long, but she was problematic. Then, director Howard Zieff (Private Benjamin, My Girl) directed the New York footage. He and producer Marvin Worth left, replaced by Marshall and Joel Silver.

Aug 4-10  Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!

Gary King (Simon Pegg) is an alcoholic who wants to bring together his boyhood friends one more time to complete The Golden Mile, a pub crawl of all 12 pubs in their hometown of Newton Haven. In 1990, they failed, never reaching The World’s End. He gets estate agent Oliver Chamberlain (Martin Freeman), car salesman Peter Page (Eddie Marsan), architect Steven Prince (Paddy Considine) and lawyer and non-drinker Andrew Knightley (Nick Frost) to do this challenge by claiming that his mother is dying. They’re joined by Oliver’s sister Sam (Rosamund Pike) — who Gary and Steven have been in love with since school — just in time for Gary to knock the head off a teenage drunk and expose it as a robot. Soon, they realize that they’re surrounded by more of these replacement bots called Blanks, who want the entire world to join them. Oliver soon becomes part of them — even Gary’s old drug dealer, Trevor “The Reverend” Green (Michael Smiley), is a Blank — as our heroes continue the bar tour.

After much tragedy and not much triumph, Gary reaches The World’s End. Andy confronts him and reveals his troubled marriage, while Gary admits that he recently tried to end his own life. Andy tries to stop Gary from drawing his final pint, but as Gary pulls the lever, they are lowered into the Blanks’ base, where they are promised eternal life and told that this is the first step in humanity joining the rest of the universe. Sam, Gary, Andy and Steven argue for man to be left alone, leading to Earth being sent back to the dark ages and all power being removed, while the Blanks left behind are ostracized.

Things end better, though. Andy’s marriage gets better. Steven and Sam are in love. The Blank versions of Peter and Oliver are just fine. Gary is sober, drinking with younger Blank recreations of his friends, defending them when the bar won’t serve them beer.

Director and writer Edgar Wright was inspired by his own life, saying that he was tired of “…strange homogeneous branding that becomes like a virus. This doesn’t just extend to pubs, it’s the same with cafés and restaurants. If you live in a small town and you move to London, which I did when I was 20, then when you go back out into the other small towns in England, you go “Oh my God, it’s all the same!” It’s like Bodysnatchers: literally, our towns are being changed to death.”

The final film in the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, it may be the one I’ve watched the least, but I liked it the best.

Aug 4-10  Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!

Ever since the 2023 Australia incident, where Tenacious D went on hiatus — and seemingly Jack Black buried his friend Kyle Gass — thinking of the D makes me sad. It was hard to watch this movie, made in a time when things were better.

The plot of this film — well, the origin of the band — isn’t far from the truth. Jack Black and Kyle Gass met in Los Angeles as part of a theater company, and Gass felt threatened by Black, as he was the only musician before. Yet the chance to go to Scotland for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival — and to climb the volcano, Arthur’s Seat — bonded them. Gass would teach Black to play guitar in return for food, just like this movie. After a three-episode HBO series and a successful album, they went from being a comedy band to being a real band that does comedy. Initially, this was going to be about Tenacious D playing coffee shops and Black becoming fascinated by Atlantis. Black and Gass both fall in love with a girl called Simmeon, who has written books about the fictional island. They later meet Ronnie James Dio, and are sent on a road trip to Miami.” That movie never made it.

This one didn’t do well in theaters. Cult movies rarely do. Black said, “A lot of enthusiastic stoners were like, ‘Yeah, du-u-u-de! Just saw it.”  I was like, “Where were you when the movie came out?” “Sorry, dude, I was hi-i-i-gh!””

Meat Loaf is Black’s dad. Dave Grohl is Satan. Dio is Dio. All is right in this. I mean, any movie that ends with the heroes smoking out of a bong made from Satan’s horn is one I’m going to love.

Their next album, Rize of the Phoenix, starts with the words, “When The Pick Of Destiny was released, it was a bomb. And all the critics said that the D was done. The sun had set, and the chapter had closed. But one thing no one thought about was that the D would rise again.” That album is about Gass losing his mind as Black becomes a Hollywood star.

Luckily, that album and tour were a success.

Here’s hoping they can rise again.

Aug 4-10  Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!

Written in 1977 by Phillip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly is based on Dick’s life. Between mid-1970 (when his fourth wife, Nancy, left him) and mid-1972, Dick opened his house up to teenage drug users as his amphetamine addiction went out of control. How else do you write 68 pages of books a day? To escape, while in Canada, he went to X-Kalay, a Synanon recovery program. That’s why the book — and the movie — ends with a dedication to the people — including Dick himself — who died or had their lives ruined by drugs, saying that they were “some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did” and informing the audience that “drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to move out in front of a moving car.” It took him two weeks to write and three years to rewrite, a time that his fifth wife, Tes, said that she would find him crying, as the book was so hard to write. As a result, Dick wrote a contract giving Tessa half of all the rights to the novel, as she “participated to a great extent in writing the outline and novel A Scanner Darkly with me, and I owe her one half of all income derived from it.”

Richard Linklater wanted to make Ubik, but couldn’t figure out how to film it, a problem that most people who made Philip K. Dick movies solved by just doing their own thing and just using the title (see Paycheck, The Adjustment Bureau, Next — which is based on “The Golden Man” — as well as Minority Report, Total Recall and nearly every movie made from his books). His daughters, Laura Leslie and Isa Hackett, started looking closely at the scripts and learned that while they didn’t want a cartoon made of their father’s most personal work, Linklater got it.

The process of making this movie involved the actors being involved in the writing process, then making the movie, then 18 months of animating everything, which was way more than the studio thought it would take. The rotoscope process gives this a look beyond anything I’ve seen outside of Waking Life. This is the next level of what Linklater did in that film.

20% of the country is addicted to Substance D. Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) is an undercover cop living in a house of addicts reporting back to the government agents that police the war on drugs, who all wear scramblesuits so that they have no idea who they are, undercover and masked even to one another, maybe to themselves. He’s in love with Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder), from whom he buys the drugs, and wants to get closer to the supplier. But she is also Hank, his boss, and this has all been a trap to make James Barris (Robert Downey Jr.) get overly paranoid. Or maybe she’s Audrey. Also: Who are the people that Bob has a suburban life with? Is he addicted to Substance D? Whichever, whatever, because Substance D was created by New-Path, a drug abuse clinic, to make money for themselves by creating and curing the supply and demand. Is Bob in the clinic to get help or is he there undercover to stop them?

None of it matters, but it all does in the end. Nothing is everything. Or, as Dick said, “There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be “My phone is spying on me.””

Aug 4-10  Stoner Comedy Week: I don’t gas reefer anymore, but I love it when people in movies do!

For a fifty-mile stretch of the highways surrounding Spurbury, Vermont, Captain John O’Hagen (Brian Cox), Lieutenant Arcot Ramathorn (Jay Chandrasekhar), “Rabbit” Roto (Erik Stolhanske), “Mac” Womack (Steve Lemme), Rodney “Rod” Farva (Kevin Heffernan) and Carl Foster (Paul Soter) are the law. Mainly, their power is used for pranks and shenanigans (“Hey Farva, what’s the name of that restaurant you like with all the goofy stuff on the wall and the mozzarella sticks?”) until a Winnebago with a dead body and tons of drugs is found. The local cops get there first and won’t share the investigation. Maybe now is a good time for the troopers to actually be police officers.

Made by the comedy team Broken Lizard, Super Troopers was inspired by road trips to weddings by Steve Lemme and Jay Chandrasekhar, who were frequently high. They were also frequently getting pulled over by cops, who could have screwed with them had they only known how out of their minds the two were.

This brings back the hijinks ensue form. All you need to know is the basic outline, and you can come in at any moment for this quotable film. You either love it or you think it’s immature, but who cares? For example, I say lines from this scene all the time:

Dimpus Burger Guy: Double baco cheeseburger. It’s for a cop.

Farva: What the hell’s that all about? You gonna spit in it now?

Dimpus Burger Guy: No, I just told him that so he makes it good. Don’t spit in that cop’s burger.

Or this scene…

Captain O’Hagan: There was a time when we’d take a guy like you in the back and beat you with a hose. Now you’ve got your God-damned unions.

Farva: Cap’n… you know I’m not a pro-union guy.

Or this…

Farva: Gimme a litre o’ cola.

Dimpus Burger Guy: What?

Farva: A litre o’ cola.

Thorny: Just order a large, Farva.

Farva: I don’t want a large Farva. I want a goddamn litre o’ cola.

Obviously, I have seen this film too many times to be objective.

Also: Brian Cox is the best Hannibal Lecter.