Dana Carvey is just about the funniest guy in the world. That HBO comedy special (Critics' Choice, I think) is flat-out hilarious, featuring, at the end, Carvey's impression of Burt Lancaster sodomizing Kirk Douglas. (Also, Johnny Carson and Jimmy Stewart having sex.)

He's on fire here as he impersonates George Bush and George W. Bush as they realize Rosie O'Donnell has seen through their schemes. (The opening is marred by a bad connection, but it gets better.)

BTW: Given that Carvey is a comic from San Fransisco, he's strangely... I don't want to say conservative. Let's say oddly centrist. But that could just be his own admitted need for adoration restraining him from offending any possible adorers.

His show was supposedly hysterical, but it didn't seem to attract an audience. Apparently Steven Colbert and Steve Carrell were both on it before being swiped by the Daily Show.

Posted by: Ace at 06:40 AM | Comments (13)
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Killed by a drunk Latino driver with no license. The LAT pretty much has an
embargo on using the word "illegal immigrant," so don't take the lack of mention of that to be proof of that he was a citizen.

Tuesday was usually family night for film director Bob Clark — best known for "A Christmas Story" and the "Porky's" movies — and his grown sons, Ariel and Michael.

Ariel, 22, who had been studying music composition at Santa Monica College and was a part-time card dealer at a casino, would typically join his father and brother at the condo they rented in Pacific Palisades. They were night owls, said Lyne Leavy, who headed Clark's production company, Film Classic Productions.

...

They had just driven a few blocks and were heading south on Pacific Coast Highway near the Bel-Air Bay Club at about 2:20 a.m. when a GMC Yukon swerved across the lane, striking their Infiniti Q-30 sedan head-on. Father and son were pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver of the sport utility vehicle, Hector Valazquez-Nava, 24, of Los Angeles and passenger Lydia Mora, 29, of Azusa were taken to UCLA Medical Center and treated for minor injuries. Valazquez-Nava was booked on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol, operating a motor vehicle without a driver's license and gross vehicular manslaughter.

...

"He was a nice guy, good to everybody, a quiet guy," Dodier said of Bob Clark. The producer-director had lived at the Edgewater complex since he relocated to Pacific Palisades from New England after his divorce. Starting out in a one-bedroom unit, he moved into a two-bedroom, second-floor condominium a few years later to make room for his sons, Dodier said. He had rented the larger unit for more than a decade.

"He was a gentleman, one of the nicest people I knew," said his New York business manager, Stuart Ditsky. "He always kept his word. He would never hurt anybody or put in anything in his movies to embarrass anyone."

Clark produced, directed and co-wrote "A Christmas Story," which was released in 1983; more than two decades later, it remains a holiday favorite, shown on television and racking up big DVD sales.

...

Clark also made darker, more brooding pictures. His seminal horror film, "Black Christmas," was recently reissued on DVD. Though hardly the first slasher film, some fans credit it with influencing other horror films.

"Whether you are a fan of the genre or not, we never would have had films like 'Friday the 13th' without 'Black Christmas,' " said Paula Haifley, who in December saw Clark introduce a screening at the New Beverly. "He was funny and friendly, had true respect for the horror genre and its fans, and seeing him was an experience I will never forget. He will be sorely missed by his fans."

He also directed a movie no one ever mentions: Murder By Decree, the best Sherlock Holmes movie I've ever seen (most of them are just plain crappy, if not godforsaken), which features Holmes pursuing none other than Jack the Ripper. It was the film introduction of the now-passe Royal Conspiracy theory of the murders. Christopher Plummer as a tough Holmes (no queeny posturing and whining about how bored he is by the world), and James Mason hilarious as Watson. Also features other great actors like Donald Sutherland (as a mystic/psychic, and there really was one somehow connected to the Ripper case) and John Gielgud.

When Martin Scorcese directed Age of Innocence, he said he wanted to become a "real pro" as a director, which, he explained, was not a joke at his own expense, but a description of the sort of director who could take on pretty much any material whatsoever and do it right. No one ever thinks of Bob Clarke when they think of great directors, but he was definitely a real pro. From A Christmas Story to the terrific period mystery Murder By Decree to seminal (ahem) high school sex comedy Porky's to even, errr, Black Christmas, the guy pretty much directed (and often wrote or co-wrote) in pretty much every genre out there.

Seriously? If you've never seen it, Murder By Decree. Give it a rent. The only knocks are 1, there's a little too much exposition as they rush to explain the somewhat convoluted Royal Conspiracy, and 2, given that this is a Royal Conspiracy movie, you have the same problem you always do -- you're just not going to get to see real justice for the perpetrators, as, um, we know from history that the monarchy was not in fact brought down by the Ripper murders.

Still, a really good Sherlock Holmes pic. Victorian London looks great, and the Ripper killer(s) look very creepy.

Thanks to Dan Collins who used to comment here until he became a splitter.

Holmes As Pulp Hero: Just an aside. The source material supports depicting Holmes as either a forerunner of pulp heroes -- he's good with his fists and a pistol -- or as a comical individual, extraordinary in one way, but otherwise just a collection of odd quirks and annoying mannerisms, like the later Hercule Poroit.

I'm annoyed by the latter, which is why I hate the BBC Jeremy Brett version of Holmes.

Murder By Decree depicts Holmes as the tough detective sort of pulp hero. He even has a cool weapon -- an absurdly long scarf, which he explains is actually a disguised weapon that used to be carried by Thuggee cultists. The ends of the scarf are filled with lead ball bearings, so the scarf is really a whip/bludgeon. Not quite as cool as Indy's bull-whip, but (to me) it's the perfect weapon for Holmes. (Apart from a pistol in the pocket.)

If you've seen the lame From Hell, be on notice that that's virtually a remake, or direct swipe, of Murder By Decree, just a much inferior version. The Hughes brothers even swiped Clarke's use of big black contact lenses for the Ripper killers, to make their eyes appear to almost all black pupil -- a subtle but spooky effect that lets you know somethin' ain't quite right with these boys. The graphic novel From Hell was based on didn't even feature the Royal Conspiracy as the solution -- the Hughes brothers rewrote it to feature that -- so it's pretty clear they saw Murder By Decree and just wanted to remake it.

Getting back to Clarke. Here's a clip (from Olbermann, alas) about the world's biggest Christmas Story fan. He bought and restored the house the movie was shot in, and now sells Leg Lamps. In a life imitates art twist, his wife is a little chagrined by his obsession with Leg Lamps.

Posted by: Ace at 05:51 AM | Comments (32)
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Dr. Helen links an article about five things guys love hearing on a first date and five things they hate hearing.

One of them is that sort of question, designed to test a potential suitor for political compatibility.

Dr. Helen doesn't offer a definitive opinion on it, but does seem to snark she thinks it's a bad idea for a woman to do that.

I know she's a psychologist and all, but I've got to disagree with her. If moonbattish political conformity is important to a woman, so much so that she really isn't interested in getting to know a guy unless he voted for Mondale whenever he's had the opportunity (if he changed residences in 2002 just to vote for Mondale in his last Senate bid, bonus points!), then, hey, it's better to find these things out early.

Actually, there are a lot of things that it's best to find out early -- is your credit rating good? do you make a decent amount of money? do you really like hiking or is that just some bullshit you say on your personals form? is there any chance at all you know what the hell you're doing with my ladyequipment? -- and women use various subterfuges and proxy questions to find out the answers. Men have their own questions, starting off with "If we actually date for a month, are you going to start talking about marriage after the 30-day grace period?" and "Are you actually kind of sexual? Or are you one of those One Week Wonder sort of chicks who will lure me in with lots of sex when we start dating and then lose virtually all initiative and enthusiasm by day eight?"*

Eh. It's just true that more similar people make better couples. Opposites may attract, but they do not stay together for long periods of time. It may be superficial to ask about politics as if that's the measure of someone's character, but 1, to a liberal, your politics are indeed the sum and entirety of your character, and 2, there are far more superficial things men and women are trying to suss out about each other on a first date.

I mean, a guy's only trying to figure out how many dates it will take to get a woman into bed, and that's a almost as superficial as one's stance on Roe v. Wade.

* BTW, the answer to this question is always, "Yes, she's a One Week Wonder; they all are." Maybe not just a week, maybe a Golden Fortnight; maybe not even a full week. But yeah. Pretty much. Evolution has given women mad sex drives at the start of a relationship in order to get guys thinking "I could kinda get used to this right here!" but, alas, we never do get used to it, because one day, for reasons unknown, it stops cold like a lobster in a display tank when it sees Rosie O'Donnell's has entered the restaurant wearing an automotive tarpoline as a bib and gulping down a jug of melted butter so as to "cut out the middleman."

So, stop wondering that, and just ask her where she stands on the Patriot Act.

PS: There is, however, no reason to ask a guy this, because most guys are quite a bit more conservative than women, and when a woman says she wants a really liberal guy for her man she's usually thinking "I'd like nice gay shopping buddy that will occassionally cuddle with me, like I've seen on television," and besides that, if women think that guys are going to give a straight answer when sex is on the line, they're more naive than I thought.

We learned what to say in college. Abortion rights, up the Sandanistas, save the rainforest, I'm really looking forward to the new Pedro Almalovar movie, yadda. yadda. yadda."

You'll have to be more subtle than that. If you really want to figure out a guy's politics, go up to a bum on your way out of the restaurant, give the bum a crisp ten dollar bill, and ask the guy if he has another ten because you really wanted to give him twenty.

And then watch his face.

Sure, we'll cough up the ten bucks and pretend we're big on passing out twenties to random street rummies (see the point about saying anything to get sex, supra), but you can still see it in the eyes, like the slow pupilary response in a Replicant.

Posted by: Ace at 03:28 PM | Comments (339)
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Israeli's message? Same as it's been. If the terrorists agree to end terrorism, Israel is ready and eager to begin peace talks with an eye towards a final settlement on the various land issues.

Apparently this contained too much nuanced for our very-nuanced globetrotting Speaker of the House.

So her little brain had to simplify it a tad. The message she relayed?

Israel is willing to begin peace talks now, right now, whether or not terrorism continues, and, let's face it, it will, so let's get on with it.

First she ended the Global War on Terror.

Now she singlehandedly reverses Israel's decades-old position on negotiations.

All in the interests of peace. For our children.

Thanks, Nancy!

Bonus: More San Fransisco Nuance! Anarchist-type militant bicyclists terrify a woman and her children by beating on her Minivan because, hey, they don't like Minivans.

Police are powerless to do anything, because apparently assault's been decriminalized in San Fransisco, so long as leftist jagoffs are doing the assaulting.

Posted by: Ace at 02:59 PM | Comments (39)
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Quick, cut off the troops' funds before they can win the war. The future of the Democratic Party depends on defeat.

Posted by: Ace at 01:12 PM | Comments (55)
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This column is back from mid-February, and it's about the old-ish news of the Utah mall shootings, but it's well worth reading.

Basically, the media is unwilling to even mention that someone guilty what seems to be a terroristic mass-murder is Muslim. And we can't just blame the media -- law enforcement, from the local cops all the way up the FBI's brass, simply dismisses Islamism as a motive no matter how suggestive the circumstances.

Even shouting "Allahu Akbar" as you drive your jeep into a crowd of college students isn't enough to get anyone to whisper the forbidden words "Islamic terrorism."

Here's the thing: the media claims it's the watchdog of the government, the "Fourth Estate" of government, there to patrol our government for lies and coverups and just plain old horseshit.

That's what they claim. But when the government is spouting absurdist, nearly Pythonesque nonsense as regards this particular issue, suddenly they're not really terribly interested in challenging the government at all. Indeed, they're all too eager to push the government's line as hard as they possibly can. (That is, when they're not embargoing the story entirely.)

The media's got a bad case of islamophobiaphobia. They're so afraid of islamophobia they can hardly rouse themselves to type the word "Islam" at all. Apparently they fear that if they so much as suggest that a Islamist may have been motivated by Islamism to commit murders, Americans will go on a Muslim-killin' rampage.

To which I always have to ask: If the media fears this sort of response from Americans, why they thell are they so willing to push stories that will clearly inflame a quite inflammable group -- Islamists themselves? Shouldn't the same logic -- soft-sell stories that may tend to "excite" people in violent ways -- apply to both sorts of stories? Indeed, given the wild disparity in the numbers of Islamist-motivated killings versus "Islamphobia" motivated killings, shouldn't their censorship-for-the-sake-of-public-safety dictate they be even more cautious with bullshit stories like the Koran in the Toilet?

The article, by the way, is by the Late Great Planet Earth guy. So what? A good point is still a good point even if it's a mutated sentient cauliflower making it.

Posted by: Ace at 11:25 AM | Comments (161)
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Ummm... no. Serenity was decent, but it was flawed due to the fact that Whedon had to jam-pack the entire plot arc of an episodic TV series into a single two hour movie, knowing he'd almost certainly never get the chance to finish the story otherwise. So he had to make the movie overly busy and choppy at times, with little of the trademark shoot-the-shit downtime so beloved in the actual TV show.

It doesn't make it a bad movie by any means. It just makes it a less than great movie.

I think fans are really voting on the series itself, which... well, I don't know if it's better than Star Wars, but the premise of following around a grittier, meaner, more criminal Han Solo around -- the kind of Han Solo that definitely shoots first -- as he evades the law and robs bank is pretty damn compelling.

I know there are perfectly logical reason why a studio shouldn't try relaunching this show. It was great, and yet it still failed, ergo there's little chance of getting better ratings just by improving the show.

But the show now has a bigger fan base than it ever had before, all through word of mouth of people telling their friends, "Look, you gotta watch this show," and then those people in turn telling their friends.

It's not a guaranteed hit if they relaunch it, but again, it seems to me they've got a better chance at a hit with a Firefly relaunch that any old new-series pilot, 95% of which will suck and fail in their first year, too.

So why not? Clearly the whole cast still likes the show and would like to come back. Whedon wants to do it.

(Of course, it's hard to re-hire a cast, as they've all gone on to different things; Nathan Fillion's of course in this Fox chase series Drive. But start optioning these guys so that they'll have an availability in a year's time or something.)

WickedPinto pointed out that, with Serenity, they basically completed most of the plot arc they'd had planned from the get-go, and probably planned to milk for four or five years' of epidodes. Admittedly, this is a problem. But the 'Verse is big enough, dangerous enough place that they can easily come up with a new metaplot.

Frankly, I was growing tired of the moonbrained sister just being all weird all the time anyway.

Besides, if you have Jayne, you've pretty much got your metaplot right there.

I'll be in my bunk.

Posted by: Ace at 10:54 AM | Comments (159)
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The kid was homeless, but forgive me if I can't make a hobo joke.

The murderers did this in Australia, which takes such crimes very seriously. They're looking at a good three years in jail for this.

Actually they're getting life in prison. But pretty much you have to beg for life in prison by resorting to post-mortem decapitated-head puppetry to get that sentence anywhere outside the US.

(Except in, say, Saudi Arabia, where you can get a pretty stiff sentence for the crime of being gang-raped.)

TWO men have been jailed for life for the brutal slaying of a homeless teenager who was stabbed 133 times and decapitated before his head was used as a bowling ball.

After six hours of deliberations, a Brisbane Supreme Court jury this afternoon found James Patrick Roughan, 27, and Christopher Clark Jones, 23, guilty of the gruesome murder of 17-year-old Morgan Jay Shepherd (known as Jay) on March 29, 2005.

The pair, both from Sandgate, north of Brisbane, had already pleaded guilty to interfering with a corpse.

During the trial of almost three weeks, the court was told police found Jay's headless body buried in a shallow grave in Dayboro, north of Brisbane, following an anonymous tip-off only days after he died.

The jury heard Jay, who was a resident of a Brisbane youth hostel, had been drinking with both the accused at Roughan's home before a fight broke out.

...

Witnesses testified Jones told friends about the murder and how Roughan had used Jay's head as a bowling ball and a puppet.

Jones smirked as his guilty verdict was delivered but later read out a note he had penned to the court apologising for his involvement in the murder.

Wonkette's about to run a picture of Karl Rove toting the bloody head under his arm, suggesting it's a good tip while tossing in a couple of exclamation points to demonstrate they're not quite vouching for its accuracy.

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 10:25 AM | Comments (21)
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Cool. Seth Bullock from Deadwood as the bad guy, and a bit of Beethoven's Ninth for the music (as in the original). Not sure if that'll actually be in the movie, of course. Trailer music tends to be temp music.

Via Allah, who writes:

In this one, Bruce goes toe to toe with the greatest threat facing America today: a team of dorkwad Internet hackers. Exit question: What are the odds they’ll be known as the “New Crusaders” or the “Wingnut Brigades” or something like that? We know you’re one of us, Bruce. Don’t let us down.

Well, based on the plot summary from IMDb...

When a criminal plot is in place to take down the entire computer and technological structure that supports the economy of the United States (and the world), it's up to a decidedly "old school" hero, police detective John McClane (Willis), to take down the conspiracy...

... and the snippet of dialogue from the Seth Bullock there, "Are you willing to pay the price?," he seems to be an "anti-war terrorist" (is there any other kind?), with a mission of inflicting upon the US the "true cost" of the war it makes on other countries.

Of course, this being a Die Hard movie, we also know, with a high degree of confidence, that he's not really politically motivated at all, and is just using this as a pretext to... well, let's take a guess. A pretext to get into one of the world's biggest bank computers, the ones that handle hundred million dollar transfers from one country to another, and somehow all this fuss and bother will get him access to that system so he can electronically divert a cool trillion dollars into his (numerous) bank accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

A trillion? Yeah. First Die Hard involved a theft of hundreds of millions of dollars, Die Hard With a Vengeance escalated that to (I believe) thirteen billion in gold, this one pretty much has to move up to the trillion dollar range.

Presumably John McClane will see through this scam early on, to reassure the few liberal members of the audience that we're not questioning their patriotism.

Although it will be interesting to see liberal film critics kind of hint that they thought the villain sort of had a pretty decent idea, and it's too bad it was just a cynical cover under which to carry out a mega-robbery. If only Seth Bullock had had the courage of liberals' convictions, maybe he could have finally stopped "the madmen" from inflicting American terrorism on the world.

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (21)
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Iran folded like a lawn chair, which is what I figured they do. What else could they do?

They can bluster all they like but when push comes to shove they're doing as well as they can with this covert war of terrorism they've got cooking. In full open warfare, things begin to go rather badly for them.

Tony Blair has welcomed the release by Iran of 15 British sailors and marines taken captive 13 days ago. The Iranian president had said it was a "gift" to Britain.

The sailors have been shown on television speaking to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at his palace in the capital Tehran.

Mr Blair said Britain bore the Iranian people "no ill-will" over the crisis.

He welcomed the release of the British personnel saying it was a "profound relief" for them and their families.

Sky New sources have indicated that Qatar and Syria played a part in resolving the crisis.

According to reports, the 15 Britons "shouted with joy" on learning about their freedom.

President Ahmadinejad said he had pardoned them as a gift to the British people.

Aw, gee whiz, Mahmoud, you only had to get them a sweater or something.

Posted by: Ace at 09:25 AM | Comments (35)
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