I cringed less once I found out it was the Scary Movie people. But I have no intention of seeing it. Just that they're mocking the fat suit movies as much as or more than the fat.

Airplanes arriving from Guam have to be inspected for stowaway brown tree snakes.

[link]

Dispersion Techniques: Secretive and nocturnal, the brown tree snake can coil itself in small, highly confined hiding spaces. Dispersed mainly by stowing away in cargo on planes and ships, and within plane wheel-wells.

Can't see how there's a movie in it, though. They're not as cute as penguins.

I just got back from my annual Christmas Day tradition of seeing a sci-fi or fantasy movie. In this case, King Kong. Am I right in assuming that Peter Jackson didn't intend me to leave with the impression that:

• Ann Darrow was suffering the worst case of Stockholm Syndrome in the history of mankind
• Bruce Baxter was the only sane character in the whole friggin' movie
• Skull Island must be the source of the Rage virus from 28 Days Later, as proven by all the insanely murderous red-eyed natives and the fact that every damn animal on the island attacked every other damn animal on the island on sight at enhanced speed
• Either Kong survived all this time without any actual survival skills or the giant mutated killer bats (at least I guess that's what they were... they looked more like the Jerry Dandridge bat form from Fright Night than any actual animal I've ever seen... which would also go a long way toward explaining why they'd attack a much larger animal than themselves and how one could magically fly carrying at least three times its own body weight) sprang up in that cave since the last time he tried to sleep there?

I liked The Producers, but it's not any good as a movie--it's good as a record of two great Broadway performances. Amd I LOVE thew original movie (except the horrible LSD character, so cringe-worthy). If you don't like musicals or you didn't like the original show, you'll hate it, though.

Matt, I suspect that the rat-monkeys featured in Dead Alive also originated on Skull Island. It would explain so much....

Matt, I suspect that the rat-monkeys featured in Dead Alive also originated on Skull Island.

If you look carefully at the empty crates in the bottom of the ship when Adrien Brody is getting the tour, one is labeled "Sumatran Rat Monkey." I was quite pleased.

it's good as a record of two great Broadway performances.

Maybe great on stage. In close-up, I couldn't shake the feeling that Broderick was playing Bloom as mildly retarded, and it was, as I said, painfully uncomfortable.

except the horrible LSD character, so cringe-worthy

More cringe-worthy than replacing him with a string of embarrassingly dated gay jokes?

Yes, because all the gay people I know dig the gay jokes, so they work in the same way Bialystock does--he's a broad comedic exaggeration of a Jewish guy of a certain era and De Bris is a broad exaggeration of a Gay man of a certain era. When watching the original movie it feel so much like an older guy trying to write a satire on the craxy hippy young people and instead creating a character which has nothing to do with any human being living or dead that it isn't funny. Dick Shawn does what he can, but it's a lost cause.

Plus, the Chrysler Building dress was fabulous!

all the gay people I know dig the gay jokes, so they work

This isn't an argument I understand. My parents, who were craxy young hippies, think LSD is hysterical. Should you retroactively find him funny just because I know people who relate to the character type and do?

I may not have been clear. I just wanted to say the gay jokes are not embarassing or offensive any more than Bialystock is anti-Semitic. I can see why you didn't like the movie--as I said, I think it's not much of a movie.