my new plaid pants: Soapdish

Showing posts with label Soapdish. Show all posts

Friday, November 06, 2020

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Lincoln (2012)

Mary Todd Lincoln: [to Thaddeus Stevens] How the people love my husband. They flock to see him by their thousands on public days. They will never love you the way they love him. How difficult it must be for you to know that, and yet how important to remember it.

A happy 74 to Sally Field today!

What's your favorite Sally Field?

I have but one answer to give:

Thursday, August 06, 2020

Do You Like To Laugh

This post's title is dedicated to those poor sods who would harass people on street corners with that question -- "Do you like to laugh?" -- in order to get them inside of Comedy Clubs here in the pre-COVID Days of NYC. This pandemic's got me down enough that I sort of miss them! Anyway true story I seem to have become nightmarishly picky when it comes to Comedy. I have lots of old stand-by favorites from my more innocent, less jaded youth that I go back to time and time again -- Soapdish! Dirty Rotten Scoundrels! -- but it's not a genre I actively seek out very often anymore.

Truth be told I can be snobbish and weird about the genre. I guess I like Smart Dumb Comedy -- I don't mind a poop joke but you've got to give me something new and exciting with your poop joke. (Side-note: you oughta read MNPP pal Michael's terrific recent piece on the art of the poop joke with regards to Bridesmaids over at TFE.) I am simply incapable of sitting down and enjoying an episode of something as braying and needy as say The Big Bang Theory. It physically pains me, that sort of thing.

Okay I need a laugh, and I need one now.
What’s your funniest movie ever made? pic.twitter.com/KPsHbsYpT6
— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 31, 2020

Of course this pandemic has really put that snobbishness to the test -- we need a good belly laugh, an emphatic guffaw, now and then amid these darkest of days. And so in a fit of want I tweeted out the above question last week, and in return I got a million and a half fun responses that I appreciated a whole bunch. Then naturally I just ended up re-watching Christopher Guest's Best in Show for the thousandth time...

... but I've got a Go-To Laugh List for when I need it now. And if anyone has any further suggestions please do give them in the comments. That said I forward all of this to say make it clear that I have actively been thinking a lot about my weird relationship with comedy -- how I'll almost always if I want to laugh put on a bad horror flick or something Campy like Showgirls before I'll even think to put on an actual trying-to-make-me-laugh Comedy Film -- when lo, behold, a trailer for a new Comedy Series should appear.

That's the trailer for Mapleworth Murders, which stars former SNL writer Paula Pell as a Murder She Wrote type Older Lady Sleuth, and which will feature cameos from lots of Smart Dumb Comedy Now people like Wanda Sykes, Chris Parnell, Nicole Byer, Maya Rudolph, Fred Armisen, Jack McBrayer, Annie Mumolo... I have a really good friend who's a Comedy Fiend and she loves Pell -- I think a lot of Comedy Fiends do. My only interaction with Pell was in the Netflix comedy Wine Country...

... which is a good example of a recent comedy that left me totally and thoroughly cold. Except for Pell, who was its highlight I thought. But with a cast like Wine Country had -- Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph and Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch and Ana Gasteyer! -- I should've been in Chuckle Heaven! So I guess what I am getting at with all of this is... I am dead inside, right? I'm just dead inside. Mapleworth Murders premieres on Quibi on August 10th!

Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

you can learn from:

Soapdish (1991)

Dr. Randall: The test results have come back.
Maggie: And?
Dr. Randall: And I'm afraid the results are very
disturbing. It seems that Angelique has a rare case
of brake fluid... Bran... fluid. Bran flavor.
Maggie: Brain fever!

Dr. Randall: Yes. Brain fever. Or what we call
in Austria... Kopfgeschlagen. At the current rate
of inflation, her brain will laterally explore the...
Maggie: Literally explode?
Dr. Randall: Exactly, within the next three houses.
Maggie: Hours?
Dr. Randall: Yes, will literally explode within next
three hours. I would suggest leaving the restraint.
Maggie: Restaurant?

Dr. Randall: Restaurant, yes.
Maggie: Her brain will actually explode?
Dr. Randall: Yes, yes, I've, um, seen it happen.
It's a dreadful, dreadful thug. Thing.

A very happy 71 to Kevin Kline today!

Tuesday, August 28, 2018

10 Off My Head: Siri Says 1991

Somehow an entire month has passed since the last time I asked my telephone to give me a number between one and one hundred and went to choose my favorite movies from the corresponding year, otherwise known as our "Siri Says" series, but now that we're back to talking to our phone again like it's a person Siri went and picked an interesting year of movies for us - The Movies of 1991.

I became a freshman in High School in the fall of 1991, meaning I was heavy in my "I have no friends and I wish I was dead" period - ahh sweet memories. But I had the movies at least? Hey it's what's getting a lot of us, visiting here at this site anyway, through, so don't knock it. This was still a couple of years before I worked at the video-store that would shape my tastes for the better so at this point in time I was still watching tons of garbage - I was watching any and everything really.

Point being I've seen a shit-ton from this year so I'm upping the list to 10. Looking back at the year now it's easy to whittle the crap down to the movies that matter, but I didn't fall for an awful lot of these until many years later - I sure wasn't laying my eyes on Todd Haynes or Derek Jarman or even Gus Van Sant at that exact point, something which probably would've benefitted my dumpy and isolated mood. Alas, hindsight, et cetera. Anyway onward and upward let's whittle that crap!

My 10 Favorite Movies of 1991

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

(dir. James Cameron)

-- released on July 1st 1991 --

Cape Fear

(dir. Martin Scorsese)

-- released on November 15th 1991 --

Poison

(dir. Todd Haynes)

-- released on April 5th 1991 --

Naked Lunch

(dir. David Cronenberg)

-- released on December 27th 1991 --

Raise the Red Lantern

(dir. Zhang Yimou)

-- released on December 17th 1991 --

Barton Fink

(dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)

-- released on August 21st 1991 --

The Silence of the Lambs

(dir. Jonathan Demme)

-- released on February 14th 1991 --

Soapdish

(dir. Michael Hoffmann)

-- released on May 31st 1991 --

Beauty and the Beast

(dir. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise)

-- released on November 22nd 1991 --

Thelma & Louise

(dir. Ridley Scott)

-- released on May 24th 1991 --

---------------------------------------

Runners-up: LA Story (dir. Mick Jackson), Sleeping With the Enemy (dir. Joseph Ruben), What About Bob (dir. Frank Oz), Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead (dir. Stephen Herek), JFK (dir. Oliver Stone), Fried Green Tomatoes (dir. John Avnet), Dead Again (dir. Kenneth Branagh)...

...... Dogfight (dir. Nancy Savoca), The Addams Family (dir. Sonnenfeld), The Lovers on the Bridge (dir. Leos Carax), Defending Your Life (dir. Albert Brooks), The Double Life of Veronique (dir. Kieslowski), Point Break (dir. Kathryn Bigelow), Shadows + Fog (dir. Woody Allen), Truth or Dare (dir. Alek Keshishian)...

... The Rapture (dir. Michael Tolkin), Edward II (dir. Derek Jarman), Grand Canyon (dir. Lawrence Kasdan), Boyz n' the Hood (dir. John Singleton), Whore (dir. Ken Russell), Mississippi Masala (dir. Mira Nair), Jungle Fever (dir. Spike Lee), My Own Private Idaho (dir. Gus Van Sant)

Never seen: High Heels (dir. Almodovar), Kafka (dir. Soderbergh), Europa (dir. Lars von Trier), Until the End of the World (dir. Wim Wenders), Close My Eyes (dir. Stephen Poliakoff)...

...... The Commitments (dir. Alan Parker), Flirting (dir. John Duigan), Prospero's Books (dir. Peter Greenaway), Scenes From a Mall (dir. Paul Mazursky), Toto the Hero (dir. Jaco Van Dormael), Night on Earth (dir. Jim Jarmusch)

What are your favorite movies of 1991?

Wednesday, November 29, 2017

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Soapdish (1990)

Nurse Nan: Sudden speech, the last sign of brain fever.
She could blow at any moment!!!

Happy birthday to Cathy Moriarty today!

I was in a room with her earlier this year!

You should go watch Patti Cake$ you guys.

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

5 Off My Head - RIP Garry Marshall

His movies may've become synonymous with dreckitude over the past several years, but coming of age in the 1980s I don't think you can help having a soft spot for Garry Marshall. I was a little young for his TV - although I definitely have fond memories of watching Laverne & Shirley with my Mom - but I was just the right kinda-don't-know-better age for his mainstream flicks, and he made me laugh and he made me cry and he made me do all the things the movies should make a person do.

Here are five of the first things I thought of thinking of him.

1 -- It kind of starts, middles, and ends with Pretty Woman, to be honest. I've written these words so many times that they've become less defensive (we all know the flick's got its issues) than they have become a mantra - I have seen this movie more times than Mary schtupped Joseph. I could probably recite it back to front, if pressed, and there's not a week, hell there's maybe even not a day, where I don't recite a line from it, or contemplate the fate of poor Skinny Marie the dead crackhead hooker in the dumpster, or think about Richard Gere mounting me on a piano in the public dining hall of the Beverly Wilshire.

2 -- Speaking of hotness though Garry funneled a good bit of the masculine sort into the world. Besides Richard Gere (that's a big besides!) there's Garrett Hedlund in Georgia Rule, while Matt Dillon with his pink polo shirts in The Flamingo Kid and Kurt Russell's brawny man act in Overboard were both childhood favorites...

... and then I mean anybody who could shoot Paul Mercurio's great big butt the way he shot Paul Mercurio's great big butt in Exit to Eden, well, this ends up being a bullet-point in your obituary as written by me.

Thank you, sir! Important stuff!

3 -- He was in Soapdish! Soapdish is right up there alongside Pretty Woman in the list of Movies I Have Seen More Times Than I Have Told My Mother I Love Her, and I probably quote it as often as I do that other film. And he's very funny in it too.

"I would like to voice my strong concern about this show's spiraling decline in ratings. David, ever since you took us to the Caribbean, it's been Jamaica homeless people sucking soup, and a big wave outside that cost a hundred thousand dollars. That's depressing and it's expensive, two words I hate. You know the words I like? I like the word "peppy" and the word "cheap". Peppy and cheap."

4 -- I've never seen the Princess Diaries movies, but without the Princess Diaries movies Anne Hathaway wouldn't have had any goody image to rebel against and we maybe never would've gotten...

... her acting in that wig in Brokeback Mountain, and I shudder in terror thinking of a world without that. So thanks for indirectly bringing me wig goodness, Garry. The world needs Wig Goodness!

5 -- Beaches, Beaches, Beaches. How many tears in my life have I shed watching Beaches? I have shed rivers, lakes, oceans of tears for the tale of two girls who become two ladies who become one lady and oh my god I am going to cry and cry and cry again right now. Here, lets get everything ready and have a good cry together...
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Monday, June 06, 2016

No Turbans for Miss Talbert

That gif perfectly expresses the way I felt last week when I realized that I'd let the 25th anniversary of one of my Top 5 Favorite Comedies Of Ever come and go with nary a peep. In the name of Montana Moorehead what had I done???

Soapdish was released on May 31st 1991, and immediately went onto full-life repeat at my house. I've seen it dozens and dozens of time. But you probably already know this if you've been around MNPP for any length of time - it's one of the very few movies to have its own tag here at the blog. Click here to see our previous posts on it.

So anyway when I realized my grave error I vowed on Twitter to fix it with this week's edition of "Beauty vs Beast" and so I did. Head over to The Film Experience to give your own personal Daytime Emmy to one of the two formidable comic talents seen here.

Monday, January 25, 2016

Good Morning, World

I really have got to toss some gratuitous gratitude Nico Tortorella's way, because he has given me, amongst other things, an easy out several times over when it's come to the daily grind of getting one of these "Good Morning, World" posts flung together when I don't have other inspiration -- just head on over to his Instagram and wham bam thank you Nico, we're done.

Anyway there is sort of some actual news having to do with him -- he has been all over the place this past week telling anybody that would listen that he is one of those "doesn't believe in labels" types.

“We as a culture spend so much time labeling everybody and everything. But we are all one. [Sexual fluidity and gender fluidity] is something I live by, stand by, and represent.”

How nice for him! This is probably incredibly GAY of me (oh god, those exhausting LABELS) but whenever I hear somebody say they don't believe in labels my first thought is Soapdish...

Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Holy Shit of the Day

Okay so I'm sitting here idly passing the time reading this "12 Things You Didn't Know About Steel Magnolias" article at HuffPo on the occasion of that movie's 25th anniversary later this month (thanks to Nat for the link) and I get to #11 and OH MY GOD TO ALL OF IT:

After shooting would wrap each day, the cast would get together to eat and play games -- and that's how "Soapdish" was born. There weren't many nightlife options in Natchitoches, which today has a population of about 18,000, so the cast would play games like Pictionary and charades in the evenings. One night, after they'd exhausted most of their typical options, the group took to posing questions for everyone to answer. Harling asked each actress to name the role she'd most like to play. Dolly Parton's was Medea. Shirley MacLaine said she'd never portrayed an alcoholic (that changed the following year when "Postcards From the Edge" came out). Julia Roberts reminded everyone she still "just wanted to work." And Sally Field, after pondering it, said she always played "really noble, earnest women that wear crummy clothes. For once I'd like to play a bitch that gets to wear nice clothes." And that was how "Sopadish" came about. Harling found himself thinking about the idea of America's sweetheart actually being someone who "really destroyed the lives of everyone around her." He put the concept to use in the 1991 comedy, which starred Field as an aging soap-opera actress who conspires to ruin the career of her co-star. ("Soapdish" will soon become a Broadway musical starring Kristin Chenoweth.)

I knew that Robert Harling wrote both Magnolias and Soapdish of course (not to mention The First Wives Club - he really should have a big glittering star on the Gay Walk of Fame) - but I hadn't heard the story about its birth on the former's set and wait what oh my god Kristen Chenoweth is making a musical version of Soapdish WHAT????