Hot Rod

I'm a sucker for stupid comedies done well. Hot Rod is one of the stupidest and best I've ever seen, and that makes it magnificent.

Hot Rod is basically the first film from The Lonely Island. Andy Samberg plays Rod, a wanna-be stunt-biker a la Evel Knievel. He wears a cape. He doesn't know how to talk to women. He barely knows how to drive a moped. He can't convince his stepfather (Ian McShane?!?!) that he is a real man. They fight with bow staffs and medicine balls. Rod usually gets his ass kicked.

When his stepfather falls ill and needs a heart transplant, Rod vows to earn the $50,000 required for the procedure — so that when his stepfather recovers, Rod can kick his ass.

Certainly the Idiot Manchild sub-genre of film comedy gains no new ground with Hot Rod, an Andy Samberg vehicle that was intended for (and not good enough) for Will Ferrell, but damn if this movie isn't funny anyway.

Sometimes, that's all I want. Give me a film that flopped in theaters and got dumped to DVD, but still had, you know, a crowd of townsfolk following the main character and doing a big musical number that escalates into a riot. Give me a preposterous plot with characters who are too stupid to be real, yet seem like people I knew growing up.

These flyover states have created their share of Idiot Manchildren. Maybe it's because we grew up on violent cartoons and TV shows like "The Dukes of Hazzard" and "The A-Team." Maybe you combine that with the bombastic, stupid rock music from the '80s, all synth-heavy and screeching. Even movies like The Karate Kid, No Retreat, No Surrender, and Rad taught us that we could be badasses, no matter who we were or how much we sucked at being a kid or growing up. If we tried hard enough, we could do anything.

Informed by all that silly '80s stuff that we totally bought back then, The Lonely Island pretty much makes a living making fun of all that. Awesome. Stupid and awesome.

Here's the first minute or so.  It's pretty much all you need to know:
But here's the musical number/riot anyway, if you still need convincing: Cool beans.

Hot Fuzz

A lot of people would kill to make just one brilliant film that stands up to repeat viewings as well as Hot Fuzz. Edgar Wright made three between 2004 and 2010. All three are critically bulletproof, and if you disagree, you are incorrect.

My wife is English, so this film speaks to her in a way that most Americans don't understand. By that I mean that she was the only person in the theater who was laughing when the model village appeared, or when the Anglo slang term "nob" appeared on the swear box, or when the key code for the police evidence room was "999" (Britain's 911), or when the hedgehog randomly appears in the riot room — I could go on and on.

Hot Fuzz is a distinctly English film that parodies great American action films such as Lethal Weapon, Point Break, and many more. But they don't restrict the nods to American action movies. Check out this list for more references and this one for subtle stuff that's sure to geek you out — if you're a geek, anyway.

How about the swear box at the Sandford Police Station? All of the swears have symbols in strategic places, so as not to offend with the actual word — except the last word, the one at the bottom, the mighty C-word. I'd type that word here, but this is a family blog sometimes.

Timothy Dalton, the great British actor who once played James Bond for two 007 films, shows up here to chew every bit of scenery around him. He's like a buzz saw — a buzz saw who wants ice cream.

Dalton isn't the only great British actor who appears as a citizen of Sandford. There's Edward Woodward, for a start, along with at least a dozen others in the cast, along with a slew of cameos — the best being this one.

Hot Fuzz is one of only a handful of films that my wife and I can watch over and over together. We never get tired of this film. Since seeing this one in the theater with my buddy Brian and laughing our arrrrses off, we've probably added another 20 viewings.

I aspire to write a film as densely packed with established details and genuine, rewarding payoffs. For every little detail you get in the early going, that same detail appears in some way toward the end, playing a vital role in wrapping up the story. A great screenplay does that.

Hot Fuzz is a rare film, indeed. I'm happy to have the 3-disc edition featured above, as well as the Blu-Ray, which would render the DVD redundant if I didn't enjoy having both so much.

Film informs a lot of what I want to do when I visit places. For example, when I visited Los Angeles for the first time in 2000, I mostly just wanted to go to a Ralph's as a nod to The Big Lebowski. In the case of Hot Fuzz, I just wanted a Cornetto once I got to England in 2008:

Tasty, indeed.

Hoosiers

Hoosiers is a beautiful film, but I'm from Indiana and I grew up watching Indiana basketball, so I'm biased (and of course I own a copy on DVD).

Sure, I get bothered sometimes because the film is about a fictional high school and a fictional game, based only loosely on historical events. I wish this were really a play-by-play re-enactment of the Muncie Central vs. Milan game on which this film is loosely based, because that's real Indiana basketball history. But that's not this film.

Instead, this is a film that doesn't get too much into specifics — a fictional team from a fictional town with fictional players leaves room for more vicarious viewing, I think, and as such, this is a tribute to anybody who played or dreamed of playing Indiana basketball. I'd say basketball in general, but this film is called Hoosiers for a reason.

The music also bothers me. Jerry Goldsmith's score might be the worst I've ever heard by someone other than James Horner.  Here's a film set in the 1950s, but instead of music that fits the period, we get '80s synth music throughout.

I've long been a fan of stripping bad scores from '80s films and replacing them with music that doesn't sound so horribly dated and awful. Hoosiers tops my list of films that need new scores.

I love this film anyway.

Is the Indiana countryside beautiful? You bet. Even the shots of an overcast autumn day are pretty, because they look like home. Even that shot of Barbara Hershey attempting to hoe her garden is a pretty one, because it looks like a billion back yards around here (even if Hershey appears to be hoeing in the dead of winter, and keeps banging the hoe up and down in the same spot, essentially just digging a hole in the mud — I'm no gardener, but what is she doing?).

A lot of people I know, including my wife, don't understand why I prefer the Big Open Nothing of Indiana so much, with all the quiet, remote towns where you actually can hear yourself think, and people know who you are, and they don't just want your money. I prefer the Big Open Nothing because I'm all that's there, and I can look in all directions and see possibilities instead of people in the way.

Of course, that's an idealized view of small town America, where if you're the wrong color or religion or sexuality, you can get hurt. In many cases, you're not welcome in these parts, like Coach Dale isn't welcome for the first hour of the film. At least they got that part right.

But something beautiful and poetic happens in Indiana small towns to this very day. Dreams are born and often realized in high school gyms and gravel driveways and in living rooms in front of televisions.

This year marks 25 years since the Indiana Hoosiers won their last NCAA title with this shot. I was 12 years old, and it was the greatest game of basketball I've ever seen.

In 1993, Delta High School — my high school — advanced to the sectional title game by beating Muncie Central, the same school that little Milan toppled some 40 years previously to win the state title. (Alas, that next game was a different story, but beating Central is a big deal in my part of Indiana.)

The underdog success stories are special, because what really happens to little teams in Indiana is this. That's my old high school on the losing end of the state championship just four years after I graduated. The following year, Indiana switched to class basketball, so the rare and beautiful underdog stories like Muncie Central vs. Milan, or Central vs. Hickory, can't happen again.

That makes Hoosiers even more special, commemorating all the teams that made it, all at once. "Let's win this one for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here."

Indiana high school basketball hasn't been the same since 1997. They broke it, as far as I'm concerned.

We need underdog stories. I've either been an underdog or been around underdogs my whole life. I like it that way. Victory is sweeter if no one expects it from you.

I was never good at basketball. I wasn't very fast, wasn't very tall, couldn't shoot well, and forget dribbling altogether. Still, because of games like that '87 NCAA title game and films like Hoosiers, I probably spent half my teenage years in my parents' driveway, playing ball until I got sleepy or until the sky got so dark I couldn't see the hoop.

I'd bring the ball inside for the night and go straight to the sink to wash my hands, which were covered in the kind of dirt that I didn't want to wash off, because it made me feel like a part of it all.

Postscript: Tonight, I tried to put the Hoosiers special features disc in my DVD player. As I was taking the disc off the spindle in the case, the disc cracked. In 10 years of collecting DVDs, I've probably handled 2,000 discs, and I've never shattered one taking it out of the case.  I figured I'd grab the Blu-Ray and upgrade, but the HD version doesn't have the bonus features. So I'll be getting another DVD instead, because in my book, if you grew up on Indiana basketball, you ought to have a spot on your shelf for this film.

Hitchcock: The Legend Begins

In a weak moment (on 5/9/11), I picked up the Alfred Hitchcock: The Legend Begins collection, which may have been a mistake.

The set includes 20 Hitch films, most of which are in the public domain, giving companies like Mill Creek Entertainment the ability to put 20 old movies together in a set for pennies on the dollar. They did the same thing with John Wayne.

Of course, most of these films are in shoddy condition, and the Amazon reviews are mixed, pointing to faulty DVDs that won't play properly. So far, I haven't noticed any playability problems, but as for print quality, these appear to be U-matic transfers — mediocre but watchable.

Four DVDs of Hitch for $5? Count me in. I'll look past flawed prints if I can get 20 films outright and watch them on my own entertainment system and at my own pace. Renting 20 films on Netflix would take me weeks — way more expensive and time consuming, and that assumes Netflix has all of these films available (not sure there and don't feel like checking).

Enter reality. This comes on the heels of picking up the Masterpiece Collection, another 14 Hitch films. Then I found the Alfred Hitchcock Premiere Collection, which adds another eight to the pile (two of those films are also in the above 20-film set). Then I took the plunge on the Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection, adding nine more. I've suddenly added more than 50 movies to this project, a few of which are downright clunkers to which I have no personal or academic attachment, and most of which I've never even seen. Oops? What am I supposed to say about them all?

Hitchcock's film work largely has been a black hole for me over the years, so I don't have buyer's remorse, exactly. I've seen several of his greats — Psycho, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Shadow of a Doubt, The Lady Vanishes — but I don't count Hitchcock as a real influence, and I'm not satisfied with how much I've seen of his work.

I may have overcompensated.

Most of Hitch's films are lessons in character development, pacing, maintaining suspense, and structure. I still fancy myself a screenwriter with a lot to learn, and Hitch seems like a teacher whose classes I've always seemed to miss until now.

All that said, this set presents some logistical problems. I'll treat the 14 films in The Masterpiece Collection normally, watching each title as I get there alphabetically because those films are truly masterpieces and I have stuff to say. I'll do the same with the 9 films in the Signature Collection and the 6 films in the Premiere Collection.

As for The Legend Begins set, maybe two of these films are truly "masterpieces" (The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes, if you're curious) so I don't need to write 20 individual entries for a mixed bag of mostly awful looking and sounding films I've never seen and may never watch again, and about which I feel nothing but curiosity and satisfaction for finding a bargain. So one entry is all you get for the entire collection, filed under "H," and this is it.

Highball

Highball is a Noah Baumbach film that nobody's ever heard of, and even Noah Baumbach doesn't put his name on it (he uses the pseudonym "Ernie Fusco" as director and "Jesse Carter" as writer).

I failed in my attempts to find adequate DVD artwork to pilfer for the benefit of this post. The above shitty image is the best my Google searches yielded.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for this little '90s film. I could try to write such an endorsement, but this guy did that already. Read that and come back. I'll wait.

...

I mostly own this film because I have all of Noah Baumbach's films on DVD, and even his lesser films still have merit. Also, I'm a completist and I can't stop.

I have to look past the technical issues — the awful lighting, the jump cuts, the tinny soundtrack — and focus on the writing and acting. Do that, and this is a solid little independent made on a shoestring.

I've been to some parties like the ones depicted in this film. The formula is pretty easy: Create a mixed company situation, introduce a guest or guests who has/have some insane perspective perfectly rationalized (I'm suddenly remembering the woman I once met who confessed that she stops taking birth control when she meets a new man), and see what happens when they spout their bullshit madness in mixed company. "Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan makes a lot of sense!  What do you mean, you need a Constitutional Amendment to implement that? Sounds like a liberal conspiracy!"

Honestly, I think there's such a thing as a sociopathic party host, and they collect batshit crazy friends who don't get along. And then they invite everyone to the same party.

You know when a friend tells you, "I have to introduce you to my friend so-and-so, because you guys would really get along great."  This is the opposite — this is a party host not telling you anything, and instead ambushing you with an asshole. "I don't really like you, so I'm going to introduce you to this other asshole I don't really like, because you'll hate each other and that is funny to me."

[They don't really say that. But they think that.]

Having suspected this sort of thing for some time, I sometimes look for the batshit crazy person when I'm at a party. Maybe someone walks in with an ironic hat or eyewear or facial hair (dead giveaway), or keeps insisting we turn off the music and put on his or her band's new bullshit EP instead, or maybe he or she brings the single most disgusting dish of sweet smelling nastiness full of cat hair and shame. You know, for sharing.

If I can't find him or her, I just assume it's me.

If you've been to enough parties, you've seen the usual stuff:

• Someone inevitably drinks too much and makes a total asshole of him or herself. With any luck, there is crying involved, and I get video of it.
• Somebody says something political or homophobic or racist or sexist or just generally ignorant, and other people get pissed off and clam up or leave the room. Even better, someone gets pissed off and stays in the room to speak up. "Hey man, that's not cool — my sister is a leper."
• Someone else tells a story about some local yuppie bullshit for which they currently have a chub. "I brew all my own beer, make all my own clothes, and of course, all of the food you're eating was created from the molecular level using only the finest locally grown organic molecules that I picked up at the molecular farmer's market at 5 o'clock this morning while walking the labradoodle. Did I mention I'm an asshole?"

Or, you know, "All of the products you're eating and drinking are Amway...as well as that couch!  Here, let's watch this quick DVD and I'll show you all how you can make a fuck-ton of dollars!"

All that well-deserved ranting and ridicule aside, I've also met some great friends this way, had some great food, and made some great memories. We've even thrown a couple of our own parties here at Chez John, and no one even got food poisoning!

So dinner parties aren't all bad. Far from it. Go to enough dinner parties, and you run the risk of having a good time, and maybe even making new friends that are the kind of people you want to invite to your own home, because they're on the level, and they can cook, and they're smart, and funny, and they're not class warriors or elitists or helicopter parents or furverts.

[Side note: What's up with furverts?]

A great party doesn't have to be an all-out happy fest wherein everyone walks away fast friends. People go to parties to relax, have fun, and meet people. Of course, there are your awkward moments even at the great parties, because that's what happens in mixed company. It's not a big deal, though.

This isn't the best place for personal shout-outs, but suffice to say, if I've been to a party at your house in the last couple of years, I definitely want to come back, and I don't think that you're a sociopath or a bad cook or host, and I don't mind your pet(s) or your friend(s) as long as they don't mind me.

Also, that cajun bread you made was fantastic, Matt Lasher.