Whizz-N-Bleach: Kills Mold Guys Dead

In High Noon, (1952) Gary Cooper (as a retired marshall who’s just married), faces a show down against Ian MacDonald, a man he’d sent to prison years earlier.  Cooper tries to get the town he’d protected for years to help him.  They refuse.  The clock ticks down to noon when the train carrying MacDonald is due to arrive. Will Cooper face MacDonald alone?  Or will he flee with his new bride?  Tick-tick-tick-tick…

Today’s cartoon is nothing like High Noon.

Lucky Punks

The Super Bowl Clint Eastwood Chrysler ad was fascinating for a couple of odd contradictory reasons.  First, Chrysler wouldn’t exist without your and my tax dollars (and Fiat).  And second, Eastwood, a republican, is almost the living personification of  American individualism.

What was Eastwood trying to say?  It sounded to me like the message was if we work together we can do anything.  We can even save a car company that produced the 2002 Dodge Stratus that has a tendency to lose it’s front bumper every time it bottoms out on a steep driveway (full disclosure: my daughter drives one and I’ve reattached that bumper many times).

I happen to think it was probably a good thing that we saved Chrysler (despite the bumper, the Stratus has been pretty reliable).  America is both a land of opportunity and second halves.  And second (third, forth, fifth) chances.  We will come roaring back.

But not without help.

Back in the 70′s, Eastwood played a rogue cop that pointed a Smith & Wesson at a suspect and said, “…ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you punk?”  A couple of years ago he played a misanthrope retired auto worker who overcame his prejudices to help his immigrant Hmong neighbors survive in modern day Detroit.

Clint’s evolved.  And I think so have we.  Do I feel lucky to live in a country that is slowly, grudgingly, ever-so-reluctantly starting to realize we’re not at our best when we’re  just collection of loose cannons firing randomly in the dark?

Yeah, I do.

War Raccoon: Spielberg Got It Wrong

Anotherbozo over at comics.com commented, “this strip goes anywhere it damn well pleases. and I keep coming back!”

Over the Hedge:  Equal opportunity masochistic enablers since 1995.  And sock puppets!

Beam Me Up, Hammy

Yes, it’s probably all sorts of illegal for us to drop Ozzie into the strip.  But that’s just the way we ride.  Caution to the wind. Renegades. Outlaws.  Playin’ it fast and loose…

…with our pants somewhere down around our ankles.

What’s Wrong with Movies Today

Saw this comment from “DK” on a weekend box office recap story on Deadline.com.   I thought he/she perfectly summed up the movie business this summer.   My favorite line, “We really don’t have the money to go and gamble on whether or not Knight & Day might be “pretty entertaining.” A dime-sack is pretty entertaining, too.”

“No one in the 14-25 demographic is going to the movies, but don’t blame us for all this lackluster performance: We don’t have any money! Downsizing comes down the hardest on retailers, so it’s a little hard for me to go splurging on these outrageous ticket prices when I don’t even work forty hours a week delivering pizza.

The last straw for me was Alice in Wonderland: Me and my friends were all fired up to see it, and even though we weren’t making much, we somehow mustered the $14 a pop required for IMAX seating and took the long drive from our rural town to the theater, not to mention the joint we smoked before the movie. And what happened? The movie sucked, that’s what happened: Totally squandered all of its thematic and 3-D potential.

I didn’t see another movie until Kick-Ass, and most of my friends stayed home for that one, waiting for Nightmare on Elm Street. You see how this works? We really don’t have the money to go and gamble on whether or not Knight & Day might be “pretty entertaining.” A dime-sack is pretty entertaining, too.

Seriously, I’m waiting in line for my ticket and I look at the admission fees: Most theaters around here are pushing ten bucks for a matinee! Are we going to the movies or boarding a train? Remember when eight bucks for a night show was considered steep?

We did end up seeing Toy Story, though… if you create something that’s genuinely damn good, it will attract patrons, period. Not just semi-good, ala Knight & Day, or pretty good, ala Get Him to the Greek, or something debatable like Shrek Forever After. Make a great movie and it will eventually find its audience.

The music industry is supposedly dead, right? Well, earlier this week, I marched my broke ass to Best Buy and picked up Recovery, the first CD I’ve purchased in a really long time. Great album, by the way: Just the kind of creative adrenaline this washed-up industries need. Same for film with Toy Story 3.”

Comment by DK

Hipster Kitten

Found this on buzzfeed.  My fav is, “I like these walls.  They remind me of a Wes Anderson film.”  Which isn’t really fair to Wes Anderson.   He made the best animated film last year with, “The Fantastic Mr. Fox.”   Mr. Fox is what the Over the Hedge film would have been had they let me do it.   Which, of course, would have resulted in the $4.36 box office that Mr. Fox did instead of the $336 million worldwide that Over the Hedge made.  

Art really has no place in Hollywood.   Thank goodness.