TCM showed a Marx Brothers marathon on New Year's Eve, and I recorded a bunch of 'em. Thus far I've watched only Horse Feathers and A Night at the Opera. And yeah, the musical sequences bring the movies screeching to a halt, but the rest of the movies are just brilliant. I think Duck Soup is probably as close to a perfect movie as I've ever seen. If you could just cut the stupid racist joke out, it would in fact be perfect.
(Aside: Soon you will be able to do this. Well, I mean you could do it now, but soon you'll be able to do it legally. Tim from church makes DVDs of out-of-copyright movies--sometimes re-edited or, in the case of the silents, with a new score included--and sells them here. They're out of copyright! You can do whatever you want! I got a nice copy of the orignial Japanese Gojira (sans Raymond Burr) from him for ten bucks. And his re-edited Nosferatu, too. So I look forward to the day when you can get the non-racist Duck Soup for ten bucks. And I know this means that you give control of the artwork to the viewer and take it away from the producers, directors and screenwriters, but, I mean, after 75 years, I think that's okay.)
In other movie news, we all watched Dodgeball together the other night, and everybody enjoyed it mightily. I watched the extras, and enjoyed those too. But, I mean, what's up with the alternate ending hoax? I mean, I guess it's some kind of commentary on the lameness of DVD extras, but the movie is so funny, and Ben Stiller yelling at you about what a nerd you are for looking for Easter Eggs is funny, so why is the alternate ending gag so lame?
Finally, I recorded Bubba Ho-Tep the other night. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I should say that if you tell me that a movie stars Bruce Campbell as Elvis and Ossie Davis as a man who believes he's JFK, and they team up to fight an evil mummy in the old folks' home where they live, well, you had me at Bruce Campbell as Elvis. This movie didn't really need to be any good for me to like it. But it was good. It was really really good. I mean, the mummy part was good, but most of all, it's a movie about hope and redemption. Now you can have a movie about hope and redemption that's slow-moving and contemplative and beautiful, or you can have one with a mummy who sucks people's souls out of their anuses. I'll take the anus-sucking mummy any day.
