At the movies: Notorious.

Thank to the folks at the Nashville Scene, here's my pick for this week's Belcourt screening of 1946's Notorious. Which for some reason is illustrated with a photo from the Notorious B.I.G. biopic. Which is kind of funny.

A Trip down Elm Street (before).

Louisville gets the Original, uncontaminated by the remake.
Elm Street 1.0

Why You should come to Midnight Movies at the Belcourt.

So I mentioned the proposal that happened at a midnight screening of The Room a little while back, and there's video. I pop up around 2 minutes in, the proposal happens at 2:55.

Never a dull moment, and that's how it should be.

In memoriam: Dixie Carter.

I just found out that Dixie Carter had died, and it hit me very hard. For my entire adult life and most of my childhood, she has been the personification of wit and great lines, because of Designing Women, yes, to a certain extent, but mostly because of Filthy Rich, a sitcom that ran on CBS from 1982-1983.

Carter's character, Carlotta Beck, was scheming and conniving and willing to do anything to get at the fortune left by her deceased father-in-law Big Guy Beck. But along the way, she had some of the great lines of television history, and next to no one knows about this show. So as a tribute to the memory of the late, great Dixie Carter, here are my seventeen favorite lines she ever delivered on this underseen gem.

You may recognize some of these, if only because I've been quoting them for the past twenty-five years.



"I became confused and forced it out of a small child's hand."

"You want to know what happened to me, I'll tell you what happened to me. I fell into the Mississippi River."

"We do not serve- gristle."

"If you refuse to pay servants, you leave us no choice but to adopt small, pliant children from underprivileged countries."

"This should be put on wheels and taken around to people everywhere to show that it could happen in your home too."

"How I hate it when she pummels us with clever repartee..."

"Yes, I want you hurt."

"If I looked in the mirror I would see someone demented, and frothing, and looking for just the right size axe."

"Kathleen, dear, I suggest you stay out of this or I will verbally annihilate you. I will cut you off at the knees. I will take that two-cent accent and perfectly coiffed hairdo and stuff it down your demurely concealed, but nevertheless dimestore cleavage!"

"We prefer not to seriously consider the opinion of a woman whose dog wears hot pants."

"Bootsie Weschester's taste in men ranges from King Kong to Lil' Abner and unfortunately, you do not fall into that category."

"It must be all that fresh morning air you get on those long taxi rides home."

"Marshall- thunder!"

"Our only regret is that we did not have time to purchase an appropriate gift. Perhaps a silver platter with rabbits on it."

"You've been meditating again... your pupils are dilated."

"Don't tell us! Random House has decided to publish your autobiography, I Was an Elementary School Virgin."

"Nouveau white trash."

At the movies: The Runaways.

I'm superspsyched- my corporate overlords have started to run some of my stuff in The Tennessean as well as Metromix, and you know me- I love attention.

So you can get all of that right here. Yay.

In memoriam: Malcolm McLaren.

I know next to nothing about the Sex Pistols or the New York Dolls. But here are a few pieces of music Mr. McLaren had his dirty fingers in somehow or another, and they're all spectacular. He was a brilliant bastard of a businessman, and I think the world will be a little less sleazy-interesting without him.


FANTASTIC PLANET: Carry On Columbus

Ah, the rave years. With a melody that sounds like both the Phantasm theme, "Right in the Night" by Jam & Spoon, and "Spanish Caravan" by The Doors.

MALCOLM McLAREN & THE BOOTZILLA ORCHESTRA: Deep in Vogue

Samples from Paris is Burning, and this bad boy predates Madonna's "Vogue" by quite some time.

MALCOLM McLAREN and FRANCOISE HARDY: Revenge of the Flowers

From MMcL's jazz-pop "Paris" project. Love it.

MALCOLM McLAREN: Double Dutch

A global mush of everything, and one of the most enduring leftfield tracks of the early 80s.

MALCOLM McLAREN and ALISON LIMERICK: Magic's Back (The Ghosts of Oxford Street)
McLaren meets Stock and Waterman, with the voice of Alison Limerick (not Double You). Apologies for the wonky quality and the lack of embeddability.

At the movies: Hot Tub Time Machine.

After a longtime friend (Rob Corddry, from The Daily Show) tries to kill himself (to a Mötley Crüe song, no less), his buddies (John Cusack, Craig Robinson) and a hanger-on nephew (Clark Duke) decide to head off to the mountains and revisit the ski town where they had some of their most defining moments back in the day. But add an illegal Russian energy drink into the mix, and the four soon find themselves hurled by Jacuzzi through time itself. Now, their time is short before they find themselves trapped in 1986 forever.

Blessed with a title that lays out everything you could need to know, Hot Tub Time Machine has been building on its can’t-miss premise as well as star Cusack’s own 80s nascent stardom as a way to pull in the nostalgia crowd as well as modern youngsters who don’t get why New Order or The English Beat are awesome.

Robinson has long been the secret comedic weapon of recent subversive cinema, and he gets several moments here that no one else could have pulled off. Likewise, Corddry goes for the gusto in every scene, and the two together are pure gold. Cusack underplays, which allows him to get to a much weirder place than he usually allows himself, and Duke (whose work I was unfamiliar with) is amiable and awkward in exactly the necessary proportions.

If it weren’t for a slack reel in the middle and some gratuitous homophobia (and by that I mean the duelling sports bet BJ sequence and a few F-fords), Hot Tub Time Machine would be a classic. As it is, it’s still generally an utter delight; unafraid of going to the darker side (the Greenberg-ier side?) of human despair (and laying some well-deserved blame on friends who don’t return their friends’ phone calls) or getting weird with the tyrannies of love and memory.

The 80s material seems slapdash, but the soundtrack choices are rightfully awesome; if Hot Tub Time Machine is a little off as an 80s film, it’s a superb time travel movie and well worth your time.

My only Class A-complaint is that of all the songs recorded and performed between 1986 and 2010, a character determined to wow an audience chooses "Let's Get it Started" by Black-Eyed Peas. I'm sorry, what?

Hats off to Crispin Glover and whoever did the music supervision.