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Four Christmases – Movie Trailer
Nov 25th
A crafty couple run the Christmas Day gauntlet by racing to visit their divorced parents’ four separate households in this Vince Vaughn/Reese Witherspoon comedy that proves the holidays are no time for relaxing. Brad (Vaughn) and Kate (Witherspoon) have made something of an art form out of avoiding their families during the holidays, but this year their foolproof plan is about go bust — big time. Stuck at the city airport after all departing flights are canceled, the couple is embarrassed to see their ruse exposed to the world by an overzealous television reporter. Now, Brad and Kate are left with precious little choice other than to swallow their pride and suffer the rounds. Along the way, they perform in a church nativity play at the behest of Kate’s mother’s (Mary Steenburgen) pushy pastor Phil (Dwight Yoakam), contend with Brad’s gruff father, Howard (Robert Duvall), and bullying brothers, Dallas (Jon Favreau) and Denver (Tim McGraw) — a pair of trained UFC fighters — and pay a visit to Brad’s spacy, New Age mother, Paula (Sissy Spacek), who recently made waves in the family circle by marrying her son’s childhood friend.
“Religulous” Lecturing to the Nonreligious
Oct 9th
Lecturing to the Nonreligious
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
RELIGULOUS (rhymes with “ridiculous is a very funny and thought-provoking documentary about the major religions of the world (with a passing nod to Scientology, even) and how fundamentalists and religious extremists can be seen as, well, ridiculous.
Comedian and satirist Bill Maher narrates the film and conducts interviews all over the planet, talking to leaders and followers of religions in a humorous and thought-provoking attempt to convince the audience that the religions and their followers are, well, ridiculous to believe in such claptrap.
As Maher says right at the beginning, “If there’s one thing I hate more than prophecy, it’s self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Maher himself knows more than a little bit about religion, as he tells us, because his mother was Jewish, his father was Catholic, and his family went to Catholic church every Sunday until Maher was 13, and then they just stopped.
We see Maher talking with his mother and his sister, too, and when he asks his mother about this, he asks her why his father just suddenly quit the church, and she answers, “I don’t know. We never discussed it.”
Maher also questions why believing in something without any evidence is “good” and then answers his own question with “It’s like the lotto. You can’t be saved if you don’t believe.”
And, of course, many people actually believe that. However, Maher also tells us that 16% of Americans say that they belong to no church and are therefore nonreligious.
The graphics are quite good, and many of the interviews are accompanied by film clips from old biblical movies as commentary to what is being said or claimed to be “true.”
We learn that in Italy, which is a very religious country, in a time of crisis, Jesus ranks only sixth as being called upon for comfort by the people. Maher then gets thrown out of the Vatican there.
He also gets thrown off the property in Salt Lake City when his film crew draws attention to what he is doing. If the religious believers don’t watch out, they could be accused of not having a sense of humor.
Although quite humorous, the film ends on a rather serious note as Maher covers religious predictions for the end of the world.
RELIGULOUS (rhymes with “ridiculous is not preaching to the choir so much as lecturing to the nonreligious.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
“The House Bunny” Ugly Ducklings Meet ‘Mean Girls’
Sep 10th
Ugly Ducklings Meet ‘Mean Girls’
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
THE HOUSE BUNNY has a “high concept” coupled with “low humor” and some girls who are very “easy on the eyes.”
Oh! And it is touching at the end, too, and I am not being punny.
Well, so much for the “low humor.”
The high concept is “A Playboy Bunny becomes the house mother for a sorority house full of losers and misfits and saves the girls from disaster.
Again, I am not being punny.
Anna Faris stars as Shelley Darlingson, and you might recognize her from the SCARY MOVIE movies, because she has been in all four of them. Tom Hanks’s son appears in it, as well.
Shelley grew up in an orphanage, but now she has been living in the Playboy Mansion for nine years, where she fulfills her duties as a Playboy Bunny.
Shelley wants to live “happily ever after” in the Mansion, but she wishes that she would be chosen to be a Centerfold, which she says would mean, “I’m naked in the center of a magazine.”
However, the morning after Shelley is given a party for her 27th birthday, she is told that she has two hours to move out of the Mansion, with the explanation that “27” is “59” in Bunny years.
So, Shelley packs all her belongings into her beat-up old automobile with a bumper sticker that reads “Mean People Are Mean” and drives off looking for a place to stay and new employment.
Through a series of fortuitous circumstances, Shelley gets hired by the Zeta Alpha Zeta sorority at a small college to be the girls’ house mother.
The sorority is in trouble. It hasn’t met its campus requirements for three years, they get no pledges, and everyone thinks they are losers. It has only seven members now, and they have to get 30 new pledges in order to keep their standing with the college administration.
So, Shelley gets to work, using all her experience to make the seven girls the hottest girls on campus, which is no easy task. She gives them all makeovers in order to make them noticeable, telling them “The eyes are the nipples of the face.”
There is a surprise twist in the middle, the gags are good, and it is better than what it appears to be.
THE HOUSE BUNNY is “The Ugly Ducklings Meet ‘Mean Girls.'”
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”