Between the Thanksgiving holiday and Mrs. F being in her third trimester, a lot of content was watched this week:

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: Second time seeing it all the way through, first time in about three years. Really holds up, not a lot has aged poorly. The scene with the "between two pillows" gag gets close to being homophobic, but seems to veer away at the last second and is more a good joke about the two guys overcompensating. Appropriately, movie podcast Unspooled did an episode on it Thursday that did a deep dive into it. A lot of stuff got cut out from this movie. Technically the driving part took way longer than it would have IRL, because there's a deleted bit where they find out they overshot Chicago by about 100 miles and had to drive back. I'm glad they didn't just totally ignore that Neal would have been intimately familiar with the roads around his home city. Also glad they cut out the obligatory 80s comedy strip club scene.

Unspooled also got into "Are you a Neal or a Del?" I was thinking some answer of "I'm more of a Del, but part of me is a Neal." A day or so later I realized that this is normal, and that it shows how Hughes did such a good job making both characters relatable.

The Gold Rush (Original cut): This one made a Rotten Tomatoes list of "Best Thanksgiving Movies" despite having exactly one (famous) scene that's barely mentioned as taking place on Thanksgiving. Mrs. Fireproof isn't into silent films, but she was just happy to sit there on her phone while I watched this one. She actually put her phone away halfway through and really got into it. Perhaps she'd be interested in Chaplin's others as well. I heard that this was his favorite of his own movies, and it might be mine as well. While I like the message of the others, this one doesn't seem to have one and is just plain fun. Plus I spent a summer working on a cruise ship in southeast AK, and one of the towns I spent the most time in has celebrated its Yukon Gold Rush heritage to the extent of recreating how the town looked at the time in several neighborhoods, so it felt personally relatable. I actually paused it at one point and looked up if I had been on the trail that the hikers were using or not.

The "eating a shoe for Thanksgiving" gag is great, but I think my favorite one might just be that The Tramp (Technically "the Lone Prospector" in this one) still just casually walks around the snowy Yukon in his usual suit, tie, and bowler hat. We weren't entirely sure if the character of Georgia deserved the ending she got or not, but she sure got it. There's an Unspooled episode on this movie as well, and they talked about how the more of a dickhead Chaplain got to be in real life, the more adorably sweet his characters became.

Once Upon a Time in China: I found this DVD used for $3 a few months ago and it had a great RT score, sounded vaguely familiar, and had a top-tier star in Jet Li, so it must be one of those legendary classics of cinema that I should have seen by now, right? So I got it. Finally popped it in Saturday night while Mrs. F was at a dumb work thing. Paused it for some reason to check some things. Only 27 RT reviews, none by Ebert? Wikipedia page a little bare-bones? Perhaps it's not the legendary classic I thought it was. Oh well, it's apparently good and I want to get it out of my "unwatched DVDs" pile, so I'll keep at it.

Holy fark, this movie was AMAZING! Such great action! Such intricate plots! So weirdly timely and relevant again, with themes like imperialism, foreign exploitation, snake oil salesmen, and human trafficking! Such surprisingly historically accurate depictions of how the imperial powers played local leaders off of each other to gain power!

I'd describe this as "A Spaghetti Western meets a kung fu film." I love Spaghetti Westerns, and now, like the couple in Office Space, I love kung fu. Like it's obvious namesake, China has a lot going on, and sometimes its hard to keep up with all of it. Plot summaries were occasionally consulted. Like Porco Rosso, it's weird to see a very American guy as one of the main villains, but it's good to see other worldviews on that kind of thing, and we certainly shouldn't always get a good depiction.

I had heard once that the Matrix trilogy took a lot from kung fu films, and this is a definitely a perfect example. Does this guy from China, especially the one in the back, remind you of anyone?



I'm gonna give the Wachowskis the benefit of the doubt and assume it was an intentional tribute, as was their decision to make the climactic kung-fu battle in Revolutions take place in a deluge. After I finished the movie, I dug into the special features, which included the DVD tailer, which gives it the praise it deserves:



A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving: AKA "The First Friendsgiving." Still good. Fark me, is Peppermint Patty a presumptive, commanding biatch. But everything works out okay for Charlie Brown in the end.

Also, this DVD opens with an obnoxious anti-piracy PSA that borrows the scene from The Wizard of Oz where the Wizard has tricked Dorothy and Friends into thinking he's powerful and scary. And, in an ugly-ass font, text tells us that the studios are the Wizard and we, the potential piraters, are Dorothy, "the small and meek," who should be terrified. It's like whoever made that had never seen the whole movie and had no idea that Oz was a total phony that shouldn't be taken seriously.

It's like a studio exec threw it together himself in 15 minutes from his own ideas. It's like he was angry about his latest excuse for declining DVD sales; "Our movies don't suck, it must be people who are download-" wait, buying pirated DVDs? This is a PSA that pre-dates Internet downloads being the main problem? Is this copy really that old? Was the black market for physical disks really that big in America? And this is the second DVD I've watched in a few months that's had a PSA about not buying pirated DVDs?

What We Do in the Shadows: Only got one episode in, but it's great as always. It was a really interesting one where they go to the underground market for magical things, sort of this universe's equivalent of Diagon Alley, but more like a market in Tijuana. There's a fighting ring for familiars, and Guillermo gets roped into battling.

Celebrity Wheel of Fortune: Only watched because Unspooled and How Did this Get Made? co-host Paul Sheer was on and it was on Hulu. He mostly dominated. The other interesting guest was the woman who played the prostitute in Borat.  She won occasionally and stayed entertaining. The third guest added nothing and made one or two incredibly dumb moves, but I bet it's all harder than it looks when the pressure is on. We're going to watch the other episode where Paul's wife June is on, and then we're done.

Blathering Idjut:

*Clicks profile*

*Goes to Movies/TV section*

Oh, hey!