It's a good day to solve a musical mystery, if not to die hard.

Die Hard was a hit almost as soon as it arrived in theaters in July 1988, but it didn't have an accompanying soundtrack album. In 2002 the Varèse Sarabande label issued a CD containing 21 cuts from Michael Kamen's score for the movie, but it left out memorable song selections like Run-D.M.C.'s "Christmas in Hollis" (1987), which is played as the protagonist, John McClane (Bruce Willis), arrives at Nakatomi Plaza near the beginning of the film, and Vaughn Monroe's "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" (1945), which we hear as McClane figuratively rides off into the sunset at the end.

Nine years later a different, unofficial version of the Die Hard soundtrack was released, presumably as a bootleg, by a label called Archival Records. It's difficult to find much information about it online now, but it has 51 tracks spread out over two CDs—CD-Rs, technically—and it's the only version of the film's soundtrack, as far as I can tell, including the two deluxe versions released by La-La Land Records in 2011 (38 tracks, two CDs) and 2018 (74 tracks, three CDs), that credits the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra with the performance of "Ode to Joy," from Beethoven's 9th Symphony, that plays over Die Hard's end credits.

I've loved that performance ever since I first saw Die Hard on videotape in 1989, but every other version of the soundtrack album implies that the Hollywood Studio Symphony, conducted by Kamen, is responsible for it. But when you consider that two pieces of Die Hard's score in the final minutes of the movie are temp-track selections from the scores of Aliens (1986) and Man on Fire (1987)—composed by James Horner and John Scott, respectively—that director John McTiernan reportedly left in because he wasn't satisfied with what Kamen came up with for those moments, you start to wonder if the rousing end-credits rendition of "Ode to Joy" is also Kamen free.

At first I thought a 1977 LP with the Berlin Philharmonic's name on it might be the source of the performance in question, but according to a blog called Chronological Scores/Soundtracks, the "Ode to Joy" heard in Die Hard comes from a compilation called The Best of Beethoven.

The listing for this compilation at Amazon and other sites initially led me to believe that the Westminster Concert Orchestra is performing all of the selections, as does this cut on YouTube:

For the first minute of the track, as well as the final minute and 35 seconds, it does sound exactly like the version played during Die Hard's closing credits, at least to my ears. So, is the Westminster Concert Orchestra the answer to this mystery?

Unfortunately, I can't find any evidence of that orchestra being credited on anything past 1962, and The Best of Beethoven was first issued in '82, apparently. Also, the final track, "Symphony No. 9 in C 'Choral' Finale," i.e., "Ode to Joy," is listed on Discogs.com as being performed by the Bamberg Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus (and may have been recorded as far back as '75).

However, Discogs says that particular orchestra is "fictitious" and "probably invented by Alfred Scholz." And who might he be? "A prolific producer of budget recordings," states the site, "who fraudulently sold recordings credited with non-existing artists and orchestras. Sometimes the names of real people were given credit for performances which were not theirs."

Maybe that's why no performer is listed for "Ode to Joy" in Die Hard's end credits or on most releases of its soundtrack album, even ones like the three-disc 30th-anniversary edition, which otherwise has extensive liner notes. Unlike Hans Gruber, the movie's villain, so memorably played by the late Alan Rickman, Scholz wasn't "an exceptional thief," but like Gruber, he may have been a con man easily bored by questions of morals and ethics.

Joel Schumacher's subtext wasn't lost on me.

When I saw The Lost Boys for the first time ten years ago, a few months ahead of its 25th anniversary, one particular detail stuck out: Corey Haim's character has a poster of Rob Lowe on his bedroom wall.

Director Joel Schumacher's previous movie, St. Elmo's Fire (1985), included Lowe in its ensemble cast, so you could argue the poster is an inside joke of some sort, but why would Haim's character have that poster? In 1987 no major studio was going to imply that one of the teen-heartthrob stars of its latest summer blockbuster was playing a latent homosexual — God forbid — but Schumacher was gay and, like most talented people, had a sense of humor.

In my imagination Schumacher overheard Haim say something childishly homophobic on the set, then told the film's production designer, "Find a pinup of Rob Lowe and stick it on Corey's bedroom wall. Better yet, stick it on the door of his bedroom closet. Corey won't give it a second thought until after the movie comes out and he starts receiving some unexpected fan mail."

museum shaming

I'm no artist, but I do know that "18 NOV 08" doesn't equal "About 2010." You've officially been museum shamed, Art Institute of Chicago placard makers! (And Gregg Bordowitz's first name is spelled with three Gs, so you've officially been friend and/or colleague shamed, Jack Whitten!)

To the Art Institute's credit, I've only noticed one other factual error on a placard in the 16 years that I've lived in Chicago: last August I viewed a 1987 multimedia installation of Gretchen Bender's titled Total Recall, which, according to its placard, is "named after the Paul Verhoeven film." If that were true Bender would be a time traveler, because Verhoeven's film, based on a short story by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, came out in 1990.

a trilogy (plus one) of random thoughts about "Star Wars"

Last month the Pentagon announced that it plans to house an estimated 20,000 migrant children on U.S. military bases. Isn't that similar to how the First Order created its stormtrooper army in the new Star Wars sequel trilogy? Can't wait to see what those kids' "Space Force" uniforms look like, President Trump.

Speaking of Star Wars, my favorite Ron Howard movie is The Paper (1994), but I also enjoyed Solo: A Star Wars Story, which I saw with friends on June 8. And since wars are covered by reporters, why should star wars be any different? How about tackling "The Year of Living Dangerously on Kashyyyk" next, Mr. Howard?

Kashyyyk, the home planet of Chewbacca, is the main setting of The Star Wars Holiday Special, which I finally watched in December of '15 on a bootleg DVD I bought at Laurie's Planet of Sound in February of '09. As you can see below, actor H. Jon Benjamin, like Star Wars fandom, is ageless.

We can't all be so lucky, however, and for many of us aging isn't easy—even for a Wookiee, which explains why Chewbacca got an eye job for the first installment of the sequel trilogy, 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

the brightest idea

The convenience-store shootout in Bright ...

... is an obvious homage to The Ben Stiller Show's "Die Hard 12: Die Hungry" parody from 25 years ago, and don't you tell me any different—I'm no April fool.

Hearts, not guns, kill people.

Or at least that's the insight I gleaned from the trailer for The Dark Tower, a.k.a. "The Chronicles of N(a)R(ni)A"—now available on Blu-ray!—a coulda-shoulda-woulda summer blockbuster from Sony Pictures with a storyline that, strangely enough, resembles that of Last Action Hero, a high-profile bomb for the studio 24 years ago.

Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig write the best dialogue of anyone making movies right now.

"I think I'm sick, and I don't know if my ailment has a name. It's just me sitting and staring at the Internet or the television for long periods of time, interspersed by trying to not do that and then lying about what I've been doing. And then I'll get so excited about something that the excitement overwhelms me and I can't sleep or do anything and I just am in love with everything but can't figure out how to make myself work in the world." —Brooke, played by Greta Gerwig, in Mistress America (2015), written by Gerwig and Noah Baumbach and directed by Baumbach

See also: Greenberg (2010), written and directed by Baumbach and starring Gerwig, and Frances Ha (2013), written by Gerwig and Baumbach, directed by Baumbach, and starring Gerwig. Mistress America is a terrific film, but Greenberg and Frances Ha are even better.

"Highways & Sundowns"

If Hollywood ever attempts a Love & Mercy-style biopic of Gordon Lightfoot's life and career, may I suggest Chris Pratt for the singer's younger years and Bryan Cranston for the later ones?

Frank and Nicky and Rudy and Hillary

In 2000 Mark Jacobson interviewed '70s heroin kingpin Frank Lucas for New York magazine. The resulting article became the basis of the Denzel Washington movie American Gangster, and on the eve of its release in the fall of 2007, Jacobson, once again writing for New York, moderated a conversation between Lucas and former rival Nicky Barnes. Here's an excerpt:

from left, Nicky Barnes (photo credit: Tyrone Dukes,
The New York Times/Redux) and Frank Lucas
(PR Newsfoto/BET Networks/Newscom)

MJ: Rudy Giuliani chased both you guys when he was D.A. What do you think about him running for president?

NB: Giuliani would make a good president because he's a principled guy.

FL: When Giuliani tells you something, he means it. But I don't think we're ready for an Italian president. I don't think we're ready for a black president. I don't think we're ready for a woman president, but I tell you right now: I think Hillary Clinton will win this thing hands down.

NB: Hillary will be the next president.

FL: No question about it.

The lesson: Stay in school. Don't do drugs. Don't deal drugs either, but the most successful dealers are usually the ones who don't mess with their own product, so when you look at it that way— SHUT UP, SOCRATIC METHOD, WHICH PEOPLE LEARN BY STAYING IN SCHOOL.

Look, just don't do drugs, okay, kids?

"Television's really not my thing."

In November 2013, a little less than halfway through Person of Interest's third season, Taraji P. Henson's character, Detective Joss Carter, was killed off. Henson was billed third on the show, behind Jim Caviezel and Michael Emerson, but she was the only cast member who could boast of having an Oscar nomination on her resumé: Best Supporting Actress, for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008).

"I knew when I signed onto the project that the character would have a beginning, middle and end," Henson said on Late Show With David Letterman, according to TheWrap.com, the day after her final episode aired. "I do more feature films, and television's really not my thing ... I thought it would be the perfect venue for me to do a television show and not be stuck for seven years."

A little more than a year later Henson is costarring with Terrence Howard (also her costar in the 2005 feature film Hustle & Flow) in Empire, Fox's new prime-time hit. The network renewed it for a second season shortly after its second episode aired last week, and although it's anyone's guess as to whether Empire will go the distance of seven seasons, it's clear that even if the feeling isn't mutual, television has a thing for Taraji P. Henson.

'Allo, guv'ner! Wot you doin' 'ere?

"If you are seeking a movie about the end of the world, you have a lot of choices," writes the New York Times's A.O. Scott in his June 22 review of the comedy Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. "There are the sturdy, old, large-scale disaster epics, of course, but lately the trend has been toward more intimate studies of apocalypse, Lars von Trier's 'Melancholia' and Abel Ferrara's '4:44 Last Day on Earth' being two notable recent examples."

But what about the trend of English actresses, accents intact, providing romantic interest for American leading men? In Seeking a Friend for the End of the World Keira Knightley is paired up with Steve Carell, while in the recent box office disappointment The Five-Year Engagement Emily Blunt plays Jason Segel's fiancée. Likewise, in the 2011 romantic drama Like Crazy American twentysomething Anton Yelchin falls for British college student Felicity Jones, but the trend also made its way onto the small screen this season as Ashton Kutcher's lovelorn billionaire courted a Brit named Zoey (Sophie Winkleman) on the CBS sitcom Two and a Half Men.

English actors have also been popping up in supporting roles in otherwise this-side-of-the-Atlantic movies and TV shows, including Hugh Dancy as Sarah Paulson's husband in the 2011 indie film Martha Marcy May Marlene; Eve Best as Dr. Eleanor O'Hara, the title character's best friend, on Showtime's Nurse Jackie; and Richard Ayoade as a suburbanite who forms a neighborhood watch with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, and Jonah Hill in the sci-fi comedy The Watch, which opens next month. I'd like to throw Lost's Henry Ian Cusick in with this crowd for his role on ABC's soapy Scandal, but he's apparently half Peruvian and half Scottish, not English. Nonetheless, he sounds British on the D.C.-set drama. (This ain't over, Cusick.)

Taiwanese singer-actor Jay Chou was reportedly cast as Kato in last year's Seth Rogen vehicle The Green Hornet to strengthen the film's global box office, especially in China, where cinema screens are being erected left and right: the LA Times noted in April that Titanic played on 180 screens there in 1998, whereas the recent 3-D rerelease opened on almost 2,500 screens. But England's movie theaters don't generate impressive box office tallies the way China and Russia's multitude of new multiplexes do, so it's hard to see actors like Knightley, Blunt, and Ayoade being cast in big American studio comedies for their transatlantic appeal.

Is latent American Revolution guilt to blame? Or have focus groups been consistently telling Hollywood development executives that they'd like to see more token Brits on-screen because (1) they sure do talk funny and (2) they sure do sound smart when they're not talkin' funny? I haven't seen Like Crazy, but at least its casting follows the logic of the story being told. In all the other examples, however, the token Brit just seems to be there as part of a foreign exchange program concocted by Tony Blair and George W. Bush right before the former left office in 2007. I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but plenty of Americans are still out of work—enough already with the outsourcing.

On a positive note, this alleged exchange program I just made up has accidentally given us Showtime's laugh-out-loud funny sitcom Episodes, which is set in Hollywood but filmed in the UK (where it airs on BBC Two), and stars Friends MVP Matt LeBlanc as "himself" alongside Englanders Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig, who play husband-and-wife comedy writers wooed by a major network to create an across-the-pond version of their hit sitcom, "Lyman's Boys." I bet the writers of Episodes could have a great time inserting a random Brit into its show-within-the-show, "Pucks!" (The second season debuts next Sunday on Showtime.)



6/25 update: After watching the first episode of HBO's new series The Newsroom, I can now add Emily Mortimer to this list.

My consciousness is gone with the wind.

"We still feel that color is hard on the eyes for so long a picture."

That's what Frank S. Nugent had to say about Gone With the Wind, the most successful film of all time (when its gross is adjusted for inflation), in the December 28, 1939, edition of the New York Times.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I feel the same way about black-and-white movies. They make me sleepy. Is there a psychological diagnosis for this "condition," or am I just too accustomed to the faster pace of modern movies (specifically, everything from Jaws onward)? Then again, as my girlfriend says, "You think the pacing of the dialogue in His Girl Friday [1940] was slow?"

"Boldy" is my new favorite typo.

"Throughout the film's production, [20th Century Fox chairman Bill] Mechanic—especially Mechanic—had taken on the pressure with a wavering composure. He had stood up for Fight Club as boldy as he could, but after this screening, he knew that if this baby didn't fly, there might be a huge career price to pay."

—from chapter 12 of What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line (2002) by Art Linson, producer of Fight Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and Into the Wild but not Jodie Foster's The Beaver, which is "boldy original," according to People magazine

"Escape from Cleveland"

That was the subject heading of a spam e-mail I received at work. "U.S. embassy bomb attack 'foiled'" was another one. Both were decoys—inside each e-mail was an ad for Cialis, the anti-impotency pill. However, it would be nice to think that in some far-off land an embassy attack really was foiled because a lonely security guard, valiantly fighting loneliness with a local prostitute, just happened to glance over at a security monitor and notice a suspicious package by the front gate—without Cialis, he would've been dozing off at his desk once again.

So thank you, erection pill. You're a true patriot.

I didn't know until I looked at one of those trick-but-no-treat e-mails (try explaining to your suspicious, snickering coworkers that you were merely trying to stay abreast of the news) that Cialis offers a chewable brand of its pill called Cialis Soft. Isn't that name counterintuitive? If you want to be hard, you need to swallow a hard pill. No exceptions.

Alright, enough foreplay.

Recently I saw John Carpenter's Escape from New York (1981) for the first time. When the sequel, Escape from L.A., came out in 1996, I saw it in the theater because I was reviewing movies that summer for the University of Georgia's radio station, WUOG. I saw a lot of movies in the theater that summer, but I realized at that point that I could never become a professional movie critic, because I liked almost everything I saw.

Of course, that crisis of conscience hasn't prevented certain critics from earning a living and getting their names on plenty of print ads under quotes like "Fred Claus takes its place among the all-time holiday classics!" But those critics are essentially PR flacks/hacks whose expenses at press junkets are paid by the studios in the hopes that the hacks will thank the studios by writing nice things about their bad movies.

But I digress. The reason I liked almost every movie I saw in the summer of '96 had to do with the fact that I wasn't paying to see the ones I was reviewing. Ignorant people who'll never learn how to behave in public could talk all they wanted, because for once they weren't doing it on my dime!

A friend suggested two years ago that I dedicate this blog to reviewing audiences at movies rather than the movies themselves, because she enjoyed hearing my rants about the Lowest Common Denominator showing up an hour into a screening and acting like they'd just walked into their living room. But the only thing that kind of blog would do is expand the hole in my soul; it wouldn't be the best way to process my ultimately fruitless rage. My movie-audience rants are meant to be funny, but the underlying anger doesn't have as much resonance as, say, a rant about poverty. Then again, who cares about poverty? Not me. Movies cost too much for poor people to see them, so they're not on my radar.

Besides, one of the reasons I get mad at people talking during movies is because I paid to get in just like they did, and when they're talking, they're wasting my money. I know they don't care that they're wasting their own money. And I know I'll never be able to convince them to stay home and flush $20 down the toilet while they flap their gums on the phone, though they'd probably find it to be an equally satisfying experience. But if I didn't have to pay to see movies, I bet I'd be able to block out the surrounding noise a lot better and be much happier in the long run. A happy movie critic isn't necessarily a good critic, however.

I watched Escape from New York on DVD. In my living room. It's possible that the lack of surrounding noise from the aforementioned LCDs helped me notice a giant continuity error in the film, but I bet I would've noticed it even in a noisy theater.

See, near the beginning of the film, the antihero protagonist, Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell, sounding silly doing a Clint Eastwood impression, but it's hard not to like Russell, so I let it pass), is given 23 hours to find the president of the United States, who's played by Donald Pleasence. The British actor sounds just as British as ever, but Escape is set in a futuristic 1997, where Manhattan has been turned into an island prison, and Americans can presumably elect a foreigner as their commander-in-chief just as long as he's notably creepy the way Pleasence is in most of his roles.

There's also the nice irony of America being so overburdened by crime by 1988, as the film's prologue states, that the federal government would turn Manhattan into a huge prison—reminiscent of my home state's roots as a prison colony for English debtors—and then hand over control of the country to an Englishman 200 years after the American Revolution.

But I digress again. Air Force One has been hijacked and flown into a skyscraper in Manhattan—no, not the World Trade Center, 9/11 conspiracy theorists—but the president was ejected in an escape pod before the plane crashed. Now he's been kidnapped by prisoners, and Plissken, a decorated military officer turned bank robber who's about to be sent to New York for life, is given a chance to win his freedom by rescuing the president. The catch is that if he doesn't get the president to safety in 23 hours, he'll be killed by some sort of microscopic, timer-activated explosive that's been injected into his bloodstream. Hell, with that kind of motivation I'd never miss a deadline, either.

So, when Plissken is told he has 23 hours to find the president, we see the timer on his government-issued watch counting down from 22:57:37. We next see him getting in his government-issued jet glider, presumably a few minutes after we last saw him. But now he's being told that he has 21 hours left to find the president.

Wait ... what happened to the last two hours?

Was a really long scene deleted? Did Plissken take a nap? Lord knows I love to procrastinate, so I'm not trying to pass judgment on you, sir, but this is no time to take a nap!

Then we see the clock in the Ellis Island command center, which is counting down from 20:17:43. That's closer to 20 hours than 21. What the hell was Snake doing for the last two and a half hours?!

If you're going to introduce a ticking clock in a story, you have to stick with it. For the sake of suspense you can delay the inevitable here and there as the clock gets closer to zero, but why shave off two hours right at the beginning without any explanation? Otherwise the first two episodes of every season of 24 should feature Jack Bauer checking his e-mail and drinking coffee at CTU headquarters.

You'd think this sort of continuity mistake could've been fixed in postproduction by rerecording a line or two of dialogue and inserting a new shot of the countdown clock, but it wasn't. Has anyone out there heard John Carpenter explain the reason for this error, possibly on an older DVD or laserdisc that contains a commentary track?

Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13 (1976), Halloween (1978), and The Fog (1980) have all been remade in this decade, and a remake of Escape from New York is currently in development. (After Escape, Carpenter and Russell made 1982's The Thing, a remake of 1951's The Thing from Another World.) The remake obviously won't be set in 1997, but since it will presumably have a higher budget than the original, somebody should take the time to make sure the script makes better use of its time.

pulpy

As revealed by actor Shia LaBeouf on the MTV Video Music Awards last night, the title of the fourth Indiana Jones movie, set for release on May 22 next year, is ...

Uh ... hmm ... alright ... I mean, I guess.

Pretty long title—nine words, 42 letters. And three K sounds in there. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But Ks are supposed to be funny, not ... adventurous. Ah, what the hell—I bet Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom sounded pretty goofy and bloated when it was announced sometime in 1983. But I was eight at the time, so it sounded just fine to me.

I'm sure I'll quickly get used to the new Indy movie's title the way I got used to Star Wars: Episode I—The Phantom Menace back in 1999. It seems like George Lucas, the creator of both the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, is getting more and more pulpy with his titles as he gets older. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm much older than I was when the first batch of films in these franchises came out in the '70s and '80s. Therefore a title like Attack of the Clones makes me laugh now, whereas if I was still a child I'd be saying "ooh" and "ahh" in anticipation of big-screen action and spin-off merchandise that could cast a spell on me all summer long.

But not letting a title like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull keep me up at night is a good thing. It's a very good thing. I wouldn't want to be like a former coworker of mine who refused to see Star Wars: Episode II—Attack of the Clones in 2002 because he felt so cheated by The Phantom Menace. I didn't have the courage to tell him that he shouldn't have expected to get the same kind of thrill from a new Star Wars movie in his late twenties that he did when he was six. This guy's childhood had ended a long time ago, and it wasn't going to be George Lucas's fault if his years of prepubescence didn't make a late-inning comeback. Just enjoy the ride, and if that doesn't work, have some kids of your own so you can get a buzz off their reaction to Industrial Light & Magic's bag of tricks.

To be fair to my former coworker, though, The Phantom Menace was a sorry follow-up to the original trilogy, but I wasn't expecting a repeat of the first three films, which admittedly lost some of their luster once I reached college and realized how atrocious the acting and dialogue is in certain spots. That being said, director Irvin Kershner deserves praise for pulling solid performances out of all the leads in The Empire Strikes Back, and Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan's dialogue for that film is an improvement over the ham-fisted declarations Lucas seems to prefer in his space operas. As Harrison Ford said to Lucas on the set of Star Wars in 1976, "You can type this shit, George, but you sure can't say it." Ford played Han Solo in the original trilogy and added a great deal of humor to the series. The prequels didn't have a Solo-like character, which is one of the main reasons why they weren't nearly as entertaining to me. But if I were 25 years younger, I'm sure I would've eaten them up. (No sale on Jar Jar Binks, though. I wasn't that dumb as a kid.)

Ford also had terrific comic timing as Indiana Jones in the first three films of that series, so I'm looking forward to seeing him in Indiana Jones and the Blah Blah Blah next May. However, I'm not sure what to think about Lucas's next project, Even More American Graffiti: Journey to the 50-Year Reunion of Lost Souls.

shiny

While I take my sweet time finishing longer posts, here's a fake movie trailer that my friend Mary introduced me to sometime in '05 or '06. It's an expertly edited parody-slash-"remix" that still makes me laugh.

movie names

Hey, you know what's a good title for a movie? This one.

And guess what? It's the one-year anniversary of my internationally broadcast scratch paper! Set off the confetti cannons! Thank you so much, letters that make up words and words that make up sentences and sentences that make up paragraphs and paragraphs that make up rambling screeds. I couldn't have done it without you.

Let's go to the movies!

Boy, I love the movies! Well, I used to. We broke up around 1998, but we're still friends, I guess. And it's actually good for both of us that I no longer obsess about the movies like I used to, although I doubt the movies have noticed. Now, let's talk about some movies I've seen in the last few months:

1. OCEAN'S TWELVE (2004)
When this sequel to the remake of Ocean's Eleven (2001) came out, I heard it was a disappointment. Sequels often are, but Steven Soderbergh directed it (as well as Ocean's Eleven and this summer's Ocean's Thirteen), so how bad could it be? Soderbergh, like Ang Lee, has a long track record of making good films in any genre he chooses. With 1998's Out of Sight, Soderbergh proved he could make smart, entertaining mainstream fare, and he continued in that vein with Erin Brockovich (2000) and Ocean's Eleven.

But with Ocean's Twelve, Soderbergh stumbles a bit and shows that sequels aren't his strong suit. Not yet anyway—here's hoping Ocean's Thirteen is better, and judging by the trailer, it seems to be paying close attention to the unofficial Movie Trilogy Rulebook, which states that you must follow up a not-as-successful second installment with a third installment that sticks closely to the elements that made the first movie successful. It looks like Ocean's Thirteen will be set in Las Vegas, like the original, with Ocean and his gang (which now includes Andy Garcia and Ellen Barkin) trying to rob Al Pacino's casino. (That rhymes. I guess that's why Al was cast.)

Twelve is set in Paris, Rome, Amsterdam, and other European locations, and although Garcia is back as Terry Benedict, the bad guy from Eleven, he's the secondary bad guy this time. Unfortunately, the primary bad guy, Vincent Cassel's "Night Fox," isn't all that interesting, and his breakdancing routine near the end of the movie is cringe-worthy. Eleven did a great job fleshing out all the members of Ocean's gang as well as Benedict and his love triangle with Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and Ocean's ex-wife, Tess (Julia Roberts). The balancing act doesn't work as well in Twelve, with Bernie Mac, Elliott Gould, and Carl Reiner's characters absent for long stretches of the movie. And although I didn't like the whole meta-tastic "Tess looks just like Julia Roberts" subplot (why didn't anyone notice this in Eleven?), it did lead to the funniest scene in the movie, in which Bruce Willis, playing himself, thinks Tess is Julia Roberts and Tess ends up on the phone with Julia. Sadly, the rest of the movie is pretty unmemorable and even confusing in some parts, and there's nothing along the lines of Eleven's serene little moment at the Bellagio fountains after the big heist.

2. BASIC INSTINCT 2 (2006)
I've been on a sequel kick recently. And it's not over yet. Like Ocean's Twelve, Basic Instinct 2 is considered to be worse than the original, but on a much larger scale. It's generally not wise to release a sequel 14 years after the original, especially if the original's director, writer, and male costar aren't returning for the sequel. Sharon Stone is back, but she's not even the main character in her own star vehicle. Like Basic 1, the sequel is structured around the horny guy who's obsessed with Stone's character, Catherine Tramell. And here's a big problem with Basic 2: Stone is no longer the hottest woman on the planet. It's a little embarrassing watching a woman in her late 40s who appears to have had some botched plastic surgery on her face and breasts talking dirty and trying to seduce every man she meets. (Stone apparently has a scene in Bobby in which she stares at herself in a mirror and realizes her age has caught up with her. Too bad that self-awareness is nowhere in sight in Basic Instinct 2.) I saw Stone interviewed on Primetime Glick in 2003 and she looked great. I don't know what happened between then and 2005, when this movie was shot, but Stone isn't given many close-ups in Basic 2, which is odd considering she's the star of the movie and the reason it got made in the first place. Maybe you just need a higher SPF, Sharon. Ask the hot fortysomethings on Desperate Housewives for some helpful hints.

3. STRANGER THAN FICTION (2006)
Meta-tastic redux! This one didn't intrigue me as much as I'd hoped, but then I remembered that I never fell in love with those Charlie Kaufman-penned films like Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind like friends of mine did (however, I really liked Adaptation up until the third act, which is when the meta-tastic qualities started to overwhelm everything else). But to be fair, I was distracted quite a bit by the sound system in the theater where I saw Stranger Than Fiction—it sounded like a plane was about to take off during most of the movie, and that didn't help during the quieter scenes.

I was also bothered that the movie was filmed in Chicago yet no mention of Chicago was ever made. Look, if you're going to have some nameless big city in your movie, film the thing in Vancouver—they're used to it! Granted, people who don't live in Chicago or haven't been here won't notice much when they see the movie, and it's not like Stranger Than Fiction shows the Hancock Tower or Sears Tower or Wrigley Field at any point, but it struck me as odd. Maybe Columbia Pictures was offered a huge tax break if they filmed the movie in Chicago, but I doubt it.

On the flip side, two days after I saw Stranger Than Fiction I watched an episode of TBS's new sitcom My Boys. It's set in Chicago but clearly filmed on soundstages, yet the writers do a good job with the details, name-checking streets like Ashland Avenue and having a character wear a T-shirt with the logo of the Metro, a concert venue here. In Stranger Than Fiction, Will Ferrell's character catches the Kronecker bus every morning. There's no street named Kronecker in Chicago.

4. BORAT (2006)
This movie starts to slow down at the point where the frat boys pick up Borat in their RV (gee, do you think that was staged at all?) and make their sexist and racist comments. But up till then it's as funny as everyone says it is. Sacha Baron Cohen is a funny man.

5. THE DEPARTED (2006)
Another great Martin Scorsese crime movie, with terrific performances all around, although I thought Matt Damon's accent sounded more authentic than Mark Wahlberg's, which is odd since Wahlberg actually grew up in south Boston, right? Didn't Damon grow up in Cambridge? I assume the accent isn't as strong in Cambridge. I like to assume lots of things. My only problem with The Departed is that the plot is moved forward in several instances via text messaging between characters. I hate technology.

6. DREAMGIRLS (2006)
Yeah, Jennifer Hudson has a great voice, but she's not a great actress yet, so people should stop saying, "She's going to win an Oscar!" Eddie Murphy's the one who deserves an Oscar nomination for this movie. It's good to see him this energetic again in a movie for adults, not three-year-olds.

These reviews are getting shorter and shorter. Can you tell I'm getting tired?

civil rites

Lethal Weapon 2 is on TBS right now. My friend Travis recently said that no matter what time of day you turn on your TV, a Lethal Weapon or James Bond movie will be on. It's not that much of an exaggeration, especially since Spike TV came along. However, I rarely see Lethal Weapon 3 on channels like TBS or Spike. That's okay, since it's the worst one, but sometimes I need my Summer of '92 nostalgia fix real bad.

Lethal Weapon 2 is my favorite of the series. South African diplomats/thugs (there's no difference in the world of summer action movies) are the bad guys, and I just saw a scene in which Mel Gibson's character holds up a sign that says "End Aparthied Now." Yes, the spelling rule you learned back in grade school was "i before e except after c," Mel, but "apartheid" is an exception. And yes, I hold you, Mel Gibson, personally responsible for the typo on that sign.

Hmm ... Mel Gibson playing a cop protesting apartheid in a movie from 1989 that's being shown on TV almost a month after his arrest for drunk driving, an incident that became a huge scandal when Gibson made anti-Semitic comments during his arrest. It's too bad I have an irony deficiency, or else I'd comment on this parallel.

There's also a scene in Lethal Weapon 2 in which Gibson, Danny Glover, and Joe Pesci's characters pick up fast food from a drive-thru window. As they're pulling away from the restaurant, Pesci's character realizes he didn't get what he ordered. He says (I'm mostly paraphrasing here), "You know why you should go up to the counter instead? I'll tell you why! Because they fuck you at the drive-thru, okay? They fuck you at the drive-thru! They know you're gonna be miles away before you find out you got fucked! They know you're not gonna turn around and go back! They don't care!" He's right, you know. Lethal Weapon 2 certainly seems to have more insight into fast-food politics than it does South African politics.

But on TBS, "fuck you" became "freak you." Why not "screw you"? Or is that not allowed by the censors? Does one "f" word really need to be replaced by another? Just make the substitution sound as natural as possible, censors. Have you ever heard anyone say "I totally got freaked over by that mechanic"? Or "Go freak yourself"? Or "Freak me? No ... freak you, motherfreaker!" Of course not. And on the flip side, "That girl's a superfuck" and "I wanna get fucky with you" don't sound quite right (although they're intriguing, I'll admit). But the words just aren't interchangeable. "Freakin' unbelievable" is about the only acceptable substitution I can think of right now. But as we all know, "friggin'" sounds much better and is the only "fuck" substitute endorsed by the Italian-American Stereotype Mafia.