Besides, I already told you about watching New York, New York on Thursday night. That leaves only nine more to tackle, or at least to touch on.
To be honest, I might not even be writing the current post if I did not watch both Tangled and Tango & Cash on Saturday, which led to the brilliant title you see above. If I can't share my brilliant titles with you, my readers, it's like they never happened.
Comedy and rectal probing
I decided to make Friday a string of comedy favorites following when I quit work at about 4:30, and once I got a head of steam going, I hoped I might be able to fit in five of them before I went to bed. I was on a pace to do it, too, but I ended up having a long nap during the fourth, Tropic Thunder, which ruled out any possibility of a fifth.
And I couldn't help noticing that all four featured the concept of someone being rectally probed. I would have attributed it to being just a 1990s thing, but then the notion reared its head -- or maybe I should say reared its butt -- in Tropic Thunder as well. (I never did fit Team America: World Police into the festival, so I'll have to check that some other time to see whether it delves into cavity searches or fisting or something similar. Given that it's Trey Parker and Matt Stone, I bet it does.)
First it was 1996's Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, where a running theme is that the FBI agent voiced by Robert Stack must subject everyone he questions to cavity searches in trying to locate the "criminal masterminds" Beavis and Butt-Head. We get the telltale shot of someone snapping on a rubber glove on multiple occasions. (And lest you judge me about including this in the festival, Mike Judge is an underappreciated comic mind. Don't forget he was also responsible for Idiocracy.)
Wayne's World (1992) made a natural pairing with Beavis and Butt-Head, but for reasons beyond the obvious of intellectually challenged blond and brunette headbangers hanging out together. (Bill & Ted were yet a third version of this.) Indeed, there's a notable cavity search in this as well, as a police officer helps Wayne and Garth by pulling over Rob Lowe's character and snapping on the glove in the same way as above to waylay him in a most embarrassing and uncomfortable fashion. We see Lowe walking funny when he arrives at Wayne's basement to crash their party at the end.
There was no snapping of the glove in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994) -- which I still enjoy despite wincing at its transphobia -- but here Ace makes a wisecrack about his ease of passing through the high security to get into Joe Robbie Stadium before the Super Bowl. He says something along the lines of "The man with the rubber glove was surprisingly gentle."
Tropic Thunder, which didn't come out until 2008, had no actual instance of a rectal probe, implied or otherwise, but Tom Cruise's Les Grossman does deliver this classic threat: "From now on, my fist is going to be so far up your shithole that every time you have a thought, it's going to have to tiptoe past my wedding ring." Steve Coogan's character also mentions crawling up Satan's bottom -- just moments before he steps on the landmine.
Conclusion? I guess this was all part of the gay panic that has been a core component of mainstream comedies until recently. I'll have to keep an eye open to see how often I see it elsewhere, or if I see it in anything more recent.
Finally understanding that Tenacious D song
I didn't watch Tango & Cash -- the last of only six new-to-me movies of the 22 -- just to have a clever tie-in with my planned viewing of Tangled, though it didn't hurt.
Really, I just thought I should greater appreciate a reference in a Tenacious D song I enjoy called "Kyle Quit the Band," sung by Kyle Gass and Tropic Thunder star Jack Black.
Lyrics in that song go as follows:
"Couldn't split up Kato and Nash
(That's true)
Couldn't split up Tango and Cash
(That's also true!)"
Now when I laugh along with that, I actually know what I'm laughing about.
It's an enjoyable if slight 80's action movie, and I feel like I should have seen it before now. Now I have.
As for Tangled? Given that I've already written about this movie more than a dozen times on this blog, I won't give you any new takeaways, or even tell you if I had any.
Only my first rewatch of Evil Dead II
How could I watch Army of Darkness twice before I'd seen Evil Dead II twice?
I'm not sure, but somehow, it happened.
I was sure I'd seen Evil Dead II -- the last of the 22 -- more than twice all the way through. But according to my list of rewatches, whose accuracy must never be questioned, it must have only been once, and then a partial viewing. I have a random memory of watching part of it on one of those car TVs on a work trip to Knott's Berry Farm around Halloween, when they transformed it into Knott's Scary Farm. Which I guess was enough to increase my familiarity with it, but not to count as a complete second viewing.
No wonder I'd forgotten so much of what happened in it.
Also, apparently Ash never says "You're going down, fucker," which I could swear he did. He does say "You're going down" to his evil hand, and then later, "Who's laughing now!" as he maniacally chainsaws it off. Then of course there is the iconic "Groovy" once he lashes the chainsaw to his hand.
Still, I actually think the individual lines make me laugh harder in Army of Darkness, even if the overall thrust of the movie is obviously not as good.
************
Two movies got no mention at all (sorry Sin City and Next), but I need to finish this off and move on with my life -- now that I've finally emerged from the garage. (Forgot to tell you that! Yeah, it happened this morning.)
But here is the complete list, with the day breaks indicated, starting on Monday and ending on Saturday. I'm not going to say the list is always impressive in terms of quality -- when you're sick, you aren't looking to delve deep into the arthouse movies you haven't seen -- but in terms of quantity it can't be beat.
Titanic
Can't Buy Me Love
Kin-dza-dza!
Shadow in the Cloud
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Avatar
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
Tucker and Dale vs. Evil
Do I Sound Gay?
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Toni Erdmann
Metal Lords
Mad Max: Fury Road
Carnival of Souls
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New York, New York
Sin City
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Beavis and Butt-Head Do America
Wayne's World
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
Tropic Thunder
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Tango & Cash
Next
Tangled
Evil Dead II
Now let's never do that again.
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