So Much for That Great Idea

Last week I had the great, uh, original idea of writing a sequel to The Breakfast Club. Sort of The Breakfast Club meets The Big Chill. I was going to write a screenplay, sell it to Hollywood, and make millions. My pal Roy rightly dissuaded me from that idea — seems Universal owns the rights — so I quickly ditched my effort.

As with most of my great ideas, it seems that someone else already came up with it. I did a quick Google search for “sequel to The Breakfast Club” and did not come up empty handed. Lots of people have come up with ideas for a sequel — Joel Mathis on Lawrence.com developed his somewhat.

It was a good thought, but my idea for writing a sequel to The Breakfast Club ain't gonna happen.

Apparently the chances of a TBC 2 happening aren’t great. According to this report, Emilio Estevez had no interest in the project a few years back. Perhaps he will change his mind after the death of John Hughes.

For now, however, I think we’re stuck watching TBC over and over and wondering what could be … sorta how I feel about Deadwood.

Prediction: Inglorious Basterds is Gonna Clean Up Come Oscar Time

Last night Ronnie, Norman, Mito and I saw Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds at The Guild.

No doubt the best and most entertaining movie I’ve seen in a long while. I liked The Reader slightly more, but this it’s a toss up.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that this puppy cleans house come Oscar time.

Christoph Waltz will get nominated for Best Supporting Actor — even though, if you were judging by screen time, he’s probably more in the “actor” than “supporting actor” category. That seems to be the consensus among early reviewers.

Brad Pitt will get nominated for Best Actor — even though he was arguably the supporting actor here. This prediction is mine — I haven’t seen anyone else call it. The Academy is aching to give Mr. Brangelina some hardware, and this just might be its chance.

Quentin Tarantino for Best Director — a given.

In fact, I’m going to go out even further on a limb — Inglorious Basterds and District 9 both get Best Picture nods.

You read it here first. (Okay, maybe you didn’t, but watch for it.)

MAN Was That a Good Flick!

I promised I wouldn’t use the family blog to opine about every movie I see. But there are exceptions to the rule, and The Reader is one of them. Benezra and I saw it last night. Definitely the best movie I’ve seen in a long, long, long while. Even slightly better than Slumdog.

Kate Winslet won Best Actress. The Reader should've won Best Picture

Kids, if you read this years from now, go download or call or whatever it is you do to get movies — do that to The Reader. It’s time well spent.

They’re Not Much for Moses’ Kids, But They Sure Can Make Movies

One of the great mysteries of international politics has to be how it is that Germany still exists. For my money, Germany forfeited its right to exist when it perpetrated the holocaust. Had the Marshall Plan been the Jenkins Plan, Hitler’s country would have been divided up among Poland, Czechoslovakia and France.

Alas that isn’t how things worked out. And the results haven’t been all bad. Germany has, among other things, produced Pope Benedict, Nena and Steffi Graf — the latter two of whom are hotties by any standard. And lately, the Germans have been cranking out some pretty good flicks. Our most recent rental, The Counterfeiters (click here for the Wikipedia plot line), I’d count as a must rent.

Rent it.

The ‘08 winner of Best Foreign Language Film joins The Lives of Others and Black Book as outstanding German flicks we’ve recently pulled at Hollywood Video. So good have these been that I’m officially adding a new rule to my list of Movie Renting Rules:

2. If there are more than two copies of it on the Foreign Language wall, it’s gotta be decent.

In any case, I highly recommend The Counterfeiters. The only caution I’d give is that the chick on the DVD box (see above) has nothing whatsoever to do with the movie. She makes two brief appearances. The rest of the movie is all concentration camp.

“The Lather Effect” Proves an Exception to My Movie-Renting Rules

Back after a week without my PC.

I try to make it a rule of movie renting not to rent movies where I have never not heard of both the stars and the movie. Occasionally there is an exception — Cloverfield comes to mind — but usually these are good rules to live by. When I have heard of neither the stars nor the movie, I usually stay away.

But this week I made an exception, and I was pleasantly surprised. We rented The Lather Effect largely based on the box’s promise — “A Big Chill for Generation X.” Have to say — pretty good flick. I won’t bore my three readers with the details — there are already enough movie reviews online and all of them do a better job than I would ever do — but I’ll just say it made for an enjoyable watch. Killer soundtrack, too, althou