And now, a playlet in which the dialogue is composed entirely of 2011 movie titles.

[Outside a bar at closing time. People are waiting in line for taxis. A MAN sidles up to a WOMAN.]

MAN: What’s your number?
WOMAN: I am number four.
MAN: Arthur.
WOMAN: Hanna.

[They shake hands.]

MAN: [gesturing to his car] Monte Carlo. Real steel!
WOMAN: [unimpressed] Something borrowed?

[Despite the WOMAN's lack of interest, the MAN plunges ahead.]

MAN: Cold weather! [pause] Everything must go… [he gestures to his car again]
WOMAN: Abduction?!
MAN: No strings attached!
WOMAN: One day. The future. Another earth.
MAN: Don’t be afraid of the dark!
WOMAN: [considering] The dilemma: Contagion? Unknown.
MAN: Just go with it!

[She considers his offer. She does find him attractive, and it is getting late...]

MAN: 30 minutes or less.

[She still isn't sold.]

MAN: Fast five.
WOMAN: [sighing reluctantly] Take me home tonight.
MAN: Win win!
WOMAN: [to herself] The art of getting by…

[He opens the passenger door for her.]

MAN: Your highness.

[They get in.]

WOMAN: Drive.
MAN: In time. [seeing pedestrians in the crosswalk] Madea’s big happy family!
WOMAN: Drive angry! Like crazy!
MAN: A dangerous method!

[She puts her hand on his thigh.]

MAN: [shrugging] Crazy, stupid love…

[He runs over the pedestrians. The WOMAN is impressed.]

WOMAN: Courageous! Footloose! Limitless!
MAN: [regretful] Beastly. Shame.
WOMAN: [seeing an acquaintance on the sidewalk] Martha Marcy May Marlene!
MAN: The girl with the dragon tattoo? Young adult? Zookeeper? I don’t know how she does it!
WOMAN: We bought a zoo.
MAN: Super!

[They arrive at her home, a charming two-story.]

MAN: Dream house! [he sees a silhouette in the window] The help?
WOMAN: We need to talk about Kevin.
MAN: The roommate?
WOMAN: Friends with benefits.
MAN: Sucker punch.

[Suddenly a bright light fills the sky. Loud ALIEN VOICES boom in the night air.]

ALIEN VOICE 1: Attack the block!
ALIEN VOICE 2: Mars needs moms!
MAN: Take shelter!
WOMAN: I am!

[They run inside the house.]

MAN: Sanctum!
WOMAN: I saw the devil! Extremely loud and incredibly close!
MAN: Insidious immortals!

[The ALIENS attack and kill everybody. The end.]

NEW MOVIE REVIEWS:

“Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” (B)
“Colombiana” (C) [Film.com]
“Higher Ground” (A-)

* * * * *

MOVIE COLUMNS:

Eric’s Bad Movies: “Happy Birthday to Me” (1981), chosen entirely at random. [Film.com]

What’s the Big Deal?: “Some Like It Hot” (1959), starring two dudes dressed like ladies. Except it’s actually funny! [Film.com]

Re-Views: “Dude, Where’s My Car?” (2000), which turns out to be a little better now than it was then. [Film.com]

One Year Ago: Catching up with “Takers,” “The Last Exorcism,” and more. [Movies.com]

* * * * *

MY OTHER STUFF:

Snide Remarks: “Freedom of Depress” — Recovering from the Great Depression of two years ago.

Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider: Reviews of “Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark” (we disagreed!), “Colombiana,” “Our Idiot Brother,” “The Interrupters,” and “Senna,” PLUS an interview with “Bellflower” writer/director/star Evan Glodell! [Cascadia.fm] or [iTunes]

In the Dark: Subscribe to this weekly e-mail and get all the latest movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info delivered to your electronic mailbox. [Eric D. Snider's In the Dark]

Twitter: If you’re on Twitter, you should probably follow me. It just seems right. [Twitter]

* * * * *

MISCELLANEOUS MERRIMENT:

My colleague and pal Dustin Rowles HATED “One Day.” A lot. I don’t share his sentiments, but I like his review. [Pajiba]

My other colleague and pal Jeremy Kirk listened to Christopher Nolan’s commentary on “Memento” and brings us 35 fascinating tidbits from it. [Film School Rejects]

The cast of “Fright Night” recorded a No Talking PSA for the Alamo Drafthouse that might be counterproductive. Also, they might have all been really drunk. [YouTube]

This comic sums up clinical depression pretty well. [Akimbo]

James Rocchi is an excellent writer, a knowledgeable film critic, a good friend, and a fine human being. He is also quite skilled in the culinary arts! If you like food, you should read his food blog. [Cooking with Rocchi]

Do you want to watch two teenage girls dance embarrassingly to a catchy pop song while a giant monster baby flops around in the background? [YouTube]

The best thing you can do with Twitter is use it to fire off one-liners seconds after a news event happens. We once had to wait until the next night’s talk show monologues or “Saturday Night Live’s” Weekend Update to get this kind of joke; now it’s there immediately.

Sunday night, as news spread that President Obama was going to make some kind of important announcement, and as word trickled out that it pertained to the death of Osama Bin Laden, snarkmeisters both professional and amateur took to the tweets to make with the ha-ha. The question of whether it’s ever appropriate to celebrate anyone’s death, even a mass murderer’s, is valid, and I will leave it for other people to talk about in other places. But I say if we can’t make jokes about the death of Osama Bin Laden, what can we make jokes about?

Here are the tweets that I saw Sunday night, in chronological order, that made me laugh. Note how they start out basic, making now-obvious connections, and then evolve as more news arrives. From a purely sociological standpoint, it’s fascinating. From a joke-writing standpoint, it is also fascinating.

@confessions123: Tea Party already denying the kill, demanding Osama’s longform death certificate.
@misterpatches: Yeah, but what about Carmen Sandiego?
@jerslater: Not to take all the credit, but I’ve been saying someone should kill bin Laden for like ten years now.
@BrianLynch: Cause of death: dynamite tied together to look like hot FEMALE terrorist.
@marklisanti: Let this serve as a lesson to future terrorists: When we finally kill you, we will mock your death with ten billion tweets. Not worth it.
@SmarmyJerkface: Man this was a REALLY long season of 24.
@Deadzero: President Obama doesn’t need to say a thing, he should just pull Bin Laden’s head out of a bag and throw it on a table.
@jennamgriffith: CIA just ousted Osama Bin Laden as mayor of Islamabad on @FourSquare
@jimmyfallon: Got Bin Laden AND interrupted Celebrity Apprentice? Win for Obama all around.
@ApocalypseHow: FOXNEWS REPORTS: Obama Administration Kills Homeless Religious Man with Kidney Disease
@natebargatze: It is pretty awkward in my cab right now
@irwinhandleman: President Obama is the worst Muslim sleeper agent I’ve ever seen
@ditzkoff: Weirdly, bin Laden also had a secretary named Hitler who warned him not to go to Pakistan that day.
@MattDentler: I hope the soldier that killed Bin Laden is an openly gay, Jewish woman.
@thesulk: I’m just glad it wasn’t the “there’s an asteroid we can’t stop” speech.
@nealbrennan: The Al-Queda guys are totally gonna have a Big Chill type weekend, I bet.
@astamate: I bet Osama will get the loudest applause during the “In Memoriam” portion of the Al Qaedies this year.
@MrBrandonMarcus: Bin Laden was killed while living in a huge mansion in Pakistan. Why does Obama hate rich people so much?!
@ThrashRuske: U.S terror alert upgraded to “Double Rainbow”.
@dontsitonart: Tonight was the night history was made, and a nation redefined the concept of Too Soon
@caissie: Whoa. That was huge. Guys, let’s not spoil it for the West Coast, though, okay?
@me_irl: Beloved character actor Osama bin Laden, star of TV’s “Fox News”, dies age 54

If you like mild, PG-13-rated adventures that are sort of good but not great, then this is your weekend!

In “Unknown” (review at Film.com), Liam Neeson wakes up from a coma to find that nobody knows who he is, and that maybe he isn’t who he thought he was. In “I Am Number Four,” a teenage boy is an alien trying to keep his identity a secret from the monsters that want to kill him. Both movies got a B- from me: modestly entertaining, certainly not bad, worth checking out if the subject matter interests you.

The same cannot be said for “Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son” (review at Cinematical), the third entry in Martin Lawrence’s “Big Momma’s House” franchise. It was one of Hollywood’s Shameful Secrets® (i.e., not screened for critics before its release), yet it turns out to be even worse than that distinction normally implies.

Over at Film.com, “What’s the Big Deal?” takes on “The Grapes of Wrath,” while “Eric’s Bad Movies” deals with “Hocus Pocus.” I note with some pride that Sarah Jessica Parker appears in that movie, yet my column contains no direct mention of the fact that she looks like a horse. I did that as an exercise, like writing a story without using the word “the.”

Subscribe to “In the Dark,” a weekly e-mail with the latest movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info.

Listen to “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” a weekly Internet radio show featuring Jeff Bayer and Eric D. Snider, at Cascadia.fm. It’s live at 11 a.m. (Pacific) every Friday, then downloadable as a podcast. Ignore the iTunes “explicit” tag; we always keep it PG.

Do you like horses who run very fast in comparison to other horses? Then the story of Secretariat is probably among your favorites! The movie “Secretariat” (review at Cinematical), however, pretty generic stuff.

Do you like romantic comedies in which a baby’s parents are killed and two people who dislike each other must raise the orphan? Really? You do? That is weird. Anyway, “Life As We Know It” is up your alley.

Do you like clinically depressed teenagers who address their problems with humor and warmth? Then may I present “It’s Kind of a Funny Story” (review at Film.com), which is indeed kind of a funny story.

There’s also a new horror film written and directed by Wes Craven, “My Soul to Take,” but it wasn’t screened for critics. In fact, there was a promotional screening Thursday night, and the studio representatives were specifically told not to let any critics in. Review to come.

In limited release, the documentary “Catfish” is one of the most intriguing and compelling true stories you’re likely to see, and a fine counterpart to “The Social Network.” You also have “Enter the Void” (review at Cinematical), a trippy and technically marvelous rumination on a drug addict’s journey through the afterlife.

Let’s see, what else happened? “What’s the Big Deal?” at Film.com is about “Stagecoach,” and “Eric’s Bad Movies” has “In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale.” And at Cinematical, I made some jokes about Darren Aronofsky and Zack Snyder.

Subscribe to “In the Dark,” a weekly e-mail with the latest movie reviews, DVD releases, and other pertinent info.

Listen to “Movie B.S. with Bayer and Snider,” a weekly Internet radio show featuring Jeff Bayer and Eric D. Snider, at PDX.fm. It’s live at 11 a.m. (Pacific) every Friday, then downloadable as a podcast. Ignore the iTunes “explicit” tag; we always keep it PG.

At the end of 1999, some people declared that we were about to embark on the 21st century. Those people were mistaken. The 21st century did not begin until 2001. There was no year zero A.D. The first year was 1 A.D.; thus, the first century was 1-100; the second century was 101-200; and the 20th century was 1901-2000. The 21st century didn’t start until 2001, and will last through 2100.

Everyone knows this now, and the people who thought the 21st century would begin in 2000 have accepted their error. You live and you learn. Unfortunately, some people have taken this idea beyond its bounds and declared that the current decade, the 2000s, is NOT about to end. They say it won’t end until 2010.

Here is the problem. We are talking about two different things. The logic used with centuries doesn’t apply to decades because we don’t number our decades the way we number our centuries. Technically, this is the 201st decade A.D. But we don’t call it that. We call it the ’00s. The ’00s are, by definition, the years that have “0″ as their next-to-last digit: 2000-2009. Likewise, the ’80s were, by definition, the years that had “8″ as their next-to-last digit: 1980-1989. The year 1990 was obviously not part of “the 1980s.” Try saying “1990″ out loud. Did you say “eighty” at any point? No? Then it’s not part of “the eighties,” is it?

Now, if we did refer to this as the 201st decade, you would be absolutely correct that it won’t end until the end of 2010. The years 1-10 were the first decade; 11-20 were the second decade; 1991-2000 were the 200th decade; and 2001-2010 are the 201st decade.

But we don’t refer to our decades that way. A “decade” is ANY sequence of ten years. 1984-1993 was a “decade.” The people who said “the century” was ending in 1999 were right — the “century” of 1900-1999 was indeed ending. And in 1985, the “century” of 1886-1985 was ending. They were only mistaken when they said “the 20th century” was ending. “The 20th century” is specific and defined, and can only mean the years 1901-2000.

In common parlance, when we talk about what “decade” it is, we’re talking about which digit is next-to-last in the year number. If that digit is a 9, that year was part of the ’90s. If that digit is a 0, it’s part of the ’00s. That’s how we do it in our culture. Most of the time, when we talk about the “decade,” that’s the criteria we’re using. The whole “there was no year zero” thing has nothing to do with it. That would only matter if we were counting the number of decades, which we don’t do. That’s why you’re seeing “best of the decade” lists now, at the tail end of 2009: because 2010 will be part of a new “decade,” the ’10s. Get it?

P.S. I thought of another example that may help clarify this important subject in the mind of the reader. When you talk about “the 1900s,” you mean the years 1900-1999 — the ones that have “nineteen” in them. At the end of 1999, “the 1900s” were indeed ending; the 20th century, however, was not. It is the same principle with the decades, the only difference being that we do not commonly number our decades like we do our centuries.

Here is Thursday’s episode of a comic strip called Adams’ Apples, which appears exclusively in my local paper, The Oregonian, and is not available online.

The artist, Jim Adams, is a local schoolteacher, and the strip is apparently autobiographical. It is also consistently amateurishly drawn, awkwardly worded, and unfunny.

In this example, he has used a joke that I distinctly remember reading a better-worded version of in a joke book I checked out of the library when I was 7.

But never mind that.

“DICIDED”??

Continue reading…

Last week I posted an item that I thought would be entirely uncontroversial. It was simply a list of mistakes made by major North American newspapers in their reviews of the movie “Dance Flick.” The movie was made by several members of the Wayans family, which led to errors along these lines:

“The Wayans (should be Wayanses) keep making the same movie.”

“Like the Wayans’ (Wayanses’) last movie, this one is no good.”

“I hope this is the Wayans’s (Wayanses’) last movie.

“All those Wayans’ (Wayanses) should know better.”

As I said, I didn’t expect any controversy here. Plurals of last names are formed the same way as plurals of other nouns: by adding “s” or “es.” The only common exception is that last names ending in “y” don’t change to “ies” (e.g., baby/babies, but Murphy/Murphys). And once it’s pluralized, you show possession the same way: by adding an apostrophe. My boss, my many bosses, my many bosses’ offices. One Wayans, several Wayanses, the Wayanses’ latest movie.

Yet as soon as I posted it, there was dissent. Like so many Internet conversations, a lot of people who didn’t know anything about the subject wanted to talk about it anyway, presumably because they enjoy the clickety-clack sound their keyboards make when they type on them. But there were others who knew about things like “style manuals” who nonetheless insisted these newspapers’ mistakes were not mistakes at all.

Continue reading…

If you were paying attention in elementary school English class, you might remember how plurals are formed. Generally, you simply add an “s,” though if the word already ends in “s,” “x,” “ch,” or “sh,” you add “es.” The same rules apply to proper names, too, as in the common expression “keeping up with the Joneses (i.e., members of the Jones family)” They are not hard rules to remember.

And yet whenever the Wayans brothers do something, the world is flooded with mutations of their name just as horrific as the rancid comedies the Wayanses produce. (Their last name is Wayans, not Wayan. Damon is a Wayans. There are many other Wayanses. This is the Wayanses’ latest movie.) When “Dance Flick” opened Friday, I figured the blogs would be the worst offenders, since blogs tend not to have copy editors. But while some onliners did screw it up, what amazed me was how many major newspapers — which DO have full-time copy editors on staff — botched it.

None of the following examples are correct by certain style guidelines, or according to certain local customs. All of them are simply wrong.

• USA Today: “Like the Wayans’ other productions…”

• The Los Angeles Times: “After the Wayans’ deadly funny ‘Scary Movie’ back in 2000…” “The Wayans had nothing to do with those…”

• The Orlando Sentinel: “All the Wayans in the world…” “Keenen Ivory Wayans and the least funny of the gang, Shawn Wayans, were lead Wayans’ in the all-Wayans script”

• Newsday: “The Wayans keep mining the same trash heap…”

• The (Toronto) Globe and Mail: “A whole lotta Wayans are up for the task…” “The Wayans have fun with the white-black dynamic…”

• Variety: “What the Wayans fail to do…”

• New York Daily News: “Five Wayans wrote it…”

• The Toronto Star: “Too many Wayans spoils the broth…” “One departs from seeing this flick with the fervent hope that it is the Wayans’s last dance movie.”

[UPDATE: See the follow-up post for more scandalous details!]

Like most people, I enjoy flipping through the Sky Mall catalog when I’m bored on an airplane and I’ve been bored long enough to have already read the airline magazine. The Sky Mall is a great place to see hilarious ads for ridiculous products that no sane person would ever buy. Here’s one I saw on a recent trip:

Dual Time Dot Matrix Watch. The 70′s coming back again!

When you want to raise some eyebrows or have an excellent ice breaker for your next sales meeting, the jaw dropping Gforce Matric is your best resource. The Matrix makes everyone aware that you know what it takes in life.

Features:
- LCD time display
- Features the day of the week
- Daily alarm
- Hourly chime
- 1/100 second Chronograph with split function
- Countdown timer
- Dual time keeping
- Brilliant backlight

Did you hear that? The 70′s coming back again! For one thing, I assume that should read “the ’70s ARE coming back again.” And for another thing, no they aren’t. Unless you mean that, just as in the 1970s, people will pay a hundred dollars for a very basic digital watch. (In the 2000s, a watch like this goes for about twenty bucks at Wal-Mart.)

But I am also glad to know that if I want to raise eyebrows or have an excellent ice-breaker at my next sales meeting, this watch is my BEST RESOURCE. Not being well-prepared, not wearing a sharp-looking suit, not making eye contact and putting people at ease with a friendly smile, but THIS WATCH. Wasting money on a laughably out-dated timepiece makes everyone aware that I know what it takes in life.