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Posts Tagged ‘Jan Hooks’

Jiminy Glick in Lalawood

Tuesday, May 20th, 2025

One movie that came out on May 6, 2005 was Ridley Scott’s crusades epic KINGDOM OF HEAVEN. It was poorly received in the U.S. at the time but later had a widely-considered-superior director’s cut, which I have reviewed. Today I’ll consider a different May 6th release that has not yet had its director’s cut re-evaluation moment.

I don’t remember if I knew about JIMINY GLICK IN LALAWOOD when it came out in its limited release, during which according to Box Office Mojo it collected $36,039. (I assume they rounded to the nearest dollar – the real total could be as much as 49 cents higher.) But there was no chance I would’ve gone to see it then. I confess that as much as I’d loved THREE AMIGOS and Ed Grimley growing up, in the aughts I did not think Martin Short was funny anymore. I was also instantly turned off by fat suits (which I wasn’t really wrong about), so I turned my nose up to Primetime Glick, the Comedy Central show where this hack entertainment journalist character did sort of Space Ghost Coast to Coast style awkward improvised celebrity interviews.

But let me point you to a historical note. Two weeks before JIMINY GLICK IN LALAWOOD came out, the first ever Youtube video, Me at the zoo, was uploaded. During the intervening two decades, through the medium of Youtube clips, I have become aware that Jiminy Glick does in fact make me laugh, so I was actually excited to watch the movie version.

SUMMER 2005Well, the character is still funny. And it seems like a great idea for an improvised movie: he goes to the Toronto International Film Festival. They were able to improvise scenes with actors attending the actual festival, and debut the movie there the following year. There is a plot and new characters and what not, but most of the laughs come just from Jiminy saying ridiculous things to real celebrities. They take advantage of the setting to interview actors on the red carpet (Kiefer Sutherland, Sharon Stone, Jake Gyllenhaal, Forest Whitaker, Susan Sarandon) and even film some bits with Jiminy at parties (annoying Kevin Cline by following him around, thinking Whoopi Goldberg is Oprah Winfrey). They also cheat by having in-studio interviews like the show, including Steve Martin, Kurt Russell and Rob Lowe. All of these people get the joke, but some are better at playing along. (read the rest of this shit…)

Batman Returns

Monday, July 11th, 2022

“It’s the so-called normal guys who always let you down. Sickos never scare me. At least they’re committed.” —Selina Kyle

“He had graduated to a point where he wanted to make movies that are his movies. And this is one hundred percent Tim’s movie.” —BATMAN RETURNS producer Denise DeNovi


On June 19, 1992 we got a blockbuster super hero movie unlike we’d seen before or have since. Since Tim Burton’s BATMAN RETURNS was about as much of a sure thing hit as a studio could ever have, and because the director had been unsure about doing another one, Warner Brothers left him alone to do what he wanted. So it’s a rare combination: an expensive summer blockbuster based on pop culture icons, but also an odd, personal film by an earnest visualist director without much interest in crowdpleasing spectacle. Okay, maybe that describes 1990’s DICK TRACY also, but this is DICK TRACY’s much freakier second cousin. As the first sequel to the movie that made comic book adaptations a hot commodity it was in a unique position to make up most of its own rules about what a super hero sequel is supposed to be, and it wasn’t timid about it.

I’ve written before about my love for the era of comic book movies that started with BATMAN and ended around BLADE or X-MEN. Since the medium that inspired them was still considered nerd shit, since digital FX were in their infancy, since most of them never worried about setting up a sequel let alone a cinematic universe, and since most were heavily influenced by what Tim Burton had done in BATMAN, the genre was very different from what it is today. There was far less literal fidelity to the source material (for good and bad), and relatively few attempts to depict extravagant super powers and creatures, meaning less falling back on visual effects sequences. Some tried to reimagine a pulpy past (THE ROCKETEER, THE SHADOW, THE PHANTOM, DICK TRACY), while the ones trying to be new and contemporary often celebrated colorful outsiders and weirdos (THE CROW, THE MASK, BARB WIRE, TANK GIRL, X-MEN). And I think my favorite thing about them is that they didn’t usually take place in “the real world.” They depended on a stylized look with big sets on sound stages, matte paintings and miniatures to create their own heightened reality. (read the rest of this shit…)