Ask 411 Movies for 11.16.09: I Came Here to Write This Column and Chew Bubblegum and I’m All Out of Column!

Posted by Leonard Hayhurst on 11.16.2009

They Live, best use of songs on TV shows, Virtuality, Blues Brothers 2000, celebrity impressionists, Law & Order and Star Trek, Love Boat style, and more!

This week from YouTube we have "Star Trek: TNG" as "The Love Boat" with a hell of a guest cast. The only mistake here, Geordi should have been the bartender.



I had to get back to the closing Blockbuster. This week I nabbed Team America: World Police, Match Point, The DaVinci Code, Raging Bull, Five Easy Pieces, 12 Rounds, the first full season of "30 Rock" and "Saturday Night Live's 25th Anniversary Special."

I thought I would get flak for saying that Shia LeBeouf was the best actor under 25, but I was instead chastised for picking Andre the Giant as the best wrestler with a prominent role in a movie over Roddy Piper in "They Live."

Now if the question was who is the best wrestler overall turned actor, I would go with Roddy Piper. Piper has proven he can do action, drama, comedy, lead roles, minor parts and come off pretty well. I would love to see Piper wind up in a movie directed by someone known for using quirky actors like Quentin Tarantino or Paul Thomas Anderson. As far as They Live goes, Piper gives a great lead performance, but if the argument of some was that Andre was basically playing Andre in The Princess Bride, I don't see where Piper was doing more than playing Piper here as a kick-ass smart-ass. I think something like 1995's Jungleground, which is another action film with a gimmick, shows how Piper had matured as a lead, action movie actor.

Then again, as pointed out by a few people, comparing the two performances is the proverbial apples and oranges. The films and roles are completely different and require different sets of acting skills and star text to come across correctly. For me, Andre the Giant in The Princess Bride has good chemistry with his fellow actors, understands what the part calls of for him, manages to milk moments for the greatest comedic potential and also comes across as charming and heartwarming as such a family film needs in such a character.

And again, it's a personal preference kind of question. You can look at the acting performances from various technical standpoints, but at the end of the day it's just kind of which one works better for you.



Q: I wouldn't screw Evan Rachel Wood if I was paid.
-Propagandhi

A: My question would be is the job hourly or salary? Are there benefits, like dental and vision? How many vacation days do I get a year? Do I get paid sick days? What's the opportunity for advancement in a job like that? Do you get promoted to Rachel Bilson at some point?



Q: Leonard. Love the column. Look forward to it every Monday morning. There was a Made for TV movie that aired on Fox on June 2009 called 'Virtuality'. It wasn't great, but it ended and was not picked up as a series, which only sucks because I invested 2 hours in it and it ended without answering the questions of what was really going on? I assume that everyone was just in a virtual reality simulation, or something like that. Any word if they will ever close it out?
-Mike

A: "Virtuality" was intended to be a television series, but Fox never picked it up and just burned off the pilot as a TV movie. After it aired, Jessica Blank, wife of actor Erik Jensen who played Dr. Jules Braun, urged through his Facebook page for those who enjoyed the movie to petition Fox to pick it up as a series, but that didn't seem to go anywhere. So there are no plans to ‘finish' the storyline in anyway nor could I find if anyone official with the series ever revealed where it was going.

In the pilot, a 12-person crew aboard the starship Phaeton is on a mission to find a new planet for humanity to move to as the Earth falls to ruin. To keep entertained the crew has glasses that plunge them into a virtual reality world. Their experiences both in and out of the virtual reality is beamed back to Earth as a reality show on Fox, which is actually pretty clever. Things start to go wrong as a mystery man begins to show up in the simulations and causes havoc. Worst of all, the ship's captain (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) is killed in an accident that might not have been so accidental. In the closing of the movie, the captain appears to Rika (Sienna Gullory) in a Civil War reenactment and tells her to follow him to find out what is really going on.



Q: Worst Sequel Ever is no contest... Blues Brothers 2000 is virtually unwatchable, while the original was an instant classic when released.
-Stone2k

A: From 1998, Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd) gets out of prison and finds that his brother Jake and their surrogate father Curtis are both dead. Elwood tries to connect with Curtis' real son (Joe Morton), a cop. Elwood also starts working at a strip club ran by drummer Willie Hall and forms a new duo with the bartender (John Goodman). The reformed and revamped band travel to a battle of the bands where they showdown with the Louisiana Gator Boys, featuring B.B. King, Jeff Baxter, Gary "U.S." Bonds, Eric Clapton, Clarence Clemons, Bo Diddley, Isaac Hayes, Steve Winwood and a host of others. James Belushi was supposed to be in the film, but couldn't fit it into his schedule. Seriously, what was he doing?



Q: I'm a huge Law & Order fan (the original) & most times the detectives or lawyers have a 'swan song' episode when the actors leave the series... they retire or are killed off, etc... my Question is this:

did Det Fontaine(?) played by Dennis Farina have a final episode? or was he just written out the next season? was there a mention of where this character went? The same with the female detective (I know fan response to her wasn't favorable) but did she have a final episode? or did they explain where she went? I never seem to find what happened to them on TNT reruns... if anyone knows, thanks!
The Homewrecker

A: Det. Joe Fontana played by Dennis Farina retired and was replaced by Det. Green (Jesse L. Martin). Oddly, Fontana's final appearance was the ‘swan song' episode for Annie Parisse as Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Borgia who is murdered at the end of "The Invaders."

The female detective you mention is Milena Govich as Nina Cassady. She is noted to be the ‘hand-picked' replacement for Fontana after gaining notoriety for a shoot out in a beauty parlor. Her final episode is "The Family Hour," which is also the final episode for Fred Thompson as Arthur Branch. In the episodes, Cassady botches an interrogation and is chastised for it by superiors, which is inferred to be the reason for her departure as Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto) replaces her the next season.

Q: 1. What is your opinion of Frank Caliendo? Do you think he's a talented impressionist? My friends and I seem to be split on whether or not he's funny. I admit some of his impressions are dead on but his material isn't really that funny to me. What do you think?

2. Who do you think is the best impressionist either at the moment or of all time?
-Guest 1234

A: Frank Caliendo's off beat impressions (like Rod Roddy and Ted Knight) are great and his mainstream ones (like Al Pacino amd George Bush) suck. Nobody did John Madden until he started doing him and now everybody does his Madden instead of trying to do the real Madden. It's like how everyone does Kevin Pollack's Williams Shatner. I do like that he tries to do routines with the voices and not just do the voices on their own like some impressionists do. He tries to work the voices into an act when I've seen his standup. However, I think he stretched this a bit far with "Frank TV" where he tried to shoehorn his most popular characters into sketches. I think Caliendo has some talent, but he needs good writers and other performers around him and that's probably why he rose to fame with "Mad TV." Of course, how ‘good' "Mad TV" was for some is debatable.

Most impressionists have voices they do well and others they don't do so well. So it's really hit or miss. Kevin Pollack I like. Rich Little is a lot like Caliendo where his minor celebrity impressions were better than his major ones, but he does the definitive Johnny Carson and Richard Nixon. Fred Travalena who died this past year was ok. There is a singing impressionist named Greg London who is pretty good. I saw a guy named Tom Stevens at the Dean Martin festival in Steubenville, Ohio, a few years ago who was dead on and he could do about 100 other voices too. I think he was better live than what the below clip shows.



Q: One of my favorite music scences in a movie would have to be in the middle of Summer of Sam with the Who song Baba O'Reilly.

You should do a list of best uses of songs in TV shows. A few I would include would be...

All I Know by Art Garfunkel in the Season 2 finale of Nip/Tuck.

No Suprises by Radiohead on this Seasons premier of House.

Any time Gary Jules version of Mad World shows up on a show. (CSI, Without a Trace, Jericho, etc.)
-Mario

A: After the famous turkey incident on "WKRP in Cincinnati" Johnny immediately plays "It Came From Out of the Sky" by Credence Clearwater Revival.



Colin Hay doing an acoustic version of "Overkill" on "Scrubs."



The bar breaking out into "We Will Rock You" on "Cheers."



"In the Air Tonight" from the "Miami Vice" pilot.



I always liked when Roscoe would catch famous country acts in a speed trap on "The Dukes of Hazzard" and make them work off their debt by playing the Boar's Nest. And here's even an example of what we were talking about recently where they preview the episode before it starts.





Remember last week I said I was waiting on A Simple Plan and I Know How Many Runs You Scored Last Summer? I did get them in from Netflix, haven't watched them yet. I don't want to even hear it. Now I have to add Brothers Solomon to the list too.

Don't die.

"You look like your face fell in the cheese dip back in 1957."