It's a wacky comedy about the hottest sport in the country: Pickleball! Except they forgot the comedy.

Jake Johnson plays Dusty "The Hammer" Boyd a former child tennis prodigy who was playing the actual tennis star Andy Roddick in a teen tennis championship when tragedy struck. Years later he is still trying to get his game back at his father's tennis club. He is forced to play the lesser sport of pickleball as a means to rehab his wrist. During play he learns a valuable lesson about....blah blah blah. There is a tennis championship to add pickleball courses at the club. Andy Roddick reappears. And John McEnroe appears to do play by play. It's all very dumb The best thing about the film is McEnroe doing play by play. And McEnroe looks good because everything else is so bad. Poor Ed Harris doing an obvious paycheck job tries to bring a little life to his role, but no.

A 10 episode retro-future series that follows a conman selling lunar real estate who is also trying to connect with his estranged son.


Echos of Paper Moon and The Music Man. Good cast, story, production design.

Came out in 2023. Only one season. Kind of a sleeper. Recommended.

--tg

Samuel Jackson plays former police detective turned crime scene cleaner in this film directed by Renny Harlin. Ed Harris is the former partner. Luis Guzman is working on a case. Eva Mendez can't find her husband.

Jackson cleans up a crime scene in a mansion but forgets to return the key. When he returns the next day the owner of the house doesn't know what he is talking about. There has been no crime committed at this house. And off we go. Jackson needs to find out what is going on because he is becoming the prime suspect in the disappearance of a cop who could hold the key to  proving all the corruption in the local police force..

The film is okay but over directed. Why do a close-up when you can do a super close-up? Every scene is broken down into a million close-up shots of actions. Here is the key. Here is the key in the lock. Here is the key turning from a different angle. Let's make coffee. This is the filter. These are drips of water. It becomes intrusive after awhile.

Finally, in the entire film, Jackson never says motherfucker. Not once. His character is very subdued and passive. Not your usual Jackson fare.

I'm putting this here because Hulu is Disney...

https://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomFo...3#pid76143

I had low expectations, but that was entertaining. A comedic parade of gruesome deaths caused by the cursed monkey after some twins find it in their father's belongings long after he'd abandoned the family. The number of funerals borders on Addams Family.

Not strongly recommended, but not a bad way to pass the time. 

--tg

Hansard was an Irish singer songwriter. If there was any event honoring Irish musicians in Dublin, he was a fixture. He started the Christmas busk that brought musicians together to help raise money to help runaway kids. He did the music for the Irish musicals Once, Sing Street, and the new Power Ballad. He died in a car crash at the age of 56

If I look at the man with the shackles through his earlobes one more time,I will not stop looking. His earlobes are stretched almost to his shoulders. Yes, I'm dying to take a picture.

--tg

I was looking for something to watch after doing yardwork all day and pretty beat. The TV in the living room is signed out of most streaming services for some reason, so I poked around Kanopy and found this 1981 film:




It's a story of a mad Baron absconding with an opera singer. Her fiancée, the Count, is searching for her and ends up in a remote village with a castle which seems to hold her. You can watch the entire film in Czech with subtitles (which is how I watched it) here on YouTube:



It's silly and clumsy slapstick, not unlike Hundreds of Beavers,but I enjoyed it. It's directed by Czech animator  Jan Švankmajer, tho there's little stop motion animation in this.


--tg

I'm skipping a step and just going right to a thread with Neagley. Starts September.

https://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomFo...5#pid82894

It was 94 this afternoon. At least it was a dry heat, not that humidity that accompanied recent heat waves...I decided to duck out of the heat at the AMC Sunnyvale. I needed groceries so I could easily pop into Whole Foods after a flick.

TS5 was starting at 5pm, so I ordered a ticket online. Nearly empty theater, 1/2 off Tuesdays, plus I exercised my get off my lawn discount so it was a whopping $14. I didn't realize that this was the 3D experience, so that also included the spex. 

I caught up on work messages and ignored most of the (not 3D) trailers as they were aimed at pre-teens. The Pixar promo for Gatto caught my eye tho (see https://www.brotherhoodofdoom.com/doomFo...o#pid85474). There was a 3D teaser for a new Ice Age installment...meh.

I don't remember much about Toy Story 4, (I took my mom to see that one when we went to Bozeman for my daughter's wedding 7 years ago) but I thought they had wrapped up the character arcs. This one begins focusing on Jessie with her new kid. The toy gang is all here, except for Woody. (The backstory from the previous films is filled in - he's semiretired with Little Bo-peep and the Canadian Evel Kinevel rescuing toys)

Jessie's current kid has a sad because the neighbor twins won't play with her. They spend most of their time with their faces stuck in screens. Her parents get her a Lilypad - a kid-gadget like the other kids have in hopes that she'll find/make friends. That doesn't work out. 

Simultaneously, a shipping crate of high tech Buzz Lightyears washes up on a desert island. The Buzz's revive each other and try to get to Star Command. So the story goes back and forth between Jessie et al, and the Buzz hoard's progress. 

It's amazing that they can make such a good movie for a 5th installment. It was sweet, funny, not as heavy-handed as I thought it was going to be (I knew it was an anti-tech treatise which is ironic coming from a digital production house always at the forefront of tech)

I have to add that I've see a few Real 3D films (Coraline being the last I remember) and in this one, the effect did not detract at all. I forgot I was wearing the glasses. I wouldn't recommend it, but I wouldn't not recommend it. 

I laughed quite a few times. A worthy installment to the franchise. 

Recommended if you want a kid friendly CGI story that isn't infantile. 

--tg