"Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves" (2023)

This movie surprised me over and over and over.

I first watched Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) about a year ago on an airplane.  My kids all play D&D, and my son is even in a teen D&D group at our local library.  Most of the other teens in that group saw this movie and praised it, so he really wanted to see it too.  But I'm pretty cautious about letting my kids, even my teens, watch movies I haven't seen before, so I told him I'd need to see it first.  I meant to get it out of the library sometime, but then we flew out to visit my parents last fall, and this was one of the in-flight movie options, so I figured, why not?

This movie made me laugh out loud.  Repeatedly.  On an airplane.  It was so smart, so funny, so delightful, that I just couldn't help laughing with glee over it!  I tried to be quiet, but I'm pretty sure I startled my seatmates more than once.  (My kids were all in a row ahead of me, where I could keep an eye on them, but I was sitting by strangers).

D&D: HAT centers on Edgin (Chris Pine), a wryly charming thief who escapes from prison with his best friend, the potato-obsessed warrior, Holga (Michelle Rodriguez).  They set off to rescue Edgin's daughter Kira (Chloe Coleman), who was left alone when Edgin and Holga were imprisoned after a heist gone wrong.  They discover that Kira is being raised by their erstwhile pal Forge (Hugh Grant), who has somehow managed to become lord of the land.  Forge has been lying to Kira, saying that Edgin doesn't love her, abandoned her on purpose, and so on, because he wants to raise her as his own daughter.  He tries to have Edgin and Holga killed, but Holga is not the sort of person who is killed easily.

Edgin and Holga escape and put together a small group of people willing to help them rescue Kira, including a magician with confidence issues named Simon (Justice Smith) and a shapeshifting rebel named Doric (Sophia Lillis).  They try to figure out how to steal Kira away from Forge, but end up uncovering Forge's sinister plot to destroy the whole kingdom.  In order to save Kira, they have to save the kingdom too.

And, lest my kids yell at me, I need to also mention Xenk (Regé-Jean Page), a mystical former warrior who dispenses gifts and advice in the most literal and hilariously dead-pan way possible.  I probably laugh more over Xenk's scenes than all the rest.

I have seen this movie at least five times now, and it delights me every time.  The storytelling is incredibly smart, one of those stories where every piece slots right in where it needs to.  Things that seem random at the beginning are shown to be important later.  It's like one of those pretty 3-D crystal puzzles where you slowly see the whole story take shape and appreciate it more and more as you get to see how things fit together.  

And yet!  The movie also feels like this could be a D&D campaign with a bunch of people making the story up as it goes along.  The dialog is simultaneously witty and sharp and funny, yet also feels like things people would say because they think their character will sound cool saying them.  That is an incredibly tricky balance, but they pull it off.  

Also, although I laugh a lot over this movie, there is a part at the end that always makes me cry, too.  It's not just all funny hijinks.  This movie centers around relatable, individual relationships.  Parents and children.  Friends.  Husbands and wives.  That's what forms the core for the film, which is really what elevates it above the usual slash-and-bash sort of fantasy films, for me.

The whole film totally works for someone like me, who hasn't played D&D (though I do have a general sense of how it works).  But my kids, who do play D&D, love it on a whole different level.  They're always explaining to me how most of what's in the movie comes straight from the game, like owlbears, gelatinous cubes that dissolve people, a coin that lets you talk to dead people, and so many other things.  I love that this movie is able to stand on its own, work for dedicated fans of the game, and ALSO gently spoof fantasy movies, all at once!  Wow.

Oh, and one other thing I love?  The unabashedly platonic friendship between Edgin and Holga.  They are a wonderful team, but they've never been in love, nor do they fall in love during this adventure, nor are they likely to ever fall in love in the future, and they are both totally happy with that.

Is this movie family friendly?  Well, it has quite a bit of bad language.  There's a bit of rude humor (mostly from the reanimated corpses in one very funny section, which are a bit gross) and some very, very subtle innuendo here and there.  But there's no smut, there's only a hint of possible romance between two side characters, and the violence is all quite stylized and fantastical and unrealistic.  All three of my kids have seen this repeatedly, and they are ages 12+.  It's a great movie for teens and more mature tweens.

This has been my contribution to this weekend's Barbarians at the Gates blogathon co-hosted by myself here at Hamlette's Soliloquy and by Quiggy over at The Midnite Drive-In.  

"The Trouble with Harry" (1955)

What IS the trouble with Harry?

Well, Harry is dead.  And, the trouble is, nobody really minds that he's dead.  They just can't quite decide what to do with his body.  Should they bury him where he died, out in the middle of the New England countryside?  Should they leave him out in the open for the authorities to find?  Should they report his death to the authorities?

Harry was a stranger to the little New England community where he died, but not to one person who lives there -- Mrs. Jennifer Rogers (Shirley MacLaine).  She is, in fact, his widow now.  She was originally married to Harry's brother, with whom she had her little boy Arnie (Jerry Mathers), but then her husband died, and Harry decided it was his duty to marry his brother's widow and provide a home for her and his brother's son. 

But it's not Jennifer who finds Harry's body.  He dies on a sunny woodland hillside, possibly mistaken for a rabbit and shot.  Possibly killed by a blow from an outraged spinster.  Possibly from being hit over the head with a bottle by someone else.  His body is found at various times by little Arnie, a wandering doctor reciting poetry, a tramp, Captain Wiles (Edmund Gwenn), Miss Gravely (Mildred Natwick), and artist Sam Marlowe (John Forsythe).  

In the midst of burying and unburying Harry multiple times for various reasons, hiding him and leaving him out in the open, and hiding him again, and so on, two people fall in love, several people make new friends, and someone's fortune is made.  It's a black comedy from Alfred Hitchcock, with many little surprises along the way, but none of the fear or fright that his movies are usually known for.  And I love it!  In fact, it's my third-favorite Hitchcock film :-)

Is this movie family friendly?  Yeah, basically?  There's a little conversation about a couple's wedding night going unconsummated, but it's very vague.  No bad language, no real violence, nothing else objectionable UNLESS you find black humor objectionable.  Then you won't like this at all.

This has been my contribution to the Master of Suspense Blogathon hosted this weekend at Classic Film and TV Corner.  Be sure to check out the other fun entries!

Hamlet as retold by Andy Griffith

Okay, but I absolutely loved this?  I mean, I already love Andy Griffith, and obviously I adore Hamlet.  So how would I not love this little retelling, which I guess Griffith did as part of a stand-up act at some point?  Oh man, it's so good.  It made me laugh, and it made me lonesome for North Carolina, and so... yeah... I dug it.

(I especially got a kick out of what he decides the moral of the story is.)

May, 2015 -- The Good Parts Version

Videos

Okay, this is not going to interest everyone, but I personally find it both hilarious and amazing.  It's from the Spike TV show Lip Sync Battle, and it's Dwayne Johnson not just lip syncing to the BeeGee's "Stayin' Alive," but doing a full-on, choreographed dance routine to it.  Warning:  it's a little silly and a lot sexy.  (Or maybe a lot silly and a little sexy?)  This vid should start right up with his number and skip Jimmy Fallon's Madonna song, if I set it up right.  What I like best about it is realizing how much time my big, muscly guy Dwayne Johnson had to have spent practicing that routine with the backup dancers, and how well he pulls the whole thing off :-D

And now for something completely different:  an amazing interview with Juliet and Hayley Mills in Australia, where they're appearing on stage together right now.  The first half is more serious, and the second half is quite funny, as they crack each other up several times.

Blogs

This is a Tumblr site, not a blog, but if you haven't checked out Awesome People Reading yet, then do so forthwith!  It's an amazing collection of pictures of, well, awesome people who are reading.  It gets updated every few days, and it has everyone from actors (classic Hollywood to modern) to authors to musicians to politicians -- it's amazing.  And addictive.

I found this post by Kelly-Anne very timely.  It's a quote from North and South about modesty, which I've just been trying to explain to my kids.

Pinterest Fun

This excellent quote from J.K. Rowling, which I 100% agree with:

(Source)

This shot of Dwayne Johnson on the set of Hercules, playing patty-cake with a 2-year-old :-D  (I swear I did not intentionally make this whole post Dwayne Johnson-themed, it just happened.)

(Source)

And this bunch of comparison shots of my two favorite film versions of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson:

(Source)

There you go!  Bunch of cool stuff I found online in May but didn't blog individually about because I was saving them for this post of reasons ;-)

April, 2015 -- The Good Parts Version

Here we go again!  A compilation of fun stuff I encountered online over the past month, but didn't blog about individually.

Videos

A friend linked to this on Facebook, and it has been cracking me and my kids up for weeks.  Clean, ultra-hilarious comedy from Tim Conway and Harvey Korman on The Carol Burnett Show in 1969:



And now for something completely different... J. R. R. Tolkien reading a poem in Elvish:



Your life is now complete.  You're welcome.  (Thank you to Hannah for pinning that!)

And lastly, in honor of the new Star Wars movie coming out far too many months from now, here's a vid of the University of Maryland's chapel bells playing the Imperial March:



(Cowboy found that.  Now you see why I married him.)


Blog Posts

The Shakespeare comics blog "Peace, Good Tickle Brain" did a mash-up of Hamlet with songs from The Sound of Music.  Um, yes.  It's quite amusing.  Here's part 1 -- you can click through to each subsequent part from there. (Thank you to my Cowboy for finding it and sharing it with me because he knew it would make me laugh.)

Mystery author Camille LaGuire explains here why mystery as a genre was almost murdered by booksellers, and how Amazon saved it.   Completely fascinating, especially if you love mysteries OR if you're an author interested in how the publishing world works.  (Thank you, Elisabeth Grace Foley, for linking to it on your blog!)

A super-duper long post by Javier Grillo-Marxuach about what it was like to write for Lost during it's first seasons -- an attempt to answer that infernal question, "Did you know what you were doing the whole time, or just making it up as you went along?"   TL;DR:  "...inspiration is always augmented through improvisation, collaboration, serendipity, and plain, old, unglamorous Hard Work."  (Also, he calls my Sawyer "a southern-fried con artist whose skills would have been essentially useless in the wild," which cracks me up.)  WARNING:  Contains some major bad language, but only a little.  (Many thanks to Noumenon for pointing me to it.)

This excellent review of the Dana Andrews western The Ox-Bow Incident by Eva Schon.  TOBI is one of my absolute least-favorite movies ever, but unlike most of the movies I hate, I hate it because it's so well-made and realistic and possible that it frightens me, whereas usually I hate movies that are dumb or badly made or just plain gross.

Lastly, a thought-provoking look at daily ways people can lay down their lives for their friends on one of my favorite blogs, Sister Daughter Mother Wife.


Pinterest Fun

I love this -- the artwork, the idea, everything:

(Source)

And what a great concept this has:

And I'm fascinated by this comparison of all the characters in five different versions of Pride and Prejudice.  (Thank you to Ruth for pinning that!)

(Source)

I meant to post this yesterday, but I was kind of wandering around in an Avengers-induced haze all day and forgot :-o

MEMM Day 09 - Scenes/things you laugh at

I laugh at a LOT of places in these movies.  I'm going to break this down by movie and try to list just two for each so this post doesn't go on for pages and pages :-)

I tend to laugh over things that delight me, surprise me in a good way, unexpected-but-perfect word choices (mostly a book thing), and characters behaving in a way that sort of typifies exactly who they are and what they're like.  And complete absurdity, that'll set me off too.

The Fellowship of the Ring

Pippin's smart-alecky face when he says, "We've had one yes.  But what about second breakfast?"  He's so confident that Aragorn will be like, "Oh!  Yes, I forgot about second breakfast.  By all means, let's stop, build a fire, and cook another meal.  My bad."

When the Council of Elrond has agreed that Frodo will take the Ring into Mordor, Sam jumps out of hiding and says he's going too, and Elrond is like, "Aren't you sweet."  But then Merry and Pippin pop out too and run past him, and Elrond has this expression of, "Gah!  My city is overrun by these Hobbits!"  Cracks me up.


The Two Towers

Gimli's grousing about being a natural sprinter, when he and Legolas and Strider are doing their awe-inspiring run to the rescue.  Really never gets old.  It's totally just there to be funny, and I usually don't like jokes-for-the-sake-of-jokes, but that one does amuse me.

Merry and Pippin's expressions at various times during their time with Treebeard also make me laugh, but not always the same ones -- guess it depends on my mood.


The Return of the King

Merry and Pippin and Gimli again, this time when everyone arrives at Isengard and get greeted by two jolly hobbits.  That whole section cracks me up.

The drinking contest between Gimli and Legolas is also quite amusing, and I definitely laugh when Legolas says, "I think it's beginning to affect me," and then Gimli falls over.

An Unexpected Journey

Bombur catching an egg in his mouth, and everyone's reaction to it.  Especially since I know now that that was the first take, and no one expected him to be able to do it!  I mostly dislike the whole dwarves-invade-Bag-End-and-mess-everything-up sequence, but that part is very funny.

I laugh at all the dwarves splashing around in the fountain at Rivendell in the extended version.  Well, mostly I laugh at how discomfited the elves are by this -- I sympathize, but at the same time, it's hilarious.


The Desolation of Smaug

Kili telling Tauriel a scary story about how his rune stone will curse anyone who's not a dwarf if they look at it.  He's such a teenage boy there, and I love her reaction -- this look of, "Oooookay, let's just walk away from the crazy dwarf, then."

When all the dwarves are coming up out of the toilet into Bard's house, and little Tilda asks, "Will they bring us luck?"  I laugh because it's a perfect little-kid thing to ask, and also because yes, they will.  Thanks to everything that goes down once those dwarves reach the mountain, your Da is going to be King of Dale in a couple years, kiddo.  Lucky dwarves, indeed.


The Battle of the Five Armies

When Thranduil asks Bilbo if he's the one who helped the dwarves escape, and Bilbo does his nose-twitch thing and says, "Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrm, yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees."  Who could help laughing there?

Alfrid readjusting the gold stashed in his dress while he's preparing to scuttle off for good.  I laugh because it makes me think of Little John in Disney's animated Robin Hood, also buxom with stolen gold.  Also, Alfrid's trying to be so smart, but he looks ridiculous, and he's trying hard not to acknowledge that he looks ridiculous, and so, yup, it's funny.

One of Those Days

(source)

"Red" (2010) -- Initial Thoughts

My dear friend DKoren has been bugging me to see this for ages now, and so she and I watched it together over a couple nights this week.  Oh my goodness!  I wish she had bugged me more!  This is one wild, crazy, wacky water slide of a movie.  I cannot wait to see it again, because it is pure fun.  And because I laughed so hard at times that I not only missed dialog, but I'm kind of hazy on some plot points.  But when we watch movies together, we're on opposite ends of the continent, and I can't just rewind and watch what I missed or we'll get unsynced.  So... I will be forced to watch it again.  Oh, the agony!

The basic plot is that Frank Moses (Bruce Willis) is a retired CIA agent trying to live a normal life, but after he's almost assassinated by unknown assailants, he gets back in the game and drags a bunch of his fellow retirees (and his almost-girlfriend) with him.  Those fellow retirees include Joe (Morgan Freeman), Marvin (John Malkovich), Victoria (Helen Mirren), and Ivan (Brian Cox).  And don't forget the CIA hitman who's now been tasked with taking Frank down -- that would be William Cooper (Karl Urban).  And then there's the almost-girlfriend, Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker), who adds smile-inducing quirk to her every scene.

While I was watching this, I started comparing the cast to a hot fudge sundae, and the analogy worked so well, I'm going to up the dessert to a banana split and include all the main players.  Because I can.  And because this is that kind of movie.

We'll start with the ice cream, since that's what gets put in first.  Cooper (Karl Urban) is all three flavors:  vanilla, strawberry, and chocolate.  For the first 2/3 or so of the movie, he's too flavorless, all clean-shaven and being the good soldier who never questions orders.  But then he gets in over his head, he gets scruffy, and he starts getting a sweet-yet-tart thing going on.  And by the end, oh, he is rich, creamy, chocolatey goodness.

Next come the bananas, which definitely represent Marvin (John Malkovich).  The dude is completely loony, but in the most hilarious way possible.  He's twitchy, he's paranoid, he's unpredictable -- he truly is bananas!

Okay, that's the base ingredients, so now on to the really good stuff.  Victoria (Helen Mirren) is the crushed pineapple -- tangy and sassy, demanding all your attention whenever she's around. She's like a lethal Martha Stewart, if you can imagine that.

Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) would be the whipped cream.  At first you think she's just tossed into the mix to add some sex appeal, to make us laugh, to make Frank seem more interesting, or because there weren't enough female characters.  But like whipped cream, you eventually realize that without her, the whole thing would be kinda blah.

Joe (Morgan Freeman) is the butterscotch sauce.  He's both sweet and salty, loveable and deadly.  I wish he'd had more screen time, just like I always wish my banana splits had more butterscotch sauce.

Frank (Bruce Willis) is the hot fudge, and I do mean hot.  He's one of the few white guys who actually looks better bald than with hair -- very few, since, as someone once said (was it Dave Barry?), most bald white guys look like giant thumbs.  But wow, he is smooth and yummy in this.

He held me at gunpoint until I agreed to post 3 pics of him instead of 1.

And finally, Ivan (Brian Cox) is the cherry on top.  He completely steals every scene he's in, he's scrumptious and wonderful, but he only has a tiny role and leaves me wanting a lot more.  Like those maraschino cherries, I can't get enough!

Is this a family-friendly movie?  It's got a good bit of violence, though none of it is gory -- it's kind of old-school movie violence, with little blood shown, and a lot of deaths implied or off-camera.  There's some bad language, including the dreaded f-bomb, but I see Clearplay has a filter for this movie, so if you're into Clearplay, it could easily become very watchable.  No sex, no nudity, just a few kisses and one or two lower-cut blouses.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the title, R.E.D. stands for "Retired -- Extremely Dangerous."  They definitely are all of that!

Finally, this is one of Ernest Borgnine's last movies, and he's adorable in it.  So I'll end with a shot of him :-)

Day 26 - A film that you love but everyone else hates

I don't think I have a real answer for this.  I know at least one person who likes every movie I like.  So I will pick a movie that my friend ED and I watched alllllllll the time in college, but that was considered a total disaster by most critics, and was a stupendous commercial failure as well.  I am, of course, talking about Ishtar (1987).

Ishtar is the far-fetched tale of a singing/song-writing duo who get accidentally embroiled in middle east intrigue. Think North by Northwest crossed with Some Like it Hot.  The singers are played by Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty.  Yeah.

I think that maybe people didn't realize that Ishtar is supposed to be funny. I'm not sure how they could have missed that fact, but perhaps the presence of Hoffman and Beatty threw them off?  If it'd been, say, Steve Martin and Chevy Chase, then would people have understood?  But it's Beatty and Hoffman being so very serious that makes Ishtar funny!  They belt out insane lyrics like "Hot fudge love, cherry ripple kisses" with perfect earnestness, they struggle through the desert leading a blind camel, Warren Beatty's character idealizes Dustin Hoffman's character for being so much better with women... and they never crack a smile or wink at the camera.  How anyone can help but laugh is beyond me.

ED and I used to quote this movie all the time, and sing songs from it.  Our favorite bit of dialog we would do with each other came from the above scene and went like this:

WB:  "I'm not crying.  A piece of sand blew in my eye."
DH:  "Wait a minute -- a piece of sand blew in your eye?  I thought you said there was no wind in the desert."
WB:  "Must be one of them once-in-a-lifetime occurrences."

Not exactly standard humor, I grant you.  But it made us laugh and laugh!  We'd do it whenever a sudden wind kicked up.

Our favorite song from the movie went like this:

Telling the truth can be dangerous business;
Honest and popular don't go hand-in-hand.
If you admit that you can play the accordion,
No one will hire you for a rock-n-roll band...

(I found the song on mp3 here if you want to hear it.)

Oh, how I love the Guard Duck!

Two things that make me laugh lately:

"Couch Potato" -- Weird Al's version of Eminem's song "Lose Yourself" (which happens to be my favorite Eminem song).

"A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope: Reconsidering Star Wars IV in the light of I-III" -- by the sixth paragraph, I'm giggling every time I read it.

Just because these are so funny....

	I, Hamlette, being of sound mind, hereby bequeath my entire estate to the Town Drunk. I do this because I like the cut of their jib. My only regret in this life was that I didn't cry in the corner enough.
'What will your Last Will and Testament say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

	I, White Queen, being of sound mind, hereby bequeath my entire estate to a wet mop. I do this because I want to support their efforts to take over the world. My only regret in this life was that I wasn't evil enough.
'What will your Last Will and Testament say?' at QuizGalaxy.com

Although I did once wear the top part of a Darth Vader helmet for several hours at work one night, I didn't have this much fun with it!

This article about being a Johnny Depp fan is really funny just because it's true. When you get to the paragraph that begins: "It appears that Johnny Depp is so talented in our eyes that his fame stays untarnished, no matter how many celebrity clichés he falls into," well, that's where my giggles and nods of agreement turned into full-blown "right on!" laughing. It's just so dreadfully true!

It's Classic Star Trek in the style of Monty Python and the Holy Grail! "On second thought, let's not go there. It's a silly place!"

Many thanks to Noumenon for sending me this link a zillion years ago :-D It never fails to make me giggle!

Okay, no secret that I've liked the comic strip "Pearls Before Swine" for a while now. And since the advent of the Guard Duck... what can I say? I love it! The Guard Duck is me! Here are some of my faves (click on them to make them bigger and more readable):(For lots of great Pearls before Swine strips, including more with the Guard Duck, check out the Swine Feeding Trough)

Okay, I never pay much attention to the mainstream media, because news bores me. And I've purposely been ignoring them lately, because they're making such a fuss over Mel Gibson's DUI incident (I still love you, Malomar!).

But, as usual, The Daily Show has come to my rescue, this time by mocking the media's mocking of Mel Gibson in this marvelous bit from a day or two ago. Hooray for Jon Stewart!

I love The Daily Show!!! They have put into very funny words all the reasons why I love and adore my 35mm cameras and really don't want to get a digital camera!

**Warning, mild expletives included**

(If you're wondering why I'm posting this at 1:22pm when all sane 3rd-shift people would be asleep, it's because we've started our vacation today, and Cowboy and I are converting to dayshifterism for the next week or so.)

Behold, my new favorite comic:

Now this is revisionist history I can get behind!