{"id":64,"date":"2015-09-19T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-19T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2015\/09\/19\/42movies-day-9-thats-funny\/"},"modified":"2015-09-19T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-19T16:00:00","slug":"42movies-day-9-thats-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2015\/09\/19\/42movies-day-9-thats-funny\/","title":{"rendered":"#42Movies, Day 9: That&#8217;s Funny"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>To be clear, I mean funny-ha-ha, not funny-strange.<\/p>\n<p><b>Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)<\/b><br \/>and<br \/><b>Galaxy Quest (1999)<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Laugh it up, fuzzball:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5vsANcS4Ml8?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/><small><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/5vsANcS4Ml8\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/5vsANcS4Ml8<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B34jbC43XzA?rel=0&amp;showinfo=0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><br \/><small><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/B34jbC43XzA\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/B34jbC43XzA<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s why these are both classic comedies: because they work as whole stories. The fact that both trailers give away many of each movie&#8217;s specific gags doesn&#8217;t diminish the enjoyment of actually watching them. They&#8217;re not just frameworks on which to hang a string of jokes; they are deep, insightful satires which have great fondness for the source material they&#8217;re riffing on.<\/p>\n<p>The James Bond and <i>Star Trek<\/i> franchises were both very much products of the 1960s. (<i>Galaxy Quest<\/i> dials its show-within-a-show forward to the 1980s, but I suspect that was mostly for production design reasons&mdash;<i>i.e.<\/i>, so the &#8220;old&#8221; footage wouldn&#8217;t look too ridiculously cheesy, like some episodes of TOS do now.) And Austin Powers and <i>Galaxy Quest<\/i>, respectively, have things to say about how those franchises have aged and how they&#8217;re still relevant in some ways, but very much outmoded in others.<\/p>\n<p>One of my happiest memories is of watching the first Austin Powers movie at home with a group of friends. We literally could not stop laughing at certain points. I very clearly remembering <a href=\"http:\/\/kplusb.org\/#karin\">Karin<\/a> doubled over behind the couch, convulsing with laughter during the bathroom scene (&#8220;Who does Number Two work for?!&#8221;). Good times, y&#8217;all.<\/p>\n<p>The sequels were not nearly as good overall, but they did have their moments. <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/vFhrc32kF6E\">The opening of <i>Goldmember<\/i><\/a> in particular is a brilliant send-up of modern spy movies.<\/p>\n<p>DeeAnn and I saw <i>Galaxy Quest<\/i> in the theatre on opening day: December 25, 1999. (I don&#8217;t think we were doing <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/search?q=%40sparckl%20%23xmasmoviethon&amp;src=typd\">#XmasMovieThon<\/a> yet, but I could be wrong. Twitter didn&#8217;t exist yet, so who knows?) It was a perfect Christmas Day movie. I also got to share it with <a href=\"https:\/\/clarionwest2014.wordpress.com\/\">my Clarion West classmates<\/a> last summer, as part of our impromptu cinematic outreach series, which was great fun. (But <a href=\"http:\/\/richwlarson.tumblr.com\/aboutme\">Rich Larson<\/a> still has a lot of catching up to do. STOP WRITING SO MUCH AND WATCH SOME DAMN MOVIES, RICH, GEEZ.)<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, one of my favorite things about GQ is lost in the home video version. The movie actually starts in a 1.85:1 aspect ratio, so the entire picture is <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Windowbox_(film)\">&#8220;windowboxed,&#8221;<\/a> but it&#8217;s not so noticeable in a darkened theatre. It doesn&#8217;t change to the wider 2:35:1 image until about twenty minutes in, when Tim Allen&#8217;s character is being transported back to Earth from outer space. The Thermians escort him to a dark room, the lights go out, and then the walls slide apart to reveal a dazzling, full-widescreen view of outer space.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/malum-iter.com\/AspectRatiosWidescreen.JPG\">a subtle difference<\/a>, but makes for a glorious effect in the theatre. On home video, the entire film is presented in 2.35:1, and it loses that moment of wonder&mdash;you may not have noticed that the picture didn&#8217;t reach all the way to the edges of the screen before, but at that point you become fully aware of how huge it is. (If I&#8217;m ever lucky enough to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tor.com\/2013\/08\/13\/grrm-movie-theatre\/\">own a movie theatre<\/a>, I will screen <i>Galaxy Quest<\/i> every Christmas Day. BELEE DAT.)<\/p>\n<p>Finally, how excited am I that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ew.com\/article\/2015\/08\/27\/galaxy-quest-tv-series-amazon\"><i>Galaxy Quest<\/i> might become an actual television series now<\/a>? I mean, I&#8217;m not holding my breath&mdash;&#8221;in development&#8221; is Hollywood-speak for &#8220;somebody might be working on this maybe but nobody else really cares that much&#8221;&mdash;but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/2015\/04\/cindy-holland-vs-roy-price\/\">Amazon&#8217;s been pretty aggressive about getting into the content game<\/a>. Here&#8217;s hoping they manage to pull off a GQ series that doesn&#8217;t suck.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/snout.org\/HotSheet\/CKL.jpg\" alt=\"Curtis\" title=\"Curtis\" border=\"0\" height=\"32\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To be clear, I mean funny-ha-ha, not funny-strange. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)andGalaxy Quest (1999) Laugh it up, fuzzball: https:\/\/youtu.be\/5vsANcS4Ml8 https:\/\/youtu.be\/B34jbC43XzA Here&#8217;s why these are both classic comedies: because they work as whole stories. The fact that both&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[46,13,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-42movies21days","category-movies","category-video"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}