”In the Loop” is a broad and harsh satire in which the feckless and self-serving behavior of political operatives in Britain and the United States threaten to lead inexorably to a completely needless war. To all appearances, the war is not waged for any logical reason, but only to further the personal agendas of a few ego-addled politicos. Farfetched, isn’t it?

Directed by acclaimed British TV comedy veteran Armando Iannucci (”I’m Alan Partridge”), “In the Loop” is largely an extension of the 2005 miniseries, “In the Thick of It,” with its Oscar-nominated screenplay penned by Iannucci and a quartet of writers from the series. And so, “In the Loop” borders stylistically on mock-documentary. However, if it were an actual documentary, it would be in the category of, “I could send you a screener, but then I’d have to kill you.” It’s a real worm’s-eye view of the rush to a war of (poor) choice.

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And now a moment of NSFW….

In 1934’s “Manhattan Melodrama,” Clark Gable’s virtuous gangster literally goes to the gallows for the sake of his friendship with William Powell’s honest but sincerely conflicted politician, now the governor of the state. As Gable nobly refuses Powell’s offer of a reprieve – he deserves his fate – and prepares to meet his end, they shake hands, a bit dewy-eyed. Thirty-four years later, Oscar (Walter Matthau) and Felix (Jack Lemmon) in “The Odd Couple” are pretty clearly in the throes of one hilariously complex love/hate relationship but, when their friendship is healed by the end of the film, even the briefest of hugs is not in the cards for the poker buddies.

Now, of course, we live in a very different male-bonding world. Yet, even as the hug becomes the new handshake for many, the question remains: what is the new hug? No wonder so many of us seem caught between a junior high school level fear of being thought gay and artsy post collegiate embarrassment that we’re not cool enough to actually be, you know, a little bit gay. It’s life in the post-Kinsey, post-ambisexual/glam David Bowie, post “Seinfeld” “not that there’s anything wrong with that” world where, as proven by “Superbad,” the spectacle of straight males being physically affectionate is somehow funnier than ever.

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Also, If you’ve haven’t seen them, you may also want to check out my interviews with Humpday’s two stars, Mark Duplass (of the filmmaking Duplass brothers) and actor-filmmaker Joshua Leonard (”The Blair Witch Project.”)

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 A once influential theatrical artist with a flair for surreal provocation and a madcap sense of humor makes some questionable decisions and winds up in a world where, at least for the moment, no one much cares for his stories. Doe this remind us of anyone we know?

Well, ex-Monty Python animator and trouble-plagued big budget cult movie director Terry Gilliam has made no secret of the autobiographical nature of “The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus.” Between that, the tragic death of Heath Ledger midway through filming, and the numerous references to the grim reaper that fill this dark and occasionally comic fantasy, it’s kind of impossible not to think about the grim real world conditions of its making; not only did the production lose its star in the most painful way possible partway through filming, but producer William Vince also passed on from cancer during post-production, while Gilliam himself suffered serious injuries after being hit by a car. The writer-director emphasizes that the screenplay for “Parnassus” was not significantly rewritten after Ledger’s death, but in view of this strangely disjointed film, that brings up a lot more questions than it answers.

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Note: This review was co-written many weeks back (I’m linking late!) with the highly esteemed Ross Ruediger of Bullz-Eye and The Rued Morgue. Guess which movies I saw, and which ones Ross saw!

Forty-two years after his death, B-horror legend William Castle remains synonymous with cinematic gimmicks with names like “Emergo,” (a glow-in-the-dark skeleton that flew over the audience), “Percepto” (a small vibrator under some theaters seats) and “Illusion-O” (a “ghost viewer”). Though his modestly budgeted productions delighted the young, they were impossible to take seriously and never earned him the kind of respect given to less avidly commercial auteurs. Still, he was a solid movie craftsman of the old school with a buoyant attitude who worked with Orson Welles and Roman Polanski, and possibly influenced Alfred Hitchcock’s move into sensational horror with “Psycho” and “The Birds.” As a director, he was a competent craftsman whose essentially good-natured works aimed a bit low. As a showman, however, Welles, Polanski, and Hitchcock had very little on him.

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I was very sorry to hear earlier this morning of the death at age 79 of a personal favorite of mine, Edward Woodward. Although he may still be best known for his roles in the acclaimed fact-based war drama, “Breaker Morant,” the espionage/crime-vigilante TV series, “The Equalizer,” and by our friends in England as the cynical, super-tough spy “Callan,” his role in what was once a fairly obscure cult film all but buried by its studio, the 1973 “The Wicker Man,” is getting the lion’s share of attention in most of his press obituaries, that’s including the very touching one issued by the BBC this morning.

“The Wicker Man” has been one of my favorite movies since I was teenager and remains so now — not even the worst imaginable remake can touch that film, and that proposition has now been tested. Still, my admiration of the actor Woodward goes well beyond one single role. He was the kind of performer you could rely on to be great in anything and so he was on countless television programs. A master of understatement who knew when and how to go big (the oft-spoiled ending of “The Wicker Man” being a case in point), he was a real virtuoso whose un-showy approach probably doomed him to being underrated to a certain degree. Still, he didn’t seem to mind and judging from the press accounts I’ve been reading, he was a real gentleman and as fun to be around as his best known characters were definitely not. He was also, by the way, an accomplished Shakespearian stage actor and a fair-to-middling pop singer. It’s a shame he rarely got to do either on screen, though his voice can be heard to powerful effect during the final scene of “Breaker Morant.” (If you don’t mind learning the fate of his title character, or already know it from history, you can see the conclusion here.)

Two of his more devoted fans appear to have been Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, who were smart enough to cast Woodward in “Hot Fuzz,” and you can read their thoughts at Wright’s blog and via a message board post by Pegg. (Big h/t to Beaks.) Wright’s piece is really lovely and I strongly recommend you read all of if . However, here’s one line that tickled me, in the spirit of “it’s funny because it’s true.”

I also remember telling him that Quentin [Tarantino] was a huge fan of his film ‘Sitting Target’ (another great soundtrack – btw) and he looked shocked. I’m not sure anyone had ever complimented him on it. He replied “Well, you must tell your friend he is very strange indeed”.

And so it goes, another great lost. I do want to echo Edgar Wright’s entreaty that, especially you’ve never seen it, you watch the 1973 “The Wicker Man” as fast as possible and avoid any place where spoilers about the ending might be found, which seems to be about 99% of what’s been posted about it recently. (I tried to avoid giving too much away in my 2000 review linked to above.) Woodward’s portrayal of a repressed, bitter, humorless, but also decent, principled, and compassionate man is, to me, very much what acting is all about. So, why are we surprised to hear about what a funny and regular guy he was in real life? He was acting — extraordinarily well.

Greg of Cinema Styles has more. Highly recommended.

Originally posted at Premium Hollywood.

I’m 17 years late getting on board the “Army of Darkness” cult train, but I’m pretty glad I finally did, even if I’m not certain I’ll be taking many repeat trips. A sequel to Sam Raimi’s late 80s horror comedy non-sequel, “Evil Dead II: Dead by Dawn,” “Army” drops most of the horror of the prior film and combines Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” with bargain basement Tolkien and a huge dose of imaginative slapstick comedy in the vein of classic era Warner Brothers cartoons and the Three Stooges. The result is a pretty rich broth of high-style geekery.

The film opens as wisecracking, chainsaw-armed, loutish, egotistical big-box hardware store clerk hero, Ash (cult superstar Bruce Campbell) and his Oldsmobile Delta Royale fall through some kind of time hole and wind up in 13th century England by way of California’s Bronson Canyon and Vasquez Rocks. Held captive by Lord Arthur (Marcus Gilbert), his only initial supporter is the local Wiseman (Ian Abercrombie). However, victory in battle against some hideous monsters and the chance to use his magical “boomstick” (actually, a non-magical 12-gauge shotgun) adds to Ash’s credibility and helps to attract the amorous attention of a refined and beautiful noblewoman (Embeth Davidtz, adding a touch of class and some real emotion to the proceedings).

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An important chunk of entertainment history left us yesterday with the death of Larry Gelbart at 81. Gelbart was gifted both working alone and as a collaborator with other writers. It probably helped that relatively early in his career he labored alongside Carl Reiner, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Neil Simon on comedian Sid Caesar’s classic early variety shows. In the sixties he graduated to Broadway and the movies. With Burt Shevelove, he cowrote the book for the Broadway musical/Zero Mostel vehicle, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (later filmed by Richard Lester) and the hard to find all-star cult British comedy, “The Wrong Box.” A Chicago-born graduate of L.A.’s Fairfax High (right across the street from Cantor’s Deli), he lived in England for a time, working with another nice Jewish boy named Marty Feldman at the height of his English television fame.

He became much better known in the seventies as the primary writer during the early, funnier and more politically pointed days on the television version of “M*A*S*H.” I get to write about him because he made a mark in movies that’s too important to ignore, writing several good ones, and some not so good. He’ll probably be most commonly remembered for his work on “Oh, God” with George Burns in the title role, and what is probably Dustin Hoffman’s best performance in “Tootsie,” which is something of a comedy classic. He also co-wrote with Sheldon Keller the vastly underrated and all but impossible to see spoof of early Hollywood (specifically Warner Brothers) films, “Movie, Movie,” directed by Stanley Donen and starring George C. Scott, Eli Wallach, Trish van Devere, and Barry Bostwick. (A likely model for “Grindhouse,” in that it was also a double-feature complete with fake trailers.) It more than made up for the regrettable but profitable “Blame it On Rio,” written by Gelbart and also directed by Donen, which starred Michael Caine, Joseph Bologna and an extremely young Demi Moore.

In the nineties, he divided his time between Broadway plays like “City of Angels,” a musical spoof of classic hard-boiled detective novels, and pointed TV movies like “Barbarians at the Gate” — a tongue in cheek version of a nonfiction book about the buyout of Nabisco — and 1992’s “Mastergate,” an unbelievably witty parody of the hearings that invariably follow major Washington scandals.

Mr. Gelbart never stopped writing until almost the end, and was easily one of the most respected and beloved writers in all of show business. 81 isn’t exactly young, but we could’ve used a few more years of his presence. It’s a sad weekend for the world of funny.

Below, a great moment from “Tootsie.”

[This posted appeared originally at “Premium Hollywood.”]

In which I shamelessly plug the new exploitarama from my long time friend and cohort, Cody Jarrett. “Sugar Boxx” a women-in-prison low-budget extravaganza of sex, mayhem and other tried and true filmic values premieres tomorrow night, September 5th, at midnight at the Sunset 5 Theatres on the eastern edge of West Hollywood. Those lucky enough to be in attendance will be treated to sexy nudity, a great score (by The Millionaire of Combustible Edison and Steven Adler, formerly of Guns ‘n Roses), gratuitous violence, nudielicious sex, a line of hilarious-yet-pithy dialogue 40% written by me as well as brief flashes…of me (in a nonspeaking role!), nudity, Russ Meyer superstars Tura Satana and Kitten Natividad and the smoking-hot stars of tomorrow (and reality TV), foul language, a little violence, and some more or less nude lesbian sex.

You can see just a hint of that below:

The show is likely to be crowded with famed cast members (including me!) and may well sell out, so buying your tickets early is a good thing. You may still be able to do so here. And, if you can’t make it — acceptable excuses include living thousands of miles from greater Los Angeles — the absolute least you can do is to check out the Sugar Boxx Facebook page as well as the fabulous official website which will no doubt help keep you informed as to various means of viewing this soon-to-be-enormous masterwork.

For more information on fighting hard drugs among our nation’s preschoolers and first graders, see the FSITO website.

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Now, before you decide to come after me for giving free publicity to really sketchy charities, be aware that this is a nice bit of viral marketing for the upcoming seventies blaxsploitation spoof, “Black Dynamite,” which I was fortunate to see at the Los Angeles Film Festival two months back. From cowriter/director Scott Sanders and cowriter star Michael Jai White (”Spawn”), it’s easily the funniest and best made comedy genre homage in a very long time, and its marketing isn’t bad either. The movie’s official site is worth a look, too.

(Also posted at Premium Hollywood.)

More here. And here.