Everybody must get stoned ... at the movies

For the record (and just in case any of my employers happen to read this), I have smoked pot exactly once in at least the last 10 years or so - in 2006 - and I didn't particularly enjoy it.

I do, however, as do more people than might want to admit it, really like stoner movies. I don't mean movies that are supposedly fun to watch while on drugs (though plenty of those are great.) And I won't include any of the Cheech & Chong flicks, even if they are the gold standard, just because it seems too obvious.

And all of this, of course, is in honor of "Pineapple Express," which I won't be seeing until Friday but which I'm virtually certain I'm just going to love. How in the world Seth Rogen became a bigger star than James Franco I'll never know, but seeing these two Freaks together in what looks like a thoroughly crazy flick should just be a joy.

So, without any further ado, here are six movies I really like that have at least a little bit to do with those funny cigarettes:

Dazed and Confused: Lining up for a free screening of this Richard Linklater flick while I was at the University of Georgia instead of going to class (which I did far too often at that point) with my bud Eric Rayburn is still one of the most fun times I've ever had watching a movie. I certainly never had as much fun as these kids did in high school, but that doesn't make this flick any less enjoyable.

The Big Lebowski: Is there a better stoner icon out there than the Dude? I think not, even if he never actually tokes up at any point in the movie. I've been slow to put this one near the top of the Coen brothers' oeuvre, but while my favorite flick from the bros remains "O Brother Where Art Thou," I've grown to love this one more and more each time I see it.

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle: It was a truly sad moment when I found out I was too old to enjoy "Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay." The guys were still entertaining, and Kal Penn is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors, but I just couldn't get into it. The original, however, is almost as imaginative as it is simply crude, and I keep going back to it again and again.

Brick: OK, drugs are just one of the many elements swirling through this high school film noir from Rian Johnson, but it's one of my favorite flicks, so I had to include it. Besides, I just saw the trailer for Johnson's sophomore flick, "The Brothers Bloom" with Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz, Adrien Brody and Rinko Kikuchi, and I'm convinced it's going to be one of the very best movies of 2008. In similarly good news, the trailer for Spike's "Miracle at St. Anna" played here in Macon over the weekend, hopefully meaning it's going to play everywhere once we finally get to see it.

Whatever: Count this as my candidate for the best movie that virtually no one has ever seen. Filmmaker Susan Skoog delivers a flawed but still seriously entertaining flick about growing up in New Jersey in the '80s in what would unfortunately turn out to be the only movie she ever got to direct (or at least so far, but it's been 10 years now.) If you can manage to get your hands on this one (I'd be willing to lend it to anyone with a VCR), it's worth watching for a fantastic performance from "Gilmore Girls" star Liza Weil and just an engaging little flick.

Super Troopers: This one is just riddled with pot from start to finish, and if I still smoked it, I'm sure I'd laugh even harder than I do when I return to this Broken Lizard flick every couple of months or so as cinematic comfort food. Though I thought "Beerfest" had its silly charms, I'm not sure the Broken Lizard guys will ever be this funny again, but as I just found out at the IMDB they will get another shot in 2010 with a "Super Troopers 2." Now that's a sequel I can get behind.

So there you have it. If you happen to see "Pineapple Express" before I do and want to give me your impressions in the comments, please do, and have a perfectly passable Wednesday. Peace out.

Never hitting No. 1? No problem

I had a sobering thought as the opening sequence of "Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay" was unspooling before us on Saturday afternoon: I'm just too old for this.

I mean, I still love the guys, and when it was about the two of them and their juvenile exploits the sequel was still often very funny. But it also just contained some of the most tired jokes about prison and Southerners I've ever seen (and, really, when that prison is Guantanamo Bay, is there anything to laugh about?) Overall I'd say if you like Harold and Kumar it's still worth a rental.

I did, however, buy tickets for me and a few friends for the 10:30 p.m. Thursday night screening of "Iron Man," which I'm thoroughly jazzed about, and I still laughed through the entire length of that redband trailer for "Pineapple Express," so I'm definitely ready for summer!

Before we get into that, however, a nugget of news about Jason Bateman, who anyone who's been here before knows I rather like. Along with being Will Smith's life coach in the upcoming "Hancock," he's now signed on for what will most likely be a pretty funny movie that no one will get to see.

Why? Well, it's being written and directed by Mike Judge, whose last fairly funny offering, "Idiocracy," managed to play only in L.A. and Austin, if I'm not mistaken, before heading straight to video. Now he's heading back to the big screen with Bateman in tow for something called "Extract," which explores "what it's like to be the boss when everything seems to be shifting around you." Sounds more than a little just like "The Office," but I'm still betting it will turnout pretty good.

And in one other "Arrested Development" note, it looks like Mitchell Hurwitz's fall Fox offering is definitely headed to series, with the hiring of "Simpsons" veterans Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein to be most likely showrunners. "Sit Down Shut Up," based on a New Zealand sitcom, will be an animated tale about teachers and administrators at a high school who care much more about their own hijinx than the students they supposedly supervise.

And one more nugget before I move on to the main course. Now that he's officially on board for "The Hobbit" and "The Hobbit 2.0," Guillermo del Toro gave the requisite interview with TheOneRing.net. You can read the whole thing here, but here's what I found most intriguing, since it hopefully means he understands that "The Hobbit," much more than "The Lord of the Rings," is a tale for the young and the young at heart:

"Another thing people will notice, at the beginning of the film will be the palette, that will be slightly different, the world will be the same but it will be a more ‘golden’ world, a more wide-eyed world."

Amen brother.

No No. 1? No problem?

Now, for the summer blockbusters that are about to come our way, that would of course be a fallacy, but there are plenty of movies that never reached No. 1 but still had a very healthy domestic box-office take. Here, with a hearty thanks to Box Office Mojo (which is really a stat-lover's dream come true), are 10 (with their chart positions) that I love from the list of the top 150 grossing flicks that never managed to make it to the top of the box office pack (the No. 1 flick, by the way, is "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," which never went higher than No. 2 but still managed to take in a rather astonishing $241,438,208):

6. "Chicago": The high-powered musical reached No. 2 when it was released in 2002 and went on to gross $170,687,518

12. "Knocked Up": Judd Apatow's comedy also peaked at No. 2 last year and went on to take in $148,768,917. And, in case you're wondering, "Superbad" isn't eligible for this list because it did indeed open at No. 1, but only took in $121,463,226.

17. "Juno": I can remember watching the numbers for "Juno" during the run-up to the Oscars and hoping it would sneak up to a late-run No. 1 visit, but it never got past No. 2 either in grossing $143,306,893.

26. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon": Man do I miss truly epic kung fu movies. I still haven't seen "Forbidden Kingdom" (though might today), but I hardly think that really counts. This one peaked at No. 4 on its way to taking in $128,078,872.

40. "Big": Has it really been since 1988 that there's been a Tom Hanks movie this fun? The big kid flick managed to peak at No. 2 and take in $114,968,774.

47. "Chicken Run": Back in the day when Aardman Animation wasn't reduced to making TV specials (Wallace & Gromit are coming back to the BBC soon!), they used to have a deal with Dreamworks which led to this zany tale that hit No. 2 in 2000 and managed to gross $106,834,564.

56. "The Aviator": Not even the presence of Leo DiCaprio and tons of Oscar hype could ever lift this higher than No. 3 at the box office, but it still did manage to gross $102,610,330. That makes it the No. 2 all-time hit for Mr. Scorsese, behind only "The Departed," which took in $132,384,315 domestic.

72. "Unbreakable": The last M. Night Shyamalan movie I just loved is also the first one on this list not to cross the $100M box-office barrier. The uber-cool superhero-of-sorts flick hit No. 2 and managed to take in $95,011,339 in 2000.

90: "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie": I may be too old for Harold and Kumar, but I don't think I'll ever outgrow Spongebob. The flick was surprisingly clever, and it managed to peak at No. 2 and gross $85,417,988.

and, finally,

139: "No Country for Old Men": I was sure the Coens' biggest hit would be higher on this list, but shockingly it never made it past No. 5 at the box office. It still did, however, manage to dwarf my favorite Coen brothers' flick and their previous top contender, "O Brother Where Art Thou," $74,283,625 to about $45.5M.

So, there you have it. A waste of time? Perhaps. But still being a huge baseball fan, and since the Orioles are still over .500 at 14-11, I thought a stat-heavy post was in order. I hope someone else found it even a little bit interesting. Peace out.

Weekend update: What - if anything - is worth watching?

I suppose I'd be extremely remiss if I didn't lead off today with the news that Guillermo del Toro is now officially going to be making "The Hobbit," even if the news does now seem more than a little anticlimactic.

He'll be moving to New Zealand for the next four years because, I suppose, it's now written law that any Tolkein movie with Peter Jackson involved has to be filmed there (and I can certainly think of a few worse sacrifices to have to make.)

The somewhat dubious move, of course, is that they're actually making two movies, one that's the real "The Hobbit" and then a sequel that somehow bridges the gap between that work and the first of the "Lord of the Rings" novels. Since this rather extreme act of hubris means they certainly can't call the sequel "J.R.R. Tolkein's 'The Hobbit'," how about "Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson's imaginary bridge to 'The Lord of the Rings' "? I kid, of course, but I bet they'll both turn out to be simply uber-cool.

Though no release date has been set, Variety - with the four-year window - bets it will be one in 2011 and one in 2012, which seems to make sense.

And, before we move on to this week's movies, two bits of TV news, one nothing but bad and one that could turn out to be surprisingly good.

Just to get the ugly out of the way quickly (it is Friday, after all), NBC has definitely traded down in announcing Jimmy Fallon will take over Conan O'Brien's show when the latter moves into the "Tonight Show" chair. I've been wrong at least once before, and to be honest I rarely manage to stay up until 12:30 a.m. very often any more anyway, but I just can't see any scenario in which I'll do so for Jimmy Fallon. Sheesh.

In better news, Nathan Fillion - a k a Captain Mal from "Firefly" and "Serenity" - has signed on to star in a pilot for ABC called "Castle." Despite that rather mundane title, the premise - a "comic procedural" about a famous mystery novelist (Fillion) who helps the NYPD solve crimes - does hold some promise.

But enough about that ... now lets take a look at this week's offerings (which are all really just filling space until the arrival of "Iron Man" anyway), with the added bonus of a trailer for a flick that should probably have made my previous Summer Top 10 list.

1. Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
I realize that I'm far too old to watch this one in a theater, and I can't with good conscience recommend that anyone else take a chance on anything this juvenile, but I will indeed be there Saturday afternoon. My inner snob led me to pass on "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," but once I saw it on DVD it's just become one of those silly little comfort movies - like "Office Space" or "Super Troopers" - that help erase my mind after a particularly dreary work day. Besides, here's what critic Nell Minow, an always reliable friend to this site, had to say:

Cheerfully offensive, cheekily raunchy, happily outrageous, and often just plain disgusting, the movie avoids the usual sophomore slump by ramping up the political jabs while keeping it all unpretentious and moving quickly.

Sounds right up my rather juvenile alley, so this time, I'll be there for the first round.

2. Deception
I had never heard of this until it showed up at our multiplexes this week, but with a cast that includes Michelle Williams (hearty huzzah), Ewan McGregor and Hugh Jackman, I might have been willing to take a chance. A quick peek at the Rotten Tomatoes, however, shows it only managed a 6 % positive rating, which seems rather astonishing. Granted, that's only with a few reviews, but the words "predictable potboiler" are enough to stop me (and besides, even "Harold & Kumar" managed to garner 51 % positive.)

3. Baby Mama
I have nothing but love for both Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, but I just can't shake the suspicion that this one just won't have enough funny to sustain a feature-length movie. Besides, in the commercial, there's a litmus-test joke, methinks, when Maura Tierney actually wipes something brown off the face of youngun and tastes it to decide if it is "chocolate or poop" (I may be paraphrasing just a bit, but you get the gist.) It's hypocritical I know since I support the often just disgusting "Harold & Kumar," but that joke just kind of makes me sick enough to wait for DVD on this one.

And finally, as promised, the extended trailer for "Hancock," which made its premiere on the TV last night, probably during the rather great "Office" episode with the coke-addled Ryan, but since I fast-forward through the commercials I would have missed it anyway. For anyone else who did the same, here's a look at Peter Berg's July 2 flick about an alcoholic superhero (Will Smith) in need of a makeover from a PR expert (the always funny Jason Bateman.) All those ingredients sound right to me, and the trailer is indeed pretty darn funny. Enjoy, and have a perfectly enjoyable weekend. Peace out.