"I'd like to think that sometime, maybe 10 or 20 years from now... there'd be something I could laugh at... anything."

Said Spencer Tracy, as the thoroughly disgraced Captain T. G. Culpepper, encased in a body cast, at the end of "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World," which I watched — all 2 hours and 39 minutes of it — as the 1963 entry in my imaginary movie project. This is a movie I saw in the theater when it came out. I was 12, and I didn't know much about gigantic epic comedy chase movies. In fact, I still don't. It's been more than 50 years since then, and I've found any number of things to laugh at along my way, but I can't say I laughed much rewatching this sprawling, raucous monster. I wasn't in a theater full of people who'd assembled to enjoy the hell out of themselves, as I was back in 1963. I'm sure I laughed a lot back then, but I only half-laughed twice in the present-day rewatch.

Tracy, musing about ever laughing again, in fact gets to laugh almost immediately. Buddy Hackett (also in a full body cast) peels a banana, throws the peel on the floor, and Ethel Merman, who's been yelling at everyone throughout the film, comes strutting in, yelling at everyone, and she slips on the banana peel and falls hard on her ass. Do we really want to see a woman get hurt? Yes, in this case, we've been conditioned to wish harm on her, because she's been the loud-mouth mother-in-law visiting aural pain on all the men (except her beloved son Dick Shawn) for the entirety of the movie.

I get it. And yet, I do not get it. And I did not get it the first time around. Yes, I understand the old comic convention of The Mother-in-Law — specifically the mother-in-law to a man. She's got her daughter's devotion and she's going after the daughter's husband, crushing his masculine pride at every turn. You don't ask why these people are like this. They just are. They're characters. They're assigned these positions. Do not pause to reflect or all is lost. That is, nothing is funny. It's just loud. And — oh! — Ethel Merman is loud. Did you know her original last name is Zimmerman — just like Bob Dylan? She lopped off the "Zim." Why not lop off the "man" — it would be more castrating-y — and be Zimmer?

Johnny Depp, "uploaded onto the Internet... expands like the universe, growing larger and mutating..."

".... into a being who is godlike and yet far from divine," in the "predictable and ridiculous" movie "Transcendence."

Movies about computers... are they ever any good?

Why no SAG nomination for Scarlett Johansson? My theory is she’s just too damn beautiful and fortunate. The backlash has set in early.

Christopher Althouse provides this analysis:

The thing about Johansson, at least when it comes to her personas in Ghost World and Lost In Translation, is that a big part of her appeal is that her technique is very minimal. You're supposed to be able to see a lot of thought behind her expressions, but at the same time she doesn't seem like she's trying very hard to impress the audience. It's the exact opposite of something like Charlize Theron's performance in Monster--Johansson is great in the way that Catherine Keener is. She's someone who you aren't automatically impressed by and I could see someone watching her performances and missing what the big deal is. I can more easily see a backlash against her, because she's getting huge aclaim for a performance that is often very minimal and where she often seems to be playing herself (even though there are some emotional scenes), than I could with the performances by Sean Penn or Charlize Theron or Naomi Watts. On the other hand, I have reason to believe Johansson does something more removed from her usual persona in Girl With A Pearl Earring, so that might be different, but even that performance is known for the fact that she has almost no lines and is supposed to be subtle to an extreme.

I saw a Hepburn-Tracy scene on TV this morning—don't know what movie—and it reeked. She had to deliver a very stagey monologue, and she missed every opportunity to make it moving. He's much better, and I wondered if the concerned expression on his face betrayed the thought, man, she really isn't very good.