A Random July Post

Racked my brain for like an hour trying to come up with two sentences to write up here…failed. This should honestly not be that difficult. I think I’m doing something wrong.

– Thomas Jane, previously the star of The Punisher (2004) and Homeless Dad (2004), apparently enjoyed the roles so much that he decided to produce his own short that combines both…Punisher sleeping in a car! Because when you are rich and can do stuff like this, why not. And it’s got Ron Perlman in it! Weird that rape is seemingly something the Punisher is pretty cool with, but I can definitely understand where that comes from.

– While Marvel gets the movie movement cranked up again (Rocket Raccoon, seriously?) DC’s animation house shows it’s just as amazing as DC’s movie house is useless (he said, mere days after a DC movie had a $160 million opening weekend). Here’s a clip of Bat Man of Shanghai which is apparently an alternate take on Batman in 1930’s Shanghai…and coincidentally has also suddenly become my favourite iteration of the character, of all time. I have no idea what these DC Nation shorts are, but now I have to find all of them and devour them with my intellectual pie hole. This whole thing seems pretty kosher as well, as the short will be handled by China-based Wolf Smoke Studio which has some other pretty cool shorts on their site as well. Of course if I later find out that it’s just some white rice picking expatriate, then I’m going to be more than a little bummed out.

– This is Men Throwing Rocks With The Other Hand. Hauntingly beautiful.

– Jerry Seinfeld is apparently producing a new web series called Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee…in which he drives one of his vintage cars to pick up a comedian so that they can have coffee together. There’s only one episode so far with Larry David, and it’s a little reminiscent of that HBO special Talking Funny he did with Ricky Gervais, Chris Rock, and Louis CK, but even less focused and it really just seems like a very candid, purposeless hang out with his comedian friends. So it’s pretty much the absolute greatest thing I’ve ever seen. I hope this thing just goes on for like seven years, and at the end he’s just scraping the proverbial bottom of his phone book, picking up Gilbert Gottfried in a rented Kia sedan to go to a Dunkin Donuts…though that actually still sounds amazing. My newest favourite thing ever, and it’s just like 13 minutes long.

– Here’s some footage from a SNL dress rehearsal of The Californians, which just demonstrates how difficult it is to keep from breaking character in the more ridiculous skits. Wiig and Armisen are again probably two of the best, absolute pros, but even they don’t make it through completely unscathed (although this is just rehearsal). Bill Hader though…is absolutely destroyed, he doesn’t even come close. I can sympathize though, the voices are insane. Similarly, check out the numerous Stefon bits he’s done…and still hasn’t managed to get through once without breaking. Though apparently that’s mainly attributed to SNL writer and character co-creator John Mulaney, who always aspires to purposefully fuck with Hader by changing the jokes between rehearsal and the live show. Thus, John Mulaney is pretty great. And that’s not even factoring in his ability as a stand-up on his own right, which is pretty great as well.

– Everyone’s favourite character actor for Latina maids, Lupe Ontiveros, passed away today due to liver cancer. She had a long career in theatre, television shows (she received an Emmy nomination for guess starring in Desperate Housewives and also appeared in Party Down), and numerous feature films (including a role as the maid of the doctor who invented the Universal Soldier program). She appeared so often as a maid that she was even asked to be the narrator for a documentary about real life Latina housemaids, called Maid in America. This should not be (easily) mistaken for the 2002 Jennifer Lopez movie Maid in Manhattan, which almost impossibly, does not include her. However (in the role I know her best from) she did actually appear opposite JLo previously in the 1997 movie Selena where she shots her. (Oops, spoiler for a 1997 biopic based on a 1995 real life event.) …so there’s that.

I actually also thought she was Lucille’s maid from Arrested Development, but it turns out they just share the same name, are actually completely different people, and I am just really racist.

It always bums me out when character actors die, often much more when celebrated big name actors die…I think I just appreciate them and their roles more. And Lupe Ontiveros was certainly a big time character actor, maybe the biggest female “That Guy” actor I can think of at the moment.

Lupe!