"She died as she lived: on all fours with three closeted actors staring at her butt."

In case you haven't seen me stanning the fuck out over this in the past week, Melissa McCarthy was the guest host on Saturday Night Live last Saturday. And, in case you have been living under a rock, she was fucking incredible, my favorite host since Jesse Eisenberg. Whether she was "dancing" with her Bridesmaids co-star Kristen Wiig, taste testing new Hidden Valley ranch dressing flavors or fellating a horse balloon, Melissa was a laugh riot from the beginning until the very end. Can we just give her her deserved Guest Actor Emmy already, please? I've already watched the episode twice and still haven't deleted the episode off my TiVo. The only other SNL episode I kept after I watched it the first time was the legendary Betty White episode (and right now I'm having a flashback to Betty shouting "Wizard of ASS!") so that is high praise indeed. I loved every second of the episode, but my favorite sketch has to be this TCM parody where Melissa plays a Mae West-like character named Lulu Diamonds. Here is the sketch:

My favorite thing about this sketch, besides the way Melissa says "Cheese 'n crackers!", is the fact that the entire sketch revolves around her falling down the stairs multiple times. And, without fail, I fucking crack up Every. Damn. Time. True story: Sunday morning I was at work and happened to think of the moment where Melissa crawls up the banister and then falls down on the staircase, and I started laughing completely out of context while the customer I was helping was paying for their purchase. Kind of embarrassing. But I have no regrets. Between this and rediscovering her work in Bridesmaids, I am officially a stan for Melissa McCarthy.

To All My American Readers Who Get Turner Classic Movies (TCM)

I hate to exclude any of my international readers, but this news is only applicable to those in America. Late tonight/early tomorrow morning, from 2:15 to 4:30 am, TCM will be airing the MGM silent romantic war epic The Big Parade. Why should you care? Here are my four main reasons:

1. It's one of my 10 favorite movies EVER.
2. This is the first time TCM has aired the movie since I originally saw it five or so years ago.
3. The film is not available on DVD, only on a hard to find VHS.
4. If you remember from a couple months ago when I posted my film log from the Silent Era, I included The Big Parade as the second best film of the entire era (just behind Keaton's Sherlock, Jr.) and also mentioned that leads John Gilbert and Renée Adorée gave two of the best performances during that time period. In fact, I went on to elaborate that Gilbert indeed gave the best male performance.

Enticed yet? If you're not, I don't know what else I could short of flying to your home and recording it on your TiVo for you. Truly, I hope that a few of you give The Big Parade a chance and fall in love with it much like I have. Be sure to let me know what you think!

Bienvenue a Cannes...What Were You Thinking, TCM?

I don't know if any of you watch TCM, but the other night they aired their newest documentary Bienvenue a Cannes all about the Cannes film festival. Normally, I love their documentaries. Their recent Brando one was immensely fascinating and really peaked my interested in him again. I also loved their one about famed movie producer Irving Thalberg a couple years ago and then there are the ones about Garbo, Bette Davis and Clara Bow (among many others) that were fabulous to the extreme. So, naturally I was really anxious to watch this new documentary and imagine my surprise when it sucked as badly as it did. I thought the film would be more of a history of the festival, but the only thing in the past that it covered was the '68 cancellation and the French New Wave directors (Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Tuffaut) protesting during that aborted festival. A lot of the film was about Harvey Weinstein bragging about how much his films that won Palme d'Or's (1989's sex, lies and videotape, 1994's Pulp Fiction, 2004's Fahrenheit 9/11) changed the face of filmmaking (or something along those lines....he really is an ass). Really, the documentary was more concerned about the atmosphere of the current Cannes festivals (red carpets and the nightlife....ooooh, riveting). The only thing that was halfway interesting was the small section about the festival juries and the politics that goes on with it. If only they had centered this documentary about the history (which I know very little about and would have loved to learn about) then I would have been more interested. Here's hoping TCM's next one doesn't suck this bad.