Back in the mid ’90s I’d have written about that infamous VHS tape showing how The Naked Gun movies copied jokes and sight gags from Get Smart, Sledgehammer and other comedy movies and TV shows.

The VHS video in question (originally mentioned in Spy magazine in July 1993) has been digitally remastered and updated. It now includes David Zucker’s contention he’s only been influenced by his own work. I’m not saying that Zucker is basically a comedy kleptomaniac (I wouldn’t know), but there are those who feel this way.

How odd that Snoopy has suddenly become a thing on two fronts — not just retail shelves but also in Bradley Cooper‘s Maestro or more particularly in that already famous argument scene that happens around the three-quarters mark.

From “Why is Snoopy so popular with Gen Z?,” posted on 12.15.23 by Morning Edition‘s Leila Fadel and Steve Inskeep:

“One of the hottest toys this holiday season has little chance of making it into the hands of children. That’s because people in their 20s, people who are adulting, are grabbing up a toy known as Puffer Snoopy.

“Puff Snoopy Dog is a upmarket version of the cartoon beagle from Peanuts. He wears a puffy pale-blue jacket and a green-and-yellow ski cap.

“Snoopy was selling for $13.99 at CVS until stores sold out. People from Generation Z, we’re told, are posting on TikTok about their frantic searches.”

Hands down, no question…I hated John Wick, Chapter Four so much I began dreaming about strong opiates running through my blood…what a relief that would be, I mean.

Pay zero attention to the Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic pissheads who’ve given George Clooney‘s The Boys in the Boat (MGM/Amazon, 12.25) failing grades. They’re wrong and mean.

I saw it a couple of weeks ago and it’s fine. It’s a familiar underdogs-take-on-the-powerful-guys sports saga…certainly not the most ambitious film of the year but it’s been assembled with clarity and confidence…it’s clean and unfettered and on-track, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with this kind of film.

I realized about halfway through The Boys in the Boat is Clooney’s best film — the least troubled or problematic, I mean — since Good Night and Good Luck (’05).

I had problems with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Leatherheads, The Ides of March, The Monuments Men, Suburbicon, The Midnight Sky and The Tender Bar. Given this 18-year history I wasn’t expecting much from The Boys in the Boat, God knows. But it surprised me. It’s really quite decent. There’s nothing really wrong with it. I’m speaking serious truth here.

Friendo: “The Boys in the Boat is the very definition of competence and likability.

“The reason for the low score is obvious. It’s allegedly a bad movie because it’s about WASP white men, and only WASP white men. Robert Daniels, the racist black critic, dissed it for that.

“And that (implicitly) is what everyone else is doing. It’s the woke militia saying: Enough movies of this sort!”

“When Seattle ‘Boys’ beat Aryan Krauts,” posted on 10.4.23:

George Clooney speaking in Boys in the Boat featurette: “These guys at the University of Washington are taking on the seniors, and then taking on the fraternity [something], and then taking on the Nazis.”

Clooney is using the usual shorthand, of course, but does he really mean that the young athletes who belonged to Germany’s 1936 Olympic rowing team were devout “seig heil” guys? Yes, Adolf Hitler saw the Berlin ’36 Olympics as a a potential proof of Aryan supremacy (Jesse Owens screwed that pooch), but how many German citizens were ardent supporters of the Nazi party that year, and how many were playing along to get along? A third or less?

How many blue-state liberals today pretend to be wokester sympathizers but are just keeping their heads down in order to stay out of trouble?

Let’s imagine, God forbid, that The Beast might win the ’24 election. He would therefore be president during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Would it then be fair or accurate to describe the U.S. Olympic team as “the MAGAS”?