Again into the mailbag. Our e-mail address is thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com and you can also use common_ills@yahoo.com.
Ellen e-mails to ask if there's ever been a week where the most clicked on piece isn't Ava and C.I.'s TV piece. Yes. Last week. "TV: TBS airs another bomb" by Ava and C.I. was second last week -- to "Maybe Cher's right and some women should be called..." -- also an Ava and C.I. piece.
4444SQUARE wonders if we've "given up on MeToo"?
We don't support Alyssa Milano. Our position is pretty much consistent. When two women were accusing Julian Assange, our attitude was do not attack the women. John Pilger and Ray McGovern turned off a lot of support that Julian might have had by attacking the women. When women came forward accusing Donald Trump, Ava and C.I. wrote a piece about the women where they evaluated their claims. Some they found believable, some they did not. We have a responsibility to hear women and men who come forward to talk about assault. We are under no obligation to believe anyone -- alleged attacker or possible attacked. To use an example, Ava and C.I. led on the Juanita Broadderick coverage. They pointed out that Juanita was only heard once on TV and that it was after the impeachment so the country was already exhausted. She never got a fair hearing. We have heard her and we believe her. Bryan Singer? C.I. and Ava believe he's a pedophile, not based on media coverage but on two people they know who say Bryan's assaulted them. Everyone should be able to be heard. That's why we noted Cory Booker's alleged victim who says that he was forced to go down on Cory in a company bathroom. We gave the guy a hearing. We don't know if we believe him or not. Actually based on what he's said, we're probably inclined to believe Cory Booker didn't assault him. We could be wrong and should other information come out, we'd be happy to re-evaluate. Alyssa Milano? She's a hack. She won't call out people who assault. That was clear when Illeana Douglas came out about Leslie Moonves assaulting her. We now know he assaulted many women and that he may lose his payout from CBS because they caught him in lies about assaulting women. Alyssa never called out Leslie Moonves. Why? He was the head of CBS. CBS owns part of THE CW. Alyssa's been trying to sell 'her' bad comic to them forever and a day as a series. She also taped a pilot for them. Alyssa doesn't support victims -- not if might cost her a job. We support Rose McGowan. We don't support Alyssa The Fake Ass Milano. And Alyssa doesn't support victims. She never even Tweeted support to Illeana Douglas. (We believed Illeana before she spoke out because C.I. had already heard about it, years ago, from Martin Scorsese.) If someone steps forward, we have an obligation to listen. We do not have an obligation to believe them if their account does not strike us as believable.
Market & Grocery wondered if we like romantic comedies so much, "why didn't you promote Rebel Wilson's ISN'T IT ROMANTIC?"
We talked about that actually. When we did, C.I. stated that the film would not clear sixty million domestically. Someone asked why? C.I. said the trailer had a joke that shouldn't be in it but, worse, they were using that same joke in the commercials on TV. What joke? The man Rebel's now with has a penis bigger than a pepper grinder -- the kind at the restaurants. That was not going to make men eager to see it. It would be, she said, as though a movie had John Cusack joking about how tight the vagina on his lover was -- that would bother women who might buy tickets. Or worse, insulting her for how 'stretched out' it was. Stan thought about it and agreed. C.I. and Stan were correct. The film's struggled to reach $40 million over the weekend and it's fallen to number seven. It should have been a hit but pimping that joke scared off a lot of ticket buyers.
Meanwhile, we strongly endorse THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS. We didn't see the film when it came out -- it was trashed. But it is funny. Yes, it's raunchy. It's also incredibly funny and a puppet noir. The puppetry deserves strong praise as does the live acting by Melissa McCarthy, Joel McHale and Maya Rudolph. In fact, Maya's so great her character could have been written into the comedy classic MURDER BY DEATH. Barry Rothbart is very funny in his small role and we're hoping he becomes an even bigger name with his upcoming TV series.
If you haven't seen the movie, try it -- you can stream it or purchase it on disc. It's very funny and, in ten years, it's going to be considered a classic. The morality police charged in when it was in theaters. They kept a lot of people from seeing the movie. But this is a film that will build each year.
SFelton asks what we think of Hillary Clinton's claim that the country is in a "full-fledged crisis in our democracy"? Well, we think she looks really rough and isn't aging well but we don't think her face, as bad as it looks, qualifies as a "full-fledged crisis."
TCMClassicsfan wonders why we haven't weighed in on the John Wayne Airport controversy? We don't live in Orange County. If we did, we might feel the need to weigh in. But, since we're asked, we would never name anything after John Wayne -- John Mulaney maybe, John Wayne never.
