Inside out - 2015

I liked it, of course I did. I liked how the ‘emotions’ looked like, as in a bit undefined, but artistically so, and I loved that Anger was reading on his newspaper what was happening in Riley’s life :-) . At moments it’s a bit boring, because cartoons must be for children too so they are also filled with little things for children, I could have done without all those silly things inside her head, but after all the protagonist is ten years old, so yeah, there was that too. 

What matters though is the moral, for once it is indeed what matters: the thing is, when Riley was little, a child, what mattered the most was Joy, of course, with only the sporadic interference of Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger, but as Riley grows up they all become important. At first the console they use to ‘give Riley directions on what to do’ was rather small, there was space mainly for Joy alone. Riley had two loving parents, a best friend, a house in Minnesota with a lake she could go skating on, she played hockey and was generally a happy little girl. Until they had to move to San Francisco when she was ten. She tried to be positive about it, but the fact that all their stuff had ended up who knows where since the truck never arrived didn’t make it easy on any of them, and she had to sleep in a sleeping bag on the floor... on her first day in the new school, when she got up to introduce herself to the class, she started crying remembering all the nice things she left behind, the place she loved so much... Joy turned to look at what had happened and saw that Sadness had touched a memory (the memory of her time in Minnesota), and Joy got really upset as if it was all her fault, upset that the beautiful memory had turned blue, sad. That experience was, for Riley, a ‘basic memory’, but unlike all the previous ones (the one that created the Family island, Friendship island, and all other islands of personality) this was a sad memory. Joy was shocked, she refused to accept a sad basic memory and tried to stop Sadness from putting it with the others, and fought with her over that, causing the big mess: Joy, Sadness and all the basic memories were all sucked out of ‘headquarters’. Sadness is the first to point out that without Joy in headquarters, Riley will never be happy again. They need to get back there. 

Meanwhile, without them, Disgust Fear and Anger are the only emotions for Riley, so her answers to her parents are different, she shows attitude, and we get to see the ‘emotions’ in her parents’ heads, which was a moment I loved :lol: The father had Anger in command acting like a general giving orders to the others, while the Mother actually had Sadness in command, but with all the others very close and working very well together, I loved her head :-D

Joy thinks of trying the ‘quickest way back’ but they should walk over a line and if they fall they’ll be forgotten... so that doesn’t work and they try another way. Walking through the long-term-memory maze is dangerous, they could get lost, Sadness has read the manuals but the place is huge and they walk all night without getting any closer. 

When Riley’s friend talks to her about the new girl on their team back home, Riley becomes angry and Friendship island falls down...

Along the way they meet Bing Bong, Riley’s old imaginary friend (and when he asks her what they’re doing down there, Joy implies that it’s all Sadness’ fault :-/ which is not at all, as we know). 

He suggests taking the ‘train of thoughts’ and also suggests a shortcut to get to it. Sadness advices them against the dangerous shortcut but Joy doesn’t listen to her of course and they almost get vaporised (well, they become abstract then dismembered than bidimensional... but they get out in time, which I thought was quite a complex thing for a child’s movie, I liked that). 

They miss the train and go through a land of imagination, meanwhile Riley tries to get in the hockey team, but gets frustrated and angry and leaves very soon, making the Hockey Island fall as well.

Bing Bong’s ‘rocket’ gets thrown down among the forgotten things and he’s feeling very down, and Joy’s attempt at making him laugh don’t work, and when Sadness talks to him Joy is all ‘don’t make him feel worse’ but she’s not, she’s actually listening to him, understanding him, which actually makes him feel better, and Joy is surprised at that. They find the train, but it stops when Riley falls asleep. Sadness suggests waking Riley up, and Riley accepts the idea only turning it into her own idea... the only way to wake Riley up is by entering her dreams of course, and Sadness suggests scaring her awake, but Joy strongly opposes the idea choosing another way because ‘she knows Riley’ and she wants to make her so happy in her dream that she’ll wake up happy... which is absurd, of course.

They actually interrupt a bad dream trying to make her laugh, until things go down and it turns again into a bad dream. They are found out and dream-production-security arrests Bing Bong. He has the basic memories so they have to free him. They finally use the gigantic scary clown to scare Riley awake. The train moves again now, but then Anger decides to take action and plants an idea into Riley’s head, to go back to Minnesota to make new happy basic memories since she was happy there, and he makes Riley steal mom’s credit card to pay for the ticket. Joy finally has a nice work for Sadness, telling her scaring Riley was a good idea. 

When Riley steals the credit card, Honesty Island falls down making the train fall too. They make it out alive, and then they have the new idea of using the ... ehm... recall-tube or something: Joy gets in but when Sadness tries to go with her she touches the basic memories and Joy leaves her behind saying Riley needs to be happy and she’ll make everything sad... so Joy goes alone but the tube breaks and she falls down among the things to be forgotten, and Bing Bong falls with her. 

She sees again the sad basic memory and takes it with her, and also watches again the happy memory connected to hockey that she loved so much, and discovers that before she was happy, she was actually sad that they had lost the game, she became sad so her parents and friends went to her to cheer her up, it’s thanks to Sadness if she had that happy memory...

She refuses to give up, and decides to use Bing Bong’s ‘rocket’ to get up there again, but they fail every time, until Bing Bong jumps out of the rocket-cart at the last moment, so not to weight her down, and she makes it. He’ll be forgotten, of course, but he’s the imaginary friend of a very little girl, so it’s normal, you know. 

Riley goes to the bus station, refusing every call from her worried mother who didn’t find her at home. The Family Island falls too. Joy starts looking for Sadness but when she finds her Sadness runs away crying because she doesn’t want to make Riley sad like Joy always told her... but now Joy knows that Riley needs her too, and manages a way to get both of them to headquarters again (I don’t know why but I find quite disturbing the scene when Joy piles up in her magic bag a lot of imaginary-boyfriends that keep piling up one over the other after she takes away the bag... I don’t know why, but that disturbs me on a physical level :-/

Riley gets on the bus, Fear Disgust and Anger now try to stop her but the console doesn’t work anymore and they don’t know what to do and are unable to get that idea out of Riley’s head. 

When Joy and Sadness are back, Joy lets Sadness take control, saying that Riley needs her, and indeed she’s able to get that idea out of her so that Riley hurries off the bus and heads back home. She’s the right one to help her now, and Joy even gives her all the five basic memories she had been carrying around, because it is right after all for Sadness to touch them: indeed when she does they turn into sad memories, but that’s what happens sometimes, that’s what happens now in Riley’s heart, because those memories remind her of home, of the friend she left there, of all the things she left behind, so thinking about all that now makes her cry while she tells her parents that she misses home. Well, they hug her and tell her that it’s normal, they miss it too, and her parents both hug her, comfort her, and then Sadness takes Joy’s hand to get her close so that Riley smiles among the tears being hugged by her loving parents, and a new basic memory, part-sad-part-joy comes out, and a new Family Island comes up.

Next thing, we see that they all have a bigger console, with space for all of them. Riley is now twelve, she plays in the local hockey team, and new friends, and is happy again. 

To end the movie, we get a peek of other people’s ‘emotions-inside’: she bumps into a boy and in his head there’s a ‘girl-alarm’ sending everyone into frantic panic. During the credits we see the teacher’s head, really looking forward to the end of school, then a couple of girls, a clown, a dog, the bus driver (in his head there are five Anger-looking emotions :-p) then a cat, where there’s no one at the console until one of them leisurely walks on it moving something that makes the cat jump and run away..... :-p

Il commissario Montalbano - La pazienza del ragno

One of the nice one, I liked this episode :-) It translates “the patience of the spider”. It starts with Montalbano being woken up by Catarella with urgent news that a girl is missing, probably kidnapped (it took a while for the message to get through but finally they manage it :p ) . It seems like Susanna, a young woman, has been kidnapped. The police commissioner (questore) calls him to say that Dr. Valente will be in charge of this operation because he’s from Calabria... he’s actually from Messina, but he ‘does’ know more than him about kidnappings, so they work together on the case. 

Montalbano goes questioning a friend of Susanna, a girl who is a big fan of him, starts flirting and even calls her friends to come see him, but after a few questions he runs away like the wind before the others arrive :-p

Valente asks Montalbano if he can borrow Fazio just for this case, so our dear Fazio spends all his time at Susanna’s house waiting for the ransom call, preparing everything for it and whatnot.

Montalbano finds him asleep on a couch and smiles. He’s told that the kidnappers indeed called, so he wakes Fazio up and listens to the call. A recording of it has been sent to the local tv stations too, as he learns when Zito calls him. Zito doesn’t, but Televigata goes on air with the phone call. 

Mimì had a little accident and got hurt, so the commissioner sends Montalbano in his place. Poor Mimì broke two ribs.

Montalbano calls Galluzzo to go with him, but the poor guy is feeling unwell, is stomach is upside down, he feels so bad that Montalbano is forced to stop the car at some point so he can... do his business behind a bush or something. While taking a look around, Montalbano finds the girl’s helmet, and Montalbano compliments him on his butt’s great detective sense :lol: (che culo! - il tuo. onore al suo acume investigativo) :lol:

Montalbano sees a sign that read “ova frische” :-p and goes there, finding a woman that sells very fresh eggs or...something else. Her husband had a bad accident and lost both legs and is now in pain and in constant need of medicines, they need money so she... does what she can to raise money.

Susanna’s mother is ill, although nobody can say exactly what she has, something like a serious case of depression. Her brother in law says that her soul has been poisoned by her brother and she let herself go. Brother and sister haven’t talked to each other in six years. 

There’s another phone call, the kidnappers ask for six billions (6 miliardi di lire), even if there’s already the new coin euro at this point in time.

As orphans, she grew up very attached to her brother Antonio, her only family, staying close to him even after she got married. When Antonio was in desperate need of money because of his troubles with the law, he asked his sister for two billions, and she immediately sold everything she had raising one billion and seven hundred and fifty millions, and her brother-in-law put in the rest of the money. The following year she went to her brother asking for part of the money back for her daughter’s studies, but he didn’t give her anything, refusing to help her.

They stopped talking to each other, and she lost her will to live. 

The kidnappers send a picture of Susanna. 

Montalbano thinks that the whole thing is a vendetta against Antonio. Montalbano e Valente try to talk to him but he’s not in his office nor in the hotel, and his cell is switched off. Everyone in town is talking about it, almost everyone is against him, saying that he must pay the ransom to save his niece. Antonio’s wife gets beaten up, two trucks go up in flames.. Antonio is forced to pay the ransom.

So he pays, as his lawyer says, but the kidnappers say that he sent them a bag full of useless paper, but they let the girl go anyway. 

Susanna now breaks up with her boyfriend saying that she made a vow to give up her old life and go to Africa to do good in a mission. 

Her mom dies. Montalbano goes to talk to her and her uncle. He knows what happened because by looking closely at the picture he found out where she had been all this time. 

He knows that the whole thing had been planned by her with the help of her uncle. He doesn’t want to charge her because he understands where her pain and hate comes from. He says that he only hopes that after such great hate there must be space for great love.

After what Antonio did to her mother, leaving her completely without money but most of all breaking her heart, using her and abandoning her, Susanna wanted vengeance. Together with her uncle, they didn’t just get the money, they also ruined him, his image. He can’t go into politics anymore (why not? in Italy there’s nothing that can prevent a rich person to go into politics...), and apparently he’s now under investigation by the Irs (finanza). Basically, they’re saying that he’s kinda ruined at the moment.

Susanna assures Montalbano that they didn’t keep one cent of the billions of the ransom, all the money has already been transfert to charity foundations everywhere. 

Agatha Christie's Poirot: Evil under the sun

It wasn’t bad at all, I liked it. There were no actors that I knew, other than Russell Tovey playing a 16-17-y-o kid, but it was nice and there was also Miss Lemon in it, and I like her a lot :-)

It starts unfortunately with a very very annoying sermon, a vicar talking of the wickedness of women :-/ meanwhile a woman in found murdered, Alice Corrigan. 

We move to Poirot dressing up to go to the opening night of Hastings’ new Argentinian restaurant, El Ranchero. Miss Lemon doesn’t go because she says she’s way behind with her fining work :p When she suggests that the jacket might feel tight because maybe he has put on some weight, he’s all ‘not possible!’ :p

The scene in the restaurant was rather dark :/ They are joined by Japp. Poirot is not the only ‘celebrity ‘ there, there’s also Arlena, a famous actress. Poirot is very surprised when he finds that the food is delicious :p Unfortunately, later Poirot feels sick and faints. Miss Lemon hurries to the hospital, and they are told that Poirot is ‘medically obese’, he needs rest and a diet. Miss Lemon sends him to a health resort for two weeks; she sends Hastings as well, of course, not intending to leave him on his own :p

On the small island they meet a couple, Patrick and Christine, and also Arlena with her husband Kenneth and his son Lionel. Patrick and Arlena immediately start flirting, upsetting the others.

Poirot is put on a strict diet and healthy regime, poor Poirot :p He also meets a woman, Ms Darnley, he once met in Egypt, and she’s an old friend of Kenneth; she says she liked his first wife, but not this one. A woman, Emily, jokes about this being the perfect place for murder. Hastings rejects the idea of such a thing in such a beautiful place but Poirot reminds him that “there is evil everywhere under the sun”. Stephen Lane, now ex-vicar, agrees and talks again of evil women while looking at Arlena.

A major warns Poirot that this is not the healthiest place at the moment. Poirot senses something and thinks that this time he must try and ‘prevent’ a murder. He tries talking to Patrick about conducting his affair so publicly, but he denies and gets angry. 

Alena goes to a little beach alone and later Patrick finds her dead and stays behind with the body sending Emily to call Poirot. Japp is called too of course and they investigate together.

Ms Darnley asks Poirot how is it that whenever he’s around people fall like flies :lol:

In a hidden cave by the little beach they find heroine. We learn that the ex-vicar had been left by his wife for another man, so now we understand all his ‘women-are-evil’ speech, the usual frail man who can’t take it and reacts hating all women, instead of wondering why she left him I wonder why she married him :-/

Poirot sends Miss Lemon to investigate Arlena’s finance situation and also the ex-vicar’s ex-wife’s murder of two years before (yes, Alice). Both women were strangled. 

When two fake-bird-watchers are caught taking the heroine out of the cave, they point a gun at Japp but the major helps, he’s actually from Home Office to investigate that matter. Obviously the drugs were brought in by that sailing guy with the boat that alternated white and red sails, as signals.

Poirot says that there’s evil on the island and that the murderer is brilliant, but he didn’t expect “the mind of Hercule Poirot”. Miss Lemon joins them on the island. 

It’s the moment of the final explanation. Poirot gathers everyone and starts his speech. 

Poirot lashes out at everyone until Japp says “so who was it Poirot?”, thanks Japp. 

Poirot speaks of Arlena as a target, a victim. She was beautiful, yes, but also a rich woman.

This is how it went: (solution follows from here)

Lionel had taken a book on poisons from the library. Christine saw it and asked him to join her at the beach. She put make-up on her body to fake a tan and she threw the bottle out of the window, almost hitting Emily. Christine steals Lionel’s glasses and alters his watch before asking him for the time. She put the watch right again then she ran to the little beach and yelled so that Arlena heard her and went to hide in the cave, thus not able to see anything anymore.

Christina lies on the sand with a black wig and Arlena’s hat, pretending to be her. Patrick says that it’s Arlena, dead, and he sends Emily away to call for help. Christine leaves Lionel’s glasses there and runs back. Patrick calls Arlena and strangles her. Why? She had given him all her money to invest but there was no investment, there never was.

Christine has a bath at midday to remove the fake tan and joins the other for tennis. 

They also killed Alice: Patrick seduced her to get her money and then kill her. Back then, it was ‘Christine’ who discovered the body of Alice before she was killed, to give him an alibi, and then he killed her. 

He makes an attempt at strangling Poirot, that’s how angry he is.

Case closed.

The restaurant El Ranchero has been shut down because it had actually been a case of food poisoning, it wasn’t just Poirot. Poor Hastings..

Agatha Christie's Poirot - Appointment with death

It was nice, as nice as it could be since the book was actually a little bit boring if I remember correctly. At least this ep had interesting actors and flew more easily. 

There’s John Hannah as the doctor, there’s Mark Gatiss as Leonard, the son of lord Boynton and the stepson of the horrible woman that will die. Also, Tim Curry as lord Boynton himself!

I think they are all in Syria to visit an archeological site. 

Doctor Sarah King likes Raymond but he’s mom’s little slave and is even afraid of introducing himself to her in front of mom. Carol and Jinny are terrified of her and have nightmares regarding their childhood. Leonard is only her stepson, the son of Lord Boynton, but she’s rude to him like to everybody else. Carol is losing her sanity and Raymond seems to want to talk to her about killing her “we have no choice” and him “she has to die” and Poirot hears these last words. 

Dr Gerard already knows Poirot from a previous case he consulted on, and likes to talk to him about the people around. Lord Boynton cares deeply about his archeology-mission, and he hugs the girls and Leonard when they catch up with him and even kisses his wife’s hand - to him she smiles.

Boynton tells Poirot the Samarcanda story and Poirot finishes it because he knows it of course. 

The horrible old woman said that putting sugar in tea is a sign of a weak character... :-/ 

Anyway, Lady Leonora Boynton is rude to everyone, she hates everybody and everybody hates her.

When everyone goes on a trip, Dr Gerard goes too because he doesn’t like the idea of staying back with Lady Boynton, but he almost faints and Jinny and Raymond take him back. Jinny and Gerard kiss then she lays beside him to rest.

When she’s found dead Poirot says “your appointment with death madam, it was always to be here”.

Everyone is shocked, but not really heartbroken, if you know what I mean. Only Lord Boynton seems actually sad that she’s dead. In the group there’s also a nun, a businessman and Dame Celia, an adventurer.

Poirot works on the case and says to the colonel that “the voices of the little grey cells they have become to sing to Poirot”. 

Raymond tells Poirot that he didn’t kill her only because he lacked the courage but she was a monster. She was controlling, manipulative and cruel. 

At night there’s a scream and then Jinny appears with blood on her hands. Poirot finds the nun injured, and Dr King treats to her wounds. It seems the two women fought against a man-slaver. 

Apparently when Lady Boynton was still Mrs Pierce she couldn’t have kids so she went for adoption, but here I didn’t totally understand something. Did she beat some children and then sent them back, and only kept Raymond, Carol and Jinny? But Poirot asks the nanny who did she beat, and she said Leslie. She was the one doing the beating, under the evil woman’s orders. 

After her death, there were rumours in the stock market and all her shares are now worthless, businessman Cope tells Poirot. The nanny is found drowned in the bathtub. Suicide?

Poirot and all the others go back to the dig and here Poirot has his long moment, where he talks about it from the start, who has motive, who would have gained from it, and blahblahblah,

Leonard tells him: “you can stare at me significantly as long as you like monsieur, I’ve done nothing wrong” , and that word ‘significantly’ seems wrote specially for Gatiss :-)

Leonard planted a fake skull for his father to find it, because he had spent all his life looking for it and he wanted him happy and free of that obsession. 

Mr Cope is revealed as the little Leslie that was beaten at the orders of lady Boynton, so he planned against her to ruin her, strip her of her money. 

The colonel was there to uncover the trafficking of slave-women, and it was actually the nun.

Celia was a junior maid working for Mrs Pierce when she got pregnant with a guest and gave up her child, Jinny. She hoped that the child would be happy, but heard rumours of her cruelty, so she looked for Jinny’s father and together they investigated the matter and planned to kill her, together. And they did. They poisoned her: Celia used a syringe given to her by doctor Gerard so that the woman couldn’t move or speak, then he put blood inside a ball of wax that melted in the sun , when actually Celia stabbed her right then, when they all thought she was already dead. 

He also pushed the nanny to commit suicide. The last bit is quite interesting, when he tells Jinny he’s sorry, then Gerard and Celia state their love to each other, and then he poisons her and then himself, to die together. 

Next scene: the ‘nun’ driving away, then walking in the desert and falling down... what does that mean? :-/ that’s her escape plan? Did she run out of gas? Did she get lost? 

They changed a lot in this movie from the original story, so, why was this bit really necessary??

Ending:

Raymond and Dr King are together. Jinny and Carol are to go to Egypt together. “Lady Boynton would have said I was constitutionally too feeble, that my skin was too fair, but I think it’s probably time I showed my feeble skin who’s boss” :-)

This should have been the end, instead there’s also a bit where he encourages her to have faith in God and he gives her a rosary :-/ I mean, I like the thing and all, but I don’t like people preaching to others what they should think. A simple ‘have faith and everything will be alright’ would have been enough, simple and encouraging, and for anyone to have faith the way they want it.

ITA La domatrice / appuntamento con la morte

Spaceballs - 1987

It’s very silly and very dated, but it’s still a classic in its own right way, funny in all its adorable silliness so very 80s. I still find the robot very annoying (specially in the Italian version because of the thick accent totally out of place), and who knows why but seeing it now the pizza-man-boss made my stomach twist in desperation, luckily it wasn’t on screen for long or I would have had to say goodbye to my dinner, euch. 

It starts with an on-screen-moving description like Star Wars, only this is less epic and more fun. We learn that the planet Spaceball has no air left so they plan to steal it from the neighbour planet Duidia, where princess Vespa is about to get married to Prince Valium simply because he’s the only prince left in the whole universe apparently, and being a princess she has to marry a prince so her father insists on the marriage even if none of them seems eager about it. 

When the Spaceball ship makes its entrance, it’s funny by itself how absurdly long it is, it goes on and on... :lol: Helmet is the villain in command, a little guy with a huge black helmet, he can barely breath with that thing on. The crew is entirely composed by people named Assholes, so Helmet realises that he’s ‘surrounded by assholes’.

Vespa runs away in her white mercedes-spaceship with her loyal robot-maid. Spaceballs try to capture her but she calls her dad for help and he hires Lone Starr and his loyal partner barf, a mog, half man half dog, the best friend of himself... They save Vespa and the robot and Vesta and LoneStarr start bickering until they get a look at each other and quite like what they're seeing... still they keep bickering because she’s very snob and spoiled. 

LoneStarr only accepted because he owes lots of money to PizzaTheHutt. They escape in LS’s camper-spaceship that Wikipedia calls Winnebago, and Helmet orders pursuit at Ludicrous Speed... which was not a good move for his health.

LS and company have to stop at a moon because their ship ran out of gas and they walk in the desert until they pass out (I understand LS carrying the girl, but why Barf has to carry the robot... maybe her rollerblade-feet can’t walk on sand? well, she walked before, so what, the robot got tired???)

They are saved by six little figures who give them water and take them to Yogurt, the great wiseman and master of the Schwartz (why the schwartz? has anyone ever explained that? I mean, it works really well in Italian, ‘sforzo’ instead of ‘forza’, but in English, why schwartz?)

Yogurt shows them all the Spaceball-the-movie-merchandise he’s going to sell, including the Spaceball-flame-thrower that the kids love so much, and then gives LS a ring so he can use the schwartz too. 

LS and Vespa already got close to each other but they never even kissed because the robot has a ‘virgin alert’ that goes off even if she’s on ‘sleep mode’...

To find out where they are, Helmet and the Captain watch the movie-VHS, watching a bit of what we’ve already seen, and what they’re doing right now, and finally where the others are, so they follow to the letter the President’s orders and they comb the desert with huge combs...

They manage to kidnap Vespa. Helmet is embarrassed when the Captain enters his cabin without knocking but luckily the captain says that “I didn’t see you play with your dolls again”.

They call Vespa’s father to get the combination so they can approach his planet: the combination is 12345, and Helmet says it’s “the kind of combination an idiot would have on his luggage” and sure enough that’s the combination the President uses on his luggage..

LS and Barf go to rescue Vespa and the robot, they escape together and the clumsy Spaceball make a mistake and capture their stunt doubles instead of the real ones...

They are now close to the planet Druidia and the huge spaceship transforms itself into MegaMaid, a sort of statue of liberty with a huge vacuum cleaner to suck all Druidia’s air. LS uses the schwartz to move the switch to "reverse" and the air is blown back onto Druidia. 

They try now to destroy the MegaMaid, entering its ear and looking for an autodestruction-button. LS finds it, but has to fight against Helmet to get to it. First he has to knock out a guard with the Vulcan neck pinch, then Helmet arrives. LS: “at last we meet for the first time for the last time” then he stops to rethink the phrase in his head to be sure he got it right :p then Helmet has the big revelation for him (no, not Luke I am your father, no). It’s actually: “I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate” - “what does that make us?” - “absolutely nothing” ...

After the autodestruction is activated they flee with their sheep. All the crew escapes with emergency pods but the president, the captain and Helmet. MegaMaid is destroyed but the head is still intact and it falls on the planet (well, a planet, and as expected two apes on horses see them, I say as expected because that head immediately makes you think of the planet of the apes, and when you see the beach it’s even more obvious, so the two apes ‘have’ to appear: they see Spaceballs coming out of the head and they are not happy at all about it, saying something about the Spaceballs going to ruin their planet or something)

Pizza-the-Hutt is now dead because it ate itself, so LS has no more debts. He brings Vespa back to her father so she can again marry Valium (...). After a stop at a diner where an ‘alien’ comes out of a customer’s chest and starts an embarrassing Fred-Astaire’s-little-number before escaping out the window, LoneStarr refuses the money and goes away with Barf, but when Yogurt informs him that his necklace actually means that he’s a prince himself, he goes back to claim Vespa for himself (dressed in a prince-charming-outfit)

Vespa is very pleased about that and they get married very quickly because the priest was kind of losing his patience, and finally kiss.

Cast:

Lone Starr - Bill Pullman

Vespa - Daphne Zuniga

Barf - John Candy

Helmet - Rick Moranis

President - Mel Brooks

There’s also a small part for Michael Winslow and not surprising he does ‘noises’.

ITA balle spaziali

Despicable me - 2010

I liked it a lot, it’s funny and also very sweet because this ‘despicable’ man who wants to be the greatest of all villains (meaning thief, this is a cartoon and there is no death) finally falls in love with three little girls, three orphans who for a while show him what does it mean to have someone who loves you, to never be alone again. 

The three children are lovely because they have different ages, different personalities, they want a home and a father-figure but they also know how to depend only on the three of them, there are no temper-tantrums, no loud crying, only ‘four people’ that learn that being together is better than being alone. 

And then there are the minions :lol: they all look like the container inside the kiinder-eggs, all yellow, all making strange noises, strange but somehow adorable, and they are all cheerful and funny.

Details:

It starts with a group of tourists in Egypt, when a little brat escapes his mother’s leash and runs away eventually falling on a pyramid... which turns out to be fake, an inflatable one, and the news spread all over the world, someone stole a pyramid!

Gru lives his life threatening his neighbour’s dog’s life, using his freezing-ray to avoid the queue at the bar and making children cry and stealing... and when he hears about that pyramid he sets off to become again the greatest villain by stealing the moon! He asks the help of doctor Nefario and asks the bank for a loan... a special one, the Bank of Evil: he explains his project but the loan is denied because he doesn’t have the shrinking-ray yet - he plans to build a rocket to go near the moon, shrink it and steal it. 

A younger new villain, Vector, is the one who stole the pyramid, and when Gru manages to steal the shrinking-ray with the help of his minions, Vector immediately steals it from him !

So now Gru tries in any way to steal it back, but he can’t even enter Vector’s super-guarded place.

When he sees that three little girls are allowed entrance, he has a plan: to adopt the children long enough to steal the ray.

Margo is the older one, then there’s Edith always with her pink cap on her head, and little Agnes. They live in an orphanage and go around selling biscuits hoping to sell enough so not to be put inside the ‘box of shame’ ... :(

He’s totally not prepared to deal with little girls - he even put bowls on the floor with food as if they were pets. He puts them to sleep in three bomb-beds ... and has to take them to dance-class..

He asks Nefario for bisco-robots but at first he gets disco-robots because the old man misunderstood... then finally it’s cookie-selling-time, and the girls are immediately allowed to enter because Vector likes their cookies, and the cookie-bot that Gru put in there help him to steal the ray back. 

On their way back, the girls asks for a day at the luna-park and he agrees thinking he could leave them there, but of course they are too little and he has to stay with them... and they play and he has fun I guess because the four of them get home together and full of toys and cotton-candy and Gru even has the face all painted like a cat or something.

The loan is still denied and he has no money to go on with his plan, but the little girls give him all they have - a few coins - and the minions follow enthusiastically giving him all they have, plus Gru instructs them to sell everything he has to get money, and so they go on with the plan. 

The children are so cute and sweet, and they like each other now.

We see that Vector is the son of the bank’s director who refused the loan. 

The launch is scheduled the same day of the dance-recital, and Gru wonders what to do because he’d like to go see them, but Nefario is against it, saying that he’s losing focus and ruining the plan, and even arranges for the children to be sent back to the orphanage.

He is sad but lets them go. He moves on with the plan, but without enthusiasm now. He puts on his pink space-suit (after he put it in the washing-machine together with the girls pink-tutus).

The launch goes perfectly, he reaches the moon, shrinks it and takes it. He rushes back hoping to get there on time for the recital, but he’s too late, everyone’s left. He finds a ransom note, though. Vector has taken the girls away.

He asks for the moon (literally I mean) in exchange for the girls, and Gru yields immediately, goes to his place and surrenders the moon. Vector is the real villain though, and he takes his word back, doesn’t release the girls and instead flies away with them and the moon. 

Nefario warns him that everything that has been shrinked will soon return to its original volume, and the bigger it was the fastest it will be to return normal. 

Gru, Nefario and the minions chase Vector to rescue the girls. The moon becomes bigger and bigger until it destroys Vector’s ship and goes back up to its original place, with Vector on top.

This is a cartoon, it doesn’t matter that he takes away the moon and nothing on Earth happens (other than surfers being unable to surf anymore), or that the moon goes back to its original place by itself... of course it doesn’t make sense, that’s part of the rules, this is like a fairytale, it’s not like a girl could really sleep for a hundred years before waking up and still be a teenager. Those things don’t matter in this movie, of course. 

Now both the moon and the pyramid has been given back, Gru is again together with the three little girls and they are so sweet together. He reads for them a bedtime story he wrote himself based on their own story, and gives them a goodnight-kiss - first Agnes, then Edith, and when it’s Margo’s turn she jumps up and hugs him tight. Outside their room, a long line of minions awaiting for their goodnight kiss too :-))

So sweet.

The movie ends with the girls dancing for a private recital, for Gru, Nefario, all the minions and Gru’s mother (who looks totally like Red’s grandma in Hoodwinked).

ITA cattivissimo me

The congress - 2013

What a chance wasted, what’s up with all this cartoon nonsense? This was a real waste of time, it was awful. Yes, there was a message behind, no doubt, but the movie was awful nonetheless. It started intriguing, I admit that, but as soon as the cartoon started it was ruined. First I didn’t like the cartoons, and second, it stopped making real sense.

It starts with Robin Wright, I like her so that was good. She’s an actress and her agent is calling her Robin and talking about her ‘last chance’ at a job. You soon realise that the name is not a coincidence, she’s playing herself; they say she blew her career because she was always too emotional and made all the worst career choices, and offer her to sell the rights to her digital image, so that she won’t work herself but they’ll make all the movies they want using her image; a lawyer handles the contract, to set a few rules (I understand the no-porn-rule, but why no fantasy?? )and the contract is valid for twenty years. She accepts because they say the world is changing and there will be no more roles for her and she has a daughter and a son that needs treatment because he has a syndrome and he’s slowly becoming deaf and blind. 

After twenty years she’s ask to ne-new the contract - she has ‘starred’ in the series “Rebel Robot Robin” (the trailer seemed ok but the one scene showed looked rather embarrassing, when she was dropped from an airplane riding a bomb like a cowgirl..) and also given ‘interviews’ and everything.

She’s to speak at a congress, as the symbol of the new era or something, but to reach said congress she has to inhale something... and then it starts: one second a beautiful Robin Wright is driving a fancy car, the next moment a fake-looking-cartoon is on a boat, through a too-colourful landscape full of smiling-octopus and other strange things. She reaches a hotel full of people - everything is a cartoon now - and some people inhale something and change their appearance, but only for a second so I don’t see the point, really. 

The lights go off in her room and she asks a robot-servant: is it really dark or is it all in my mind? And the answer is that everything is in her mind, if she sees the dark it’s because she chose the dark.

Now she’s told that they don’t want just her digital image as before, but they want to make lots of chemical products of her, so that people could become her or something. The future is chemical, apparently. At the congress, Robin is presented as the symbol of the new era, digital and chemical, but when she steps on the stage she starts speaking of her son and children in need, and they don’t like it, but at that moment the guy who was talking gets shot by the rebels and she flees when the rebels attack in number. She’s helped by a guy, Dylan, who says that he’s the one who cured the ‘animation’ of her digital self for the past twenty years. They go downstairs to a strange place flooded place where they need air-bubbles around their heads and also to sit on a couch (and Dylan shoves away rudely a rude guy with two girls.. well, in the back there were many other empty seats so... was it really necessary? ) . There are many more strange images then she falls asleep and is kidnapped by the local police and executed... but she wakes up again, still a cartoon. Doctors says that she’s been heavily poisoned by chemicals and there’s no cure so she’ll be hibernated, waiting for a cure. She dreams of meeting again her son Aaron, and then she wakes up again, who knows how much time has passed. Dylan appears again saying that he waited for her, and now she can be cured. They walk around; apparently now people use chemicals to be whatever they want, and everything appears wonderful and a real utopia - or at least they say that, that they can have whatever they want, with the right chemicals. She keeps thinking of her son Aaron. Dylan tells her that her daughter Sarah is happy now, a naturalist, but she wouldn’t recognise her so they don’t go to her. He says that he loves her and there’s an animated-sex-scene, then in a restaurant (where they are served by someone looking like Michael Jackson in his red-outfit) she asks if she could get out of that chemical place, and he tells her that there’s a way but he thinks that there’s no way of coming back afterwards. He gives her a pill that’s supposed to wipe out all the chemicals in her so she’s be in the real world again. Much like Matrix, you know. There’s only one pill, and he gives it to her. 

She takes the pill and after a moment she sees a lot of poor people in a sort of post-apocaliptic world, everyone is just standing there, spacing-out, on drugs. 

There are still ‘normal’ people, and they are all on airships-zeppelins. She enters one wearing her dirty-homeless-clothes, looking for Doctor Barker, the one who treated Aaron. They are happy to see each other, but he tells her that Aaron waited a long time for her and eventually took the drugs to escape and not being alone, six months before. In those years he had become almost completely blind, and the doctors asked him to take the drugs, to escape. 

Now she has nothing in this world, so she hopes she can go back to where she came from, but he tells her that that place doesn’t really exist, it was created by her mind, so now she would go somewhere else, where her mind takes her. 

She inhales something again and she’s back in an animated world, where she relives Aaron’s life through his eyes, since birth to the day he took the drugs. She looks like him now, and at the end she finds Aaron, and the movie ends. 

So what, after taking the drugs their real bodies were just standing there, while their minds went to an animated world that only them can see? So everything Dylan told her was actually only in her mind? Nothing of it really happened? What about the rebellion, and her daughter? Is that simply what she wanted to think? Who takes care of their bodies, then? By looking at her and the other people, it looks like they didn’t change or shower, but what about food? 

And if she could choose in her mind where to go, then why couldn’t she go back, find Dylan again and also her son and daughter? Imagining a happy life where they are all together?

Bleah, I didn’t like it at all, once the cartoon started it was all almost unbearable to watch. I’ll never watch this thing again!

Goosebumps - 2015

It was nice, rather funny, nicer than I thought, actually. A pity the ending doesn’t make sense. Honestly I have never read the Goosebumps-books, I only know about them because they are famous, so I don’t know if the book-titles mentioned in the movie or the monsters set free are real or not. Well, by real I mean, if they are mentioned in real books or not. I hope they are, it would make the whole thing more cool, but at the same time it would raise the point: do the monsters in the movie bring justice to their image in the books? I can’t judge that. At least not yet, maybe I’ll read them. Can I? I’m afraid I’m now an adult without the ‘young’ before it. 

Anyway, details:

Zach and his mom move to Delaware, she’ll be the new vice-principal and he’ll start in a new school. He doesn’t seem bothered at all to leave their former home (wherever that was, I’m not even sure they mention it). His father died the year before, so a change of air might be good for both, to start again.

He immediately meets his neighbour, a nice girl called Hannah, but her father seems to be very grumpy and warns him to stay away from her. 

They meet again when she takes him out for a little trip at night. 

When Zach hears what seems to be an argument between Hannah and her father, and thinks that she’s in danger, so he runs out and calls the police, but the man says that Hannah went back to her mother and Zach simply heard the television.

There’s a school ball but he’s not going, but his mom has to, so she asks her sister Lorraine to stay with him, but Zach can’t let go, thinking Hannah might be locked up somewhere in her house. He lures her father out and calls the only friend he made at school, Champ, and together they sneak into the house looking for her. Champ (short for Champion) is really scared but follows him anyway. They find a lot of Goosebumps manuscripts; Zach has never read them but Champ is a fan and wants to look at them. They are all locked so Zach takes the key and opens one, when Hannah surprises them. She’s totally fine, but she’s alarmed seeing an opened book and immediately the monster of the story comes out, the abominable snowman, who causes a little mess in the house before heading out. Hannah takes the book and runs after it, and the boys follow her. She’s at an ice rink waiting for the snowman to come close so that she can open the book and suck it back inside it. She fails, the boys try to help her but luckily her father came back in time to save them. While he’s driving everyone back, Zach tricks him into revealing his identity (he’s RL Stine, the Goosebumps author) by slandering his books while praising Stephen King until he snaps. 

When they get home, Stine insists they must move again, against Hannah’s will. Of course he plans to take all his books with him, but when he enters the room he’s confronted by Slappy, the evil dummy (when his book fell on the floor it opened by itself, maybe it wasn’t properly locked...?).

Slappy is quite evil and angry for having been locked up all that time, and wants revenge on Stine (also because without Stine nobody will ever lock him inside a book). Slappy starts opening the books and setting them on fire so that the books can’t be reused to trap them again, and causes chaos in the whole town. 

Zach, Champ, Hannah and Stine have to fight against evil garden gnomes and escape. Lorraine is attacked by an evil white poodle, while the town is turned upside down by mutant plants, giant insects, and whatnot. Slappy, with the help of a group of aliens (what are they?) freezes (literally) the police, while Zach and the others try to find a solution. Zach suggests writing a new story that will trap them all, but Stine says that it needs to be a real story, with plot and everything, and must be written with his old typewriter which is kept at the school (why? who knows). 

To get there, they must escape the invisible boy and also the werewolf, plus a giant mantis (really really huge). Lorraine helps them by running over the werewolf with her car (you can see sparkles between her and Stine, so you can guess right away that they won’t move away after all...) and they sent her to warn the police, but when she gets there she gets frozen as well.

Zach and the others go through the cemetery where Zach discovers that Hannah is not real, she’s also out of Stine’s imagination. They escape a group of zombie (why are they coming out of the ground? I know they are zombie, but in this case why aren’t they coming out of a book?) then they finally make it to the school. Stine confesses to Zach that he felt so lonely that he kept Hannah with him as his daughter, writing her so that she would believe to be real. 

They find the typewriter and Stine starts writing by himself while the others try to stall the monsters to give him time to write. Champ saves a girl from the werewolf by biting it with his silver-tooth, and she hugs him and kisses him as thanks.

Since he has to be quick, he starts writing about the events as they happen, naming all the monsters, but Slappy finds him and breaks his fingers with the typewriter’s cover so that he can’t continue writing. He reunites with the kids and decides to confront the monsters and his fears because Slappy and the monsters want him so by staying at the school he’s putting everyone in danger. 

Stine and the three kids escape on a school bus, and hide in the same abandoned amusement park that Hannah showed Zach at the beginning of the movie. Stine is imprisoned inside the Blob, and he tells Zach to finish the story himself. He finishes it, but then he hesitates to open the book realising that Hannah will also be trapped inside it (well, why? she’s not a monster..) but she’s ok with it, she knows she’s not real (‘how many sweet sixteen can one girl have?’ according to IMDB). Still Zach doesn’t want to open it so she does so herself and all the monsters are sucked into it, and Hannah too. When Stine arrives, they sorrowful eyes of Zach explain it all and Stine’s smile signals that he understands. 

Some time after, Stine is now the new literature prof at Zach’s school, since the other one is still injured after the attack. He’s in a relationship with Lorraine, and he reveals to Zach that he wrote another book to make Hannah alive again and the kids kiss while he burns the book (well, he should have burned it immediately, but it’s more effective to do so in front of the camera I guess. Will Hannah grow up as all the other kids now or she’ll stay sixteen forever? Because that would be a problem if the two kids were to fall for each other, as the kiss suggests...).

The last scene shows Stine hearing a noise when he passes in front of the displayed typewriter, and we hear the invisible boy using the typewriter to write his own revenge story and also saying that he ‘forgot about him’... well now, I understand this is supposed to be the twist at the end, but this thing doesn’t make any sense when you think about it. Maybe I’ve missed something, but what I understand is: we saw and heard Stine list a lot of monsters while he was writing his new story, and this would sit well with the invisible boy’s claim that he forgot about him, meaning ‘you didn’t write my name so I wasn’t sucked into the book with the others’ but this also raises the problem of ‘why was Hannah trapped?’ . Stine for sure didn’t list her among all the monsters, so why was she locked in the book but the invisible guy wasn’t??? Nonsense.

ITA piccoli brividi

Lo chiamavano Trinità... - 1970

Titled “they call me Trinity” abroad, although the original title’s exact translation is “they called him Trinity...”.  I love it of course, it’s incredibly famous and so very funny, I almost know it by heart. Who doesn’t love this movie, the most famous of all the Hill-Spencer movies. It’s very funny but it’s not a comic-movie, it’s a western for real, it’s only that it exaggerates (compared to the other movies, that is) certain traits (like how dirty they are) and contains more fist-fights than shootings, and of course the famous way the fight :-D Of course it has some things that might be a little annoying now, but it was 1970, it was a long time ago. The girls characters would be unbearable in a modern movie, and I rather feel sorry for the poor Mexican man whose life they save, yes, but they also turn him into an alcoholic. Nowadays it would be unacceptable but it was 1970, a lot of films were different. This movie already shocked people who saw it when it first came out for how different it was from what people were used to. It’s a lot less violent, for once, because there’s a lot of fighting and some shootings, yes, but in Hill-Spencer movies almost nobody ever dies, and there are never serious consequences, those beaten up will be ready to fight again in another scene. 

Also, one can’t fight against imprinting, I watched it first when I was little, since this film came out way before I did, so I can’t even remember when I first watched it, I was probably very little, and back then I found it very very funny and the girls-and-Trinità-locking-eyes-thing was cute to me (although I didn’t much like that there were two of them, I never liked the idea of sharing). 

So, details:

It starts with Trinità sleeping on a sort of inclined platform pulled by his horse who seems to know exactly where he wants to go :-P and also where he wants to stop, because the horse stops exactly in front of a coach station. Only then he wakes up yawning, puts on his boots without checking them first, so he has to take it out to throw a scorpion away. He gives some hay to the horse and goes inside to eat, asking the owner to leave the pan with all the cooked beans at the table because just one portion isn’t enough (all that happens with looks and a couple of words: “leave them”). Trinità starts eating like a starving man, with bread and wine. He eats and drinks quickly, burping loudly once and then keeping it up until he’s finished it all, cleaning all the sauce with bread (of course, scarpetta :D).

The only other people present are two bounty-hunters and an injured man. Since he is very very dirty, and very very hungry, they think he might be running away from the law, but he’s not on their list of wanted criminal so they let him be. Still, he doesn’t like them and the way they’re treating the wounded man, only caring that he survives enough time to get their reward. Apparently this is not a ‘dead-or-alive’ case but only ‘alive’ . Before leaving, Trinità tells the injured man to go with him, making the two angry. But before fighting, they ask his name: “they call me Trinità” to which they reply: “Trinità! the right hand of the devil!” and they try to shoot him in the back but he shoots them without even turning around. He asks the man what he did, and he explains that his woman was doing laundry at the river when a gringo came trying to rape her (“a gringo assaulted her and wanted her”). He rushed to help her, he had a knife. ‘The gringo looked at him and died, maybe hitting his head because he only gave him a few stabs’ :-p Trinità places him on the rack to rest shile he mounts the horse. They head into town where they see that the sheriff is being threatened by three men who want their friend released. Trinità has his horse walk in between them giving him a smirk, but does nothing to help, sure that if they try anything he’ll kill them. The sheriff is clearly not happy to see him :-p When the injured man asks who that is, Trinità says “the left hand of the devil” because he’s left handed. Together they take the bullet out of the man, giving him a lot of alcohol to drink as anaesthetic. The sheriff is Bambino (meaning male child), Trinità’s brother. It’s funny how Bambino raises the man like a weightless-child to sit him on the desk, the way he uses alcohol to clean the knife but then he dries it on his dirty shirt :-p  Now the poor man is drunk and says that ‘gringos are bastards’ because ‘you want our women and get angry if someone stabs you’ :-p

Bambino doesn’t like having Trinità around, because he always brings trouble :-p so he wants Trinità to leave town, but of course he won’t. He’s so annoyed that for a second he loses his appetite, but finds it again immediately :-p 

Bambino is now the sheriff because, he says, after he escaped from jail he saw a man following him, actually only going the same way, but he shot him and he fell from his horse, so he took the new-sheriff’s badge and came into town waiting for his men (faina & timido = beech marten and shy ). They are horse-thieves. The sheriff’s helper Jonathan comes to tell him that some of the major’s men beat up some farmers (the mormons), and to keep up his sheriff-persona he needs to do something. First Jonathan forces Trinità to have a bath :-p then Bambino goes to talk to the major about his men, giving him a last warning, also hitting one man on the head because he tried to provoke him, and pointing his rifle to another who had decided to stand up, while Trinità prevented the one a bit far away to do anything :-p

Bambino is annoyed that the major keeps bothering the farmers, because the rangers would get involved and he’d have to run away before his men arrive, and also because he plans to steal the major’s horses. Trinità suggests helping the farmers, but Bambino has no help... so now he tries asking for his help but he refuses in a mocking way :-p 

The major is not the only one bothering the farmers, there’s also Mezcal and his gang of criminals, they like to beat them and eat their food and wine (even though the farmers don’t drink and don’t have any).

The major of course owns the local groceries shop and orders to not sell them anything, but when Trinità sees two beautiful girls with the farmer thrown out of the shop, he helps them to buy what they need. He waits for the farmers to go away before fighting Jeff and one other of the major’s men, then he goes into the saloon and starts messing with the major’s solitaire by moving his cards around until the major says ‘there’s a knight too much here’ (“qui c’è un fante di troppo”) to which Trinità says ‘no, here there’s a major too much’ (“no, qui c’è un maggiore di troppo”) and again warns him to let the farmers be. 

Bambino is angry that he left him alone for only two hours and he caused troubles already, but Trinità only thinks of the girls’ eyes... so he provokes him demanding to become his vice-sheriff, blackmailing , or he’ll tell that he’s a horse-thief. 

Immediately Trinità enters the saloon where they are talking about him and his mother, trying to start a fight. Jonathan runs to wake up the sheriff telling him his brother is in trouble and with a hopeful face he asks ‘did they kill him?’ :-p when he gets there, Trinità tells him that they offended the law and their mother, then they put their badges into their pockets, Jonathan takes away all weapons, and they start fist-fighting. Most of the guys go against Bambino, but Trinità helps a bit too :-p but not much... and as an excuse for the fight he says he got angry when they insulted his mom saying she’s an old hooker ‘but it’s the truth’ - ‘well, she’s not old’. 

Together they go meeting the farmers, and when they see them Tobias yells ‘hello brothers’ - ‘did you tell him that we’re brothers?’ - ‘no, I don’t know him’ :-p and Tobias ‘the Lord sent you among us’ - ‘no, we were just passing by’ :-p 

Tobias thanks them for helping Sara and Giuditta and offers to dine together, but then Mezcal comes back with his men. He sits down to eat but gets angry because there is no wine and lines them up to hit them one by one, then he sees Bambino: ‘this is new, I never hit him before’, but Bambino doesn’t flinch, instead he reacts hitting him once and knocking him out. Mezcal and his men go away :-p

After a few honey words from the girls on the power of love, they go away too. 

The major has hired two men in black against them, but it doesn’t take long for Trinità to pick a fight with them, until they run away in their long underwear :-p The major demands both their resignations or he’ll talk to the governor, but Bambino only nods. 

There’s a bounty on Bambino’s head because he didn’t kill the sheriff, only injured him :-p Bambino sends Trinità away, and he goes to the farmers to play with the girls in the river, who tells him that in their community they practice polygamy so he already imagines himself with both of them (what they already do at the river, we don’t see).

They give him new clothes, then Trinità tells them to strike back when bad guys come. Faina and Timido arrive and Trinità understands who they are right away and tells them where to find Bambino. They tell their boss that they saw someone following them and they shot him and he fell off the horse, but he wasn’t after them only going the same way, a crippled sheriff :-p but they didn’t kill him :-p

Trinità shows up again dressed like the farmers, asking his help against the major and then he’ll get married (to Sara or Giuditta, he hasn’t decided yet) and get settled forever. He is serious and swears on his mother, so Bambino agrees to help him. 

The major goes to Mezcal offering a deal: he makes the farmers leave the valley and the major will ‘let them’ steal some of his horses :-p 

Trinità, Bambino, Faina and Timido try to teach the farmers to fight, but they are not very good :-p

Trinità spots one of Mezcal’s men, Emiliano, spying on them so they have him spill everything. As it often happens, Trinità is the one who can think and plan, but he pretends that it’s all Bambino’s thinking :-p (they’ll do this again in other movies). So they take the Mexican’s place in stealing the horses (and not only the planned 20). When they are out, the poor sheriff with two crutches comes looking for the three of them, and Jonathan hurries to warn him. 

Trinità says that the horses are safe somewhere in the valley. Jonathan warns him, taking with him the now-alcoholic-Mexican from the beginning. 

When the major comes with his men and Mezcal’s gang, they hide and then force him to stop and surrender all weapons, threatening him with a rifle to his head, and when they are all disarmed, they all fight, even the farmers. There’s a lot of smack-sounds and people flying around, and positioning the adversary to the punches look more real :-p until all the bad guys are on the floor unable to keep fighting. 

When it’s over, the major asks for his horses back but they send him away suggesting he moves to Nebraska. 

Bambino sends his man to get the horses, but they have now been all marked by the farmers. He’s very angry, and Jonathan too because he wanted a share, and Bambino leaves with his men. 

Trinità stays behind, but then he learns that by staying there he would not simply get the girls, he should work all day, be a farmer, help them with the building and the animals and everything, so when they have finished praying Trinità is already far away, after Bambino. 

Bambino heads west to California, telling him to go east; when the injured sheriff asks him after them, he points him in the right direction (poor sheriff).

Then Trinità lies down in his old rack and tells his horse to go to California.....

Cast

Trinità - Terence Hill

Bambino - Bud Spencer

Tobias - Dan Sturkie

Sara - Gisela Hahn

Giuditta - Elena Pedemonte

Faina - Ezio Marano

Timido - Luciano Rossi

Mezcal - Remo Capitani

Jeff - Riccardo Pizzuti (one of the stunt-men that we often see in their movies. They were often the same group of stuntmen , directly acting the part, and he’s the face I can usually recognise)

Law & Order : Criminal Intent season 5

missing: ep 1


1- Grow
the one with Nicole and the little girl, when she leaves to protect her because he really loved her and couldn't risk it.
2- Diamond dogs
Logan and Barek (she speaks lots of languages, nice)
(there's Peter Scanavino in this ep. From killer to victim to detective, nice L&O career)
Johnny robs jewellery stores while his mom drives him! They are all addicts, well, mom turned him into an addict, made him steal for her, provided a girl then killed her when she became a liability. He got angry but still she's his mom. She'd be alone after he goes to prison, so to help her he helps them charge her.
3- Prisoner
Goren and Eames.
Bill's a warden. Ten years ago his wife Jenny was kidnapped by an inmate. Cops are called when he is found with his wrists tied to a grid, suspended and bleeding from the wire cuts. They find Jenny: she's now called Wendy LeBlanc, married to Mitch LeBlanc, and she says she ran away with him, that they are in love. Now they think that Bill did it to himself to look the good one (ok, tying your belt to stay suspended, tying your right wrist with your left hand, yes, but how did he tie the left hand??)
Actually he himself had hired that Vic/Mitch to kill her, but after kidnapping her he told her everything and let her live. Bill wanted to stop her from asking a loan because a background check in her finances would have shown money that he stole. Poor woman, hard to find herself now, I guess.
4- Unchained
Logan and Barek
They stumble on a mafia case. It starts with Joe Long being killed, the son of a cop, but not the Long they wanted to kill. The investigation leads them to two cops. They are totally loyal to each other, but they show the daughter of one of them what kind of man he is, giving her number to bad men, so she turns against him. He sort of sold her to befriend important men, giving them her number...saying stuff like 'no relationship's needed, just dinner is ok, make sure to make her drink and have fun...' that sort of things, what a disgusting man.
How come that nobody ever called her? I mean, never! This is clear because at the end she tells her father that he was the only one who had her number, when she wants it to admit it. Before they let her hear his recorded words she thought he was a hero, so it's not likely that she had bad experiences connected to someone calling her on her phone...
5- Acts of contrition
A young nun buys young girls off their pimps to save them. She was a different person when she was young, a bad girl, a drug addict who wanted to please a violent man and to do that she tricked a poor black young man into going where two white guys were waiting for him and what they did was beating him so badly he almost died, but suffered tremendous wounds and for nineteen years has lived in a vegetative state, and she took a small part in the beating too, she kicked him once. The brother of that young man tried to find her, knowing she was the only witness, but an older nun got in the way trying to protect her and got killed. They finally have her confession. It's too late to charge anyone for the beating, but he won't live for long now and after his death it'll be a homicide and they'll be able to charge them all, young nun included.
I liked the actress playing the young nun.
6- In the wee small hours part 1
Goren and Eames. :-)  Logan and Barek too. I like the four of them working together, and I liked Goren and Logan working together :)
A school trip. Two boys and a girl go missing. The boys are found but not the girl. They find there was another girl, missing for two months, a black girl who did not run away on her own. They trace the blog of a seventeen year-old predator. The kid is the son of a judge (played by Colm Meaney). They find Tiana's body, the poor black girl. They ask Conny (the guy who had three girls devoted to him, I remember him, and he's now in prison) to talk to Ethan in their cell. They keep working on it together . End of part one.
I know about texting and the shortcuts used, sometimes on twitter they're necessary, and htey were even more necessary when I used messages because sometimes one more character could mean paying for two messages instead of one, but I don't like it when not necessary. The girl's text said: "ur a$$ luks gr8 in those jnz", which probably takes longer to write than the actual right letters :-/
7- In the wee small hours part 2
They find Bethany's body, and evidence that someone else had sex with her, not just Ethan the boy. His friends say that the judge paid an escort for Ethan's 16th birthday, and then he had sex with her too. They start thinking that the judge is involved too. Ethan's mom tries to help her son, she admits that the reason she never divorced him is simply because "he's a judge and all his friends are judges".
She tells her son to talk, Ethan admits that the judge made out with Bethany and they arrest him. The judge tires to go hard on them: going after Logan as a violent cop, but Barek backs him up; going after Goren by harassing his old sick mom who got so agitated she had to be sedated. Goren's very angry at him. He goes to talk to the judge and Eames calls Carver too (I like angry, manipulative Goren :D ) Great scene :) They made it look like he was so angry as to not think of his actions and maybe put himself into trouble, but in a few seconds you realise he knows what he's doing, and he gets his man, making him confess :)
He provokes him well enough to admit that he had sex with her: statutory rape. There's a trial, the defence lawyer goes after Goren (his father abandoned his family when he was a child) and shows a letter that Eames wrote five years prior, stating "detective Goren's erratic and antisocial behaviour... lead me to have serious doubts about his judgement and mental stability", back when she requested a new partner. She then withdrew the request. She explains, almost crying "over time I came to see that his approach was based on deep understanding of human behaviour. I came to appreciate his as an ethical person and an effective police officer". He's there, listening, but is not angry, he understands. I loved him here :)
The way he looked at her and moved when he approached her, and when she tried to apologise there was actually no need: "I am an acquired taste" and "I'm lucky you withdrew your letter" :) lovely scene :) He kinda looked proud, I mean if you think about it being an "acquired taste" is better, because it's not superficial, while some people are immediately likable but sometimes you realise it's only a mask, a farse.
The judge admits the sex but denies the murder on the stand, instead he implicates his son for that. Ethan didn't kill her, but after the judge had done with the girl, his mom found her drugged and bleeding and got rid of her, she killed her, to protect her son, knowing he was involved in the scandal.
8- Saving face
Logan and Barek
A medical student, a girl, is dead. A charity foundation is 'helping' people, doing plastic surgery to disfigured people. A nurse was doing the actual facial surgery, the surgeon has a condition, she can't see clearly or something like that. She killed the girl because she had found out.
9- Scared crazy
Goren and Eames.
A programmer is killed. A programmer of a competing company has mental issues and his therapist is controlling him. She worked in Guantanamo, sort of psychologically torturing terrorists to get information, she studied them to learn what they were afraid of and then told it to interrogators. She felt guilty about it.. it's not clear to me what happened here. Robbie killed that man because he couldn't stand the music he listened to. Because she had already tortured him? Why did she, if now she can't stand the idea of him suffering???
10- Dollhouse
Logan & Barek.
Danielle blackmails married guys. She told a lot of men that they were the fathers of her child, all married man who had an affair with her, so they gave her money and toys.
They think Danielle shot a man dead. Her lawyer Declan is her sister Claire's boss and lover. Declan's wife knows of the affair and is fine with it. He stood by her through her cancer fight and she wants him happy. No ground for blackmailing there. He's in love with Claire, and she used him to get custody of the little kid. When Declan realises that she was to leave him he kills himself in his cell.
Claire arranged for her to be killed , so they arrest Danielle for blackmail and murder, and Claire for attempted murder, and the child stays with his grandparents.
Still, who tipped Danielle off? How did she know about it? She was prepared, when she killed him... I missed something here. Oh well, doesn't matter, it was a boring episode anyway.
11- Slither
Goren and Eams
A rich couple, the husband turns up dead, the wife totally drugged, wasted. Their house was completely stripped of everything, even light and ceiling.
Goren smells everything :p
In another apartment they find a head in the fridge. Bernard and Sammy have a little club; Sammy and two other women seem to be charmed by him.
Goren says "he spoke Chinese with an accent", because he had been in a prison in Taiwan :p
He was Nicole's boyfriend, he taught her to kill!
Apparently Sammy, Hillary and her sister are all in love with Bernard ! Hillary confesses to murder to protect her Bernard !
He's so full of himself, they can play him easily. At the arraignment, bail is set to two millions. Sammy and Hillary can't pay but Hillary's sister bails him out.
Once out, he is killed with poison, with a syringe, and they think of Nicole.
Well, he's nothing like her.
12- Watch
A body falls out of an airplane and is found by two surfers. There's a serial killer .Someone likes to kill women, then he puts the body on plains to be dumped around the world. Dwayne likes to watch it. Dwayne's younger cousin Art does the beating and the killing, and Dwayne watches it. A sick relationship for sick people, they are both disgusting, Dwayne is a sick bastard too, choosing the girl, convincing Art to do it all the way.
13- Proud flesh
Goren and Eames.
Trip, the son of a rich man, dies. The rich man, Jonas, has a Chinese wife and daughter, Emma.
Trip hired a man to find dirt in Hanna's life. Jonas thought of it as disloyalty on his son's part, so he had that man kill Trip and implicate his wife and her ex-husband. He gains his other son, apparently. He was about to move out of town with his pregnant wife but now he'll stay here with him.
They arrest him, but at the arraignment he's released on his own recognizance. Really? For a murder charge?? yeuch.
Outside, his precious son tries to shoot Hanna and Eames kills him, and before he dies he confesses killing Trip in front of cameras, to free his father. "That's what sons are for", says the old shit.
Talking to a pawn shop owner in Chinatown Goren tries to speak Chinese but apparently his Cantonese is not good :p
14- Wasichu
A secret service woman is found dead. A neighbour kid says he saw a man killing her.
The actor that plays Korzak was in here too: a congressman. Because of interests, he sent a man to look into her house because in business with her husband. He got worried when he learned she was secret service.
Actually a boring ep....
15- Wrongful life
Goren & Eames
A guy, Eric, is found dead on a roof. Erik with his sister Nicky and her boyfriend Drew and one other friend liked to break into places and take pictures nobody has seen before. They interview Drew's mom who's sewing her doctor because they didn't tell her that her other child Lisa had a problem that would put her forever in a wheelchair. Since her dad died, Drew takes care of Lisa. Her mom got pregnant so her rich boyfriend would marry her, and when a doctor told her to take a test, she chose a doctor that was against those tests. Eric could ruin her baseless lawsuit and she killed him.
(or had him killed? what did Drew do? will he go to prison too? I think so but am not sure why. His mom told him to and he killed him? Anyway, interesting ep, I liked these kids, Lisa Drew and Nicky.
16- Dramma giocoso
Logan and Barek
Violinist Laura is dead, she was the lead soprano's daughter. Actor Julian Sands plays the 'Maestro' here, or God if you were to ask him (and by him I mean the character obviously).
The doctor is apparently a fan of the soprano and sings 'la donna è mobile qual piuma al vento' and Logan is so rude, says that he envies the dead and to stop singing, so rude and not funny at all.
They suspect the maestro, and when Barek talks to him, playing the 'understanding' part, his lawyer says "enough with the Vulcan mindmeld"..
The soprano Gillian and the maestro Philip Reinhardt have been on-off lovers for years. Now she has him to marry her, as a proof that she 'believes in his innocence'. She's very sick and thinks that he'll have to take care of her. She killed her daughter because she was about to have him fired.
Now that he knows it all he wants her out of his life, he only cares about himself, and she of herself.
The daughter was always too busy to take care of her when she needed her (you know, with her life)
17- Vacancy
Goren and Eames
It's snowing big time, planes are cancelled, so two girls had to stop at a hotel. During the night, Alice goes out to the bathroom leaving the door open because she couldn't find the key, drunk as she was, and when she came back her friend was dead.
An actor digs so deeply into his characters that he becomes his characters, and now his character is a serial killer.
I didn't like that Alice, she was loud and crazy, but the actor playing Tim was sort of interesting.
18- The healer
Logan and Barek
Two sisters are found dead in their apartment, wrapped in plastic. One of them was too interested in a nurse services: people know Lydia as the healer. Barek respects voodoo as well as any religion.
Their first suspect Jack dies too. Lydia told Logan that he might get sick and when he does Barek takes him to see Mama Louise, and she tells him that Lydia put poison ivy oil on the candle he touched and he had an allergic reaction "the magic is in the believer's faith" she says.
Jack had given a sister a copy of Lydia's book.
Robbie's water contained Lithium Carbonate, it doesn't make people better, but makes them 'think' they are getting better because the lithium makes them feel better, they convince themselves that they 'are' getting better, and if they stop paying she takes away the water and they feel worse. Robbie thinks that Lydia put her healing powers in that water. He made a suicide attempt in college, and she made him believe that he has suicidal tendencies and the water keeps him from killing himself. He believes her totally. They bring Lydia in too.
Barek puts her herbs in a glass of water; those herbs are not good, they're poison. Robbie believed her and tried to drink it when she suddenly stops him. He understands now and tells them that she killed them.
19- Cruise to nowhere
Goren and Eames.
Ben Williams is dead, a poker player. He lost 500.000$ to a young man, Joey Frost. Since Joey's dad died, Phil has watched over him. Joey's really addicted to games and bets, even bingo at church! He's unbearable.
Joey's dad was killed. Goren takes him to watch Phil's interview, so he can see if he lies. Goren wants him to realise that Phil killed his dad and used him. Finally Joey tells the truth, Phil is arrested and Goren tells  Joey that 'he's gonna be alright'...
20- To the bone
Logan
Whoopi Goldberg was in this ep! Playing the foster mother.
Two families are slaughtered. Logan sees a man with a gun and shoots him, but he's a cop, and he dies. Watkins has the suspect foster kid to turn himself in and he gets killed in prison. Watkins told these kids to go steal at big houses. Logan talks to her but can't break her. She gets arrested, along with three foster kids. The one who talks dies throwing himself off a window, the case against the others will probably be dismissed.
21- On fire
Goren & Eames
The captain is questioned about officer Martinez, the first on the scene at last episode's Logan's shooting, and they say that the captain recommended him to task force, in exchange for his silence they say....
In one night five churches are set on fire, and three more the night after. There's one victim. They say they have an email that came from the captain. He tells Goren and Eames about it. They try to help him, looking into it.
They find who forged the email. A man the captain sent to prison arranged it all to frame him, so he decides to resign.
Justin is a successful man with a beautiful wife. He has a father, a stepmother and a stepbrother, Glenn. The stepmother actually had a story with him when he was 14 and Glenn is his son. Justin didn't know but Glenn did. Glenn set the fires and Justin killed his roommate to protect him.
22- The good
Two weeks left on the job for the captain, so he wants to join Logan and Barek on the new case - only for a scene though. A wealthy couple was killed, and their troubled son Kevin is their suspect. An addict, with debts. Another team handles it, and lie to Kevin to make him confess. Logan and Barek are upset. Logan finds a conflict, the victim's business partner is a client of the cop making the arrest, so it's a conflict of interest. The partner had an ex-con kill the victims. The killer had his veteran son cover for him, but Logan gets to him. At the end, the captain leaves.