Man, we all need some sleepAnd I thought it was just me. But all day long I’ve been hearing people talk about how tired they are. I’m not sure if it’s because, like me, they were up late last night parked in front of the TV being thoroughly entertained, or perhaps their cat is in heat and her screeching kept them up. Either way. Sounds like a good time.

I was up into the wee hours last night, bathed in the cathode ray light coming from that big box of fun in my living room. I was comfortable in my overstuffed recliner and before I knew it, it was after one in the morning. Time flies.

After what I’d seen last night, it’s going to be tough to top it tonight. But I’m sure that my TV will not let me down. Drama, excitement, a few laughs. This is what it’s all about.

Since the baseball season’s over and the NBA hasn’t started yet, and most of the network shows are taking a nap until sweeps starts next Thursday, there isn’t much on. So I got caught up on my movie watching.

If you’re like me (and if you are…I’m truly sorry) you can’t get out of Best Buy without a DVD. It doesn’t matter what I go in there to buy, when I leave I will have at least one movie in my bag that costs either $14.99 or $9.99. Those damn things are like crack.

Sometimes, I don’t even get around to watching them right away. Granted, I’ve seen most of the movies already, that’s how I knew to buy them in the first place. But obviously they were purchased with the intent of watching them.

The other night I was looking at my DVDs and realized I have a few that I haven’t watched since I bought them. So with nothing on TV last night, I decided to get caught up. Well, that was the plan, until TiVo went and f#$%ed it up for me. But, I’ll get to that.

He hates these cans!A couple of months ago I picked up the 26th Anniversary Edition of The Jerk. One of the greatest comedies ever made, I have somehow found a way to use the following Navin R. Johnson phrases in my everyday life with a frequency that would shock you.

“So, it’s a profit deal! That takes the pressure off!”

“The new phone books are here! The new phone books are here!”

“Wow! You tattooed my name on your ass! First the phone book, now your ass! You know, I’ll bet more people see your ass than the phone book!”

“I’m gonna buy you a ring so big, it’ll make you puke!”

“You would think, in a fancy restaurant like this, you could keep the snails off the food! Now take this away and bring us those toasted cheese sandwich appetizers you talked us out of.”

“I got him! (Pause) The guy who stole Mrs. Nussbaum’s credit card!”

“Lord loves the working man. Don’t trust whitey. If you get it, see a doctor and get rid of it.”

“I’m picking out a thermos for you!
Not an ordinary thermos will do!
But the extra best thermos, that you can buy
With vinyl, and stripes, and a cup built right in!”

And yes, I could literally go on for days.

So I watched it again last night, for about the 47th time ever, but the first time in it’s fully restored, Dolby Surround Soundedness and found myself in hysterics over the scene where he hops out of the bath tub to try to catch Bernadette Peters before she can leave, holding only his dog (Shithead) to cover himself. He then bends over and picks up a smaller dog so that he can turn around and have his arse covered. I’ve seen it before, I knew it was coming, but what can I say, I’m a sucker for sophisticated comedy.

So after watching the movie and the sparse DVD extras (the highlight is the lost footage from Father Carlos Las Vegas de Cordova’s film reel–we saw the cat juggling, but there’s so much more) it was time to grab another movie. After all, “My Name is Earl” was a re-run and “The Office” wasn’t on.

But I made a mistake. I checked my TiVo to see what it had in store for me. So I ended up not grabbing another Lost Treasure out of my DVD collection, but instead watching “A Few Good Men” (which is in the DVD collection, but has been watched) and the very underrated “A Time To Kill.”

On Saturday morning, TNT showed “Malice”, the Nicole Kidman-Alec Baldwin-Bill Pullman movie where Nicole and Alec pull a scam on poor, witless Bill (and Lillith Sternin-Crane is in it, too, playing a tough cop). What I noticed was that Aaron Sorkin co-wrote it (I think I knew that) and so early on when Josh Malina walks in to a room as a surgical intern and has one line, I thought “Damn, has he ever been in anything Sorkin didn’t write?”

So imagine my glee when in the very first scene in “A Few Good Men” (also written by Sorkin) the door pops open and who should come in, but a young Marine played by Josh Malina who has one line.

Malina was also on Sports Nite, written by Sorkin and is now on The West Wing (where he just got “promoted” to White House Communications Director), which was created by Sorkin.

The Sorkin-Malina thing reminds me of a joke involving Greek men and a shoehorn, but I’ll pass.

Like every old Tom Cruise movie now, you look at “A Few Good Men” and first, you’re astonished that Cruise has always been able to act. He’s not exactly the 1970s Al Pacino, but he’s good, and you can almost trick yourself into forgetting what a very strange man he’s become.

Kiefer Sutherland is in the movie in a relatively small, but important, role as a hillbilly Marine.

Kevin Bacon, is, of course in the movie, and this was the time in his career when he was taking movies full of other big stars (JFK was another example) just to get his “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game off the ground. I’m sure he started it in the early days of the current version of the Internet. Didn’t he? Seems like now would be a good time to wonder again, “I always forget, is Kyra Sedgwick his wife or his mother?”

Demi Moore has a major role, proving again that she can’t act, and that pre-boob job she was headed for the same career that her old pal Ally Sheedy has had. And what is with her hair in the movie? When she’s the only woman of any note in a film, you’d think they’d find a way to make her remotely attractive.

Kevin Pollack is a personal favorite, though I inevitably watch him act, just waiting for him to do his Columbo impression.

The guys who play the accused Marines are played by a black guy that you’re sure you’ve seen in something since that movie (probably a Burger King commercial), and the guy who was in “Gladiator” with Cuba Gooding, but who I’m sure now just tells chicks that he was in “Gladiator” hoping they’ll think he means the Russell Crowe one.

The movie is good, even if it’s hard to imagine that Cruise or Bacon could really be important cogs in any softball team, but it’s all just building up for the end in the courtroom with Jack Nicolson and Cruise.

Every time you watch it you think it’s going to get old, and that the impact won’t be there. Every time, you’re wrong. I watched it and instinctively thought, “Damn, that’s good stuff. Time to get Sorkin back on the ‘shrooms.”

I wasn’t going to watch “A Time to Kill.” I’d seen it on the TiVo menu one day while I was flipping around and gave it three thumbs up so it would record it sometime (I’m the same guy who set up a Season Pass to record “Seems Like Old Times” every time it’s on), but I was sitting there trying to remember how the movie started. I knew that Matthew McConaughey was trying to get Samuel L. Jackson off for murder, but why? So I decided to watch the beginning, and then I was going to pack it in for the night.

Two hours and 15 minutes later I was packing it in. I saw the movie when it came out in 1996 and remember I liked it, but I had forgotten how many stars were in it. I don’t just mean the main characters, but all through it.

It took me a minute at the beginning to figure out who raping-redneck #1 was, but even with the mullet, I recognized him as the teacher who brought a gun to school in “Boston Public”. He doesn’t count for the purpose of stars in the movie, since not only do I not remember his name, but I don’t even care enough to look him up on IMBD.com.

But the roster is impressive.

McConaughey in his first truly starring role and the one that took him from, “That’s the guy who played Wooderson” to Matthew McConaughey . The whole naked bongo thing a few years later would derail his career, but he’s always been a very entertaining actor. I still can’t figure out why “Sahara” wasn’t a bigger hit than “The Mummy” was. But, I digress.

Jackson has his own hair in the movie and you can see why he shaves his head. He’s beyond tremendous as Roy Lee, the father of a raped 10-year old girl, who “takes the law into his own hands” and kills the guys who raped her.

Ashley Judd is not only in the movie, but she’s blonde (and such a believable blonde that I remember seeing her with dark hair for the first time and wondering why she died her hair brown). She’s also at her all-time hottest and give director Joel Schumacher credit. He may have killed the ’90s Batman franchise, but the gay guy knows how much “fake sweat” to apply to Ashley’s cleavage at all times. Excellent job.

Oliver Platt plays the shady divorce lawyer buddy to McConaughey. Oliver Platt has never been bad in anything. At least nothing I’ve seen.

Sandra Bullock in the role that for some reason made her an icon to Lesbians everywhere. And in the spirit of Cheryl Swoopes shocking…well, nobody…by coming out of the closet today, I have a theory as to why this movie made Sandra Bullock a hero to Lesbians the world over.

She plays an ambitious, rich, law student who volunteers her time to help McConaughey out with the trial. Through a few contrivances (it was written by John Grisham after all) she finally convinces him to let her work for nothing and help him. Every man in the movie looks at her like she’s the hottest thing ever. It’s a major flaw in the casting, not because she’s not attractive, and not because she’s not good in the movie, but if you were married to Ashley Judd you would not have an affair with Sandra Bullock. You just wouldn’t. That’s like trading Carlos Zambrano for Gustavo Chacin. Or something. Where was I?

Oh, yes. Three different times, Bullock and McConaughey (damn, that’s a hard name to spell–what happened to old Hollywood when some studio would have made him change that?) almost kiss. Lesbians see that as Sandra choosing not to kiss the hunky lawyer, which feeds their belief that she’s gay. It makes no sense, considering he’s the one who keeps it from happening, but whatever. You pair that with the fact that every man in the movie (especially Platt’s character and the creepy guy from the Ole Miss nuthouse hospital) just oogles her non-stop and you have a pretty, but by no means gorgeous actress getting an unrealistic reaction out of all of the men in the movie. For the same reason she was popular with some men, her beloved honorary Lesbian status came out of the fact that she seemed attainable. Kind of like how fat guys think they could have a shot at Courtney-Thorne Smith because she’ s married to Jim Belushi on TV.

OK, it’s not a great theory, but I’m sticking with it.

Kevin Spacey plays the district attorney. He was at the height of his career, this would have been almost the same time as “The Usual Suspects”, “Seven” and “LA Confidential.” He was huge. Then, he made “K-Pax” and it was all over.

Donald Sutherland is in it playing a drunken, disbarred lawyer named Lucien who was McConaughey’s mentor. I kept waiting for the scene where McConaughey wanders into Bullock’s hotel room and Sutherland is reaching for the cereal wearing only a shirt. Actually, I’m really glad that wasn’t in the movie.

Keifer Sutherland is in the movie in a not so small, but important role as a hillbilly…uh, hillbilly.

Chris Cooper plays a cop (this was back when all he ever got to play were cops) who gets shot in Roy Lee’s shooting rampage. He’s tremendous, but when has he not been?

Charles S. Dutton plays the town sherriff and a former LA Ram. If only Fred Dryer were black, he’d have been perfect.

Then we get to the best casting of the whole movie. The two psychology experts. The whole case hinges on whether Roy Lee was temporarily insane at the time of the shooting.

The prosecution’s expert is played by Anthony Heald. Best known as Dr. Chilton from “Silence of the Lambs” and “Red Dragon.” He also was in Boston Public, but that’s not important to that. He plays the doctor in this, just as smarmy as Chilton. The only thing missing was Hannibal Lecter telling Clarice he was going to “have an old friend for dinner.”

The defense’s expert tied the whole night together. Unless a door had opened in McConaughey’s law practice and Josh Malina had stepped in, this was the perfect end to my night. Who played the esteemed (drunk) Dr. WT Bass? M. Emmett Walsh!

Who the hell is M. Emmett Walsh? Remember in The Jerk when Navin is so excited about being in the phone book that he says, “This is the kind of spontaneous publicity…your name in print… that gets you noticed! I am somebody!”

Then we see a guy holding a gun randomly picking a name out of the phone book to kill? (By the way, I always get a laugh out of Navin’s address in the phone book).

That’s M. Emmett Walsh. He’s the “die you random son of a bitch!” guy. Well, that made my night.

As you see. It doesn’t take much.