From Robert Popper and Tim Heidecker, comes an installment of their weird and hilarious prank phone calls.

Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin'...into the future....

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I reject passive consumption. I reject the premise. I will have no passive consumers. Casanova will not stop and explain itself to you. It will not allow you to flip through it while you're dropping a deuce and waiting for Batman to show up.

- Matt Fraction

Rob Dean examines the overlooked, unappreciated or unfairly maligned movies. Sometimes these films haven't been seen by anyone, and sometimes they've been seen by everyone - who loathed them. This is Missing Reels.

Today's film is the 1998 comic-neo-noir-detective-character-study Zero Effect. With an easy sell like that, how could it have not done well?  Written and directed by Jake Kasdan (yes, son of Lawrence "I Wrote the Good Parts of Your Favorite Movies But Also Dreamcatcher" Kasdan), the film is a look at a quirky detective who's idiosyncratic approach to crime-solving makes him a very successful sleuth, but also marks him as an oddball outcast who is ill-equipped to deal with people. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Like the entire line up of USA programming from Monk onward?

Well, apparently it was too ahead of its time as most people haven't seen it. Using IMDB's numbers, the budget was $5M and it only made about $2M in its theatrical run. People were not coming out to see "the world's most private detective." This is also due to how the film was marketed: a quirky comedy starring that guy from that show on Fox that no one saw but won an emmy, and all those other hilarious comedies!

Ultimately, it's a real shame that people haven't seen this film. Zero Effect is a good character study of people who set out to define their lives but ultimately are defined by outside forces. It's also a great updating of Sherlock Holmes, taking the obsessive, addict, musical and social malcontent elements and bringing them into late 90s America. And, lastly but not leastly, it's an interesting mystery movie that quickly solves the original mystery in favor of finding the deeper reasons and more profound secrets that are at work.

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A new Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis just came out! (Some NSFW Language)

Today's word of the day is Torment

From Whitest Kids U'Know comes this ad for The Jizzle (NSFWish language):

Via Reddit

You're not my supervisor!

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I want to walk through life instead of being dragged through it.

- Alanis Morissette

Immodest Proposal is a place where Rob Dean makes humble suggestions that would forever alter the world and vastly improve the lives of everyone. But, you know, you don't have to listen to him, or whatever.

the resemblence is uncanny!The Simpsons is in a rut. That venerable institution, once lauded by cool english teachers and awkward IT staffs alike, has fallen into disrepair and it may take drastic measures to bring it back.

Starting around the early 2000s, it seemed there were less good episodes per season; instead the show was dominated by stunt casting, delving into backstories of lesser characters, random "travel episodes" that eventually descended into becoming the lazy set-ups that were mocked by earlier Simpsons episodes. Random changes were made to characters - Apu's octoplets, for example - that served as nothing more than 30 minutes of filler. The writers began lapping old scripts, revisiting plot points that were already dealt with or that previous writing staffs derided (rightfully) as cheap and uninteresting. 

How can the producers hope to rescue the show? What price will they have to pay to escape from the shadows of Macfarlane's Animation Empire and reassert itself as the rightful Emperor of Smart and Important Cartoons?  My suggestion: it's time for the characters in The Simpsons to start aging.

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Today's word of the day: Emphatic

[em-fat-ik] 

Please to enjoy - Matt & Kim, "Lessons Learned" (from their very good album Grand) as interpreted through the medium of Saved by the Bell:

(video by Corey McKenna)

Feels like a Tuesday...

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I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the imagination.

- John Keats