Greetings dear readers and happy Mother’s Day. I’m here in “the office” today so Jessica can have her day (I have been comped with a lovely bacon/spinach/feta quiche, so I’m not complaining at all). In honor of Mother’s Day, here’s a Take Five on the theme of Movie Mothers.

Ralpie’s Mother in A Christmas Story is probably the worrying, gently nurturing mom we all had, or wish we had. When she tells Ralphie’s brother Randy not to play with his food and that starving people would love to have it, you know she’s just thinking of her son’s welfare. And the same is true when she breaks Ralphie’s heart and denies his request for an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle by saying “No, you’ll shoot your eye out.” Never mind that she turns out to be pretty much right about that.

Dan O’Banion wrote Dark Star in 1974. It’s a sci-fi/comedy cult favorite about a ship in the far reaches of space whose crew has unwittingly brought a deadly alien aboard the ship that proceeds to run amok and kill most of the crew. In 1979, he did it again, but Alien was quite a bit less funny. In both movies, however, the computer that runs the ship is called Mother. She’s a lot nicer in Dark Star than she is in this scene from Alien:

Ripley: Mother! I’ve turned the cooling unit back on. Mother!
Mother: The ship will automatically destruct in T minus five minutes.
Ripley: You… BITCH!

Jay And Silent Bob’s Mothers may not have been the best, but I like to think they shaped their sons into… yeah, that’s a load. The opening scene in Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back is just really funny to me, though I’m gonna have to do some editing for language (big surprise there). For the record, no babies were harmed in the filming of this scene:

Silent Bob’s Mother: Bobby Boy, stay here while mommy picks up the free cheese, ‘kay? Here, this will keep the sun out of your eyes. [she puts a baseball cap on his head backwards]
Silent Bob’s Mother: You be good, now. [she walks into the store, then Jay and his Mom arrive]
Jay’s Mother: Alright, don’t you f***in’ move you little sh*t machine. Your Momma’s going to try to score.  [she starts to walk into the store]
Passerby: What the hell? ‘Scuse me. Who’s watching these babies?
Jay’s Mother: Uh… the fat one’s watchin’ the little one?
Passerby: Oh yeah, nice parenting. Leave ‘em out here like that and see what happens.
Jay’s Mother: YO, F*** YOU YOU F***ING SQUARE!
Passerby: Oh yeah, keep on truckin’!
Jay’s Mother: [to baby Jay] Did ya hear that f***in’ guy tellin’ me how to f***n’ raise ya? What a motherf***er, man! Who the f*** does that f***in’ guy think he is? What’s the worst f***in’ thing that can f***in’ happen to ya just standing outside a f***in’ store, right? F***! [Jay's mother walks into the record store, leaving baby Jay and baby Silent Bob in their strollers]
Baby Jay: F***… f***… f***… f***…

My wife loves-LOVES-Adam Baldwin. I think he’s pretty swell, too, and I really enjoy him in Firefly (and Serenity), Chuck and in the last few episodes of Angel. What I didn’t remember, because I haven’t seen it in a million years, is that Adam Baldwin is also the lean, mean, killing machine known as Animal Mother in Full Metal Jacket. I’m thinking I need to revisit this classic war/anti-war movie. This quote from Animal Mother sums him up pretty well: “What do I think about the U.S. involvement in the war? We should win it.”

And finally, my favorite Mother of them all: Dan Aykroyd as the paranoid conspiracy buff Darren “Mother” Roskow in Sneakers. One of my all-time favoritest movies ever, Sneakers is all about a super-secret code-breaking machine and the people who are out to get it. Switcheroos, con-games, sneaky spy stuff, comedy… it’s all here. And the cast! Robert Redford, Sidney Poitier, David Strathairn, River Phoenix, Mary McDonnell, Donal Logue, James Earl Jones, Ben Kingsley and, of course, Dan Aykroyd.  “We got bupkis! We turn ourselves in now, they’ll give us twenty years in the electric chair!”

There you have it, a Take Five look at Movie Mothers. What? Oh, you were expecting something a little more traditional? Yeah… no.

Happy Mother’s Day all you moms and wives out there!

Newish releases are on the shelves now, including these recent hits: Disney’s latest animated princess movie The Princess And The Frog, romantic comedy with Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker in Did You Hear About The Morgans?, animated superhero Astro Boy, heavy drama in Adoration, action-packed heist fun in Armored, a sci-fi/fantasy flick co-written by Peter Jackson called Jack Brown: Genius and the alien abduction thriller The Fourth Kind. Plus, more copies of Land Of The Lost, Drag Me To Hell and (500) Days Of Summer. Get ‘em while they’re hot.

Some recent trades to tell you about, too, including a whole bunch of music stuff, like Red Hot Chili Peppers: Off The Map and Funky Monks; Lynyrd Skynyrd: Freebird The  Movie/Tribute Tour (double feature) and Lyve From Steeltown; Dream Theater: Live At Budokan and Metropolis 2000: Scenes From New York; plus Jimi Hendrix: Live At Woodstock, Dave Matthews Band: The Videos 1994 – 2001 and The Commitments. That’s a lot of music.

We also have some not-music stuff. Like movies. You remember movies, right? Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, 12 Monkeys, Slumdog Millionaire, Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Blackhawk Down are all I can come up with while staying in an animal theme… there’s also The Simpsons Movie, A Christmas Story, First Blood, The Hunt For Red October, Funny Farm, The Thomas Crown Affair, The Wedding Planner and Blackbeard: The Miniseries are just a few of the random smattering of titles we’ve gotten in recently.

Come, browse, enjoy.