Tyler Perry has two projects making their way to video today. We were going to let the incident pass without comment but then we noticed that Kim Kardashian (above) was being listed above Vanessa Williams in the cast credits in some of the articles referring to the releases. That pushed Tyler Perry's Temptation and Tyler Perry's The Haves & The Have-Nots past being formulaic fluff filled with stereotypical one-dimensional characters caught in absurd situations that we're willing ignore and into "somebody lost their damn mind" territory. No, Kim Kardashian is not an actress. (No matter how anxious directors are to have her display her assets on screen, the woman can't act.)
In Tyler Perry's Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor (all of his movies have his name in the title just in case somebody somehow manages to miss seeing his name in the credits as producer, director, screenwriter and sometimes star), "an ambitious married woman whose temptation by a handsome billionaire leads to betrayal, recklessness and forever alters the course of her life." First, is there ever a time when betrayal and recklessness don't forever alter the course of your life? Second, a handsome billionaire bothers to go chasing a clearly-off-limits married woman when plenty of other beautiful women are throwing themselves at him. Yeah, that's completely plausible. Fine, whatever. All of that, though ridiculous, isn't the offensive part.
The offensive part is that Vanessa Williams is one of the most beautiful, most talented, strongest, smartest women on the planet and in Tyler Perry-land, she's getting dumped in with Kim Kardashian in the supporting cast pile, with Kardashian sometimes getting higher billing than Williams. That's enough. Stop, Tyler Perry. Please, just stop. Stop making movies that dump Kim Kardashian in with Vanessa Williams as if they were somehow equal in talent or beauty. Stop making movies with interchangeable characters, plotlines, settings, dialogue and actors. Stop making movies that require a middle-aged man with a receding hairline dressed in a granny dress (that would be you) to jump out at some critical point in the plot and remind everybody to turn to Jesus or start slapping people around - or both at the same time. Stop making movies where lines like "She's in there playing Gritball" make sense. Stop. You have more than enough money and Kim Kardashian has had more than her 15 minutes of fame. Please, just stop.
Now, on to movies we do want to watch. Universal Studios is re-issuing several classic films in a best-of-the-decade series. Hitchcock's The Birds is among the 1960s releases, with other titles from that decade being Psycho and Cape Fear. Other titles from the series include The Jerk, Airport, The Blues Brothers, The Sting, Scarface and National Lampoon's Animal House. Prices range from $10 to $15 for DVD/digital copy combos.
Finally, a guilty pleasure - Movies 4 You: Spaghetti Westerns. A quartet of westerns from the late 1960s, these are pre-CGI shoot-em-up action films so when you see a guy fall off a horse, chances are poor guy really did fall off a horse. Ditto taking a right hook on the jaw, and assorted other scenes that are now neatly choreographed but back then were shot on the fly. The fourpack includes A Pistol for Ringo and The Return of Ringo with Guiliano Gemma playing the title role in both with Anthony Steffen taking over for Ringo: Face of Revenge. Brian Kelly stars in Shoot, Gringo, Shoot. Music for the films is by Ennio Morricone (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) - which in itself warrants the $6 price tag. There are no extras and all four titles are on one disc (did we mention the $6 price tag?)