Well, I didn’t want y’all to think that I had slipped off the face of the earth. I’ve been hugely busy lately – as anyone who has tried to communicate w/ me over email well knows. I have news aplenty, just not a lot of time to write it down in….I’ll do that later. I would, instead like to impart to you a trio of movies discovered over the last few years thanks to J deciding that it was time for us to follow Oliver Platt’s career:

Three to Tango: In my opinion, this is the best of the trio. I would have never watched this movie if Platt hadn’t been in it. Matthew Perry made a spate of movies in between trips to rehab, and most of them are true stinkers. This one is a delightful exception (and the Whole Nine Yards). Neve Campbell is just there to look like a dewy-eyed starlet, and she slides through this movie with so little effort or commitment, that I wonder if she didn’t get rug-burn. Dylan McDermott was brilliant and creepy as the obsessive compulsive germaphobe foil, to Matthew Perry’s bumbling moron. And then there’s Oliver…who plays a gay architect, with a zeal that is just hard to fault. The script has some cheap one-liners (like “You’ve made your big, gay bed, and now you can gaily slumber in it”) and a very transparent plot, but it’s funny and somehow charming. Bonus: the soundtrack is an excellent collection of modern swing that is just impossible to miss!

Lake Placid: This is also another movie that I would have never seen – it’s a monster movie for goodness sake! But it is absolutely hilarious. You’ve got a really oddball cast with Bill Pullman, Bridget Fonda, Meredith Salenger (yes, of the 80’s films Dream a Little Dream and A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon), Betty White, and….you guessed it, Oliver Platt. There’s not much to say about this movie, except the script is hilarious (I’m not even going to go near the plot). Betty White steals the movie shamelessly with lines that I hesitate to put in this entry for fear of the spam that I would get. I’m only sorry that you didn’t get to see it with Woozer who was in shock over White’s performance the whole time: W: “But she’s a Golden Girl!” L: “She’s not so golden anymore….”

The Imposters: A really funny funny movie! Written, directed and starred in by Stanley Tucci (who I first noticed as the creepy assassin in The Pelican Brief). It’s a pseudo-musical door farce with a vengeance. Platt and Tucci are out of work theater hacks who end up stowing away on a ship. There they run into cameos by just about every indie film actor you can think of: Alfred Molina, Lili Taylor, Tony Shalhoub, Steve Buscemi, Allison Janney, Isabella Rossellini, Woody Allen, Hope Davis, and Billy Connolly, just to name a few. All it’s missing is Eric Stoltz. Check it out.

A few other films Oliver has been in: Pieces of April (twisted), Ready to Rumble (crap, but funny crap), Gun Shy (I didn’t really like it, but J loved it – you decide), Dangerous Beauty (excellent film), Three Musketeers (see crap comment on Ready to Rumble), and Flatliners (I loved this film, J didn’t – you decide)