"Rock Box" Track of the Day: The Bar-Kays, "Too Hot to Stop"

Song: "Too Hot to Stop" by The Bar-Kays
Released: 1976
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: It accompanies both the Foxy Brown-style opening credits of Superbad and Bernie Mac's slap-happy entrance scene in Head of State. In Superbad, "Too Hot to Stop" was an immediate sign that the Apatow production's soundtrack was going to be anything but irritatingly twee ("I want to tongue kiss whoever decided to keep the movie devoid of any twee music. Seriously, I do. Preferably with a Curtis Mayfield song blasting," wrote film blogger Kim Morgan in 2007). The 1976 tune is from the Mercury Records-era incarnation of The Bar-Kays, which opted for more of a P-Funk-influenced sound than the Stax-era incarnation that gave us 1967's "Soul Finger" (a classic I first heard while watching Spies Like Us as a kid).

Because of its line "I don't mind if I'm considered uncool," "Too Hot to Stop" was a fitting choice for a film that involves a kid like McLovin who doesn't care how uncool he looks when he tries to spit game. Too bad Superbad couldn't find some way to work in The Bar-Kays' equally fitting 1981 jam "Freaky Behavior" during the party scenes or the moments of awkward second base.

"Rock Box" Track of the Day: The Roots, "Here I Come"

Song: "Here I Come" by The Roots featuring Malik B. & Dice Raw
Released: 2006
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: It's featured in Superbad. (It also appears in the Hancock closing credits.) "Here I Come" is the most upbeat (and party-friendly, hence its inclusion in Superbad) track on 2006's Game Theory, The Roots' most militant and brooding-sounding album. Game Theory was a bold move for their first album for Def Jam, a label that many feared would interfere with The Roots' sound and force the band to be more mainstream (luckily, Def Jam's been hands-off). You may be more familiar with the faster-paced version of "Here I Come" that The Roots perform each weeknight during the opening titles and end credits of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Dammit, Fallon! That was supposed to be the theme song for my talk show! You know, the one I host in my basement with my special guests, a cardboard cutout of Liza Minnelli and a cardboard cutout of Jerry Lewis?
Which moment in Superbad does it appear?: The scene where Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Christopher Mintz-Plasse finally arrive at Emma Stone's party.

Speaking of Superbad, last night's Daily Show superimposed the face of a crying John Boehner from 60 Minutes over the body of McLovin while he lost his virginity in the movie. That cracked my ish up.

Hear Black Thought, Malik B. and Dice Raw disturb the peace.

All the other "Rock Box" Tracks of the Day from this week:
Classic & 86, "Ridin'"
Pulp, "Like a Friend"
Run-DMC, "Rock Box"
The Crystal Method, "Starting Over"

AFOS: "Funk in the Trunk" playlist

Airing this week on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel is the 2008 Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "Funk in the Trunk" (WEB92). jim.aquino.com is no longer online, as are all the pre-WEB97 playlists I posted on that site, so I'm reposting each playlist as each pre-WEB97 ep reairs.

1. Lyle Workman, "Flashback Party Weekend," Superbad, Lakeshore
2. Lyle Workman, "SuperWhat?," Superbad, Lakeshore
3. The Four Tops, "Are You Man Enough (End Title)," Shaft in Africa, Hip-O Select/Geffen
4. Quincy Jones with the Don Elliot Voices, "Money Runner" (from $), The Reel Quincy Jones, Hip-O
5. James Brown, "People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul (remix)" (originally recorded for Slaughter's Big Rip-Off), Motherlode, Polydor
6. Lalo Schifrin, "Main Titles (Alternate)," Enter the Dragon, Warner Home Video
7. Antonio Pinto, "O Polígamo," City of Men, Lakeshore
8. Lyle Workman, "Evan's Basement Jam," Superbad, Lakeshore
9. Curtis Mayfield, "Superfly," Superfly: Deluxe 25th Anniversary Edition, Curtom/Rhino
10. Gladys Knight & the Pips, "On and On" (from Claudine), Funk on Film, Chronicles/PolyGram
11. Ennio Morricone, "Allegretto Per Signora" (from The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion), Mondo Morricone Revisited, Royal Ear Force
12. David Holmes, "S***! S***! S***!," Ocean's Thirteen, Warner Sunset/Warner Bros.
13. Theodore Shapiro, "Two Dragons," Starsky & Hutch, TVT Soundtrax
14. Flight of the Conchords, "Business Time," The Distant Future, Sub Pop

Repeats of A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series air Monday night at midnight, Tuesday and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, Wednesday night at midnight, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

Levi Stubbs (1936-2008)

Four Tops frontman Levi Stubbs, who possessed a baritone that could knock you on your ass, has died. He was 72.

The Tops' most memorable hits include "Baby I Need Your Loving," "It's the Same Old Song," "Ain't No Woman (Like the One I've Got)" and "Bernadette" (WARNING: white people dance to "Bernadette" in this clip from John Larroquette's 1990 slapstick comedy Madhouse, but despite the gratuitous white guy dancing, it's a great scene in an otherwise dumb and forgettable movie and it shows why Larroquette has nabbed the Emmy so many times).

On the film music side, the legendary vocalist and his cohorts performed the catchy theme from Shaft in Africa, "Are You Man Enough?" (which is effectively used in Superbad).

Also, Stubbs lent his booming pipes to Audrey II, the carnivorous alien plant in the star-studded 1986 version of Little Shop of Horrors. Audrey II killed more white people than Candyman.

The Mondo Musicals! blog notes that some critics found Audrey II to be an offensive black caricature (!). Stubbs responded to those criticisms in a 1987 interview and said, "Sure, a lot of black people have big lips, but this is a plant, for crying out loud! That attitude is stupid."

Edward Copeland is right: even though he never appeared onscreen, Stubbs stole Little Shop.

Sunset Gun: Better Know a Blogroll Link, Part 3

In addition to running the Sunset Gun film and music blog, Kim Morgan frequently contributes posts about film to The Huffington Post and MSN Movies. She was the "DVDuesday" reviewer on The Screen Savers before the program morphed into Attack of the Show (Film Threat's Chris Gore assumed the "DVDuesday" duties after her departure).

Hey Robert Osborne, hire Kim to be your next co-host on TCM's The Essentials. Unlike current Essentials co-host Rose McGowan, she won't annoy me with post-movie commentary about why Seven Samurai, a film recently featured on The Essentials, is inferior to the remake, The Magnificent Seven. McGowan's biggest gripe with Seven Samurai--one of my favorite films--is that it's overlong. WTF? For a film that's "too long," Seven Samurai is one of the least tedious ever made.

So McGowan prefers the good but not great Magnificent's sometimes stilted dialogue and direction (the filmmakers enlisted Elmer Bernstein to spruce up the film's rather lethargic pace, hence Bernstein's fantastic score) and its flat depictions of the peasant characters (they talk like the villager mice in Speedy Gonzales cartoons) over Samurai's more complex characterizations and more intense and mesmerizing action sequences? It's like if someone had to choose between The Wire and CSI: Miami to take along with them as a desert island disc box set and that person went with CSI: Miami. You lost me there, Cherry Darling.

Anyway, here are some of my favorite posts by Kim.

"Sexy Sleaze with Cheese--'70s Cop Shows on DVD":

The show's range in quality but they all reveal a mutual commonality--though a brilliant era for film and probably the last real sleazy FUN anyone had, the '70s were hard. Hard on people's faces. I don't know if it was the drugs, the clothes, the film stock, the lighting, the jaded post '60s malaise or the surge of swingin' Auto-Focus-esque divorced men, but everyone looks tough and sun-damaged. If you assume someone is 30, they're probably in real life, 20. And 40? Who the hell knows? In their polyester double knits, bad toupees, sweaty urine tinted undershirts, crinkled brows and hairy chests, everyone looks about 50. The '70s was a great time to be an unattractive character actor. You're fat, old and like to wear tight red pants? You've got the part!

"Sunset Gun's Ten Best Movies Of 2007":

This is the movie that the obnoxious, overrated, trying-way-too-hard Juno should have been. Smart teenagers not straining to be quirky and clever -- Jonah Hill and the great Michael Cera simply are clever. And smart. And not pulling quips out of some screen-written arsenal -- they're natural ("honest to blog" they are!). And the soul and funk soundtrack is an absolutely perfect celebration of teenage energy, sexuality and hope. I want to tongue kiss whoever decided to keep the movie devoid of any twee music. Seriously, I do. Preferably with a Curtis Mayfield song blasting.

"Kiss With a Bang--'Kiss Me Deadly'":

There are so many masterful opening shots, some I find works of genius or some I simply love. But the more I thought about it, the more I drifted back to where my mind always manages to drift back to — stark, hard-boiled cruelty, paranoia, insanity and psycho sexual angst — so there it was again, Kiss Me Deadly.

"Car Power":

Bullitt actually makes me think Mustangs are not the most obvious "muscle" car you can own. Still, the villain's car, the 1968 Dodge Charger was much, much cooler.

"One Brilliant Ball Of Fire":

All dolled up in pom-pom heels, creamy sweaters and dramatically lined lips, Stanwyck's Phyllis, who's not as young as she used to be and not quite as lush, can't hide the poison within her. And her chemistry with MacMurray sizzles as they swap barbs and coos (co-written by Raymond Chandler from a James M. Cain crime novella) with sleazy ease. They yearn for more, but Stanwyck, the prototypical noir siren, seems perfectly aware of how fatalistic this kind of dream really is. Sometimes murder really does smell like honeysuckle.

The best film writers do the following: they get you interested in films you're unfamiliar with, they make you see things that you never noticed before in past films you've watched, they leave their egos at the door and they manage to do it all with a sense of humor. The unpretentious and not-so-annoyingly-tweedy Kim Morgan is one such writer.

New AFOS episode: "Funk in the Trunk"

Battlestar Galactica and 30 Rock are back from hiatus, and so is another favorite around these parts, A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series. A new installment of AFOS will finally begin streaming Tuesday, April 8 (midnight, 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm). This long-delayed episode is entitled "Funk in the Trunk," and it will feature selections from scores to movies like Superbad, City of Men and The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion. I'm not exactly sure what the episode's about. I think it has something to do with funk. And it seems to be in somebody's trunk.


A vidcap from Superbad's amusing Foxy Brown-style opening titles


Forbidden Photos hottie Dagmar Lassander