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CITY UNWIND

Movie Mania:

Monsters, Inc. (2001)

Starring: John Goodman, Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Tilly

RARELY DOES THE phrase “fun for all the family” hold such resonance. This delightful movie is set in the fictitious Monstropolis, where best buddies Sulley (Goodman) and Mike (Crystal) work at power company Monsters, Inc. Their job is to leap out of bedroom cupboards to make children scream – the sound of which supplies Monstropolis with power. However, their world is turned upside down when a baby girl is accidentally transported back to the factory. At first Sulley and Mike are terrified of the toddler, as they believe that all children are toxic, but she soon melts their hearts and makes them realise the error of their ways.

YouTube Giggles:

The Llama Song

THIS IS WEIRD. I mean seriously weird. An excerpt of the lyrics – “fuzzy llama, funny llama, llama llama duck” – says it all really. A twisted and surreal song, which also throws in references to treehouses, bricks, cake and potatoes in its steam-of-consciousness prose. Oh, and the singer sounds like one of The Chipmunks. This is either very clever or very stupid, or it might be so stupid its genius. Or it might be so stupid it’s moronic. Any which way, after watching this 67-second clip, you’ll feel like you’ve been hypnotised by a small rodent. I still do.

To listen to the tune, type ‘llama song’ into the search box at www.youtube.com.

Love Connection:

Christian Bale & Courtney Love

WE PREDICT FIREWORKS. Both these stars are renowned for their unpredictable behaviour and bouts of volatile rage. Bale recently put the ‘mental’ into ‘temperamental’ when he freaked out on the set of the new Terminator movie and hurled a three-minute tirade of abuse at crew member Shane Hurlbut. An audio clip of the incident predictably surfaced on YouTube and forced Bale into a public apology, in which he cleverly managed to shift half the blame onto the fictional character he was portraying. Courtney Love is no angel herself – known for swearing, brawling and generally being a little bit unhinged. The City Times Love-o-meter predicts this will be a clash of the temper titans. We don’t think it’ll necessarily work out happily ever after between the pair, we just want to watch the mayhem unfold…

Celeb Trivia:

MORGAN FREEMAN’S Shawshank Redemption character ‘Red’ was a red-headed Irishman in Stephen King’s original novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. The film’s director Frank Darabont considered veteran actors including Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford and Robert Redford for the part, before settling on the African-American Freeman because of his authoritative manner.

Quote Hanger:

“Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find some woman I really don’t like and just give her a house.” (Rod Stewart)

Celebrity Anagram:

Howard Stern – wonder trash

Just for Laughs:

A MAN GOES to a psychiatrist. “Doc, my brother’s crazy,” he says. “He thinks he’s a chicken.”

“Why don’t you turn him in?” asks the shrink.

“We would,” replies the man. “But we need the eggs.”

Mole of the Emirates:

Overheard from conversations around Dubai this week…

“Yeah I’ve heard of the game ’20 Questions’ – isn’t that where you ask people lots of questions about how they feel?”

“I went through a phase where I put ketchup on everything”

“Mini-golf!”

“That’s very Will Smith”