Cut: Movies in Fifteen Minutes, Cleolinda Jones

Johnny Cannon, Les Clark, Frenchy de Tremaudan, Joe D'Igalo, Norm Ferguson, Blue Rhythm

(July 28) My heh-ing muscles are worn out. Every page of this book made me heh-heh-heh aloud.

So these are capsule parodies of 10 blockbuster movies of the '90s and early 2000s, and they are brilliant. They are excellent summaries -- sometimes... often, actually... they impose more sense and logic than the movie in question ever had.

But they are also very funny, especially when you know the movie, and even when you don't, since Jones pokes affectionate fun at the generic clichés of movie-making as well as the ones specific to the franchises. From "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Sorcerer's Philosopher's Stone in Fifteen Minutes," for example:

Dinner in the Great Hall

DUMBLEDORE:I would like to announce that I am absentmindedly beneficent.

NEARLY HEADLESS NICK: I'm a ghost!

HERMINONE: I know everything, because I read it in Hogwart's: A History!

NEVILLE: I'm completely hapless -- OW! MY FORK IS IN MY EYE!

NEARLY HEADLESS NICK: I'm a headless ghost!

SEAMUS: I'm a half-blood! Has my water turned to rum yet?

RON: Dude, and possibly a burgeoning alcoholic.

SEAMUS: Yeah? Well, you're POOR.

RON: SHUT UP, I KNOW.

NEARLY HEADLESS NICK: I'm a disgruntled headless ghost!

PERCY: I'm overweeningly officious, which will be important four books from now.

THE FAT LADY: I'm a painting!

THE STAIRCASES: We're fickle bitches!

NEARLY HEADLESS NICK: PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEE!

Even the scene titles are funny:
Gandalf's Cart of Exposition (from "The Fellowship of the Ring in Fifteen Minutes")
Hissyfit Chamber, Imperial Palace (from "Gladiator in Fifteen Minutes")
The Planet Seattle Kamino (from "Star Wars: Episode Two -- Attack of the Clones in Fifteen Minutes")

Ah, it's hard not to just quote the whole book.