I've Seen Home Alone A Million Times And Never Caught This

I've probably watched Home Alone at least once a year (probably more times than that) ever since it came out. It is a surprisingly tightly written movie full of far more clever writing than you would expect at face value. The slapstick comedy that makes up the end of the film seems to me like John Hughes inner child coming out and after watching his take on teenagers in so many other movies it's really fun to get his take on kids.

I know it's early in the season but I was watching Home Alone today and it was almost like seeing it for the first time. I was picking up on details I had always missed and hearing set ups and payoffs in the dialogue I had never heard before. I'll probably write at least one more post on the movie before the season is over, but there was one detail I noticed this time around that I had never seen before and it cracked me up. It's a detail so quick that if you blink you'll miss it. I actually had to rewind and pause to make sure it was what I thought it was.


The pizza place in the movie is Little Nero's, a fun jab at Little Caesar's, but what I hadn't ever seen before was their slogan.  Check it out on the car under the title.

This is genius. If you're not familiar with the significance of this here's a quick tidbit. According to legend while Rome was burning Nero, the emperor, was playing the fiddle which demonstrated how little he cared for his empire or his people.

Keep an eye out for more Home Alone posts, and more Christmas movie posts, they're sure to come!

Sneaky Detail In Zootopia No One Has Talked About

A few days ago I wrote a small piece about a detail I noticed in Coco. I'm not actually all the observant so I felt pretty good having found something no one else seemed to have noticed. I didn't really expect that to happen again anytime soon, but the other day a detail kind of jumped out at me that I haven't heard anyone else talk about. If you haven't seen Zootopia this will have a couple of spoilers, but more importantly you won't really understand the significance of the discovery.


My kids loved Zootopia when it first came out and we watched it quite a few times. Then they lost interest for awhile and just the other day they watched it again for the first time. I had seen the movie several times over and this still didn't sink in until that time.

In the press conference scene Judy is prepared for the press by Nick, and things are actually going pretty well for her. Then a reporter throws out a question that derails everything. The reporters question is technically a fine question, but seems a bit leading at the same time. It was the leading nature of the question that pulled my attention to the TV ( I was just passing through the room at the time). He says, "So, predators are the only ones going savage?"


The question feels panic inducing. Well, guess who asks that question. Doug. Yep, the same Doug who is going out by night and shooting the predators to induce their savage episodes. He is posing as a reporter just to ask this question and help the hysteria to build. Despite several viewings of the film I had not caught this little tidbit.

Technically it might not be Doug, it could just be another sheep, but that doesn't actually change anything. It was a sheep, and those particular sheep seem to pretty much all be in on the plot with Bellweather.