Christine Baranski

A BAD MOMS CHRISTMAS follows our three under-appreciated and over-burdened women as they rebel against the challenges and expectations of the Super Bowl for moms: Christmas. And if creating a more perfect holiday for their families wasnít hard enough, they have to do all of that while hosting and entertaining their own mothers. By the end of the journey, our moms will redefine how to make the holidays special for all and discover a closer relationship with their mothers.

Milo Boyd (Gerard Butler), a down-on-his-luck bounty hunter, gets his dream job when he is assigned to track down his bail-jumping ex-wife, reporter Nicole Hurly (Jennifer Aniston). He thinks all that's ahead is an easy payday, but when Nicole gives him the slip so she can chase a lead on a murder cover-up, Milo realizes that nothing ever goes simply with him and Nicole. The exes continually one-up each other - until they find themselves on the run for their lives. They thought their promise to love, honor and obey was tough - staying alive is going to be a whole lot tougher. Andy Tennant (Hitch, Sweet Home Alabama) directs.

Donna is preparing to host her daughter Sophie`s wedding, but the guests include three men from her past whom Sophie secretly invited because she suspects one might be her father!

A Jewish-American Princess is forced to take control of a hard-core hip-hop record label and falls for the label's most controversial rapper. While delivering an award to her humanitarian father Ben Feld, the stylish wealthy Jewish Caucasian Marci Feld is surprised by the attack of conservative senator Mary Ellen Spinkle to her father in the media. The motive is the lyrics of the rap "Shoot Ya' Teacha," sung by Dr. S and released by the hip-hop record label Felony Assault that belongs to Ben. He has a heart attack, and his daughter decides to assume the problem and negotiate a public excuse of Dr. S in the MTV Award. However, the bad boy sings a polemic song on television to humiliate Marci that gives senator Sprinkle the chance to promote the "Buttgate". —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Marci, a spoiled Jewish American Princess, is forced to take control of her father Ben Feld's hard-core rap label, Felony Assault, when her mogul dad has a stress-induced heart attack due to the controversy surrounding the label's hip-hop song "Shoot Ya' Teacha" by Dr. Snatchcatcher. To rescue her father's plummeting stock, Marci attempts to tone down the rapper's bad-boy edge. Over time, the unlikely pair fall in love just as a conservative senator vows to banish the rapper and his offensive lyrics from the airwaves forever. —Sujit R. Varma

B movie film producer Bobby Bowfinger (Steve Martin) has saved up to direct a movie for his entire life-he now has $2,184 to pay for production costs. He is deep in debt, but an extremely positive outlook towards life. He is a master at doing things on a budget, using his connections. He has a script ("Chubby Rain" (because the aliens come to earth in rain drops) penned by an accountant, Afrim (Adam Alexi-Malle), and a camera operator, Dave (Jamie Kennedy) (who is also a parking lot attendant and loans Bowfinger expensive cars for his meetings with producers and stuff), with access to studio-owned equipment. Bowfinger then lines up several actors who are hungry for work (including Daisy (Heather Graham), a Hollywood wannabe and Carol (Christine Baranski) who considers herself a serious actress), along with a crowd of illegal Mexican immigrants for a camera crew; the only other thing he needs is access to a studio in order to distribute his masterwork. He extracts a promise from a high-ranking Universal Pictures executive, Jerry Renfro (Robert Downey Jr.), that Universal will distribute the film if it includes currently hot action star Kit Ramsey (Eddie Murphy). Ramsey-a pompous, neurotic, and paranoid (he thinks there is a conspiracy in Hollywood to deliver all the good lines to white actors) actor-refuses to act in Bowfinger's film, so Bowfinger constructs a plan to covertly film all of Ramsey's scenes without his knowledge. The actors, told that Ramsey is method acting and will not be interacting with them outside of their scenes, walk up to Ramsey in public and recite their lines while hidden cameras catch Ramsey's confused reactions. Daisy is very comfortable giving sexual favors to get what she wants and starts by showering Slater (Kohl Sudduth) (the supporting actor) with her affections. The plan goes well at first: Ramsey (who is a member of an organization called MindHead, whose mentor Terry Stricter (Terence Stamp) is counseling Kit on his paranoia about being chased by aliens and against his urge to flash females in public) swallows the movie's alien invasion premise and believes he is genuinely being stalked by aliens, resulting in an exceptionally genuine and intense performance. Daisy wants more scenes with Kit and asks Slater for it. Slater suggests speaking to Afrim, since he is the screenwriter. Daisy sleeps with Afrim and he changes the script. Afrim informs Daisy that its up to Bowfinger if the scenes actually make it into the final movie or not. So, Daisy moves on to Bowfinger. Bowfinger steals Daisy's credit card to fund the equipment to film the rest of the movie. However, the strain on Kit's already-precarious mental state leads him to go into hiding (He moves into the Mindhead facility for solitude) in order to maintain his sanity, stalling the film's production. Bowfinger resorts to hiring a Ramsey lookalike named Jiff. Jiff is kind, amiable and rather clueless. He even runs through a gauntlet of "stunt drivers" racing along a major freeway when asked. During a chat with the other cast members, Jiff mentions that he is Kit Ramsey's brother, explaining the likeness. Using this new knowledge, Bowfinger has Jiff find out Kit Ramsey's movements and the final scene to the film is readied for shooting. Also, Daisy moves on to having sex with Jiff to get an intro to Kit. The final scene is at an observatory. Though otherwise pleased with Ramsey's unscripted dialogue, Bowfinger considers his character's final line "Gotcha suckers!" to be the key moment of the film and directs one of the actors to guide Ramsey through the scene under the guise of showing him how to get rid of the aliens. During the filming, Ramsey becomes terrified and struggles to deliver the final line. At this point, Ramsey's mentor at MindHead, Terry Stricter (Terence Stamp), has discovered evidence (A guard at Dave's studio is a MindHead member and tells Terry everything) that Kit's "aliens" may not be just in his head. MindHead officials track Bowfinger to the observatory and shut down production. Bowfinger's camera crew show him B-roll footage of Ramsey they were filming off-set, just in case they saw anything they could use. The footage shows Ramsey donning a paper bag over his head and exposing himself to an amused Laker Girl Cheerleading Squad, something MindHead specifically discouraged him from doing. Bowfinger blackmails MindHead with the footage, threatening to release it and ruin Ramsey's career (which would also endanger MindHead's finances as Ramsey is a major donor to their operations). MindHead advises the star to finish the project. Bowfinger finally gets to sit at the premiere of a film he himself directed and is awed (Daisy attends the premier as Kit's guest, suggesting that she is now sleeping with him). Following the arguable success of the film, Bowfinger receives a rare Fed-Ex envelope-an offer to film a martial arts film called "Fake Purse Ninjas" starring himself and Jiff Ramsey.

30 years later... Oscar has settled in Sarasota, Florida, where he reports on a weak minor league baseball team and plays cards with other senior citizens. His son notifies him from California that he's getting married in a few days, to the daughter of Felix Ungar. Oscar and Felix happily reunite at the Los Angeles airport, 17 years after living together in New York City, but having not seen each other since then. They rent a car and drive off together, promptly teasing each other about their annoying differences: Felix was always fastidious and clean, Oscar was always unkempt and casual. Oscar soon gets irritated with Felix for needing to stop to pee, and later needing to stop for food, and to take pills. Felix laments that his third wife left him a few years earlier. Within a couple hours of driving, the two lose the directions to the wedding, realizing that Felix's suitcase was left back at the car rental agency. Making matters worse, the empty rental car rolls down a hillside and explodes. Felix and Oscar set off on foot along the desert highway, and no other cars come by for hours. They finally get picked up by a Mexican farmer, who asks them to drive his truck to a nearby gas station. They are soon stopped and arrested by a phalanx of police who find many illegal immigrants in the back of the truck. The local sheriff deduces that the two are not criminals and lets them go. Felix calls relatives at the wedding site and learns that they are five hours off course, so he and Oscar decide to spend the night in their current town. Felix and Oscar go off to a local bar, where Oscar charms a couple ladies somewhat younger than they are, named Thelma and Holly, and Felix goes along. The two couples dance, until the ladies suddenly need to leave. The next morning, they get a ride with an older man who is heading to the town where the wedding is being held. Alas, he soon dies after driving the car very slowly for a few miles. Police show up and take Felix and Oscar back to town, where the same sheriff from before again deduces they have committed no crimes and lets them go. Felix and Oscar get a bus out of town, and Felix says he feels happy and youthful. Along a stop, Thelma and Holly get on the bus, but soon after, the ladies' husbands hijack the bus and take all of them hostage on a wild car ride. Soon the police stop them and take them back to the same town where the same sheriff from before becomes so frustrated that he offers to transport Oscar and Felix to the wedding by a regional airline. While getting on the plane, Felix meets a friend of Oscar's named Felice, whom he is sure is his soulmate. Oscar convinces Felix to chat up Felice, and the three continue on to the wedding. When they arrive, they immediately learn that Oscar's son-- the groom-- has gotten cold feet and is hiding on the roof. Oscar tries to talk him out of getting married, in reverse psychology that convinces his son to go through with the wedding. After the service, Felix dances with Felice. Oscar gives his son extremely valuable baseball cards as a gift. That night, Felix tells Oscar that he plans to spend some time in San Francisco with Felice. Felix and Oscar depart at the airport with restrained emotion. Back in Sarasota, Felix shows up at Oscar's house to tell him that things did not work out with Felice. Oscar is hesitant, but agrees that Felix can stay with him for a while. As Felix begins cleaning the place, Oscar goes back to playing poker with his old friends.

The film opens with a performance at the Birdcage, a nightclub situated in South Beach, Miami. The club is owned by Armand Goldman, a gay Jew in a relationship with the club's star Albert, who performs as a drag queen. Armand's son Val returns from college with an announcement: he is getting married to a schoolmate, Barbara Keeley, whose father Kevin Keeley is a conservative politician from Ohio who founded the Coalition for Moral Order, and who is seeking reelection. The problem is that Barbara hid the truth from her parents - she informed them that Val's father is a cultural attaché for Greece and that Val's mother is a housewife, and that their last name was Coleman. The Keeleys, meanwhile, are in the midst of their own crisis: Keeley's co-founder for the Coalition, Senator Jackson, died of a heart attack while in bed with an underage black prostitute. This event makes headlines, and gets the Keeleys swamped with hordes of reporters and threatens to ruin their political position. Kevins wife Louise proposes that they go to see Val's parents, who they believe are a traditional wholesome family, as a double measure to both avoid the reporters and to restore their impeccable public image. They set off, but are being tracked by a couple of reporters, who are themselves tracked by competing reporters... Val begs his father to go along with the charade, and after some deliberation he concedes. They both set to work remodeling their apartment into a more austere and simple home, and dress up the flamboyant gay manservant Agador as a butler/cook. Less simple is asking Albert for support; an effeminate, temperamental and sensitive partner, he is offended at Armand and Val asking him to be absent due to his obvious gayness, and when he tries to act like a heterosexual he fails miserably. With no other choices, Armand and Val decide to call upon Val's birthmother Katherine, a former showgirl who left Val with Armand and ran off to become a businesswoman. Asking Katherine is the last straw for Albert and he decides to go to a cemetery; Armand calms him down and reaffirms their devotion by giving him partnership of the Birdcage. The Keeleys arrive, and the night starts off fairly well, with only a few hiccups. Unfortunately, Katherine, who was supposed to join the party, gets stuck in traffic. Unexpectedly Albert dresses up as a woman and takes her place, to the horror of Armand and Val; bizarrely his masquerade works successfully and Kevin is even smitten with Mrs Coleman and her liberalness, much to Louise's indignation. However, both Kevin and Louise start to suspect that the Colemans are hiding something, especially when they are served an awful mishmash soup made of all sorts of ingredients (including hardboiled eggs), and notice that the plates hold pictures of men in disturbing poses... Katherine finally arrives, and everything falls apart: Kevin and Louise find out that Val's parents are gay Jewish nightclub owners, and they decide to leave immediately. But they discover a mass of news crews outside who tracked them down, and duck back in. Although the Keeleys have warmed up to their in-laws, they are now trapped inside and for them to appear in the presence of such people would finish their political careers. Albert hits on a brilliant scheme: he dresses the Keeleys up in drag and gives an impromptu performance, and as the show goes on Katherine successfully gets the Keeleys out of the Birdcage without any interception from reporters. The film ends with Val and Barbara getting married, in an interfaith ceremony presided by both a rabbi and priest, attended by Kevin and Louise, Katherine and Armand and Albert.

Reduced to minding the counter at a crusty pawn shop, Weslake stumbles onto a scheme by some disgruntled misfit clients to rob the place. Rather than blow the whistle, however, he insinuates himself as the heist's mastermind. Down-and-out Weslake (Donald Sutherland) was reduced to minding the counter at the San Francisco pawn shop of crusty Garvey (Jack Warden) when he stumbled onto a scheme by some of the boss's disgruntled misfit clients to rob the place. Rather than blow the whistle, however, he insinuates himself as the heist's mastermind. Louis Malle's hilarious remake of Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958) co-stars Sean Penn, Wallace Shawn, Christine Baranski, and Professor Irwin Corey. —Anonymous Garvey is a San Francisco pawnshop operator. His unemployed and criminal friends Dillard, Turtle, and Weslake, team up with Boardwalk, a local pimp, to burgle Garvey's shop while the owner is out of town. During the elaborate planning process, Dillard falls for a Hispanic woman, the sister of a friend. Also, Boardwalk is assigned to case a local apartment, where he meets and falls for the maid. Amidst all these romantic hijinks, Weslake puts together a burglary plan, which is executed by the makeshift gang. —veloc <velo_00@yahoo.com>