Connections

Before a late-night screening of The Village on Tuesday, we saw a trailer for Meet the Fockers, the disastrously titled sequel to the so-so Ben Stiller comedy Meet the Parents. (By so-so I mean it was not as good as Flirting With Disaster, not as bad as Envy.) In Meet the Fockers, Robert De Niro reprises his role as Stiller's father-in-law, and the new film also stars Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand as Stiller's parents.

As you may know, I'm an incorrigible fan of the game that has you connect actors to Kevin Bacon. Some call the game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and impose a six-connection limit; I've always called it the Kevin Bacon game, and I strive to play it for style points. Films that star more than one really famous actor are important to the Kevin Bacon game, and the joint appearance of De Niro and Hoffman made Meet the Fockers seem like an important new hub. But just now I went to the Internet Movie Database and learned that not only have Hoffman and De Niro already been in movies together; one of their films was Sleepers, which starred--Kevin Bacon. (Without looking it up, can you name the other major release that featured De Niro and Hoffman?)

As for The Village, how's this: Joaquin Phoenix was in The Village with Sigourney Weaver, who was in Ghostbusters with Dan Aykroyd, who was in The Blues Brothers with John Belushi, who was in Animal House with Kevin Bacon.