Build a comedy around Jim Carrey in manic mode and they will come. Case in point: Fun With Dick and Jane, a pointless, painfully unfunny and yet inexplicably popular remake of the 1977 fizzle with Jane Fonda and George Segal. This time Carrey plays the Dick who loses his job at Globodyne (read Enron). Faced with having to curtail their conspicuous consumption, Dick and wife Jane (Tea Leoni) turn to crime, wearing increasingly strained disguises as they become head-splittingly shrill.

“1999”

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.