Just looking at hangdog Steve Buscemi and perky Sarah Silverman as mismatched lovers is a kick. What a comedy team these two virtuosos of the comically perverse could have made if they weren't stuck in the shambles that is Saint John of Las Vegas. First-time director and screenwriter Hue Rhodesshows no discernible talent for dialogue, humor and, especially,pacing. For a movie than runs a mere 85 minutes, Saint John moves like a life sentence in molasses prison.

Buscemi plays John Alighieri (same last name as Dante's), a gambling junkie trying to take the cure by taking a nowhere job in an insurance company in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Just as he's settling into an eccentricromance with the cutie (Silverman) in the next cubicle, John is sent on the road by his boss (Peter Dinklage) to investigate an alleged fraud involving a totaled car and a stripper (Emmanuelle Chriqui) in a neck brace and a wheelchair. That would be fine if his destination wasn't Vegas — Kryptonite for a reformed gamer — and if his partner wasn't Virgil (Romany Malco), a claims adjuster determined to take John through nine circles of hell that Dante himself would blanch at. Still, watching Buscemi at a cowboy nudist camp, a carnival shooting gallery or just getting gaga over Silverman almost makes it bearable.

“Everyday People”

"Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.