I’m really looking forward to seeing the new Polanski. LaSalle really liked it (and I enjoyed his review), as did Manohla Dargis.
Once again, I’m in exact accord with Drew McWeeny (aside from the fact that I haven’t actually seen the first film):
Man, I was taken aback when The LA Times ran a piece about the potential directors for “Paranormal Activity 2.” I like the first film, so don’t take this wrong, but… what world are we living in where Brian De Palma is considering Oren Peli’s leftovers? That’s just f’ing crazy. Admittedly, De Palma is good at creepy horror, he’s been preoccupied with notions of what reality is in front of a camera for decades, and his not-very-good “Redacted” was a direct experiment in this sort of found-footage filmmaking. So it’s not that I think it’s a bad choice. But still… this is BRIAN FREAKING DE PALMA we’re talking about. His career trajectory is so awful that it makes me feel better about my own near-total failure in Hollywood. If this guy, at this point, is looking this as a potential job, then obviously this business is deeply broken. Brad Anderson (who’s no freshman, no matter what The LA Times says) is a great choice if they can get him. I’m a little amazed that the list features names I actually like. I guess the first film’s success put Paramount in a great position on this one. My question is who’s going to be able to pull this off and have it in theaters in October. Sounds like one hell of a ride for some filmmaker, and my guess is we’ll have a name soon if they hope to make that date.
Before I read this review, I had no interest whatsoever in seeing The Crazies (despite Tim Olyphant’s presence). But now … well, maybe.
And this … {sigh}. I dunno, I guess, like McWeeny, I don’t disagree with the overall goal, but … geez. What a fuckin’ nerd. A bad nerd.
Saw The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus last night. It wasn’t as … depressingly awful as it could have been. It was fun/magical in spots, and all the perfs were fantastic, but it’s just not any good. It’s a mess, thematically, tonally, visually — it’s a drunkard’s film (no idea if Gilliam is a drinker; that’s not what I’m after with the sentiment). It’s awful to say, but Heath Ledger’s death saved the movie — without the thematic reworking of the through-the-mirror scenes and the fascinating performances of the three Tonys, there wouldn’t have been a movie there.
Oy. Polanski, De Palma, Gilliam — they’re running out of time … and we’re running out of actual auteurs. Aside from Fincher and the above-mentioned Brad Anderson, is there any director under 50 who merits actual anticipation?
you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
PT Anderson is under 50! Soderbergh is also under 50, and I know I was anticipating Moneyball. I used to think Aronofsky merited anticipation.
monkey hates PTA. Why, I don’t know. He just does.
Apparently, the absolute brilliance of “Hard Eight” through “There Will Be Blood” is not impressive to him.
Yeah, you easily forget those films after you see them. Ther’es no sign of brilliance there at all. It’s all contrived.
Ah, forgot about Soderbergh. He’s almost too prolific to bother anticipating. He’s also so small-c catholic with his tastes and goals that … well, I’m not sure where I’m going with that argument.
LB’s right — I hate PTA.
Aronofsky? No, not anymore.
Ah, I forgot Chris Nolan — he certainly warrants anticipation.
But WHY, mb?! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, WHY?!
He’s the Jeter of directors.
You really shouldn’t confuse overhyped with not great.
I was being fairly precise with my analogy.
was kidding about pta (that you would think so).
Whoever is directing Shrek 17. Now there’s a movie worth anticipatin’
Can someone explain why people like Tim Olyphant?
He was in Deadwood, which is awesome.
Agrd.
But, to beat this non-moving quadruped with forty teeth (thank you, Mr. Gradgrind) a bit more…TO was the weakest link in Deadwood. By a lot.
Terry Gilliam’s ode to Mikhail Bulgakov (who?).
Under 50 auters —
Obvious omissions: Quentin Tarantino, Alfonso Cuaron, Chan-wook Park
If you’re feeling generous: Guillermo del Toro, Atom Egoyan
If your taste runs in this direction: Edgar Wright
Most people would put this guy in the list: Spike Jonze
Had promise, went off track: David Gordon Green
Probably lacking the heft to make anything great, but might produce a few decent-to-good movies: Rian Johnson, Craig Brewer, Sofia Coppola
Made one great film, jury still out: Jeff Nichols, John Hillcoat
Richard Kelly? Maybe not?
Whoops. That’s a monkeyball FAIL right there.
Michael Bay is only 45. Don’t tell me you’re not anticipating Tranformers 3.
I fell asleep (literally) watching the first one. So yes, I will tell you.
God damn it, fuck you all.
Paul Thomas Anderson can direct the fuck out of a movie.
And if our cut off point is 50, how old are the Coens? 55 and 52? Well, fuck you anyhow.
The Coens haven’t been anticipation-worthy for 15 years.
Well, the aughts haven’t been as good to them (or they haven’t been as good to the aughts) as the nineties were. But…the aughts produced No Country for Old Men, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and The Man Who Wasn’t There. And Burn After Reading was….kinda fun, I guess.
The last 15 years also includes Fargo and Big Lebowski. mb is insane.
Anticipation-worthy 15 year-olds, dude.
Up in Napa for the weekend. Just had one of the best meals of my life at Umbunto. Holy Toledo.
tell us what you had.
There were 6 of us, and our waiter said that we could either all order individually, or if we wanted to try lots of things, he would just bring us larger portions of the chef’s choice of appetizers, main courses, and dessert and we could share. We chose to share and I’m so glad we did.
I brought the menu home (it’s a daily menu, so it’s not like I stole one) so I can tell you exactly what we had:
We had three starters–two of which I loved, and one I hated. So considering I hated one of the dishes, you can see how strong the rest of the meal was!
Starter #1 (which they call “snacks”) Marcona almonds with lavender sugar and sea salt. These were so INSANELY good that I ordered a second portion to bring home with me. I’m going to mail them to my mom because I think she’ll really like them. The lavender sugar was amazingly delicious.
Starter #2: Castelvetrano olives marinated in carrot top pesto–really good
Starter #3: French breakfast radishes with nori creame fraiche and lava salt. The lava salt was cool, because it was solid black. I cannot stand nori, however, so I really hated this “snack.” I washed the taste out of my mouth with a dozen more almonds.
Main courses:
#1 Spring onion jam doughnuts stuffed with cool burrata chrispy fried shallots, foraged green salad, and pea shoots. This also had some sort of soft cheese on the side. The donuts were sweet/savory and scrumptious.
#2 Farm eggs ‘a la Catalan,’ stewed chickpeas, marinated calcots with sauce romesco and sylvetta arugula. The chickpeas were two ways: stewed and deep fried in a batter, I think. Totally yummy.
Dessert: I could have eaten about three of these, but I was already stuffed. Vanilla bean “cheesecake” in a jar, sour cherry with verbena, teecino crumble. I’m not normally a cheesecake fan, but this was really delicious, with a really sour cherry topping and a crumble in the middle that served as the “graham cracker crust.” They served it in a really cute little old fashioned jar with a lid that closed by a metal clasp.
There are many ingredients listed above that I don’t have a clue what are, but I’d gladly eat them all again. (except the nori!)
I’ve been there twice. The entree was great the first time, the sampling of entrees not that great the second time. They always have the almonds and the olives, and the almonds are indeed amazingly delicious.
Ima go on down to the Waffle House now.
When you become an ex ex ex Sign Overlord, you can come back to CA and revisit this menu. You know and will know plenty of people that’ll join you on your quest.
In the meantime: maple syrup… waffles… mmm…
It’s not real maple syrup.
That’s okay, it’s not real waffles either.
waffles just pancakes with little squares on ’em.
{{{{{{droooooooool}}}}}}
Yes, inquiring minds want to know. What did you have?
LOVE that place. Now I want to go back.
Speaking of movies, just watched this one.
I didn’t realize that you only had to go back to 1951 to be in a place where the phrase “hit man” didn’t exist, and Bogart could be plausibly confused as to the murder-related meanings of “hit” and “contract.” That blew my mind a little.
Bretaigne Windust?
Trivia section:
Guess it wasn’t much of a break.
Probably took one viewing of it and thought, “Holy shit, what the fuck was I on when I thought this would make a good film. I can’t salvage any of this crap. Um, you take it. Ahh… good work kid, it’s your big break.”
you just made me laugh. Loudly.
I must say that the director I enjoy the most is Chris Nolan, who’s only 40ish. Memento and The Prestige were both gems and The Dark Knight was a very good movie as well. His next movie is Inception. And after watching a trailer, I still can’t figure out what it’s about. But it has Leo in it. Speaking of, has anyone seen Shutter Island?
The Prestige is fucking fantastic.
So is my life
The Prestige is one of those rare films where the movie is far superior to the book.
Added to queue. I did not love the book, so this actually will push me to see it.
The movie was more based on magic and rivalry of one-upmanship and only very loosely based on the book. So even if you absolutely hated the book (outside of the basic subject), the movie is an entirely separate animal. No ghost thing, no future relative thing. Had the two had different titles, I’m not sure you’d necessarily connected them together.
As is our annual ritual, Ms. Sslinger & I have been going to a lot of the movies that are either nominated for best picture or/and have performances that are nominated. In recent weeks we’ve seen An Education, Crazy Heart, and The Hurt Locker, and we’ve already seen Up In The Air, A Serious Man, and District 9, and I saw Inglourious Basterds. So we haven’t seen Avatar, Up, Precious, and The Blind Side of the nominated films. Out of all of them, the only one I really liked was IB. The others don’t even seem remotely worthy of a nomination, a collection of really disappointing films, each with a major flaw:
An Education: you know from the get-go it won’t end well, and the ending was unbelievably trite
Crazy Heart: I like Bridges, but how cliche can it be? And that fraking song was stuck in my head for days (now replaced by O Canada)
Hurt Locker: A collection of scenes, some of which were very good and riveting but there’s no real point to it, and one ridiculous scene following the “suicide bombing”
Up In The Air: Clooney is always watchable, but meh, and again the ending was lame
District 9: I’m a big sci-fi fan and it was fun, but it lost me in the end and was in no way “Best Picture” material
A Serious Man: boring
Were there other good movies in ’09? Should we see any of the ones we missed? The only one out there right now that I’d like to see is A Single Man, but I have issues with Julianne Moore (my favorite role of hers was in Children of Men and she gets killed right away) so I’m not sure how I’d take it. I’d be interested to hear any recommendations for movies of the year that I missed. I must say, I’m interested in seeing The Prophet, which is nominated for best foreign film, and the previews look interesting.
Final note: the new screening rooms at the Shattuck are nice, and you can bring an adult beverage in with you on shows after 6:00 pm. But get there early – they have sofa’s to sit on, that are clearly big enough to seat 3 people but most couples that go take them. There were some awkward minutes the other night when some people came in late, and one asked a couple to move over so she could sit on the sofa with them, while some others just bailed. I think it was a miscalculation on the theater’s part to put in sofas that big.
Love seats are the answer. Cheaper, too.
I think you may be at a crossroads in your love/hate of movies. I came to where you’re at about five to eight years ago when the conclusion of movies really started pissing me off. It doesn’t ever really seem to go away and I’m questioning some of my old alliances now.
Interesting comments re endings, but I’m not sure it’s a long-term issue. Or all-encompassing. Surely, there have always been highly lauded movies that I’ve disliked, but in most years there are at least a good number that I can agree are good-to-great. Just last year I thought Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Visitor, and The Reader were all in that category. This year, not even close.
All I care is that the ending fit the story, characters and situation. Most don’t, some come close and rarely some do. But that’s been the way of it probably since Man With Hose and Man With Hose II. After film school, I’ve just learn to set your expectations to what the movie looks to be. If you’re going into movies always expecting to be blown away, you’re going to be disappointed 99.99% of the time. If, like most movies are, expect to see a popcorn flick, odds are you might get blown away 25-30% of the time and have your expectations met at least 50% of the time. I think the only film in the last 5 years I walked into expecting to be blown away AND having my expectations met was Dark Knight. Not a perfect movie, but damn good. Everything else, especially those that I was told would be fantastic, were complete disappointments that I probably would have enjoyed much more had I not come into them with higher expectations. The only two movies on SS’s list that I liked were IB and D9, but as much as I enjoyed D9, definitely not Best Picture unless you’re thinking of it in the Gladiator sense, which is just downright dumb.
See Up. I loved it. But… I range from “meh” to “hate” on Inglourious Basterds, so I think mathematically that means you’d hate Up.
Up was overrated. But then most of their films have been. That’s not to say they haven’t had some really great films, but some I’ve watched and thought, “So?”. This was one of them. It had some great moments, mind you, but overall it just meh.
This kind of goes to something I’ve been thinking about in general.
Am I just getting harder to impress as I get older or are they just not making as many “great” films as they used to?
Speaking of growing older, I turn 40 on Thursday. If you go shopping on Monday and mail it, it will probably get here by Thursday.
The former. And, of course, you don’t remember the shortcomings of films you liked.
I rewatched Ghostbusters a year ago. It was sad.
Some things hold up over time (Looney Toons, Fletch, Batman the Animated Series, Calvin and Hobbes) and some don’t (Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, X-Men: the Animated Series, Sherman’s Lagoon).
OT: We watched about 12 minutes of The Marriage Ref after the olympics last night. I feel bad for everyone involved with that show.
Well, they must’ve had some real dirt on a lot of different people. It looks like everyone’s involved in that.
Alec Baldwin looked like he was contractually obligated to appear on the show, the concept of which could easily be one of the many spoof shows (MILF island) featured in his sitcom.
JoePo:
When your lead in is about a stuff dog, you know you’re fucked. You take a lackluster concept and do every possible thing that would make it less interesting and you’d still have a better show than that.
So… uh… want some SJSU swag? Because the campus bookstore is the only store I’m anywhere near most of the time… there’s a post office downstairs of it, too…
I used to love that about school. Post office right there. Bookstore. I miss school.
Will one of you pay me to go to school so I don’t have to do signs any more?
I’m in for $5
See, my “meh” to “hate” range on IB is based on my feelings of “it was okay” to “wow, that was really, really overrated.”
Agree. The first 20 minutes were really good. The ensuing plot was terrible, but the characters were still ok.
yes–I loved Up! And I typically get a bit bored during animated movies, but I watched Up twice before I sent it back to Netflix. I thought it was very cute and had some really funny parts.
I love most of Pixar. FK needs more girls.
Wall-E. And I agree with your assessment of FK and the disproportionate number of the female persuasion.
So does Dr. Seuss, apparently.
Oh, for Ba’al’s sake … you know what? Geisel’s lacunae also included suspicious absences of people in wheelchairs, Inuit, Women’s Studies professors, and the cross-eyed. I’m certainly not exposing JP to that regressive neo-Nazi filth.
SRSLY
I think that’s actually the actress who played the lesbian partner of Ross’s ex-wife on Friends.
And social scientists wonder why nobody takes them seriously.
Hold on a sec there — (1) this twit is a self-described “writer and commentator,” not a social scientist; and (2) there’s good/”real” (i.e., quantitative) social science (which is its own flavor of ridiculous/clueless) and there’s bad/fake social science. And then there’s the whole Subjugated Studies nexus, which is I think what you’re talking about (and which only the most clueless/grasping of practitioners claim to be operating under the aegis of Science).
Yes, real practicing social scientists can (and do) perform real useful work. I won’t dispute that.
But the smart money is that the writer’s educational training is in the social sciences. Now, I have never spent much time and effort in that field, and do not know (personally) many (any?) “real” social scientists. But my impression is that people who study that field without fully grasping it and then become authors/analysts/commentators unleash ridiculousness like the Dr. Seuss diatribe.
I’d be willing to bet she was an English major.
quiet, you.
Women’s Studies?
Also a good possibility.
bingo
Isn’t Subjugated Studies part of the required curriculum at your alma mater?
Probably. Everything I get in the mail from them goes straight into a Poopee.
I know that subconscious discrimination often lurks in innocuous places… but women (or anyones) who go hunting for “discrimination” in absolutely every little teeny thing really dilute the public consciousness for women (and anyones) who try to address the roots of actual discrimination in the real world.
sock puppets?
Earless, legless llamas are like
giant sock puppetswomen.Lord, I hope not, or I might have to change teams.
That thing still haunts my subconscious.
A woman?
I’m going to go ahead and disagree with everyone: I think the critique of the lack of females in Seuss is legitimate and, if not exactly troubling, certainly worth considering w/r/t the ideas about gender in the books we read to our kids.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Dr. Seuss, he was a friggin genius of lyric and meter. He was also a childhood pal of my grandfather’s when they were both wee lads in Springfield Mass. But the level of gender awareness in his works is very much what one might expect from a man of his era. Doesn’t mean Seuss shouldn’t be read to/by kids…quite the contrary…but that it is worth considering the gender role/model question when thinking about what other books to inflict upon your kids.
Fortunately, there are both boys and girls in Everyone Poops.
I’m going to go ahead and agree with you – which doesn’t mean that we don’t read Lily a fair number of the good doctor’s books, although we’ll skip the ones with the more gratuitously racist illustrations.
What are hard (but great) to find are children’s books which feature a representative range of characters and circumstances that are in the book not because they are under-represented elsewhere but just because they are.
The Giving Tree fucked me up worse than anything Dr. Seuss ever wrote… :P
Melody Beattie refused to let me read that book.
She has control issues.
The Snowy Day and Corduroy the Bear are two good ones.
Yup – and they were heavily in the rotation.
Not what you’re asking for, but the Frog and Toad series are probably my favorite books for kids.
They were heavily in the rotation too – and there is a connection in that both frog and toad have a broad range of feelings that they act on and react to, but again in a way that is a natural part of the story rather than the reason for it.
Where does one draw the line, though?
If I have 10 characters how must I apportion them to make my story satisfactory?
See any Spielberg film (directed or produced) ca 1986-2000
My point is more that if you’re telling a satisfactory story then the distribution should come out naturally.
TWSS
That’s What Statisticians Said?
Not true at all. There are a lot of stories where the protagonists would be all/almost all homogenous.
Like King Kong? OOOoooooh homogenuous… like Brokeback Mountain?
FK’s lacunae also include suspicious absences of
people in wheelchairsSlegna fans,Inuit** admins,Women’s Studies professorsTrainmen, and the cross-eyed. I’m certainly not exposing JP to this regressive neo-Nazi filth.Oh, crap
Guess I’d better get my bullying in now then. Asshole.
Actually one admin has surreptitiously entered your midst.
AAAAAAHHHHHH
(Did he don a disguise to do so?)
I don’t know if 67M hangs out around here actually. I’m merely pointing out that I was promoted to a mod at ** and can now give out strikes and the such, not that I do so very often. This makes me the very thing you guys hate, yes?
We’re all Rockers here.
(1. I wasn’t including mods in my admin category. 2. We don’t actually really care, except for a couple dillweeds who wouldn’t get approved entry anyway. 3. Clement Moore, outside of the holidays? Really? Slusser really is disinvited now.)
I hate you because you’re always being mean to nice, innocent Cliffy, who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
vignette’s Norm Peterson?
I only hate the chief administrator and his once-lackey.
I have absolutely nothing bad to say about Pixar’s output. The Incredibles, in particular, I really enjoyed.
agrd. Though I’ve not seen their last two, and I’ve been divorced for their last two. Coincidence?
Without the fear of being knife in your sleep you don’t care to see Pixar Flix?
I really like:
Toy Story 1 and 2
Monsters, Inc.
Incredibles
Wall-E
I thought An Education was quite good until the plot resolution via montage conclusion, which as you say was excruciating.
It’s true you know it won’t end well, but of course it can’t, and shouldn’t, end well. It’s not meant to be suspenseful. I mean, the title tells you how it’s going to unfold. The point is to present her “education” in an interesting way, and I think it worked in that regard, owing mainly to the strength of the two lead performances.
Other 2009 movies: I liked Big Fan, Moon, and Adventureland.
Point taken about knowing how it will unfold, but it’s precisely that aspect that makes the ending so crucial to the ultimate success of the film. Bollixing up the ending ruined the things they had done well up to that point.
Oh, and thanks for the recs. I did want to see Big Fan, and will check out the other two.
Yeah, I can see that. In my head, the movie ends with Emma Thompson telling her to pound salt, have a nice day, you’re still expelled. Maybe with an understated “she didn’t go to Oxford, but it worked out okay anyway” coda.
Exactly.
I miss The Parkway.
And it’s a year late, courtesy of Lily, but Sita Sings The Blues is wonderful and has been released under a creative commons license!
I liked A Serious Man. Not my favorite Coen brothers movie, but I wouldn’t call it boring.
One of the things I was thinking about when I trotted out the “there’s no accounting for taste” cliche a couple of weeks ago: On a broad level someone’s tastes (in movies, music, tv, books, art) often do tell you something about other aspects of their personality, philosophy, or politics. But the detail level, it’s just hard to make much sense of it. In a sense, I can more easily understand the friend who said Avatar was the best movie he had seen in 10 years (even though I have no desire to see it, and probably never will) than the fact that so many people here rank Raising Arizona and Hudsucker Proxy among the best Coen movies.
I agree with outraged, horrified Donald.
I think I failed to make the point I was trying to make. Oh well.
(I think we were both reacting to your not thinking highly of Raising Arizona or Hudsucker Proxy. At least, I was–nothing more serious than that. And I think there are probably four or five Coen films I like more, though I really like both of these.)
I still love you. You’re still swag-worthy.
Phew.
Wasn’t a big fan of HP, but then I think I’ve never seen it all the way through. RA is one of their best. Fargo I think is still my favorite.
The dialogue in HP is through the roof! How can you not like it?
give it another shot.
It makes sense to me when people say Avatar looks great, but I am amazed that some seem so taken by the story, which by all accounts is laughably hackneyed (I haven’t seen the film, but, well, if I may indulge my inner snob, I can just tell).
But, I suppose we are all inclined to ascribe depth to cliches we don’t realize are cliches. I’m sure I do this all the time.
At the other end of the spectrum, some cinephiles seem to view all character and all plot as cliche, to the point that they regard assessments of relative value as the province of fools and philistines. I think for these folks, whose enjoyment is more form dependent and intellectualized, movies made in the Hudsucker mold are a kind of refuge. Also I guess they think the jokes are funny.
Hudsucker didn’t use a mold, but rather an extrusion device.
This guy disagrees with you re: Avatar.
I’m pretty sure reading that was orders of magnitude more entertaining than watching Avatar.
I wouldn’t know; I didn’t see the movie either. I think the last time I was in a movie theater was for…Little Miss Sunshine? Casino Royale? Something like that.
Yeah, LMS almost made me give up on movies.
Ditto. Talk about a Rorschach movie
Quantify that, please. Are we talking a full custa- multiple?
My main complaint about Avatar was that they NEVER HELD THE DODGAM CAMERA STILL. I had to go out to the lobby for about 15 minutes to keep myself from calling my old buddy Ralph on the big white phone.
Oh yeah, and the story line was basically “Dances With Wolves” with a bunch of nifty CG to dress it up. (Disclosure – DWW was the worst movies I’ve ever been forced to endure, even worse than “The Horse Whisperer”).
Dammit. I can’t find the Far Side on the “Didn’t Like Dances With Wolves Society”
Over the weekend I discovered that the guy who made A Prophet also directed The Beat That My Heart Skipped, which is fantastic. I therefore recommend it, sight unseen.
But what if it’s horrible?
Sometimes you’ve got to have a little faith, LB, throw some trust behind the possibility, be it ever so slight, that the cosmos isn’t going to stick the knife in this time, that maybe, just this once, reality will fit expectation like a fucking freshly pressed tailor fitted shirt: warm, snug, comforting, smiles all around, wind in your face, every breath a lusty gulp of living, all the frustrating incoherence and unsolvable mysteries and oppressive banalities but whispers at your back.
So, yeah. Watch A Prophet and let me know how that all works out.
Or, you could just buy a Snuggie and drink a bottle of Southern Comfort.
There was this time in college when, on a home break, me and my two friends, my two heterosexual friends, were sharing a waterbed and a fifth of Southern Comfort. We had no chaser, so we were using the blanket as a chaser. We’d take a slug, pass it down and lick the blanket. Blanket chaser.
Pillow biter
That’s been my routine for A’s games the past three Septembers.
Famous people agree with monkeyball link of the day.
I have a newfound respect for Mr Hanks.
I watched A Prophet last night. It is quite good.
Abstruse sidebar: watched the first 40 minutes or so of Ophuls’ Lola Montes last night, and what struck me most was that this is the first movie I’ve ever seen that I could definitively identify as a direct influence on Ridley Scott. (Which is the roundabout way of saying that Ridley Scott, for better and for worse, often directs as if he’s never seen a movie before.)
I feel like he directs as if he’s seen some Tony Scott movies…
I think I saw George Scott in a movie once…
I saw George Scott getting taunted by AAA Hawaii Islander fans as he tried to hang on to his career via the comeback through the minors route, long after his skills had declined below big league caliber (and his waistline had expanded to Rattoian dimensions).
I saw Kevin Mitchell in a similar role/story, playing for the Sonoma County Crushers. He was fat as well.
I love the Crusher’s mascot. Is his name the Abominable Sonoman? I can’t remember–maybe that’s just what he is and he has another name. In any case, he’s wonderfully obnoxious.
It was indeed the Abominable Sonoman…sadly, though, the team folded some years ago.
Oh Noes!
I saw Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans and I thought it was worth the money. Certainly better than many of those up for Oscars.
And the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, though disjointed, held solid performances all around and again – better than most of the Oscar nominated films this year.
Herzog is way over 50 I’m sure but I will see anything he produces. He has managed to keep his curiosity and passion intact.
I heard BL was pretty good. I’d like to see it.
Yeah, I’m really looking forward to the Herzog-Cage kraziness. And feel likewise about Herzog.
I went in expecting some awesome kraziness and was not disappointed.
Just had lunch with a friend who gave it a similar thumbs-up. Though he said it had too many endings.
I attended this last night. It was interesting, as he took a clip (two sequential scenes) from The Talented Mr. Ripley and played it whole, then with each of the individual sound tracks: dialogue, score, effects, and Foley effects. I will be curious how it affects my perception of the sound for the next movie I go see – he warned that it can be distracting at first as you listen for the individual components, but once you get used to it you will perceive the whole in a new way.
Speaking of Ripley, this looks like a cracking good tale.
Yeah, I read the review. Seems like she was a bit of a tough nut. I’ve read a bunch of her stories – some really good ones, though mostly pretty grim.
I looked through the book a few weeks ago, intrigued by that first review, particularly:
There was a bit about a romantic encounter with Arthur Koestler (who apparently was a piece of work himself), after which Koestler said or wrote “I had no idea homosexuality could be so ingrained.” She wrote out a whimsical list of ways that children could kill their parents called “things to do around the house.” Very entertaining.
rat-throwin’ bitches.
ways-to-kill-your-parents-list-making bitches.
Charming gal.
Koestler:
There has always been crazy.
I went there last year. Disappointing. Here’s a tiny room. Here’s another tiny room. Here’s an oddly angled staircase leading to yet another tiny room. And, here’s the gift shop.
I almost went about 12 years ago (was down in SJ for some forgotten reason), realized we were about a mile from it — and then when we found out about the preposterous admission fee, we bailed.
Yeah, it’s a boondoggle all the way ’round. I think I paid six dollars for a lemonade while waiting for the tour to commence.
If she were alive, I’d sell her signs.
I went when I was 10 and liked it. I think it’s a kids/parents only thing.
I understand that’s the same reaction people have to a behind-the-scenes tour at the Coliseum.
Christ, what a ghost dole