: not easily handled, managed, or used
: cumbersome
Well, Gabriel is a little under the weather today, so we'll keep him home... which means he now will have, by my count, eleven days off. Good God! What to do with him? Well, we're gonna take him up to Charleston one day... the other ten? Help!
Here are the new movies opening this weekend:
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part II This franchise, despite how much money its made, just feels over. The usual crew is here - Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner, Robert Pattinson, Billy Burke, Peter Facinelli, Michael Sheen, Dakota Fanning - and director Bill Condon, who did the last one, is back too. Critics say it moves glacially but is self-aware and occasionally rousing. The end. Now we wait for the film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's The Host.
Verdict: Not Interested
Anna Karenina Despite some very talented filmmakers - screenwriter Tom Stoppard and director Joe Wright - critics are saying this bold, modern take on the Tolstoy perennial is a miscalculation, overdirected and overwritten, with some flamboyant touches; too much style and too little substance. The cast is getting pretty good notices - Keira Knightley (the director's muse it seems, after appearing in Pride and Prejudice and Atonement), Jude Law as her aloof husband, Aaron Johnson as the Count she is drawn to, Emily Watson, Olivia Williams, Matthew MacFayden (Mr. Darcy in Wright's Pride and Prejudice). It seems as if all the film's Oscar expectations have filtered away.
Verdict: Mildly Interested
Price Check It seems like it has been a long time since Parker Posey has had a plum role and really run with it. Well, she has one here in a slight comedy playing the Boss From Hell, a ruthless, mean, acidic, sarcastic employer who makes life hell for the new guy (Eric Mabius) on his way up the corporate ladder. He doesn't know how far he wants to climb, however, if it means turning into Posey (who's forty-four now; Parker Posey's 44!).
Verdict: Mildly Interested
*
A pick for tonight? Well, I need to re-group after a disappointing 7-6-1 record last week. The Dolphins seems like they're fading, and the Bills had a great showing - on a loss - at New England last week. Both teams have very slim playoff chances. I'm at a loss here. It's in Buffalo, where the weather will probably favor the Bills. However, Fred Jackson is hurt, and the Dolphins defense is probably licking its chops after a terrible showing last week against Tennessee. Tough call. I guess I'll give it to the Bills, in a close one, though it could go either way.
Buffalo 20, Miami 17
*
The National Book Awards were announced yesterday. I was glad to see a book I just checked out yesterday from the library, won the award for Best Non-fiction: Katherine Boo's look into the life of a Mumbai slum, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and hope in a Mumbai undercity
The fiction award went to Louise Erdrich's Round House, a unanimously-praised drama/mystery about a woman attacked on a North Dakota Indian reservation. Erdrich has been writing acclaimed fiction for decades - all revolving around modern Native American lives and issues and customs - and this one had been described/pitched as the Native American To Kill a Mockingbird.
*
Finally, to wrap up this Thursday, let's select another one of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time (according to me):
Gene Hackman
as Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle in The French Connection (1971)
Hackman's first Oscar win and one of the most unsentimental, streamlined, unglamorous, unsettling, lived-in portraits of a police detective ever put on screen. It's an exciting movie and performance - still, forty-one years later - and Hackman never seems to care whether you like Doyle or not; he is who he is - relentless, flawed, racist, and, ultimately, fatally wrong.
Images courtesy of:
http://www.theweeklydriver.com/files/2011/01/hackman.jpg
http://www.characterblog.com/assets/CA-katherine-boo-1.jpg
http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/screencrush.com/files/2012/11/anna-karenina-review.jpg
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