Word of the day : farrier
: a man who shoes horses
Well, we're in the heart and heat of the Christmas break here, and we're having a pretty good time - no complaints.
We've been watching and re-watching a lot of movies: The Reef and Rogue (effective Australian creature features), Magic Mike, Chernobyl Diaries, Premium Rush...
Have you seen Premium Rush (2012) yet? It's one of the best action films - one of the most entertaining films, for that matter - of the year. A fast-paced, ingeniously-choreographed film featuring some first-rate stunt work, the film stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt (that endlessly appealing, up-for-anything fount of charisma) as an NYC bike messenger who finds himself in possession of a Very Important piece of mail - wanted Very Badly by crooked cop Michael Shannon. The movie has the same energetic, freewheeling, non-stop reckless sense of fun and play as Speed, and writer-director David Koepp (longtime go-to studio scripter) has a ball with the linear convolutions of the story and the obstacles inherent in the setting. Koepp has directed some underrated films - the Ricky Gervais comedy Ghost Town, the Kevin Bacon creeper Stir of Echoes, Johnny Depp's Secret Window- but this one is his best yet; it's a modestly ambitious piece of throwaway entertainment, perfect for what it is, with Michael Shannon giving an enormously colorful supporting turn; the actor seems as pained as strained as usual (I mean that in a good way), seizing with worry, contorting his vocal inflections, and very, very funny.
Another movie we had long been waiting to see was Chernobyl Diaries (2012), which is pretty much what you think it's going to be from the title and previews. Six tourists are up for - some more than others, naturally - an extreme travel sidetrip to Chernobyl - site, of course, of the nuclear reactor disaster in 1986. The characters are fascinated, enthralled by the apparently off-limits site and the abandoned city where the workers once lived. But, of course, as night falls, complications set in and they realize they're not alone. I suppose you can say that the film is exploitative, making light of a horrible tragedy, but why bother? It's a movie, people! I was creeped out throughout, and though the film follows a fairly obvious blueprint, the whole thing really hooked me and one reason for my engagement is that, though I should have, I never really knew where the film was going and who was going to die next. Directed by Bradley Parker.
Saturday, December 22, 2012
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Disgusted.
Horrified.
Unsettled.
Ashamed.
Don't even wanna think about it.
Can't imagine.
Why would anyone take guns to school intending to slaughter as many children - kids aged seven to ten with their whole lives ahead of them - as humanly possible?
Why would a mother with a mentally unstable son living in her house have three guns registered in her name?
Why?
Why does this stuff continue to happen? Why can't we politicize this issue? Why can't we have a reasonable discussion about it?
If you own guns, fine; odds are that you are a responsible individual who keeps them away from your children - if you have children.
But answer me this: Why would anyone need to own a gun nowadays? Self-defense? From whom? Explain to me the scenario that would have your safety in jeopardy and leave you perfectly able to go retrieve your gun - which evidently must not be that out-of-reach, I guess - in time to defend yourself?
The 2nd Amendment? Fuck the Second Amendment! The writers of the Amendments lived in a very different world than we lived in - a vastly different society. They didn't envision this. If any of their sons or daughters would have been shot to death with a gun, we would have never had this amendment to begin with. Let's stop cherry-picking from the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Bible - whatever the sacred text - and trying to, via hermeneutics, align our goofy beliefs and ideas with the words, ideas, and rights of those who wouldn't have any idea how to deal with or live in our modern world.
If a few spoiled apples ruin the rights of others... well, that's life. It wouldn't be the first time such a thing happened. Deal with it. We can think of a thousand other examples where the behavior of a miscreant few have ruined it for the rest of us.
I haven't been particularly eloquent this post... but I'm sick to my stomach and don't care.
NEW GUN CONTROL LAWS NOW!
Horrified.
Unsettled.
Ashamed.
Don't even wanna think about it.
Can't imagine.
Why would anyone take guns to school intending to slaughter as many children - kids aged seven to ten with their whole lives ahead of them - as humanly possible?
Why would a mother with a mentally unstable son living in her house have three guns registered in her name?
Why?
Why does this stuff continue to happen? Why can't we politicize this issue? Why can't we have a reasonable discussion about it?
If you own guns, fine; odds are that you are a responsible individual who keeps them away from your children - if you have children.
But answer me this: Why would anyone need to own a gun nowadays? Self-defense? From whom? Explain to me the scenario that would have your safety in jeopardy and leave you perfectly able to go retrieve your gun - which evidently must not be that out-of-reach, I guess - in time to defend yourself?
The 2nd Amendment? Fuck the Second Amendment! The writers of the Amendments lived in a very different world than we lived in - a vastly different society. They didn't envision this. If any of their sons or daughters would have been shot to death with a gun, we would have never had this amendment to begin with. Let's stop cherry-picking from the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Bible - whatever the sacred text - and trying to, via hermeneutics, align our goofy beliefs and ideas with the words, ideas, and rights of those who wouldn't have any idea how to deal with or live in our modern world.
If a few spoiled apples ruin the rights of others... well, that's life. It wouldn't be the first time such a thing happened. Deal with it. We can think of a thousand other examples where the behavior of a miscreant few have ruined it for the rest of us.
I haven't been particularly eloquent this post... but I'm sick to my stomach and don't care.
NEW GUN CONTROL LAWS NOW!
Thursday, December 13, 2012
12...
Word of the day : counterfoil
: a detachable stub (as in a ticket or check) usually serving as a record
or receipt
12 Days till Christmas...
Movie awards season...
David arriving tomorrow...
Jeez!
Here are the films opening this weekend:
The Hobbit Heard of this one? Then I need not tell you what is about. The reviews have been somewhat lackluster, however. No one hates it, but no one loves it either.
Verdict: Not Interested
Save the Date A comedy about thirtysomething inertia and romantic vulnerability and apprehension, this comedy stars two talented young actresses - Alison Brie and Lizzy Caplan - as sisters at opposite ends of the relationship spectrum. The critics aren't digging it, however.
Verdict: Interested
Stand Up Guys Director Fisher Stevens ropes together an impressive trio of actors - Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Alan Arkin - for this poorly-reviewed comedy about a man released from prison (Pacino) who gets back together with an old friend (Walken) who has been ordered by a Mob boss to kill Al. It sounds more dramatic than funny, but there are a lot of sex (read: Viagra) jokes and raunch.
Verdict: Mildly Interested
Any Day Now Alan Cumming, usually camping up, drag-style, is said to give the best film performance of his career, as one of half of a gay couple (Garrett Dillahunt is his partner) who adopt a teenager with Down's Syndrome in the 1970s and then get involved in a drawn-out court case to determine whether or not they are fit for custody of him. Critics like it, calling it moving and sometimes funny, avoiding the melodramatic.
Verdict: Interested
*
Animal of the day:
Reindeer
Well, it is that time of year, right? Did you know that reindeer, unlike humans, can perceive ultraviolet light? It helps them be able to detect prey and predators in the blindingly white Arctic snow. They most lively in the Arctic and sub-Arctic north - for about 10 to 15 years. Both males and females grow antlers (no other female species of deer do so). They are more domesticated (having been domesticated in Eurasia for over 7000 years) than their wilder cousins, the caribou. They mostly eat grass and lichen, mushrooms. Their mortal enemy? The mosquito!
*
Check out my other blog, http://mybookylife.blogspot.com/, later today for book reviews!
Images courtesy of:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gGNHtzFx74I/TudNvjst2TI/AAAAAAAACMg/8L_TEHfaKOM/s1600/reindeer-213.jpg
http://smhttp.14409.nexcesscdn.net/806D5E/wordpress-L/images/any_day_now-1.jpg
: a detachable stub (as in a ticket or check) usually serving as a record
or receipt
12 Days till Christmas...
Movie awards season...
David arriving tomorrow...
Jeez!
Here are the films opening this weekend:
The Hobbit Heard of this one? Then I need not tell you what is about. The reviews have been somewhat lackluster, however. No one hates it, but no one loves it either.
Verdict: Not Interested
Save the Date A comedy about thirtysomething inertia and romantic vulnerability and apprehension, this comedy stars two talented young actresses - Alison Brie and Lizzy Caplan - as sisters at opposite ends of the relationship spectrum. The critics aren't digging it, however.
Verdict: Interested
Stand Up Guys Director Fisher Stevens ropes together an impressive trio of actors - Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, and Alan Arkin - for this poorly-reviewed comedy about a man released from prison (Pacino) who gets back together with an old friend (Walken) who has been ordered by a Mob boss to kill Al. It sounds more dramatic than funny, but there are a lot of sex (read: Viagra) jokes and raunch.
Verdict: Mildly Interested
Any Day Now Alan Cumming, usually camping up, drag-style, is said to give the best film performance of his career, as one of half of a gay couple (Garrett Dillahunt is his partner) who adopt a teenager with Down's Syndrome in the 1970s and then get involved in a drawn-out court case to determine whether or not they are fit for custody of him. Critics like it, calling it moving and sometimes funny, avoiding the melodramatic.
Verdict: Interested
*
Animal of the day:
Reindeer
Well, it is that time of year, right? Did you know that reindeer, unlike humans, can perceive ultraviolet light? It helps them be able to detect prey and predators in the blindingly white Arctic snow. They most lively in the Arctic and sub-Arctic north - for about 10 to 15 years. Both males and females grow antlers (no other female species of deer do so). They are more domesticated (having been domesticated in Eurasia for over 7000 years) than their wilder cousins, the caribou. They mostly eat grass and lichen, mushrooms. Their mortal enemy? The mosquito!
*
Check out my other blog, http://mybookylife.blogspot.com/, later today for book reviews!
Images courtesy of:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gGNHtzFx74I/TudNvjst2TI/AAAAAAAACMg/8L_TEHfaKOM/s1600/reindeer-213.jpg
http://smhttp.14409.nexcesscdn.net/806D5E/wordpress-L/images/any_day_now-1.jpg
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
13 Days Before X-Mas
Word of the day : intersperse
: to place something at intervals in or among
: to insert at intervals among other things
Well, two days until David gets here... Lotta stuff to do around the house between now and then. Today, we have a parent-teacher conference regarding Gabriel's progress around school. Then, of course, we're going to go take him to get some frozen yogurt. Savannah and Beaufort this weekend, too! Woo-hoo, Christmas!
*
5 Things I Liked About the First Season of BBC's Luther (which I just finished):
1. Idris Elba. I've always been a fan of the actor, ever since his sinuous, memorable work on the first three seasons of The Wire. Here, as intense, hard-charging London DCI John Luther, Elba just about sets the screen on fire. He's magnetic as hell and you can't take your eyes off him.
2. Ruth Foster. As a killer who murders her parents, Foster is gleeful and chilling... and damn it if you don't like her. The twisted, kindred-souls, vaguely erotic relationship she forms over the first season with Luther is... interesting, for lack of a better word.
3. The bad guys are really creepy. From a kidnapper who cuts out a hostage's tongue to a cabbie who collects young women to an occult weirdo, the villains here are diabolical and lethal.
4. Every episode is intense. I was on edge almost every episode. Everything seems up for grabs, and there never - for the better - seems to be a proper sense of closure; killers get away and a fog of moral rot looms even as the credits roll.
5. The final two episodes - wow!
*
5 Things I Liked About the film Hope Springs (2012
1. The details. Vanessa Taylor's script is often pinpoint in the observation of the routines and behavior that define everyday living in a marriage.
2. Tommy Lee Jones. The actor's portrait of a man so settled into his routine that he's unaware of his emotional nullity is really something to see; the body language he displays - particularly in the counseling sessions - is worth a look.
3 and 4. The casting. Outside of Jones, there's Meryl Streep. Oh yeah, she's top-notch too, equal to Jones' as his restless, deeply unsatisfied wife who doesn't know how to get the fire going again; it's not a showy performance, but it's characteristically very well-observed.
Steve Carell is cast against type as the marriage counselor and if you expect him to be funny or Michael Scott-y, you might be in for a letdown. He plays it absolutely straight.
5. The rhythms and payoff. It's not a great film, but it's breezy, full of uncomfortable truths, and has a good ending. The characters feel like real people, and though it's more of a drama than a romantic comedy, the film has some tender, touching moments and some humor too.
: to place something at intervals in or among
: to insert at intervals among other things
Well, two days until David gets here... Lotta stuff to do around the house between now and then. Today, we have a parent-teacher conference regarding Gabriel's progress around school. Then, of course, we're going to go take him to get some frozen yogurt. Savannah and Beaufort this weekend, too! Woo-hoo, Christmas!
*
5 Things I Liked About the First Season of BBC's Luther (which I just finished):
1. Idris Elba. I've always been a fan of the actor, ever since his sinuous, memorable work on the first three seasons of The Wire. Here, as intense, hard-charging London DCI John Luther, Elba just about sets the screen on fire. He's magnetic as hell and you can't take your eyes off him.
2. Ruth Foster. As a killer who murders her parents, Foster is gleeful and chilling... and damn it if you don't like her. The twisted, kindred-souls, vaguely erotic relationship she forms over the first season with Luther is... interesting, for lack of a better word.
3. The bad guys are really creepy. From a kidnapper who cuts out a hostage's tongue to a cabbie who collects young women to an occult weirdo, the villains here are diabolical and lethal.
4. Every episode is intense. I was on edge almost every episode. Everything seems up for grabs, and there never - for the better - seems to be a proper sense of closure; killers get away and a fog of moral rot looms even as the credits roll.
5. The final two episodes - wow!
*
5 Things I Liked About the film Hope Springs (2012
1. The details. Vanessa Taylor's script is often pinpoint in the observation of the routines and behavior that define everyday living in a marriage.
2. Tommy Lee Jones. The actor's portrait of a man so settled into his routine that he's unaware of his emotional nullity is really something to see; the body language he displays - particularly in the counseling sessions - is worth a look.
3 and 4. The casting. Outside of Jones, there's Meryl Streep. Oh yeah, she's top-notch too, equal to Jones' as his restless, deeply unsatisfied wife who doesn't know how to get the fire going again; it's not a showy performance, but it's characteristically very well-observed.
Steve Carell is cast against type as the marriage counselor and if you expect him to be funny or Michael Scott-y, you might be in for a letdown. He plays it absolutely straight.
5. The rhythms and payoff. It's not a great film, but it's breezy, full of uncomfortable truths, and has a good ending. The characters feel like real people, and though it's more of a drama than a romantic comedy, the film has some tender, touching moments and some humor too.
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Actors
Word of the day : disport
: to divert, amuse
: to frolic
: to display
This past summer I started compiling an ongoing list of what are, in my humble opinion, the 500 greatest performances in English-language films. I've been slacking a little on this list lately, so I want today's post to feature some more selections.
Tommy Lee Jones
as Hank Deerfield in In the Valley of Elah (2007)
A flawed movie if there ever was one, Paul Haggis' follow-up to Crash is a slow-moving examination of a father's grief. The movie's major selling point - not to exclude moving, compact supporting turns by Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon - is that the father is played by Jones, who brings his trademark cut-and-dry, streamlined extraordinarily subtle sensibility to the role of a wounded answer not getting the answers he wants. Jones' face here is a map of torment, and he underplays everything so powerfully well. He has some great moments here, none finer than we relates the meaning of the title to Theron's son. He might be clipped and terse, but Jones always lets you see the seething pain beneath the surface.
Jeff Bridges
as Ted Cole in The Door in the Floor (2004)
One of the most unique portrayals of grief in contemporary film, Bridges is absolutely extraordinary here. He's sort of funny - wandering around his sprawling Long Island yard naked. He's sort of mean - yelling at and constantly wheedling his assistant (Jon Foster). He's narcissistic. Uncommunicative. Closed-off. But when the script reveals the tragedy he and his distant, vaporous wife (Kim Basinger) have undergone, we start to understand what the character - and this great actor - is up to. He's a clown, a possibly irredeemable jerk, but his pain is real, and we realize that there isn't any blueprint to carry on in the wake of loss; Bridges essays the floundering, drowning spirit of a man who doesn't know what to say, how to love, how to live. His monologue about the death of his two boys is as moving as it gets.
Dorothy Malone
as Marylee Hadley in Written on the Wind (1956)
I had to plumb the deaths of Douglas Sirk movies to come up with at least one selection, didn't I? What other director consistently wrangled such stormy, windblown, fruity, compellingly entertaining/soapy scene-stealing work from otherwise overlooked, staid performers (read: Rock Hudson)? Malone won a Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in this great, ludicrous melodrama. She flirts, cavorts, whimpers, threatens, vamps, sulks, rages and schemes. Talk about Daddy Issues. In short, everything you want from a supporting actress.
I'll be back with a regular post tomorrow!
Images courtesy of:
http://www.moviesonline2012.info/wp-content/uploads/tommy_lee_jones_in_the_valley_of_elah_movie_image__1_-50af0716c8026.jpg
http://youritlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bridges.jpg
http://www.movieactors.com/photos-stars/malone-writtenwind-6.jpg
: to divert, amuse
: to frolic
: to display
This past summer I started compiling an ongoing list of what are, in my humble opinion, the 500 greatest performances in English-language films. I've been slacking a little on this list lately, so I want today's post to feature some more selections.
Tommy Lee Jones
as Hank Deerfield in In the Valley of Elah (2007)
A flawed movie if there ever was one, Paul Haggis' follow-up to Crash is a slow-moving examination of a father's grief. The movie's major selling point - not to exclude moving, compact supporting turns by Charlize Theron and Susan Sarandon - is that the father is played by Jones, who brings his trademark cut-and-dry, streamlined extraordinarily subtle sensibility to the role of a wounded answer not getting the answers he wants. Jones' face here is a map of torment, and he underplays everything so powerfully well. He has some great moments here, none finer than we relates the meaning of the title to Theron's son. He might be clipped and terse, but Jones always lets you see the seething pain beneath the surface.
Jeff Bridges
as Ted Cole in The Door in the Floor (2004)
One of the most unique portrayals of grief in contemporary film, Bridges is absolutely extraordinary here. He's sort of funny - wandering around his sprawling Long Island yard naked. He's sort of mean - yelling at and constantly wheedling his assistant (Jon Foster). He's narcissistic. Uncommunicative. Closed-off. But when the script reveals the tragedy he and his distant, vaporous wife (Kim Basinger) have undergone, we start to understand what the character - and this great actor - is up to. He's a clown, a possibly irredeemable jerk, but his pain is real, and we realize that there isn't any blueprint to carry on in the wake of loss; Bridges essays the floundering, drowning spirit of a man who doesn't know what to say, how to love, how to live. His monologue about the death of his two boys is as moving as it gets.
Dorothy Malone
as Marylee Hadley in Written on the Wind (1956)
I had to plumb the deaths of Douglas Sirk movies to come up with at least one selection, didn't I? What other director consistently wrangled such stormy, windblown, fruity, compellingly entertaining/soapy scene-stealing work from otherwise overlooked, staid performers (read: Rock Hudson)? Malone won a Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in this great, ludicrous melodrama. She flirts, cavorts, whimpers, threatens, vamps, sulks, rages and schemes. Talk about Daddy Issues. In short, everything you want from a supporting actress.
I'll be back with a regular post tomorrow!
Images courtesy of:
http://www.moviesonline2012.info/wp-content/uploads/tommy_lee_jones_in_the_valley_of_elah_movie_image__1_-50af0716c8026.jpg
http://youritlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/bridges.jpg
http://www.movieactors.com/photos-stars/malone-writtenwind-6.jpg
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Movie Day
Word of the day: dowager
: a widow holding a title or property from her deceased husband
: a dignified elderly woman
(That word is courtesy of Dame Maggie Smith's character in Downton Abbey)
Well, it's all movies today, folks. The first two major critics awards of the year have been announced - the New York Times and the less prestigious National Board of Review.
It's looking like this might be the year of Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathyrn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's follow-up to their surprise Oscar winner of three years ago, The Hurt Locker. Released within the next two weeks, this is the exciting, gritty account of the hunt for (and eventually killing) of Osama Bin Laden; in the lead role, Jessica Chastain has suddenly become a major Best Actress candidate. The film is set to sweep the critics awards.
Everyone's frontrunner Daniel Day-Lewis (as Honest Abe) Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook), Sally Field (Lincoln), Leonardo DiCaprio (Django Unchained), and Matthew McConaughey (Magic Mike and Bernie) have all won early awards too alongside Chastain.
Out of the blue winners Rachel Weisz and Ann Dowd have burst into the hunt too with their performances as, respectively, a depressed, suicidal woman in the acclaimed adaptation of the great Terrence Rattigan play The Deep Blue Sea (one of my fave plays) and, in Dowd's case, a fast-food manager ordered by a mysterious policeman to question one of the store's employees in the independent, insanely well-reviewed Compliance, a based-on-true-events nightmare that I had hitherto never heard of - but now really really really want to see; Dowd also was a character actress nominally unfamiliar to me.
Golden Globe and SAG nominations are announced next week!
*
Here are the new movies opening this weekend:
Playing For Keeps Well, despite the abysmal reviews, I still want to see this sporty romantic comedy starring Gerard Butler as a former soccer pro wooing all the suburban Virginia mommies (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Uma Thurman, Judy Greer), trying to reconcile with his wife (Jessica Biel), coach his son's team, and a generally just being a well-intentioned misogynist fool - classic Butler. Dennis Quaid co-stars.
Verdict: Mildly Intersted
Hyde Park on Hudson It seems to possess all the credentials for a great Oscar season film: excellent director (Roger Michell, Morning Glory, Venus, Notting Hill)l a historical account/lesson involving royalty (including some of the characters featured in The King's Speech) and a U.S. president; knockout performances - by Bill Murray as FDR and Laura Linney as his spinster cousin; wartime intrigue; sex. So why the tepid reviews?
Verdict: Interested
Deadfall This one looks like a kindred spirit of A Simple Plan. Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde are a couple of casino robbers trying to make their way through a blizzard to the Canadian border. It's a movie, folks, so you know it won't be easy. Kris Kristofferson, Sissy Spacek, Kate Mara, and Treat Williams co-star. Critics are saying it's run-of-the-mill.
Verdict: Interested
Bad Kids Go to Hell Just what the title says. A horror-film take on The Breakfast Club, this jokey, gory outing about a group of bad kids who mysteriously start getting picked off one by one during an afternoon detention session. Judd Nelson had a cameo, natch. Need I say more?
Verdict: Mildly Interested
Lay the Favorite It's always a treat to have a Stephen Frears movie on our hands... alas, critics say, just not this one. Good cast: Rebecca Hall, Joshua Jackson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bruce Willis, Vince Vaughn, Laura Prepon. Hall is an ex-stripper who moves to Las Vegas and finds unexpected success as a sort of muse for a powerful bookie (Willis). It just doesn't even sound that good.
Verdict: Not Interested
The Fitzgerald Family Christmas A new Edwards Burns movie! In which he returns to his Brothers McMullen style: the bickerings and tribulations of an Irish working class family on Long Island! Are we excited yet?
Verdict: Not Interested
*
A new month - well, six days ago it was new - means it's time for ten more films to be added to my list of Charles' 200 Essential American Films. This will take us up to 120.
(Mostly-Comedy Edition)
The Awful Truth (1937; directed by Leo McCarey)
As a divorced couple and opposing counsels on a difficult marital case, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne are so lovable, funny, fast-talking, and quick-witted that you could never see anybody else in these roles or with this chemistry.
Blue Velvet (1986; David Lynch)
That surreal opening set to the Bobby Vinton song; the ear in the field; Dennis Hopper in the gas mask; Dean Stockwell singing "In Dreams"... Need I go on?
Bringing Up Baby (1938; Howard Hawks)
Zany, zany, zany! Hepburn, Cary Grant (how many great movies has he been in?) and that adorable, sneaky pet leopard!
\
His Girl Friday (1940; Howard Hawks)
Magic. Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant, and co-stars talk so fast, so so so so fast in this sidesplitting (a word I almost never use) look at a crack newspaper team. Grant is in perfect form, bur Russell just might give the greatest performance by an actress in a comedy ever.
It Happened One Night (1934; Frank Capra)
Gable + Colbert = Oscar gold. There's so much to like about this mismatched-lovers-on-the-road comedy. All the scenes and moments you know still hold up. Favorite for me: The Wall of Jericho.
My Left Foot (1989; Jim Sheridan)
In which you can make a serious argument that Daniel Day-Lewis gives the greatest performance in the history of movies.
Slumdog Millionaire (2008; Danny Boyle)
A fast-paced, style-drenched, Dickensian, romantic, bouncily-scored romp through modern India, with great songs and images, lorded over by the unique, dizzying mastery of Danny Boyle. Jai Ho!
Other monthly selections:
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942; Orson Welles)
Manhattan (1979; Woody Allen)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962; Robert Mulligan)
*
Animal of the day:
Deep-sea Blob Sculpin
Yikes! Found in the deep, deep waters of the northern Pacific, this bottom cruiser is one ugly creature. They have massive rubbery heads and are covered all over by cirri - spine-like little daggers. They are sluggish and lazy, waiting for their food to come to them, and are often caught up in the trawls of deep-sea fishermen.
Images courtesy of:
http://twentyfourframes.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/theawfultruth-photo.jpg
http://ttcritic.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/mp_main_wide_hisgirlfriday.jpg
http://moviemusereviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/my_left_foot_the_story_of_christy_brown_1989.jpg
http://gothamist.com/attachments/byakas/hyde-park-on-hudson-murray-fdr.jpg
http://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/02e5/BadKidsGotoHell.jpg
Information courtesy of:
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=4205
http://fishbio.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/blob-sculpin-psychrolutes-phrictus.jpg
: a widow holding a title or property from her deceased husband
: a dignified elderly woman
(That word is courtesy of Dame Maggie Smith's character in Downton Abbey)
Well, it's all movies today, folks. The first two major critics awards of the year have been announced - the New York Times and the less prestigious National Board of Review.
It's looking like this might be the year of Zero Dark Thirty, director Kathyrn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal's follow-up to their surprise Oscar winner of three years ago, The Hurt Locker. Released within the next two weeks, this is the exciting, gritty account of the hunt for (and eventually killing) of Osama Bin Laden; in the lead role, Jessica Chastain has suddenly become a major Best Actress candidate. The film is set to sweep the critics awards.
Everyone's frontrunner Daniel Day-Lewis (as Honest Abe) Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook), Sally Field (Lincoln), Leonardo DiCaprio (Django Unchained), and Matthew McConaughey (Magic Mike and Bernie) have all won early awards too alongside Chastain.
Out of the blue winners Rachel Weisz and Ann Dowd have burst into the hunt too with their performances as, respectively, a depressed, suicidal woman in the acclaimed adaptation of the great Terrence Rattigan play The Deep Blue Sea (one of my fave plays) and, in Dowd's case, a fast-food manager ordered by a mysterious policeman to question one of the store's employees in the independent, insanely well-reviewed Compliance, a based-on-true-events nightmare that I had hitherto never heard of - but now really really really want to see; Dowd also was a character actress nominally unfamiliar to me.
Golden Globe and SAG nominations are announced next week!
*
Here are the new movies opening this weekend:
Playing For Keeps Well, despite the abysmal reviews, I still want to see this sporty romantic comedy starring Gerard Butler as a former soccer pro wooing all the suburban Virginia mommies (Catherine Zeta-Jones, Uma Thurman, Judy Greer), trying to reconcile with his wife (Jessica Biel), coach his son's team, and a generally just being a well-intentioned misogynist fool - classic Butler. Dennis Quaid co-stars.
Verdict: Mildly Intersted
Hyde Park on Hudson It seems to possess all the credentials for a great Oscar season film: excellent director (Roger Michell, Morning Glory, Venus, Notting Hill)l a historical account/lesson involving royalty (including some of the characters featured in The King's Speech) and a U.S. president; knockout performances - by Bill Murray as FDR and Laura Linney as his spinster cousin; wartime intrigue; sex. So why the tepid reviews?
Verdict: Interested
Deadfall This one looks like a kindred spirit of A Simple Plan. Eric Bana and Olivia Wilde are a couple of casino robbers trying to make their way through a blizzard to the Canadian border. It's a movie, folks, so you know it won't be easy. Kris Kristofferson, Sissy Spacek, Kate Mara, and Treat Williams co-star. Critics are saying it's run-of-the-mill.
Verdict: Interested
Bad Kids Go to Hell Just what the title says. A horror-film take on The Breakfast Club, this jokey, gory outing about a group of bad kids who mysteriously start getting picked off one by one during an afternoon detention session. Judd Nelson had a cameo, natch. Need I say more?
Verdict: Mildly Interested
Lay the Favorite It's always a treat to have a Stephen Frears movie on our hands... alas, critics say, just not this one. Good cast: Rebecca Hall, Joshua Jackson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bruce Willis, Vince Vaughn, Laura Prepon. Hall is an ex-stripper who moves to Las Vegas and finds unexpected success as a sort of muse for a powerful bookie (Willis). It just doesn't even sound that good.
Verdict: Not Interested
The Fitzgerald Family Christmas A new Edwards Burns movie! In which he returns to his Brothers McMullen style: the bickerings and tribulations of an Irish working class family on Long Island! Are we excited yet?
Verdict: Not Interested
*
A new month - well, six days ago it was new - means it's time for ten more films to be added to my list of Charles' 200 Essential American Films. This will take us up to 120.
(Mostly-Comedy Edition)
The Awful Truth (1937; directed by Leo McCarey)
As a divorced couple and opposing counsels on a difficult marital case, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne are so lovable, funny, fast-talking, and quick-witted that you could never see anybody else in these roles or with this chemistry.
Blue Velvet (1986; David Lynch)
That surreal opening set to the Bobby Vinton song; the ear in the field; Dennis Hopper in the gas mask; Dean Stockwell singing "In Dreams"... Need I go on?
Bringing Up Baby (1938; Howard Hawks)
Zany, zany, zany! Hepburn, Cary Grant (how many great movies has he been in?) and that adorable, sneaky pet leopard!
His Girl Friday (1940; Howard Hawks)
Magic. Rosalind Russell, Cary Grant, and co-stars talk so fast, so so so so fast in this sidesplitting (a word I almost never use) look at a crack newspaper team. Grant is in perfect form, bur Russell just might give the greatest performance by an actress in a comedy ever.
It Happened One Night (1934; Frank Capra)
Gable + Colbert = Oscar gold. There's so much to like about this mismatched-lovers-on-the-road comedy. All the scenes and moments you know still hold up. Favorite for me: The Wall of Jericho.
My Left Foot (1989; Jim Sheridan)
In which you can make a serious argument that Daniel Day-Lewis gives the greatest performance in the history of movies.
Slumdog Millionaire (2008; Danny Boyle)
A fast-paced, style-drenched, Dickensian, romantic, bouncily-scored romp through modern India, with great songs and images, lorded over by the unique, dizzying mastery of Danny Boyle. Jai Ho!
Other monthly selections:
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942; Orson Welles)
Manhattan (1979; Woody Allen)
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962; Robert Mulligan)
*
Animal of the day:
Deep-sea Blob Sculpin
Yikes! Found in the deep, deep waters of the northern Pacific, this bottom cruiser is one ugly creature. They have massive rubbery heads and are covered all over by cirri - spine-like little daggers. They are sluggish and lazy, waiting for their food to come to them, and are often caught up in the trawls of deep-sea fishermen.
Images courtesy of:
http://twentyfourframes.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/theawfultruth-photo.jpg
http://ttcritic.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/mp_main_wide_hisgirlfriday.jpg
http://moviemusereviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/my_left_foot_the_story_of_christy_brown_1989.jpg
http://gothamist.com/attachments/byakas/hyde-park-on-hudson-murray-fdr.jpg
http://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/02e5/BadKidsGotoHell.jpg
Information courtesy of:
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/content.php?sid=4205
http://fishbio.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/blob-sculpin-psychrolutes-phrictus.jpg
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Catch-Up Time
Word of the day : campestral
: of or relating to open fields or country ; rural
Well, one of the big themes of this holiday season will be catching up on BBC/PBS shows and mini-series' that Julia and I have lagged behind on:
From this -
(A few episodes into its first season, I can honestly say I know what all the hype is about: Downton Abbey is the real deal. Everything about it is absolutely splendid.)
To this -
(A BBC show about a haunted, troubled police detective solving gruesome cases masterminded by brilliant serial killers, starring the magnetic Idris Elba - there's only, over the course of two seasons, been ten episodes. But I'm hooked on Luther!)
And this -
(What's not to love about Kenneth Branagh's moody, intelligent portrayal of despairing detective Kurt Wallander in these 90-minute dramas adapted from the works of bestselling Swedish crime novelist Henning Mankell? Wallander crackles and vibrates and creates magisterial swaths of doom and sorrow. I've seen some of them before and have no problem watching them again.)
And after these, who knows? I'll find two or three other series to get into. Gotta love Amazon Prime!
*
A performance today for my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time?
Emma Thompson
as Margaret Schlegel in Howards End (1992)
Thompson is among the most customarily superb actresses of her (or any) generation. This was the role that really cemented her reputation for American audiences. A sterling Merchant-Ivory adaptation of the E.M. Forster classic, the film is an acting showcase all around: Anthony Hopkins' sly businessman; Vanessa Redgrave as his dying wife, who leaves her home, Howards End, to her kindred spirit; Thompson, as that kindred spirit, warm and appealing, nobody's fool, intelligent, wronged, tricked. She breaks your heart. In a career of great roles (Remains of the Day, Sense and Sensibility, Last Chance Harvey, to name some), this is the acme of hers... so far.
*
Happy birthday, Kandinsky!
Images courtesy of:
http://janeaustensworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/downton-abbey-episode-5-550x3842.jpg
http://www.beyondhollywood.com/uploads/2011/10/idris-Elba-in-Luther-TV-Series1-600x400.jpg
http://camerarentalz.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/wallander-red.png
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rsKYay4KdSU/T35xivF6JgI/AAAAAAAACig/II4zYS3n0XE/s1600/Emma-Thompson-Margaret-Schlegel-Howards-End.png
http://www.abcgallery.com/K/kandinsky/kandinsky39.JPG
: of or relating to open fields or country ; rural
Well, one of the big themes of this holiday season will be catching up on BBC/PBS shows and mini-series' that Julia and I have lagged behind on:
From this -
(A few episodes into its first season, I can honestly say I know what all the hype is about: Downton Abbey is the real deal. Everything about it is absolutely splendid.)
To this -
(A BBC show about a haunted, troubled police detective solving gruesome cases masterminded by brilliant serial killers, starring the magnetic Idris Elba - there's only, over the course of two seasons, been ten episodes. But I'm hooked on Luther!)
And this -
(What's not to love about Kenneth Branagh's moody, intelligent portrayal of despairing detective Kurt Wallander in these 90-minute dramas adapted from the works of bestselling Swedish crime novelist Henning Mankell? Wallander crackles and vibrates and creates magisterial swaths of doom and sorrow. I've seen some of them before and have no problem watching them again.)
And after these, who knows? I'll find two or three other series to get into. Gotta love Amazon Prime!
*
A performance today for my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time?
Emma Thompson
as Margaret Schlegel in Howards End (1992)
Thompson is among the most customarily superb actresses of her (or any) generation. This was the role that really cemented her reputation for American audiences. A sterling Merchant-Ivory adaptation of the E.M. Forster classic, the film is an acting showcase all around: Anthony Hopkins' sly businessman; Vanessa Redgrave as his dying wife, who leaves her home, Howards End, to her kindred spirit; Thompson, as that kindred spirit, warm and appealing, nobody's fool, intelligent, wronged, tricked. She breaks your heart. In a career of great roles (Remains of the Day, Sense and Sensibility, Last Chance Harvey, to name some), this is the acme of hers... so far.
*
Happy birthday, Kandinsky!
Images courtesy of:
http://janeaustensworld.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/downton-abbey-episode-5-550x3842.jpg
http://www.beyondhollywood.com/uploads/2011/10/idris-Elba-in-Luther-TV-Series1-600x400.jpg
http://camerarentalz.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/wallander-red.png
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rsKYay4KdSU/T35xivF6JgI/AAAAAAAACig/II4zYS3n0XE/s1600/Emma-Thompson-Margaret-Schlegel-Howards-End.png
http://www.abcgallery.com/K/kandinsky/kandinsky39.JPG
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