Likes

Ten things I like/don't like this Sunday: 

1) Like.  Margaret Millar.  Influential, very talented American-Canadian mystery novelist (1915-1994) who was the wife of a better-known mystery writer - Ross Macdonald, author of the Lew Harper books.  I just finished her award-winning Beast in View (1955), a slim, psychologically disturbing tale about a reclusive woman (only in her late twenties!) who is living on the top floor of a seedy Hollywood Boulevard motel.  She receives a dire, threatening phone call from an unhinged woman from her past... events transpire.  Terrific.

2) Don't Like.  That Julia developed allergy-induced asthma here in Georgia.

3) Like.  The way Lebron James is absolutely tearing up the NBA.

4) Like.  That Gonzaga will be, for the first time in their history, will probably be ranked #1 when the polls come out tomorrow.

5) Don't Like.  The portrait of Mississippi I've seen in the last two films I've seen that are set there: Mississippi Burning, A Time to Kill.

6) Like.  That we found that little-seen, fun B-movie Cellular yesterday at Sam's for $5.

7) Don't Like.  The way the Fox show The Following has descended into overly-violent, unimaginative, cliched melodrama.  I no longer understand why Kevin Bacon (the best thing in it) came to TV for this.

8) Like.  That Italy looms in a little over two months.

9) Like.  That I don't have a thyroid problem.  In order to gain back the 14 pounds I lost over the last year, I need to eat more.

10) Like.  That all the seasons of Justified are now on Amazon Prime.

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An entry today for my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time:

Robert Downey Jr.  
as Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder (2008)

Downey Jr., awash in his comeback vibes, gave two great performances in 2008 - as Tony Stark, the jokingly intense, subversive superhero in Iron Man; and here, in one of the funniest performances I've seen, as the lauded Method actor who literally goes black for a part in an intense war drama in which the cast (Ben Stiller, Jack Black, etc.) ends up in a dicey situation.  Playing an Australian actor who is playing a misguided conception of an African-American, Downey's smart, tricky work is a success on every level possible.  How many other actors could have pulled this off?  Great one-liners too.