March 30

Word of the day : obviate
                                          : to anticipate and prevent (as a situation) or make unnecessary (as an 
                                            action) 

What's going through my mind right now:

End of March upon us.  Hope Julia gets job at Lamar or DuPage or Salem St.  Would love to move to Beaumont, TX, Chicago, or Boston.  Want Gabriel to get over his cold.  Praying that my hemorrhoids continue to get better.  Need septic tank to keep working.  Great games last night - amazing comeback by Michigan.  Will take Daisy for a walk soon.  Probably should cut grass this weekend.  Don't know what to watch tonight but glad that HBO and Cinemax are free this weekend - got a bunch of movies recording.  Can't wait to watch the American Masters program featuring Philip Roth. 

Julia and I re-watched The Namesake last night, our first time seeing it since we saw it in an Evanston movie theater six years ago.  If you haven't seen it, you should.  It's a delicate, smartly-directed, faithful adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's first-rate novel, with two great, moving performances by the wonderful Indian actors Irrfhan Khan and Tabu as a husband and wife who move to America in the late 1970s to work and raise a family.  How much you believe or like Kal Penn in the crucial role of their son Gogol might determine the level of your appreciation of the movie, but, regardless, his understated turn is overshadowed by the tremendous work of Khan and Tabu.  Very sad and deeply felt.  Directed by Mira Nair. 

Anna Sewell was born on this date in 1820.  I've never read Black Beauty, the book she is most known for but I do own it and I will read it soon.  Her mother was a successful children's author, and, throughout her life, Anna helped her edit her manuscripts.  She herself wasn't published until she was 57!  Published about a year before her death, Black Beauty was written as a way to "induce kindness, sympathy, and an understanding treatment of horses."  Born in Norfolk, England and raised in a family that moved around a lot, Anna found a role model in her hard-working, pious mother who taught Anna a love of animals.  Anna had chronic ankle problems and never walked normally.  She never married or had children.  She traveled as well as she could, to health spas throughout Europe, and even taught Sunday school.  She had no idea that her novel would become a best-seller and have a big impact on the burgeoning anti-animal cruelty groups popping up in England at the time.   

(Thanks: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/anna-sewell-author-of-black-beauty-is-born)

Picks for this weekend:

Ohio State over Wichita St.
Syracuse over Marquette
Louisville over Duke 
Michigan over Florida 

(So Far:  Correct - 40 ; Incorrect - 20)
                           
  




Image courtesy of: 

http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/image/detail/Black-Beauty-Anna-Sewell.jpg
                          

TV SHOWS

New Movies Opening This Weekend: 

The Host    An adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's non-Twilight bestseller, this poorly-reviewed movie stars Saiorse Ronan as a teen forced to act when an unseen alien force infiltrates the bodies of her friends and town and erases their memories.  Directed by Andrew Niccol (Gattaca, In Time), who penned one of the great modern scripts for The Truman Show.  Co-stars Diane Kruger, William Hurt, and Max Irons (Jeremy's son).  Kind of a YA body-snatching sort of movie. 
(Yes)

The Place Beyond the Pines    Blue Valentine director re-teams with Ryan Gosling for this long, "epic" family crime drama.  Gosling is a stunt motorcycle racer who turns to robbing banks to support his girlfriend (Eva Mendes) and unborn child.  In the second triptych, we are introduced to Bradley Cooper's rookie cop, who finds himself on a collision course with Gosling.  In the third part of the film, we are introduced to the characters' sons, who inherit this legacy of crime and bad ends.  Ambitious, divisive, aims for the greatness of a Greek tragedy.  Ray Liotta co-stars.
(Yes)

G.I. Joe" Retaliation    You pumped for this sequel?  It's got the Rock, Bruce Willis, Channing Tatum...
Yeah, me neither. 

Tyler Perry's Temptation    No idea what this one is about, but it is written and directed by Tyler Perry, it was not screened for critics, and it does co-star Kim Kardashian and Brandy Norwood.  You've been warned. 

*

Going on and on as I was in yesterday's post about The Bates Motel got me realizing that I have never made a list of my favorite TV shows (of all time). 

This was a tough list to construct, and I had to winnow away the shows that were guilty pleasures as a young guy and teenager (Golden Girls, Saved by the Bell, TGIF-related stuff).  Also, I didn't include any shows that came out before I was born - although I did like an episode of All in the Family or Sanford  & Son if they were ever on).  Some of the shows only lasted a season.  And, yes, some of them I And, sorry, I can't include mini-series', but I do include reality shows.   
quit watching at some point. 

So, here goes.  Here are the 50 Shows I Can't (and Couldn't) Have Done Without:

- Alias    (ABC)
- Arrested Development    (FOX)
- Big Love  (HBO)
- Breaking Bad   (AMC)
- Castle   (ABC) 
- Cheers    (NBC)
- The Closer   (TNT)
- Covert Affairs  (USA)
- Curb Your Enthusiasm  (HBO)
- Damages  (FX)
- Dexter   (SHOW)
- Downton Abbey  (PBS) 
- Ed   (NBC)
- Entourage  (HBO)
- Everwood  (WB)
- Extras  (HBO) 
- Frasier  (NBC)
- Friday Night Lights  (NBC) 
- Friends  (NBC)
- Harper's Island  (CBS)
- Hart of Dixie  (CW)
- Homeland   (SHOW)
- In Treatment  (HBO)
- Justified   (FX)
- Mad Men   (AMC)
- Modern Family   (ABC)
- My So-Called Life   (ABC)
- The New Adventures of Old Christine  (CBS)
- Nip/Tuck   (FX)
- Nurse Jackie   (SHOW)
- The Office   (NBC)
- Once and Again   (ABC) 
- Parenthood   (NBC)
- Party of Five   (FOX)
- Project Runway   (Bravo)
- Rizzoli and Isles   (TNT)
- Scrubs   (NBC)
- Seinfeld   (NBC)
- Sex and the City   (HBO)
- Six Feet Under   (HBO)
- The Sopranos   (HBO)
- Tales From the Crypt   (HBO)
- 30 Rock   (NBC)
- Top Chef   (Bravo)
- Twin Peaks   (ABC)
- Veronica Mars   (WB)
- Weeds   (SHOW)
- Will and Grace   (NBC)
- The Wire   (HBO)
- The X-Files   (FOX)


Runners Up:  Brothers and Sisters (ABC), Californication (SHOW), Dawson's Creek (WB), Enlightened (HBO), Freaks and Geeks (NBC), The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (NBC), Girls (HBO), Hot in Cleveland (TV Land), Home Improvement (ABC), How I Met Your Mother (CBS), King of Queens (CBS), Luther (BBC), The O.C. (Fox), What About Brian (ABC).

(Given time, though, and more episodes some of these runners-up - Girls and Luther - will easily make it into my list.  easily.  I love them!) 

So for the record, the breakdown of shows by network:

NBC: 11
HBO: 10
ABC: 6
Showtime: 4 
FOX: 3 
WB/CW: 3 
FX: 3 
AMC: 2
Bravo: 2  
CBS: 2  
TNT: 2
USA: 1 
PBS: 1 



No blog for tomorrow, so here are the NCAA Picks for tonight and Friday:

Arizona over Ohio State
Miami (Fl) over Marquette
Syracuse over Indiana
Wichita State over LaSalle 


Louisville over Oregon
Kansas over Michigan
Duke over Michigan State
Florida over Florida Gulf Coast

(So far: Correct - 35 ; Incorrect - 17) 

Master Bates

Sorry about the last hemorrhoid post; that couldn't have been any fun to read or visualize. 

What I wanted the last post to be about was how much I'm liking A&E's Bates Motel, the revisionist drama about teenage Norman Bates and his mother Norma.

Why do I like it?

1) I like how it's set in the present day.  The film wisely stays away from re-making the story, and instead chooses to plop Norman down in the present day, making his strange, unsettling madness and neurosis something for our generation.  He's just a teenage kid, full of insecurity. 

2) I like some of the self-aware shots, like that terrifically framed one early one with Norma sitting on the car, telling Norman to open his eyes.  He does and behind Norma, who is sitting on the car, we see the motel and, looming above it, the house.  And, of course, all those framed pictures of birds. 

3) The storylines flesh out the characters of mother and son - and pesky brother Dylan from Norma's first marriage - in intriguing, cheeky ways.  The filmmakers play on our imaginations.  We start thinking back on the events in Psycho and all the questions that we had but which were never answered.  And, maybe, just maybe, in some alternate universe, this was how it all started or could have happened...

4) Freddie Highmore is an astute, eerie choice to play young Norman.  He has the tall, gangly, shy, half-smiling, furtive thing down pat. 

5) Vera Farmiga rocks as Norma, a terrific characterization: sexy, protective, eager, vulnerable, inappropriate, steely. 

Yuck

Word of the day : gnomic
                                          : characterized by aphorism 

Well, Smithsonian published its annual list of the 20 Best U.S. Small-Towns to Visit: 
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/The-20-Best-Small-Towns-to-Visit-in-2013-196855051.html
Been to any of them?

Okay, this is gross, but it's my blog and I can say whatever I want:
I HATE HEMORRHOIDS! 

I have one swollen internal hemorrhoid and it's driving me crazy.  I hate going to the bathroom.  This morning, there was so much blood in the toilet that I was really unnerved.  Turns out, I think the thing just burst.  Which is good. 

But I don't think it's gone.  I'm going to go up and take a hot bath!

That is all for today! 
 

Words

Word of the day : nascent
                                          : coming or having recently come into existence

Great weekend of games.  My predictions so far: Correct - 35 , Incorrect - 17

Croods, not surprisingly, ruled the box office this weekend.  No idea what it's about, but it is a kids' movie, so you knew it would do well.  Olympus Has Fallen, a crummy-looking, White House-gets-invaded thriller, showed strongly in second, with over $30 mil.  Oz and The Call stayed steady at #3 and #4, respectively.  The Tina Fey-Paul Rudd comedy-drama Admission landed with a thud at #5, earning just over $6 million.  Spring Breakers is performing well in limited theaters, but audience scores are very low; people are curious about the movie but not liking it. 

*

The Words (2012), the debut film from the writing-directing team of Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, is a fine literary mystery, a matryoshka doll of a tale - a story within a story within a story.  Bradley Cooper is the writer who can't catch a break.  In Paris on his honeymoon with wife Zoe Saldana, he finds an old writers' satchel with a novel inside of it.  Desperate for anything, he re-types the story line-for-line and submits to an agent.  Lo and behold, the book becomes a huge hit.  Along comes a raggedy, scuffling old man (Jeremy Irons, in old-age makeup) who accuses Cooper of stealing his book, which was lost on a train long ago. 

But Cooper's character is a fictional creation, you see, a character in the book written by a louche writer (Dennis Quaid).  Did what happened to Cooper happen to Quaid's character?  Did Quaid steal a story along the way?  Is that what an avid fan (Olivia Wilde, proving that you can never have too many good-looking people in one movie) is eager to find out about him? 

The ending is a bit of a letdown; I think the movie needed another five minutes to answer some of the questions it raised, but I was absorbed by all the storylines.  It's a good-looking, well-acted film. 

*

A selection today for list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time:


Jeremy Irons
as Claus von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune (1990)

Speaking of Irons, be sure to catch his Oscar-winning turn as the real-life Long Island socialite murderer sometime during your life.  As the spruce, timorous, eloquently shifty von Bulow, Irons uses his magnificent voice and Eurotrash mien to grand use in the controversial role of the man who fiddled with his wife's (Glenn Close) medications to make her overdose and spend the rest of her life brain-dead.  It's a wonderful part, requiring Irons to be sneaky and unreadable, silky and entertaining, with a cold heart of steel. 




Image courtesy of: 

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfh84Hs1CO7AJYYEf3NHm5S1PeEsvDJVhRdJr-EtUQLTdGJBmAB_hBOlH0wJF-Rsek_uS11L6NUWDK_5Wdf7xVSpBtWqNMyILEg3xUnW-xHjrD3JX5ZKhlXMfsxjRPa3zI8KghjDju2SY/s1600/Reversal+of+Fortune.jpg

Day 2

Word of the day :
                            grift
                                    : to obtain (money) illicitly (as in a confidence game)
                                   

Picks for today's games:

Duke over Albany
Wisconsin over Ole Miss
NC State over Temple
Miami (FL) over Pacific
Creighton over Cincy
Kansas State over LaSalle
Indiana over James Madison
Colorado over Illinois
Georgetown over Florida Gulf Coast
Ohio State over Iona
North Carolina over Villanova
Florida over Northwestern State
San Diego State over Oklahoma
Iowa State over Notre Dame
Kansas over Western Kentucky
UCLA over Minnesota 

(So far: Correct - 16  Incorrect - 4)

*

For travel readers out there, check out this Smithsonian link:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/The-Top-Ten-Most-Influential-Travel-Books-199199901.html

*

Get well, mom! 

Argo F--- Yourself

Word of the day :
                            demotic
                                          : common, popular
                                         

First off - here are my (relatively safe - which concerns me) NCAA picks for today:

Michigan State over Valparaiso  (could be a close one)
Butler over Bucknell
Pittsburgh over Wichita State
Saint Louis over New Mexico State
Memphis over Saint Mary's
Marquette over Davidson
Gonzaga over Southern
Oregon over Oklahoma State
Louisville over North Carolina A&T
Michigan over South Dakota State (watch out!)
Arizona over Belmont
California over UNLV
Missouri over Colorado State
VCU over Akron
New Mexico over Harvard
Syracuse over Montana

(So far: Correct - 3  Incorrect - 1)

*

And here are the new movies opening tomorrow:

Admission    This one looks like a charmer, but critics are not more than mildly, of at all, amused and moved by it.  Directed by Paul Weitz (About a Boy) and starring two of the most appealing comics around - Tina Fey and Paul Rudd - the film is about a Princeton admissions officer (Fey) who meets a young high school student on a recruiting trip - a boy that might just be the kid she gave up for adoption years earlier.  Lily Tomlin, Wallace Shawn, and Michael Sheen co-star.
(Yes)

Olympus Has Fallen    Hack director Antoine Fuqua's (Training Day) new action film looks ludicrous: the White House is kidnapped by North Korea!  The National Security team scrambles to come up with a solution.  Cue a lot of generic action, no doubt.  Great cast, though: Aaron Eckhart (the President), Morgan Freeman, Robert Forster, Ashley Judd, Angela Bassett, Gerard Butler, Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell. 

The Sapphires    Yes, please!  Chris O'Dowd (Bridesmaids, Friends With Kids) is a talent scout who is won over - during his trip to visit the troops in Vietnam - by a girl group who covers souls songs: an Australian aboriginal girl group!  Inspired by a true story.  In the vein of The Commitments, it seems, which is just fine with me.  A crowd pleaser if there ever was one. 
(Yes)

Also, the animated kids movie' The Croods, featuring the voicework of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, and Ryan Reynolds.

*

Okay, if you haven't seen it yet, here are nine reasons why you should see Argo:

1) It's informative.  Based on the outrageously true declassified mission, it's a relevant, inspiring bit of modern history that many people probably don't remember too much about.

2) It's tense as hell.  Even though you know how it's going to end, it's still terrifically exciting, nail-biting all the way until the end. 

3) Chris Terrio's superb script juggles a lot of characters - and does so with heart and humor, and some memorable lines. 

4) Crackling editing - William Goldenberg had a marvelous year: he also edited Zero Dark Thirty. 

5) Outstanding production design; Istanbul is more than able stand-in for Tehran.  The music choices are pinpoint: when was the last time you heard Led Zeppelin's "When the Levee Breaks" or the Stones' "Little T&A" in a movie? 

6) The Hollywood scenes provide a nice counterpoint to the Iran scenes.  John Goodman and Alan Arkin provide welcome comic relief as the makeup expert and salty old producer, respectively.  Just seeing them each for the first time on-screen can put a smile on your face.

7) The movie is superbly cast in every single role.  Affleck himself is understated and coolly poised in the title role and makes 70s facial hair pretty rad again. 

8) Because this is now 3-for-3 for Ben Affleck as director.  Gone, Baby, Gone was good, The Town was sensational.  And now this - it's one of my favorite Best Picture winners of the last few decades. 

9) Because you get to hear the best catchphrase of the year: "Argo fuck yourself!" 



Image courtesy of:  http://www.trespassmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/John-Goodman-and-Alan-Arkin-in-Argo.jpg
   

Zero Hour

Word of the day:
                           plaudit
                                         : enthusiastic approval
                                         : an act or round of applause

Tonight's tourney picks:
James Madison over LIU-Brooklyn
Boise St. over LaSalle
(So far : Correct - 2  Incorrect - 0)

I'm a little late to the party for end-of-the-year 2012 films, but I'm glad I finally saw Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty, her justly acclaimed follow-up to the great, 2009 Oscar winner The Hurt Locker.  A detailed, propulsive, tense look at the decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden, it's a masterful film that is a triumph on every level: Grieg Fraser's cinematography; William Goldenberg and Dylan Tichenor's editing; Mark Boal's screenplay; set design; casting in every single role. 

It's ludicrous that the film courted so much controversy due to its "pro-torture" stance, a false allegation if there ever was one.  This film merely shows that torture took place, for better or worse, and that it both got and didn't get results - for better or for worse.  The film has no political agenda, supports no party, doesn't disparage or align itself with any political figure; anybody who claims otherwise is a conspiracy theorist and not to be trusted. 

The film is simply about the manhunt; characterization is sparse.  The film is streamlined and thorough as it follows the course of the complex investigation, full of lucky breaks and hard work, difficulties, tragedies, bombs, misinformation.  If there's anything discernibly personal in Bigelow's approach it could be in the notion that she finds a kindred spirit, a muse, in the film's main character Maya (Jessica Chastain), a determined, forceful woman in a field of men.

The siege of Bin Laden's compound at the end is beautifully orchestrated and exciting - despite the fact that we know how it will end.  Kudos too to Jason Clarke, in a terrific performance as a CIA officer often called upon to question suspects under extreme duress.         


*

I can't urge readers enough to try Alice Munro at least once in their lifetime.  Her 2012 short story collection Dear Life is reportedly her last work; the author has claimed that is all she has to say about fiction and her life.  It's a worthy work, 14 stories of memories and lifelong observations, autobiographical moments in time.  All the stories take place in Munro's native Canada, usually around Toronto after the second World War.   

Munro possesses a lovely prose style.  Akin to an Impressionist painter, she illuminates brief moments of time; the idea of things fleeting is characteristic of all Munro work.  Almost all of her work are short stories - 2004's Runaway and Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage (2001) are monumental works, must-reads. 



Images courtesy of: 

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/jessica-chastain-zero-dark-thirty.jpg

Let it Begin... Tonight!

Word of the day :
                            reprove
                                          :  to scold or direct, usually gently or with kindly intent
                                          :  to express disapproval of ; censure
                                          :  to express rebuke or reproof

All right, the tourney opens up in Dayton tonight.  I'll keep a running tab of my daily predictions for each and every game.    
North Carolina A&T over Liberty
Saint Mary's over Middle Tennessee St. 

*

The Sessions (2012) is a fine film, and I was glad that the movie had enough humor in it to overcome the potential ickiness of its unusual subject matter.  Many people thought John Hawkes would earn a Best Actor nod for his work as Mark O'Brien, the real-life poet whose lifelong battle with polio left him trapped inside an iron lung.  Helen Hunt plays the sex surrogate - a sexual therapist, if you will - hired by Mark to help him... well, lose his virginity. 

The movie - a concise piece of work at 90 minutes - is written and directed with light poignancy by Ben Levin, and his approach to the material makes the film more palatable without being insubstantial.  This is a sad story, but full of uplift.  Every character is well-written, and the evolving friendship between Mark and his surrogate (beautifully played by Hunt, who did earn an Oscar nod) is enacted nicely.  The great William H.Macy gives a sharp performance as the humane, down-to-earth priest who befriends Mark and listens to his adventures in the sack.  My favorite moment in the film is almost a throwaway scene: after visiting Mark at his house, sharing a few beers, and hearing of his exploits, Macy steps outside Mark's door, lights up a cigarette, and smiles to himself -  the sheepish, satisfied grin of a man ever amused and comforted by the secular.  

*

Graham Joyce's Some Kind of Fairy Tale is a novel centered on a fantastical dilemma - a 16-year old girl goes off into the woods and is taken away by a strange man; she lives with him and his oversexed community for six months, only to return home and find that twenty years have passed in the real world.  Is she crazy?  Is she dreaming?  What happened to her?  

The family and friends Tara leaves behind include her brother Peter - a farrier now, tired and edgy - with his wife and four kids; her bewildered parents, who never got over her disappearance; and her musician boyfriend Richie, who was once Peter's best friend, and was suspected as being behind her disappearance. 

Joyce has an engaging, intelligent prose style and he cleverly teases out the mystery of what happened, concocting various scenarios; the one he ultimately settles on left me a little disappointed and underwhelmed, but in creating a magical-realist world in which strange, unexplainable things just might be out there, Joyce does a highly capable job. 




Image courtesy of: 

http://www.peanutbutterthoughts.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/the-sessions_2012-2-2048x1152.jpg
                      

NCAA

Well, it's dancing time! 

*  The NCAA tourney field was selected yesterday and though it was weird to not see either Xavier or Kentucky (the latter especially) in the field, it seemed like an overall good crop.  Starting tomorrow, I'll make my daily picks for the games.  As of now, my Elite Eight looks like this: Louisville, Duke, Kansas, Georgetown, Syracuse, Miami, New Mexico, Gonzaga. 

*  Julia is on spring break this week.  She's staying home every single day! 

*  I joined Icheckmovies(.com) and have gone through the archives on an intensive quest to check every movie I've ever seen.  So far (and I think I'm about done) I'm at a little over 3,100!  Yikes! 

* Oz the Great and Powerful ruled the box office again this weekend.  Halle Berry's The Call performed nicely in second place, earning over $17 million.  The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, which doesn't look that good, underwhelmed in third place (considering its star power).  Jack the Giant Slayer, a candidate for the bomb of the year, was in fourth, followed by the incredibly-performing Identity Thief.

*  I wonder if the new AMC show Bates Motel, tracing Norman Bates' teen years, is going to be any good.  Freddie Highmore is well-cast as the young Bates, and I'm always up for watching Vera Farmiga; here she plays Norman's mom, who was looking a little boney when we last saw her. 


* Speaking of Farmiga, she makes an appearance in my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time:

Vera Farmiga
as Irene in Down to the Bone (2004) 

Never heard of this one?  Me either until a couple of years ago, when I was scrounging my long-gone Netflix queue and found that Farmiga won some awards and garnered some major hype for this first film from Debra Granik, who gave us the similarly depressing Winter's Bone five years later - which kickstarted another actress' career, Jennifer Lawrence.  Here, playing an unhappy mother trying to raise her kids and carry on an affair all the while managing a debilitating drug habit, Farmiga is astonishing - lived-in and believable, sexy, sad, infuriating. 

3/14/13

Word of the day :
                             de rigueur : prescribed or required by fashion, etiquette, or custom  
                                                : proper

Thoughts for this Thursday: 

- It's picture day for Gabriel Fischer!  Always a fun occasion, always hilarious/adorable results. 
 

- Julia is on spring break next week.  Her goal is to read a lot, finish her dissertation, and stay home every single day. 

- Savannah tomorrow! 

- Crazy couple of days in NFL free agency.  Denver-Seattle is looking like a possible Super Bowl matchup next year.

- Julia now has me into Millionaire Matchmaker... Uh, oh. 

- There's going to be a Veronica Mars movie!  http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/03/13/veronica-mars-movie-is-a-go-kickstarter/

*

New Movies Opening This Weekend:

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone    Despite an impressive cast - Steve Carell, Jim Carrey, Steve Buscemi, Olivia Wilde, James Gandolfini, Alan Arkin - this comedy about rival magicians in Las Vegas has only gotten tepid reviews.  No one finds it that funny.  The script is by four writers, including the ones for Horrible Bosses.

The Call    This one looks like it can be in the vein of Cellular, a preposterous but trim, fast-moving B-movie.  It took three screenwriters to concoct this plot about a 911 operator who receives a call from a teenager (Abigail Breslin) who has been kidnapped and stored in the trunk of a moving car by a killer.  I like director Brad Anderson's films, though: The Vanishing on 7th Street, Transsiberain, Session 9.  

(Yes)

Spring Breakers    A conversation piece if there ever was one, Harmony Korine's film is an in-you-face, graphic, volatile work about a horde of coeds partying on the Florida coast during the most famous week in college life.  James Franco reportedly steals the film as a cornrow-ed, Hip-hop sounding, whacked-out Meth head, but the film's buzz is centered on the young, clean-cut actresses who play the lead girls: Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Ashley Benson.  

Disturbing Movies

The Orphanage

Julia wanted me to create a list of the most disturbing movies I've ever seen - "disturbing" in this case applying to anything generally frightening, unsettling, nightmare-inducing, provocative, etc.

Well, here goes my list:
(in no particular order)

- The Mist (2007, Frank Darabont)   The more I think about it, this might just be the best Stephen King adaptation ever - sorry, Shining fans. 

- Wolf Creek  (2005, Greg McLean)   This Australian wonder made me feel so tense and bad, that I still haven't had the gall to see it again. 

- The Chernobyl Diaries  (2012, Bradley Parker)   I'm not going to Pripyat anytime soon. 

- Jaws  (1975, Steven Spielberg)   If 20-25 years after I have first seen the movie I'm still wary of going into the ocean isn't still an indication that this movie scarred me for life, what is? 

- 28 Days Later  (2002, Danny Boyle)   A masterpiece of dread, Danny Boyle's film has some very fast zombies.

- I Am Legend  (2007, Francis Lawrence)   I'll never forget the death of Will's dog.  Never. 

- Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion (1968, 1965, Roman Polanski)   The more famous Polanski horror film of the 60s has us on edge throughout, wondering what exactly Mia's got inside of her; the less famous one has Catherine Deneuve going deliriously crazy in her apartment. 

- The Mothman Prophecies (2002, Mark Pellington)  I don't know: I thought this "based on actual events" tale was really creepy. 

- Eden Lake  (2008, James Watkins)  Flight's Kelly Reilly and Michael Fassbender make an unwise venture into the woods and become even more unwisely antagonistic with a group of teen hoodlums.  Gross, unsettling. 

- The Orphanage (2007, Juan Antonia Bayona)  This has some of the best scares of the past decade.  Scenes that are really, really scary.  Even if you've had it with Guillermo del Toro...

In the Company of Men

- Mimic (1997, Guillermo del Toro)  Big ol' cockroaches in the New York subways.  Expertly done - funny and fleet and full of goosebump-raising moments, with a great odd cast including Mira Sorvino and F. Murray Abraham. 

- The Descent  (2006, Neil Marshall)  This surprise hit about a group of tough but unlucky female spelunkers had me squirming - oh, the claustrophobia - even before the Gollum-like creatures showed up! 

- Psycho  (1960, Alfred Hitchcock)  An obvious one. 

- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre  (1974, Tobe Hooper)  We've been so inundated and de-sensitized by pop cultural overkill, parodies, and remakes, remakes, remakes, updates, sequels, prologues, re-vamps, that it's easy forget how terrifying some of these original films once were.  Just the jiggery rumblings of a chainsaw warming up is still scary. 

- The Ring (2002, Gore Verbinski)   A chiller.  That head-lowered Japanese girl coming out of the TV didn't leave my head for days. 

- Mulholland Drive (2001)
- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
- Zodiac (2007)

The above three are are modern classics.  David Lynch's film is cryptic and unforgettable, a riddle never meant to be solved, with truly terrifying images, a haunting soundtrack, and a great central performance by Naomi Watts.  Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Philip Kaufman's re-make of the great 50s original, is one of the best remakes ever made.  Zodiac is so meticulous and such a bravura feat of direction, well-cast in every role, that it's an achievement - and there's no closure either. 

- Cache  (2006, Michael Haneke)  Julia and I didn't really like this movie, but I'll admit that it was disturbing.  A wealthy French couple (Juliette Binoche and Daniel Auteuil) are being videotaped by an unidentified peeper.

- Salo (1975, Pier Paolo Pasolini)  The less I say about this adaptation - an acclaimed director's take on the word of the Marquis de Sade - the better.  Grossest film I've ever seen - by far. 

- Frailty (2002, Bill Paxton)  The "Demons!"  A nasty, fun film full of devout looniness, with a plum twist ending. 

- Safe (1995, Tood Haynes)  Just a great, great film, about a real-life incident.  A woman (Julianne Moore, astonishing and then some) is allergic to the 20th century.  In the days of rampant allergies, who wouldn't gripped by this? 

- Black Christmas  (1974, Bob Clark)  Okay, don't laugh at this one.  You know what it's about: The prank calls are coming from inside the house.  Stop laughing! 

- The Others  (2001, Alejando Amenabar)   Umm, yeah, Nicole killed her children...

- The Exorcism of Emily Rose  (2005, Scott Derrickson)   This one chilled me pretty good, with a pre-Dexter Jennifer Carpenter Linda Blair-ing all over the place. 


Other possibilities:  Taxi Driver, Seven, In the Company of Men, Monster, Misery, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Black Swan, Little Children, Manhunter/Red Dragon/Silence of the Lambs. 


Hope this list suffices, wifey!   

Week Starts

Word of the day :
                             campestral  - of or relating to fields or open country ; rural

Ten Things I Like/Don't Like or Get/Don't Get This Monday:

1) Like.  Simon Baatz's 2008 nonfiction book For the Thrill of It, an account of the infamous, shocking Leopold and Loeb case, in which the the two wealthy, homosexual University of Chicago students murdered a 14-year old boy and then hired the most famous lawyer in the country, Clarence Darrow (an anti-capital punishment icon - and windbag) to prevent them from getting the chair  Fascinating and terrifically researched, the book's only flaw is that its midsection drags on; the book's about a hundred pages longer than it should be. 


2) Don't Like.  Can't really say my initial (if wary) interest in The Americansi has really been rewarded.  I like Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, but I wish the show was more about them and their children - even they're tense relationship with Noah Emmerich's nosy Fed neighbor.  Everything else that is going on in this show I either don't care about or can't follow.

3) Like.  That Jennifer Love Hewitt's guilty pleasure Lifetime show The Client List is back for its second season.

4) Don't Get.  How Oz ruled the box office this weekend, bringing in just over $80 million.  I thought this one would bomb, but apparently a lot of people - particularly overseas - are still interested in Frank Baum's world.

5) Like.  The Sagrada Familia church in Barcelona.  Subject of a 60 Minutes piece last night, it looks like it would be the most amazing church you'd ever see in your lifetime.

6) Get.  The international appeal of Linwood Barclay.  I'm just about done with my second book by him, 2011's The Accident.  Though his plotting is a little silly and he doesn't write the greatest dialogue, he can definitely crank out a page turner - check out 2012's Trust Your Eyes.

7) Like.  Indiana's tense win yesterday over Michigan.  What a game!

8) Don't Get.   How insurance rates and costs keep going up on everything - but salaries stay just the same!

9)  Like.   That we might be going to Europe again next summer - for six weeks!

10)  Don't Like.  That there are still two whole months before we go to Italy.   
         

Movies

Quick post today, and it's about the new movies opening this week:

Emperor    The reviews are just okay, but I think this one looks really interesting.  It centers on two men who find themselves in Japan right after World War II, wondering what to do - arrest? exonerate? punish? - with Emperor Hirohito, a man who might be a hero (as he was to many Japanese) or a villain (to those subjected to Japanese atrocities during the War).  One of the men is Tommy Lee Jones' famous General MacArthur - Jones reputedly walks away with the movie - and the other is Matthew Fox's general, an expert in Japanese culture who is in love with a young school teacher.  Directed by Peter Webber - who made a pretty solid film out of The Girl With the Pearl Earring.
(Yes)

Dead Man Down    Trailer looks good, although they haven't screened it for critics, so who knows?  Noomi Rapace is a woman seeking revenge on Terrence Howard's villain, so she seeks the help of neighbor Colin Farrell (whom Rapace has seen murder someone) to do it.  Sex, violence, glossy action scenes, B-movie dialogue.  What's not to want?  The director of the Swedish version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo is at the helm, and the film co-stars Dominic Cooper and Armand Assante. 
(Yes)

Oz, the Great and Powerful    NO!

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Any guesses as to whose birthday it is today? 

Images courtesy of:

http://adrianasassoon.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/piet-mondrian.jpg

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/emperor-matthew-fox-eriko-hatsune.jpg

Do What I Say!

Compliance (2012) is the kind of film that drives you nuts.  Why are these characters so naive, so idiotic?  Oh, wait, they're based on real-life people?  This really happened? 

Your view of humanity diminishes second by second. 

At an Ohio Chick-Fil-A-like store, a harried manager (terrifically played by Ann Dowd) receives a phone caller from "Officer Daniels," a cop informing her that one of her employees, blonde-haired, rather sweet Becky (Dreama Walker, Don't Trust the B- in Apt. 23) has stolen from a customer.  The officer orders the manager, Sandra, to isolate Becky in a back room until the cops can come.  Officer Daniels stays on the phone with Sandra and commands her to strip-search Becky. 

The demands get increasingly, ickily worse. 

The movie reveals its big twist about halfway through though if you're aware of the real-life incident (which happened at a Kentucky McDonald's) or have read anything about the movie, you pretty much know what it is. 

So what to make of the second half of the film and the queasy sense of complicit guilt the director, Craig Zobel, tries to illicit from the viewer?  I thought it verged on sadistic at times, particularly in how we keep seeing so much of Officer Daniels and his smirky reactions?  Are we supposed to be getting off on this too?   

We get the points: many of us believe people are who they say are, particularly authority figures.  We have a blind allegiance to those who represent the law, power.

But I still couldn't help looking down on these characters, and that's never a good thing in a movie.  Provocative and certainly watchable (and short), the film just makes you feel bad.

(The end credits tell us that similar incidents happened over 70 times in 30 states!)

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Happy birthday, Mich! 

3/4/13

Word of the day : Apollonian
                                                : of or relating to the god Apollo
                                                : harmonious, ordered, or balanced in character  

Julia finished three books this weekend!  Christ almighty!  Gabriel's home from school today, taking a "mental health" day. 

The $200-million budgeted Jack the Giant Slayer finished number one this weekend at the box office, but with a weak $28 million.  Identity Thief, a big hit, was number 2, with the newly-opening 21 & Over and The Last Exorcism Part II (there was a first one?) opening at a paltry # 3 and 4, respectively.  Snitch, that lame-looking Rock-starrer, was #5.

Happy birthday, Vivaldi! 

Born in Venice in 1678, Vivaldi was ordained a priest but eventually decided against the profession because of a physical ailment that sounds a lot like what Julia has: asthmatic bronchitis!  This was Baroque-era Venice and Vivaldi was employed most of his life by the Ospedale della Pieta, a music school/convent, where he taught violin to "orphans" and other well-endowed offspring of noblemen and their mistresses.  All the while, Vivaldi composed operas, concertos, and oratorios.  He traveled often throughout Italy and Europe, usually with Anna Giro, a pupil who he might have had a relationship with; he did cast in several crucial roles in his operas.  He is best known for his series of violin concertos known as "The Four Seasons." 


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A yellow-throated warbler was seen in Bulloch County this week.

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A performance today for my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time:

Anthony Hopkins
as James Stevens in The Remains of the Day (1993)

For my money, the greatest Hopkins performance.  As the reserved, dignified butler of a great English home in the 1930s, the actor breaks your heart.  Why?  Because he's so cut off and removed, he has no idea that the new housekeeper (the great Emma Thompson) is in love with him, nor does his blind allegiance to his station allow him to consider that his Lordly boss (James Fox) might be up to his eyes in nefarious dealings with the Nazi.  Body language, posture... Hopkins has it all. 

Information courtesy of: 

http://www.baroquemusic.org/bqxvivaldi.html

Images courtesy of:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9RTSfx6PYxwX3IrK7_uMUo2MEP60UUTkfqaC9K_JiikhmY7rpv_zZYRGmIzDKy4i2jpX8uBtSonKa5RGpsy3TQtGrsSGaqE7wm4i1L8dtOS7TG1AlhunFTE3BJKc0beokDJr5qhQ7PtY2/s1600/Yellow-throatedWarbAMmed.jpg


http://writingderrick.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/the-remains-of-the-day-original.jpg

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.