The 47%

Word of the day : recondite
                                             : hidden from sight; concealed
                                             : difficult or impossible for one of ordinary understanding or knowledge
                                               to comprehend

Ah, Wednesday.  So much to talk about... Not really.

Just this, if you're at all interested in the "truth" behind Mitt Romney's inanely elitist comments:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/09/18/161337343/the-47-percent-in-one-graphic     

Is this really the way to go, Mitt?

*

What (Rare) Bird Was Seen in Bulloch County This Week? 

Gray-cheeked thrush

This ground forager nests in dense, closed-off canopies and shrubs.  It's a shy, hard-to-spot bird with the most Northern breeding range among all the North American spotted thrushes. 

*

I'm just gonna keep rolling along with my 500 Greatest Performances of All Time, so don't try and stop me!

Julie Christie
as Fiona Anderson in Away With Her (2007)

In Sarah Polley's pitch-perfect adaptation of Alice Munro's devastating short story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain," Christie gives the performance of her life - which is really saying something, if you think of her work in Don't Look Now, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Petulia, etc.  She's Fiona Anderson, an Ontario woman in the grip of Alzheimer's.  To her loyal, caring husband's mystified chagrin, she becomes affectionate with another patient at the nursing home she has been admitted to.  Christie is lovely here, her face a map of loss and memory, and the actress, within a somewhat limited context, creates a full-figured woman with a rich inner life.  Christie plays fragility beautifully, showing how hard her character is trying to keep her tenuous grasp on life - but there's something mysterious and untouchable about her too; it's as if she is already lost to us. 

*

Time for another football list:
Greatest Wide Receivers of My Lifetime:

 
1. Jerry Rice
2. Cris Carter
3. Terrell Owens
4. Tim Brown
5. Randy Moss
6. Michael Irvin
7. Isaac Bruce
8. Marvin Harrison
9. Calvin Johnson
10. Hines Ward
11. Andre Johnson
12. Art Monk
13. Jimmy Smith
14. Andre Reed
15. Larry Fitzgerald
16. Rod Smith
17. Torry Holt
18. Steve Smith
19. Herman Moore
20. Irving Fryar

 





Images:

http://www.lilibirds.com/gallery2/d/2462-5/gray-cheeked_thrush_1.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgh4rpwQ1ndAw8IXhpH4cTtLTZdAYa_5OsP-M1yg_QjQfcJhqVwAi0a3E-7AxDVEboo_uFBgqtWDS2P9Kwj_k4MIxJsz7mlfORoQyb-TD-4pRYWA7LwPYJgsArWusmhSSne2MF84Eiw3S0/s400/JulieChristie1.jpg

http://www.thecitrusreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Jerry-Rice.jpg


Information:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Gray-cheeked_Thrush/lifehistory

Martedi (that's Tuesday in Italian, folks)

Word of the day : supernumerary 
                                                       : exceeding the usual, stated, or prescribed number
                                                       : exceeding what is necessary, required, or desired

Good Tuesday to you, readers!  It's starting to cool off a bit down here in Georgia - mid-80s - which is good.  Julia and I are just waiting to hear back from job/conference opportunities.  Gabriel was testy over the weekend, but he seems to have gotten over it.

The family is off to Milledgeville, Georgia in a few days for a workshop/mandatory meeting for Julia, the first of three she'll have to attend in regards to next summer's teaching-abroad post.  Gabriel and I will find stuff to do while she's in her meeting.  I had no idea Milledgeville was the capital of Georgia from 1807-1868; surely, there will be some historical stuff to see.

- I did terrible on my NFL picks this weekend: 6-10!  Right now, through two weeks, I'm 16-16.  So much for 70%!

- Julia and I are big fans of the TNT show Perception, which is winding down its first season.  Will and Grace's Eric McCormack is first-rate as Dr. Daniel Pierce, a quirky neuroscientist at fictional Chicago university who helps local FBI agent Kate Moretti (Rachael Leigh Cook) solve particularly perplexing crimes.  A little bit The Mentalist (which I've never seen), maybe a little bit A Beautiful Mind, a little Monk - and yet, I find the show to be fully entertaining and engaging.  Pierce, who has conversations with his dead wife (played by Kelly Rowan), is a very watchable, interesting character - alert, hyper-literate, even sad.  The cases are fun, and the chemistry between McCormack and Cook works (even though Cook, who's almost 33, looks 17).

*

Maya Angelou
T.C. Boyle
Jeffrey Eugenides
Joyce Carol Oates
Junot Diaz
Michael Cunningham
Zadie Smith
Jonathan Safran Foer
Toni Morrison
Salman Rushdie

What do all these famous authors have in common?  They all teach!  Their day jobs find them teaching various English/creative writing/humanities courses, for both graduates and undergraduates, at American colleges and universities.  How would you like to take a class taught by them?  I was reading up on T.C. Boyle (whose novel The Road to Wellville I'm currently reading) and I saw that he teaches - and has been teaching - at the University of Southern California since 1978.  Naturally, I wondered what other writers out there are forced to earn their keep from teaching.
(Angelou = Wake Forest ; Eugenides, Oates, Morrison = Princeton ; Diaz = MIT ; Cunningham = Yale ; Rushdie = Emory ; Smith, Foer = NYU).

*

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

Diane Keaton
as Faith Dunlap in Shoot the Moon (1982) 

One of the best movies about divorce ever made and Alan Parker's best film, Shoot the Moon stars Diane Keaton and the great Albert Finney as couple, with four kids, in the process of a painful separation.  Keaton does some of the most revealing, unadorned, un-fussy acting of her life, playing the role of Faith with great delicacy and honesty.  Wronged by her cheating husband, wanting to stray herself, Keaton is never concerned with making Faith an attractive victim - which is all the more reason why we relate to and can understand her.  Keaton, as great as she is, can be a tic-y, fluttery actress, overly mannered at times (it's almost what we expect of her now), but in roles like this, she reminds us how powerfully natural she can be.  She has a great scene where she sings The Beatles' "If I Fell" alone in her bathtub, smoking a joint. 

* 

Finally, some images from JeanLoup Sieff, #61 on Professional Photographer's "100 Most Influential Photographers of All Time" list:

 

To read more about this photographer of the "frivolous," go here:

http://www.photoicon.com/modern_masters/44/

*

Oh, one more thing:  Here's Entertainment Weekly's re-cap of the Oscar potential of some of the entries at the Toronto Film Festival:

http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20483133_20628605,00.html






Images: 


http://www.thegorgeousdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/sieff-1.jpg

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrkycc4H9n1qe31lco1_r1_400.jpg

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/images/teacher-point.gif

Fall in Georgia

Word of the day : eudaemonic :
                                                   producing happiness, well-being

Statesboro, oh, Statesboro, how do I hate thee.

Let me count the ways....

1) You're boring.
2) You have no parks.
3) You provided us with some neighbors who might find themselves feeling very... well, hot in the next life.
4) You have no good shopping.
5) You have no good grocery stores.
6) You're very poor.
7) Your university, GSU, is full of disgruntled faculty.
8) Your movie theater - singular - stinks. 
9) Your citizens are philistines and hicks.  Do I sound elitist?  Good!   
10) Your downtown is doo-doo.

Need I go on?  I've made a variation of this list before, but it is comical how when the weekend comes around, Julia, Gabriel, and I just look at each other and telepathically come to an agreement: Now what?

*

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

John Travolta
as Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction (1994) 

Quick, what do these movies have in common?  Look Who's Talking Now, Boris and Natasha, Shout, Eyes of an Angel, Chains of Gold, Look Who's Talking Too, Look Who's Talking, The Experts, Perfect, and Two of a Kind.

Sure, you have probably heard of three of these (I can guess which three, I bet), but what is this other dreck?  If you guessed it was the ten movies the one-time superstar Travolta made prior to his landmark turn in Quentin Tarantino's influential masterpiece, give yourself a gold star or two.  The very definition of a comeback role.  Travolta is outrageously good as the cool, chill, rhythmic, talkative, cuddly hit man.  And yes, he can still dance.

*

Agatha Christie was born today in 1890.  Christie is probably one of those authors everyone has read sometime in their life.  Her books are still read, 36 years after her demise.  She'll probably be read 200 years from now.  My favorite of hers: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.  Here's a tough quiz for you, if by chance you're a fan of hers:

http://www.sporcle.com/games/g/agatha_christie_novels

(If you can get more than ten, that's pretty great - you must be a big fan.)   

Talk of Christie got me wondering...
Who are the bestselling fiction authors of all time? 

There are a few lists out there, but here is one I found to be more or less agreed-upon as the most accurate.  Thanks: http://akorra.com/2010/03/04/top-10-best-selling-fiction-authors-of-all-time/

10. J.K. Rowling
9. Leo Tolstoy
8. Gilbert Pattern (never heard of him, but he was American)
7. Dr. Seuss
6. Danielle Steel
5. Enid Blyton (never heard of her either)
4. Georges Simenon
3. Harold Robbins
2. Barbara Cartland (never heard of her either!)
1. Agatha Christie

* 

NFL picks for the weekend: 

Kansas City over Buffalo  (I guess - is it too early to pretty much throw the towel in on Buffalo?)
New Orleans over Carolina  (just can't see the Saints starting 0-2, no matter how effective Cam is)
Cincinnati over Cleveland  (bleh!)
Indianapolis over Minnesota  (the Who-Cares Bowl)
Houston over Jacksonville
Oakland over Miami   (destined to be an ugly one)
New England over Arizona
(upset alert) Tampa Bay over N.Y. Giants
Baltimore over Philadelphia
Dallas over Seattle
Washington over St. Louis
Pittsburgh over N.Y. Jets
San Diego over Tennessee 
Detroit over San Francisco  (maybe a bit of an upset, but I got a feeling...)
(Monday night) Denver over Atlanta 

Season record: 10-6




Images:

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs4n_0M0-aSIHUn-vmAXxyZZYdRLxdXCAUu79ly3ecvuA6sfJhDqd5NX8rJJgNkDAWirFOAY0A4qqAI1x2NXoHknyydl7iCEQUEzUN25cpUVaHPQ4bTeGU9-vuzSgUNBGP1UItPVpu4LI/s1600/Pulp+Fiction+%28John+Travolta%29.jpg 

http://sas.suplitodomedia.com/resource/landing/bookmaker/denver-broncos-betting.jpg

http://classicmystery.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/agatha_christie1.jpg

Fall Hopefuls

Word of the day : dissemble
                                              : to disguise or conceal (feelings or intentions)
                                             

Well, it's almost the weekend!  As of now, we're planning on going up to Columbia to see Catherine.  We're just trying to figure out what to do with The Daisy.  Catherine's dog, Dexter, has kennel cough!   I guess we'll have to separate these two!

*

Here are the new movies opening this weekend, some of which are Oscar hopefuls:

The Master    A Paul Thomas Anderson picture is always an event, and this long look at post-WWII America is said to be a veiled look at the history of Scientology.  Joaquin Phoenix stars as a veteran and a drifter, taken in and tantalized by the L.Ron Hubbard-ish leader of a movement (Philip Seymour Hoffman).  Most critics love it - though some are saying it's oppressive and closed-off.  Possible Oscar nominations could include Amy Adams as Hoffman's wife.
Verdict: Interested 

Arbitrage    Richard Gere is getting the reviews of his life - and is destined to be an Oscar nominee for his work as a hedge-fund magnate in way over his head in fraud.  Essentially the story of Bernie Madoff, the film is getting good reviews.  Written and directed by Nicholas Jarecki, the film might propel Gere to his first ever Oscar nomination; I think the actor has been terrific for a long time.  Apparently, there's a lot of Wall Street jargon in it, so beware.  It co-stars Susan Sarandon (as Gere's wife) and Tim Roth (as the detective on Gere's trail).
Verdict: Very Interested 

Liberal Arts    How I Met Your Mother's Josh Radnor wrote, directed, and stars in this campus comedy about a college admissions worker (Radnor) who returns to his alma mater, Gambier, Ohio's Kenyon College (Radnor's own alma mater and where the film was shot), to speak at the retirement party of a beloved professor (Richard Jenkins).  While there, he falls in love with a college student (Elizabeth Olsen).  Should be fun to see for the Ohio setting and the cast, which includes Allison Janney, Elizabeth Reaser, and, in a small part, Zac Efron as a hippie!  Good reviews.
Verdict: Very Interested 

10 Years    Another month, another Channing Tatum movie.  This one's an ensemble piece - a melancholic comedy about that most recognizable cinematic event: the high school reunion.  Naturally, old romances are re-kindled, dormant feelings are brought to the surface, and everyone realizes how much growing up they still have to do.  Good reviews, mainly because of the appeal of its cast, which includes Tatum's real-life wife Jenna Dewan-Tatum, Chris Pratt, Justin Long, Anthony Mackie, Ari Graynor, Kate Mara, and Rosario Dawson, among others.
Verdict: Interested 

Stolen    Another month, another piece of Nicolas Cage shlock.   The actor's been in re-run mode since the mid-1990s, making nothing but junk.  Cage plays a thief who is believed, by the bad guys who kidnap his daughter, to know the location of the millions of dollars that he supposedly hid before going into the slammer.  Yawn.  Simon West is the Nicolas Cage of directors.  Check out his resume: Con Air, The General's Daughter, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, The Expendables 2.  This one co-stars Malin Akerman, Danny Huston, and Josh Lucas.
Verdict: Not Interested 

*

- Julia and I are excited about watching the series finale of Damages tonight.  I haven't been too keen on this fifth and final season - I don't think the central storyline, involving a Wikileaks-like scandal (involving Ryan Phillippe), is that engaging, and too many subplots don't come to any fruition - but overall, it's been an outstanding, beautifully-acted show.

- On this date, in 1916, Roald Dahl was born.  Fans of Dahl out there, take this quiz and see how you do:

http://www.sporcle.com/games/g/roalddahl        

- A prediction for tonight's game.  Hmmm.  I really like this Chicago Bears team.  Good defense, great running game, and, finally, some actual WRs - big, physical ones, even - for Jay Cutler to throw to.  I see the Bears getting into the playoffs.  The Packers - well, I still don't like their defense and their offense is struggling because they can't run the ball.  With Greg Jennings a maybe for tonight, I see the Pack hurting.  That said, I can't see the Packers and A-Rod losing three in a row at Lambeau, I just can't.   Green Bay 27, Chicago 24. 

* 

A painting today by the Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna, who died on this date in 1506. 

Lamentation over the Dead Christ 
c. 1490
tempera on canvas
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan  (art collection)

As Julia informed me, this Mantegna is a brilliant example of foreshortening; foreshortening is the technique that creates the illusion that an object is receding slowly yet strongly into the distance or background.  Here, Mantegna uses it by having the objects closest to us - Christ's feet, lower torso - appear bigger and larger to us than they actually are.  The painting is equally captivating for its cold realism, its bare, wrinkled detail.  One might even conclude that, because of his technique and clinical eye, Mantegna ultimately exaggerates and inflates Christ's suffering.  



Images: 

http://www.chinaoilpaintinggallery.com/oilpainting/Andrea-Mantegna/The-Lamentation-over-the-Dead-Christ.jpg

http://collider.com/wp-content/uploads/joaquin-phoenix-the-master.jpg

http://img2-2.timeinc.net/ew/i/2012/01/19/liberal-arts_320.jpg
  

Almost Autumn

Word of the day : peripatetic
                                               :  of or relating to the Greek philosopher Aristotle
                                               : of, relating to, or given to walking
                                               : moving or traveling from place to place ; itinerant 

Well, fall is almost here.  Events in the household include: 

- Julia continues, despite the obstacles against her (of whom we won't name), to plow forward with her dissertation, attempts to attend conferences, and teach.

- Gabriel was sick yesterday.   He's feeling better today.

- Our dog, Daisy, got terribly injured Monday night.  At the vet's yesterday, she was sutured and stitched up; apparently, the glass or barbed wire she came down on sliced through a tendon and nicked an artery.  She's feeling better but she has to wear one of those neck collars (that no animal likes) in order not to try the rip the bandage off her paw.  Terrible!

- How'd my football picks go this past weekend?  10 for 16.  Not bad.  62.5%.

* 

The Iranian film A Separation, which won last year's Foreign Language Oscar, is a stunner.  Many won't see it because 1) it's subtitled, and 2) it's set in Iran.  It's rich and suspenseful, and it's the rare film that actually allows the audience to see the viewpoints of and empathize with every single character.  Set and shot in Tehran, writer-director Asghar Farhadi's film centers around a married couple in the process of splitting up (the woman wants to leave Iran, the man wants to stay and care for his father, who's in the grip of Alzheimer's), their daughter (who is torn between them), and a pregnant woman who cares for the dad.  An incident, the pivot of the entire story, occurs between the married man and the female help... That's all I'll say.  Check it out.

*

I'm glad Parenthood is back, so glad.  One of the flat-out best, and most underrated, shows on TV.  There was some talk that NBC wouldn't renew it for its fourth season, which would have been a shame - and very telling (as if we need further proof) of what a silly TV-watching culture we are that we can make hits of the network's other formula-drenched dreck like America's Got Talent and The Voice.

*

Another entry in my 500 Best Performances of All Time, you demand?  Sure.

Meryl Streep
as Karen Silkwood in Silkwood (1983)

I really need to go back and watch Mike Nichols' film again; from what I remember, it was captivating and exciting, and a great showcase for the endless talents of Meryl Streep (oh, yeah, and Kurt Russell and an Oscar-nominated Cher are excellent too.).  She plays the real-life Silkwood, who was tortured and poisoned when she started making complaints against the devastating effects she and her co-workers were being exposed to at the plutonium plant she worked at.  Streep has an accent here - as she always seemed to in the 80s - and she chews gum, wears a come-hither trampish look, sometimes coming across shrill - but it never seems, to me, like she's acting.  She invests the character with so much distinct personality and color, so much realism and nuance, that her fears become the audience's fears.

*

A word quickly about Alfred A. Knopf (born on this date in 1892), the Jewish-American who, at the age of 23 (!),  founded one of the great publishing companies in American history: Founded in 1915, Knopf - with its distinguished book design and production - has the greatest roster of literary talent imaginable.  Well, let the word be a list.  Among the authors that Knopf (long run by Alfred, his wife Blanche, and their son, Alfred) have represented over the last century:

Willa Cather, Julia Child, Michael Crichton, John Updike, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Anne Tyler, Richard Russo, Anne Rice, Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, Elie Wiesel, James Ellroy, Langston Hughes, Kahlil Gibran, John Cheever, Alice Munro, Cormac McCarthy, Carl Hiaasen, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jane Smiley, Walker Percy, and Wallace Stevens.

Not too shabby.

*

Finally, in what will be a weekly feature.

What Interesting Bird Was Spotted in Bulloch County This Past Week?  

      
 Orchard Oriole

-  smallest North American oriole
- adults have rich chestnut color that make them appear very black
- long tail
- thin, pointed beak
- nests in gardens, orchards, suburban areas





Images:

http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/4500000/Meryl-in-Silkwood-meryl-streep-4552878-640-340.jpg 

http://www.planetofbirds.com/Master/PASSERIFORMES/Icteridae/pics/Orchard%20Oriole.jpg

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9jrjFicBYyM4AW-jR_BHGL2eSNcsR-gdgfqvksShRK3ThzBNHxfYoTlC5DNcGR5siOJ3nW-ZtEksQ5eia-fZRmjlWZWEqCcGgznvL9P6yVYUZhuWiA9rUQqueM1vW-5F1oHj0vQAuYYg/s1600/2011_a_separation_Leila_Hatami_Peyman_Moaadi-.jpg

Information: 

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Orchard_Oriole/lifehistory

Kickoff

Word of the day : dais
                                   :  a raised platform (as in a large room or hall)

A beautiful. hot, sunny Saturday in Georgia.  Gabriel has been playing up in the guest bedroom for a good three and a half hours!  I'm finishing up one book (David Goodis' The Burglar), starting another one (William Boyd's An Ice-Cream War).  Julia's playing music games against Mary online, looking for job opportunities.  Daisy's being a scoundrel.  Kit's demanding lascivious pets.

I'm digging Major Crimes, TNT's spin-off of their cash cow The Closer.  The cases are just as interesting.  Although Kyra and J.K. Simmons are missed, Mary McDonnell is occupying the empty space with a unique performance, full of poise and an odd, watchful calm, with some very interesting line readings.

I just finished Harlan Coben's newest thriller, Stay Close (2012).  Like his other New Jersey-set mysteries, it is fast-paced and breezy.  He still can't write dialogue that well, but I like how he has toned down on the exorbitant twists.  A suburban mom, Megan, is drawn back into her past; before she married her husband sixteen years ago, she was a dancer at a strip club, in love with an up-and-coming photographer, Ray, a man now reduced to eking out a living as a faux-celebrity paparazzo.  Together these two, along with an obsessed detective, a couple of creepy Christians, and a dying bartender, are all in various ways involved with the disappearances of abusive men over the years.  Not his best book, by any means, but it's a worthwhile read if you're into bestselling crime fiction. 

*

Here's a performance for my list of the 500 Greatest Performances of All Time: 

John Huston
as Noah Cross in Chinatown (1974)

A fantastic director (Treasure of the Sierra Madre), Huston was also a wily, powerful actor in the right role.  Here, as the man behind the complex water scheme in one of the all-time great movies, Huston is the rotting, jovial, looming figure of darkness.  Huston needed to be overwhelming and memorable in order to carry out the screenplay's biblical malevolence (and to hold his own with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway) and he succeeds brilliantly.  Remember: "Most never have to face the fact that at the right time, in the right place, they're capable of anything."   

* 

Next up in Professional Photographer's list of the one hundred most influential photographers of all time is, checking in at #60, Philip Jones Griffiths (1936-2008). 

The Welsh Griffiths is most remembered for his war photography.  He studied pharmacy in Liverpool but he freelanced on the side until he was given a position as full-time freelancer for London's Observer.  He covered the Algerian War, African conflicts in the 1960s, the Vietnam War, the Yom Kippur War, the Cambodian conflicts of the mid-1970s, and even the first Gulf War.  His book Vietnam Inc. helped crystallize Western opinion on the fruitless horrors of the war - and the lack of necessity for American involvement in it.

*

And finally, let's make my inaugural NFL predictions for week 1.  So far, I'm 1-for-1.  A goal of mine, week after week, will be to correctly predict two-thirds of the games.  Crazy?  Probably.  But we'll see how it goes.  Every Tuesday, I'll let you know how I did.  Here we go: 

Chicago over Indianapolis
Philadelphia over Cleveland   (I foresee a long day for Weeden) 
Detroit over St. Louis
Houston over Miami
Minnesota over Jacksonville
Atlanta over Kansas City
New Orleans over Washington
Buffalo over the New York Jets
New England over Tennessee
Seattle over Arizona     (another year, another Arizona QB cluster-f...)
Green Bay over San Francisco  (should be the day's best game) 
Carolina over Tampa Bay
Denver over Pittsburgh   (should be a doozy)
(Monday) Baltimore over Cincinnati
(Monday) San Diego over Oakland  


       


Images: 

http://fandomania.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/noahcross.jpg

http://www.12thpress.com/assets/images/uploads/2008/03/philip-jones-griffiths.jpg

http://www.12thpress.com/assets/images/uploads/2008/02/griffiths.jpg

http://blogs.gmanews.tv/sidetrip/blog/uploads/PhilipJonesGriffith.png


                                    




Information: 

http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_9_VForm&ERID=24KL535HON

9/6/12

Word of the day : gainsay
                                         : to declare to be untrue or invalid
                                         : contradict, oppose

Today was picture day for Gabriel; hopefully, his teacher shaped him up enough to get at least one good pic.  Tomorrow is a faculty meeting day for Julia.  This weekend?  Who knows?  Football, I guess.  

Well, it's a new month, of course, and I realize that I forgot to do my monthly thing of adding ten more films to the list of Charles' 200 Essential American Films.  Never fear, here's this month's entries, bringing the total to ninety now:

- Before Sunset  (2004; directed by Richard Linklater)
                      The first one, 1995's Before Sunrise, was pretty wonderful, but this one was even better  unbelievably romantic and touching, with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reconnecting on the final day of his book tour, just walking around Paris and talking.  And what talk it is too.  We get so caught up in their talk that it's easy to forget how rich the acting and filmmaking is.      

- The Big Heat  (1953; directed by Fritz Lang)
                      A powerful, punchy, stylized bit of noir, with Glenn Ford up against a powerful crime syndicate - with Lee Marvin as one of its thugs - and Gloria Grahame at her best as a femme fatale.  What's in the suitcase?  No matter - what a ride!

- Bull Durham  (1988; Ron Shelton)
                       A grand sports comedy, sexy and entertaining.  Its appeal is multi-fold: A wise, appealing love story (with Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon at their most charismatic and charming); a sympathy for the underdogs (the Durham Bulls); and a lived-in, around-the-block feel at the dreams and realities of players destined to have nothing more than minor-league careers.  Tim Robbins makes an adorably blockheaded second banana.

- Dead Man Walking  (1995; Tim Robbins)
                       A film that pulls no punches and has no political agenda.  It's the kind of film that rolls around in your head for days afterwards, letting you try to answer the questions and argue the points it has so harrowingly raised.  

- Double Indemnity  (1944; Billy Wilder)
                      One of the best thrillers ever made.  Some of the best dialogue ever written.  One of the best in-over-his-head saps ever (Fred MacMurray).  One of the best femme fatales ever (Barbara Stanwyck).  One of the best screenplays ever (Raymond Chandler and Billy Wilder, from the James Cain novel).

- Erin Brockovich  (2000; Steven Soderbergh)
                       Why not?  It's a great entertainment, a star vehicle of the best kind - full of ideas, with flavorful direction, a script that isn't obvious or full of pat moralizing, and Albert Finney (always a plus). 
                       
- A History of Violence  (2005; David Cronenberg)
                      A tale of how the past is never really past, that it's impossible to escape from who you are - goofily, scarily violent and graphic, well-paced, with Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello at their best, Ed Harris a terrific villain, and William Hurt - who can be so boring and mannered - explosively strange and fruity as a head nutso.    

- JFK  (1991; Oliver Stone)
                      Probably Stone's best film - there's so much kaleidoscopic visual wonder on display, so much headache-inducing crosscutting and superimpositions and differing film stock, that you just surrender to it, even if you think it's all paranoia b.s.  A directorial achievement nonetheless and a film full of ideas, with a large, impressive cast (standouts include Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, and Donald Sutherland).

- The Last Picture Show  (1971; Peter Bogdanovich)
                      Bogdanovich does a magnificent job with the Larry McMurtry novel, capturing the barren ordinariness of lives lived in a nothing town; existentialism meets ennui meets soap opera.  Impeccably cast and performed, poignant and sad.       

                     
- Safe  (1995; Todd Haynes)
                      Maybe the greatest American movie of the 1990s, a tour de force for writer-director Todd Haynes with one of the greatest performances ever (by Julianne Moore).  A southern California housewife becomes allergic to her environment and is forced to move to a wellness retreat in New Mexico.  A film that works on countless levels, it's also a movie that is whatever you want it to be: social satire, science fiction, character study, an examination of modern life, fable, send-up of everything self-help,  piercing drama of loneliness and marital discord.


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And now, the new movies opening this weekend:

The Words    A bunch of hotties in this one: Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana, Olivia Wilde - and, for those who like their men older and suaver, Dennis Quaid and Jeremy Irons.  Cooper pays a struggling writer who comes across a manuscript that tells the story of a WWII romance between a veteran and a French girl.  Cooper passes it off as his own work... an act of thievery that has consequences.  Critics aren't really buying all the narrative trickiness; I haven't seen one rave review yet.  Terrific cast, though: it also includes J.K. Simmons, Ron Rifkin, Michael McKean, and Damages' John Hannah and Zeljko Ivanec.
Verdict: Interested 

The Cold Light of Day    Terrible reviews for this action-er that stars Henry Cavill (should I know who that is?) as a man whose family is kidnapped during a sailing outing in Spain by agents searching for a mysterious, all-important briefcase.  The only possible interest could be in seeing Bruce Willis and Sigourney Weaver in supporting roles and the city of Madrid.  
Verdict: Not Interested
  
Bachelorette    With the exception of Richard Roeper ("I'm ready to forget I ever saw it") and a few others, critics are generally enjoying this raunchy girls-being-hellish comedy in the vein of The Hangover and Bridesmaids.  The night before their friend's wedding, three bridesmaids (Kirsten Dunst, Lizzy Caplan, and Isla Fisher) go out looking for adventure.  James Marsden, Rebel Wilson (Kristen Wiig's odd, obese female roommate in Bridesmaids), and Adam Scott co-star.
Verdict: Very Interested  

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So I'm reading a Harlan Coben book at the moment and I come across a reference to a tourist stop in New Jersey called Lucy the Elephant.  I had no idea it was real:

http://www.lucytheelephant.org/?presets=preset5      
 
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Images:

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