Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981) 7/10
Society has broken down due to war. In the “Waste Lands” of Australia, savage gangs kill one another for gasoline. Mad Max (Mel Gibson) wanders this region and encounters a heavily guarded compound with abundant gasoline. Against his better judgment, he helps them against a brutal gang out to kill them all.
I should have taken my friend’s advice and skipped Mad Max. The Road Warrior stands alone as a low budget marvel. » Read more..
Because Daniel Craig was on the cover of Caesars Player, my mom saved the issue for me (I didn’t even know she was in Vegas!).
The article was mostly same-old, same-old, but there was a nice bit in the interview about how Craig felt being an actor:
Craig doesn’t hesitate to admit his own awe of Hollywood luminaries. “I think when I did Road to Perdition and was sort of confronted by Tom Hanks and Paul Newman, it was half an hour before I managed to get out of the rabbit-in-the-headlights thing and go, ‘Hey, you’ve got a job to do here, better get on with it.’…I’ll quite happily admit that I am star-struck. That’s why I’m in the game. As I said, I wanted to be an actor.
Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003) 9/10
Griet (Scarlett Johansson) comes to work as a maid in the home of painter Johannes Vermeer (Colin Firth) in 17th Century Holland.
“Girl With a Pearl Earring” is a haunting and mysterious painting. It has been called “the Dutch Mona Lisa” because of the opaque, captivating expression on the face of its unknown model. Indeed, little is known of the life of Vermeer, offering a blank canvas, first for the novelist Tracy Chevalier, and then for this very faithful adaptation.
The movie itself is a canvas. Water reflects deep colors that shimmer. Floor tiles contrast fabrics which pick up light from windows, reflected on brassware. Composition of every scene is as perfect as a painting.
Many reviewers complain that there is no narrative substance to the movie; it’s just a pretty picture. I disagree. As Griet, Johansson shows us the inner turmoil of a girl between worlds. She cannot express herself except by the look in her enormous eyes, but if you pay attention, you can come to know her. » Read more..
Oh. My. Gods.
Oh Gods I just saw the most horrible thing. Countdown had a clip of Matt Lauer interviewing Crazy Child Molesting Teacher Mary Kay Letourneau. CCMT married her victim, Vili Fualaau, and this interview commemorates their one year wedding anniversary.
Oh my frickin GAWD.
The entire tone of the interview was all about what a nice couple they were, and how everyone was wrong about them. What do you say, Lauer asked, to those few people who still have doubts. Still. Have doubts. Doubts about…whether child molestation is wrong? About whether it was true love from the start…when he was eight years old? (She has contended the ‘connection’ dates from that time. Which, ew.)
So what am I to take from this? Is marriage a magic panacea that wipes out all harm? Is this Luke and Laura for the public, and as long as we can spin a tale of “true love” that ends at the altar, it’s all okay? Is this the sanctity of marriage being protected by the right? (And of course, one year of marriage is enough to “prove” the “naysayers” wrong. Because we all know that your marriage is perfect if you pass the one year mark.)
I just don’t get it. The whole thing is painted as so all-American. Is this what they mean by family values? Grooming an eight year old for eventual sex, at age fourteen (or younger) is okay?
It was a seven minute interview. I was so disgusted, so sickened, and I thought, this isn’t like a train wreck. I can stop. And I fast-forwarded to the next segment (thank you, TiVo.)
Last night, Olberman showed an extensive interview between Katie Couric and Al Gore. The focus was An Inconvenient Truth. This was an amazing interview, really blew me away. I learned two things.
First, Al Gore is amazingly personable. Kind of funny, warm, brilliant yet cuddly. When did this happen? I don’t remember this. He’s maybe sexier than Olberman.
Second, is it me, or was Couric flirting? How can she do interviews when she’s giving the coy, girly, I’m-gonna-ask-you-a-good-one-now face? Ew.
Warning! If you click “more”, you will be exposing yourself to spoilers that will make your eye pop out (hehehe).
It’s gone. The embarrassment of riches is gone.
In a wave of optimism, I had scheduled about five movies to record, and I have now cancelled them, alas. No Terminal for me.
Batman Begins (2005) 5/10
Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), billionaire son of Gotham, is traumatized by the death of his parents and a bunch of bats. Seeking to fight injustice, he learns to kick ass until he comes to the attention of the League of Shadows. He parts ways with them, though (and not very nicely) and decides to become Batman instead.
Batman Begins is not as bad as Hulk. Beyond that, it deserves very little praise. Both movies put notable directors at the helm of superb casts and magnificent design and create ponderous, self-important, dull affairs. » Read more..
The oddest thing. All of a sudden, I have every premium channel that DirecTV offers. All of them. Every. Channel.
I found out by accident. TiVo lets you set desired movies to auto-record. So if you’ve always wanted to see such-and-such, you just tell it to record it automatically. It’s cool. Anyway, I have a few movies set to auto-record. What happens if they appear on a premium channel is that TiVo will actually tell you it’s going to record, but doesn’t. Or, for fun, it will record 90 minutes of a black screen with the words “to subscribe, go to DirecTV.com.”
So anyway, I saw that Mad Max was set to record on Encore, but I don’t get Encore. Then I saw that it had actually recorded.
I am puzzled.
So I start browsing through channels. I get them all. All. Not just HBO, but all the HBOs, including HBOw (West Coast time). And Cinemax, and Starz, and Encore, and TMC, and Westerns, and Romances and and and and!
Every movie I’ve been wanting to see! Okay, plenty of movies I want to see aren’t showing but I could record FIFTY! This WEEKEND. (Only I don’t have the space on the machine.) But SHIT! I’m overwhelmed, I can’t think what to do. Shit, I could start watching premium shows. I could see Deadwood or the Sopranos or Queer as Folk or anything I want.
Must remember to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. I am Zen with the movies. Breathe.
About Schmidt (2002) 6/10
Warren Schmidt (Jack Nicholson) has just retired, and his wife has just died. Empty and sad, he journeys to his daughter’s (Hope Davis) wedding.
An entire thesis could be, and perhaps has been, written about the role in this film of Kathy Bates’s naked ass. By the time Schmidt arrives in Denver to meet the parents of his future son-in-law Randall (Dermot Mulroney), we are relieved by their warmth. Roberta (Bates) has a home painted in deep rusts and golds, decorated with art and musical instruments, and she dresses in a flowing purple caftan. After an hour of Schmidt’s sorrowful, repressed, seething grays and tans and blues, arriving in Denver is like finding a warm fire after trudging through the snow. » Read more..
