Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category

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Random notes: July 3, 2012.

Tuesday, July 3rd, 2012

I think I’m going to wait until later tonight or tomorrow morning to do a roundup of Andy Griffith obits. In the meantime, how has the Criterion Collection not come out with an edition of “A Face In the Crowd”?

Here’s something I’m wondering about. There’s a story in the HouChron: I’ll link to it, but I won’t mention names. The gist of the story is that the sister of a state representative was arrested yesterday after a police raid found drugs and guns in her home. Reading between the lines of the honorable gentleman’s statement, it appears she has issues, if not a lifetime subscription and a complete set of bound volumes.

Question: why is this news? Would it have been newsworthy (outside of Corpus Christi) if her brother wasn’t a state rep? Does it matter that her brother happens to be a Republican? (I like to think I’d be asking the same question if he was a Democrat.)

In news that might actually be news: a while back, the Landry’s corporation got a tax abatement to build “The Inn at the Ballpark” . This was supposed to generate a certain number of jobs. According to a city audit, it didn’t generate the specified number.

So how did the Houston City Council respond? If you said “they voted not to ask Landry’s for the taxes they were previously exempted from”, take two gold stars…and you know the drill.

(Hattip: Lawrence. I’m aware that post has nothing to do with Landry’s, but I’ve been wanting to link it for a while.)

Posted in Clippings, Food, Media, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 13, 2012.

Wednesday, June 13th, 2012

Henry Hill has passed away. In a hospital. Of what I guess could be called “natural causes”.

(You know, I still have not seen “Goodfellas”, though I do have it and want to sit down and watch it soon. I have read Wiseguy, and I think it is a heck of a book.)

Also worth noting: Ann Rutherford, Scarlett O’Hara’s sister.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Movies, Obits | 1 Comment »

Cahiers du cinéma: Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Thursday, March 29th, 2012

This should be fairly short, since I’m not sure I have much to say other than this:

If “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” plays anywhere near you, I recommend that you go see it. If you have teenage children, I would seriously consider taking them along.

This is a movie about more than a world-class (as in, three Michelin stars) sushi chef. It is also a movie about finding work that you love, trying to be as good as you can at it, and working hard every day at it. In some ways, I think this is a movie about virtues we as a country have lost, and virtues that may be passing away in Japan as well.

Setting that aside, there’s also a lot of wonderful shots of Jiro’s sushi, the Tsukiji fish market, and raw tuna being prepared. It is a beautifully shot movie, worth seeing on a large screen.

(Jiro talking about his routine reminded me, of all things, of a quote from Don Winslow’s The Winter of Frankie Machine: “If you have a routine, you can always deviate from it if something comes up. But if you don’t have a routine, then everything is stuff that comes up.”)

Posted in Food, Movies | Comments Closed

John Carter, John Carter, Malkovich.

Wednesday, March 14th, 2012

Actually, no Malkovich.

John Scalzi’s column at filmcritic.com this week is about “studio math”. Specifically, why a movie that cost $250 million to make has to bring in at least $600 million at the box office in order to turn a profit. Much of this was stuff I already knew (the movie studios take most of the first week’s box office gross, declining in subsequent weeks, distribution cuts, gross profit cuts, cocaine cuts, etc.) But I note it here because it is a handy reference for folks not familiar with show business, especially the kids.

Meanwhile, back at the House, I’m sure you’ve all been asking yourself: What does John Carter (the member of Congress from Round Rock) think of “John Carter” (the motion picture)?

He kind of liked it. I guess that’s the one thing they’ve got.

Posted in Clippings, Movies | Comments Closed

Very, very carefully.

Tuesday, March 13th, 2012

This is a multi-purpose punchline. In addition to “How do porcupines make love?” it also serves as an answer to the question: “How do you steal a three foot tall active beehive?”

Seriously, I have no idea how or why you’d want to steal an active beehive. But let’s watch some Nicholas Cage anyway.

Edited to add: You can get three pounds of bees with a queen for $105 shipped to your doorstep (when these people have them in stock). Other folks have them as low as $90. I realize criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, and generally not able to do subtle economic calculations. But still, this seems like a really stupid crime. Perhaps the criminals will try to fence them, and the police can set up a sting operation.

Sorry.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Movies | Comments Closed

All these planets are yours except Mars. Attempt no movies there, Disney.

Monday, March 12th, 2012

Now that Lawrence has actually seen the movie and he and Howard have written their review, I feel free to post “John Carter” related content. For example, this NYT article, headlined “‘Ishtar’ Lands on Mars”.

“John Carter,” which cost an estimated $350 million to make and market, and was directed by Mr. Stanton, took in about $30.6 million at the North American box office, according to Rentrak, which compiles box-office data. That result is so poor that analysts estimate that Disney will be forced to take a quarterly write-down of $100 million to $165 million. The amount will depend on ticket sales overseas, where “John Carter” took in about $71 million over the weekend, a better total than Disney had feared.

And:

 The only silver lining for Disney may be a dubious one: last March the studio’s “Mars Needs Moms” flopped so badly that it also required a write-down, making year-on-year performance comparisons less brutal.

Sorry, that just makes me giggle.

Posted in Clippings, Movies | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 23, 2012.

Thursday, February 23rd, 2012

Barney Rosset, Grove Press publisher.

Rosset brought the court cases that allowed “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, “Tropic of Cancer”, and “Naked Lunch” to be published in the United States. He was also behind the distribution of “I Am Curious (Yellow)” (yet another court case) and “Titicut Follies” (yet another court case, and the most horrifying movie I’ve ever seen).

Joe Bob Briggs’s write-up of “I Am Curious (Yellow)” in Profoundly Erotic: Sexy Movies that Changed History goes into more detail about Grove Press and some of the colorful incidents in Rosset’s history (the Cuban exile bombing, the unionization attempt, etc.)

And:

Mr. Rosset turned down J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings,” saying he “couldn’t understand a word”

Posted in Books, Clippings, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Burning airlines give you so much more.

Friday, February 17th, 2012

Another topic of conversation at dinner last night: planes. Specifically, airlines.

Posted in Art, Endorsements, Movies, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch and more randomness for February 3, 2012.

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

Obit watch: prominent spy novelist Dorothy Gilman.

Ben Gazzara. I’m glad to see “Run For Your Life” get some mention in his obit; that’s another series RTN was re-running, and that I wish someone would bring out a full DVD set of. (And I’d also like to see “Anatomy of a Murder” sometime; I’ve read the book, but haven’t seen the movie.)

Hey, how about that lengthy Federal investigation into Lance Armstrong’s alleged doping? The Feds took their best shot…and turned up nothing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the guy has been tested so often that either he’s telling the truth and is totally clean, or his doping technologists are not only ahead of the curve, you can’t even see the curve from where they are.

Finally, I wanted to make note of a developing local story. Early Friday morning, a guy wrecked his car near a railroad crossing in the Avery Ranch area of Northwest Austin. The guy walked away from the wreck. A little while later, the wife of a homeowner in the area heard voices outside and saw a man (the same guy) lying under her car. Her husband went out to investigate, and apparently attempted to hold the man at gunpoint. The homeowner ended up shooting the intruder three times, killing him.

And the homeowner has now been charged with murder.

The case is now in the hands of a Williamson County grand jury and the district attorney’s office, which will investigate the shooting and to what extent homeowners can defend their property with deadly force, said District Attorney John Bradley.
A grand jury is expected to hear the case in the next three months, he said. It will address the recent “castle doctrine” law justifying certain cases of deadly force to protect one’s property, Bradley said.

There are too many unknowns in the current press coverage to make me feel comfortable passing judgment in this case. I know the article quotes the homeowner as saying, “If you flee, I’m going to shoot you,” and then firing on the intruder as he tried to flee. But we don’t know what else the intruder did at this point; did he display a weapon? Was there a disparity of force involved (23 year old intruder, 47 year old homeowner)?

I think there is one thing we can say for sure:

Yazdi remained jailed late Friday in Williamson County on the murder charge and was held on $250,000 bail, jail records show.

Use your gun defensively, and even if it is a good shoot, your life is going to change; probably not for the better. Commvault Bryan and I were talking the other day about having an attorney on “retainer” and the various groups that offer that service for a small monthly fee; I need to get with Karl and get the name of the organization he recommends.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Guns, Movies, Obits, Schadenfreude, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 26, 2012.

Thursday, January 26th, 2012

Legendary actor Nicol Williamson passed away on December 16. However, his death was apparently not reported until yesterday.

…during the Broadway run of Paul Rudnick’s 1991 comedy, “I Hate Hamlet,” in which he played the ghost of John Barrymore, he criticized the play in interviews, audibly offered coaching to his fellow actors onstage, and finally, during a staged swordfight, ignored the choreography and smacked the actor Evan Handler with the flat blade of the sword, prompting Mr. Handler to leave the stage and resign.

And:

A young actress who shared the stage with him in 1965 and who spoke to The New York Times said of him: “Drinking, fighting and wenching — God, he’s fabulous!”

(In addition to playing Hamlet and Macbeth, he was also Sherlock Holmes in “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution”.)

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: The final countdown…

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

…for James Farentino.

I really wish someone would put “The Bold Ones” (or even the individual “wheels” within the series, such as Farentino and Ives’s “The Lawyers”) out on DVD. From what I saw back when I could get RTN, that was actually a pretty good series.

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

TMQ watch: January 24, 2012.

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

Before we jump into this week’s TMQ, we thought we’d mention D.J. Gallo’s list of the worst college basketball blowouts in Division I history. “Long Island 179, Medgar Evers 62”. It took all of Long Island to defeat one guy? And “Texas 102, San Marcos Baptist 1”. “San Marcos Baptist Academy was — and is — a boarding school for teenagers.”

After the jump…

(more…)

Posted in Clippings, Law, Movies, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

Friday, January 20th, 2012

KAREN O
Ahheeeaahhhhhhhhhh-aaaahhhh!
Come to the film that’s really slow;
Where the story plods and the accents blow!

(This is much funnier if you sing it to the tune of “Immigrant Song”.)

Also:

We should be able to solve this right around when the audience members start cupping their hands around their cell phones to see what time it is.

Guilty. But that was nearly two hours in, and we still had a whole bunch of Ulfråsen Fribergsgatu to go.

(Hattip: the great and good Pat Cadigan on the Twitter.)

Posted in Movies | Comments Closed

Nice, bright colors.

Sunday, January 15th, 2012

I wanted to throw up a link to Zander Robin’s “Kodachrome 2010” documentary on Vimeo, but I felt like I should watch it first.

After watching it…well, there’s some interesting stuff in it about the chemistry involved in processing Kodachrome, and quite a few lovely images, but I really wish there was more to it. At less than 10 minutes, it seems like it is just the beginning of the story of Dwayne’s Photo and the final days of Kodachrome. I know it might have been a tough sell on the festival circuit, but I, for one, would have paid money to see a 90 minute version of this, or to download it from iTunes.

In any case, here’s “Kodachrome 2010” if you want to watch for yourself.

KODACHROME 2010 from Xander Robin on Vimeo.

(Hattip: PetaPixel.)

Posted in Geek, Movies, Photography | Comments Closed

Like Steve McQueen.

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

Today’s NYT has an interesting article about an attempt to unearth and recreate the tunnel system used in Stalag Luft III.

In an effort to establish more clearly how the escape was accomplished — and, in a sense, to reclaim the narrative of the breakout — British-based engineers, battlefield archaeologists and historians traveled into the pine forest outside Zagan last summer to unearth the secrets buried there for a television documentary by Wildfire Television in London that was broadcast in late 2011 in Britain. They were accompanied by modern-day Royal Air Force pilots, as well as veterans of wartime bombing raids, now in their 80s, who helped build the tunnels at the encampment known as Stalag Luft III.

It turns out that the team was unable to excavate “Harry”, but they did manage to dig down to “George”. They also constructed a new tunnel called “Roger”, “but in a trench just beneath the surface; anything deeper was deemed too dangerous”. (The original tunnels ran 30 feet below the surface.)

I am looking forward to this documentary showing up on PBS. (At least, I’m hoping it will show up on PBS instead of The Hitler History Channel.) I think this is a review of it from the Telegraph. Here’s a link to an older NOVA documentary. For any of my younger readers who are unfamiliar with the story, here’s the Wikipedia entry to use as a starting point. The Great Escape is still in print and available from Amazon. And because I want to make things as easy for my readers as possible, here’s a link to the DVD.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Geek, Heroism, History, Movies | Comments Closed

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