I have a confession to make. Despite my handle, I absolutely loathe going to the movies. When I do venture to the theater, I usually go alone to a matinee. I've never understood why people feel the need to go to movies with other people. I'm not there to socialize, I'm there to watch a goddamn movie. I hate the sound of people munching popcorn in my ear. I hate the SOB teens with no respect for the people around them. I hate pretty much everything about it.
So, most movies I see at home, with the exception of big event movies or prestige pictures. However, sometimes when I'm sitting on the couch, munchies at hand, I don't want to watch a movie. Sometimes I'd rather watch television.
TV programs have always been in the ghetto of the filmic city. They are considered less worthy of praise, less artful, than good movies. I have to disagree. Good television can do things movies can't. A good season of television will tell a long format story, and the best will deliver enormous character arcs, or brilliant laughs. I'd have to say some some of the longer running shows have given me more hours of quality entertainment than any of my favorite directors. So, with that in mind, I present my favorite television shows.
Remember what a stone cold killer the Right said Hillary Clinton was. She was a regular Tony Soprano. Cross the Clintons and you were likely to end up in a witness protection program, which of course was self-defeating because the Clinton's ultimately ran said program.
All bullshit, of course, but some never let it go. Now, the right is at it again, in even more hilarious fashion.
If you have a wingnut relative, you can expect the Obama Death list in your inbox in the very near future.
When I was a kid, I used to love the 4th of July. My parents raised me to be a patriotic American, one who loves his country even despite her flaws. Every 4th, we'd pack the whole family up and have a picnic at Stone Mountain Park. We'd eat sandwiches, toss a frisbee, play gin, and wait for the sun to go down. Then came the laser show, one which featured outlining, then animating, the Confederate generals carved into the rock (this is the South, and, unfortunately, Confederate pride will never go out of style). Then came the fireworks. A gigantic, ear-splitting fireworks display, made louder by the soundwave echo slamming against the mountain, bound for our tender eardrums. It was beautiful, true rocket's red glare and mid-air bomb bursts.
These days I dread the 4th. It's not for the jingoism I was too young to understand as a child, which irks me, but I try not to let other's infantile politics change the spirit of the holiday for me. The real reason is I'm not much for fireworks anymore. I haven't been since I came back from Iraq.
He [Greg Pal] means bugs. To be more precise: the genetic alteration of bugs – very, very small ones – so that when they feed on agricultural waste such as woodchips or wheat straw, they do something extraordinary. They excrete crude oil.
Unbelievably, this is not science fiction. Mr Pal holds up a small beaker of bug excretion that could, theoretically, be poured into the tank of the giant Lexus SUV next to us. Not that Mr Pal is willing to risk it just yet. He gives it a month before the first vehicle is filled up on what he calls “renewable petroleum”. After that, he grins, “it’s a brave new world”.
There have been movies throughout the hundred year history of cinema that have taken their place in the pantheon of great art. Films like Casablanca, Raging Bull, Network or Citizen Kane.
This diary isn't about those. This diary is about the garbage.
Other films of dubious quality survive precisely because they are disasters. Watching these flicks is like rubbernecking on the freeway. You know you shouldn't look, but you can't turn away. These films are certainly enjoyable, but for all the wrong reasons.
Robert Altman once said that he learned more from bad films than good ones, because he learned what not to do. With that in mind, let the learning begin.
The civil right's era had many, many heroes, some of which don't get the credit they deserve. Some of which have receded to the background of our history, despite the large role they played in that history.
Mildred Loving was one of those. She, the black wife of a white man, who took her case against the Commonwealth of Virginia for the right to be so all the way to the Supreme Court, and won.
She died Friday from undisclosed reasons. She was 68.
Speaking slowly, so that the slower among us might understand, is difficult in blog form. Yet, if I were in a room with Paul Krugman right now, I would elongate every vowel, like I was speaking to an especially stupid child.
Now, I like Paul Krugman. He's one of the left's strongest allies. But he has gone off the deep end when it comes to Obama. His support of Clinton is so thorough that he is unable to see the forest for the trees.
Sir Elton John’s recent performance at a fund-raising event for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has drawn a formal complaint from Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group.
Mr. John, a foreign national, cannot under federal law make any contribution to a federal, state or local election campaign. The group, in a letter from its president, Tom Fitton, described Mr. John’s appearance at the fund-raiser as an “in-kind contribution from a foreign national.”
There is no love lost for Hillary Clinton around these parts. Most of our Clinton backing compatriots have fatuously gone on strike (one assumes myDD is providing their lost blogging income so that they can continue eating). I have always tried to be a straight shooter when it comes to the Primary Wars. I support Obama, but my support has always been soft, as Edwards was my first choice. However, it is now obvious that Hillary Clinton has no shot at the nomination, outside of a coup by superdelegates, so we should all be Obama supporters now. Still, I can understand why Hillary Clinton continues on. She has a shot, and you can't win if you don't keep running. Her supporters agree.
While I was watching Countdown tonight, RIchard Wolffe made an interesting point, one which I think is not only brilliant, but would satisfy both the Obama and Clinton camps, both of whom want to win.
U.S. President George W. Bush got an earful on Thursday about problems and progress in Afghanistan where a war has dragged on for more than six years but been largely eclipsed by Iraq...
"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."
"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.
There are times when President Bush says things that are so brain-bendingly stupid that they drive me beyond mere offense and into a universe of disgust unheard of among feeling people. That a Commander in Chief of the United States military can be so callous, and so wrong, about war defies all notions of logic and decency.
Did you think this was going to be easy? I know Obama supporters got that false sense of security during their run of wins, but Hillary Clinton is far too savvy a politician to go away without a fight. She has shown herself time and again to be a political Lazarus, and more vicious than a cornered badger when her back is against the wall.
But don't spend your time feeling sorry for yourself and your candidate. I thought your motto was "Yes We Can."
If there is one thing that the Democrats have over the Republicans, it is that for the past twenty-four years we have had a lock on terrible candidates. It's an inherent bi-product of who we are as Democrats; we are the party of ideas and thoughtfulness. We are the party of optimism, and we, as the Democratic base, tend to expect that the rest of the American electorate will be just as in love with wonky substance as we are. Ergo, we run candidates like Mondale, Dukakis, Gore and Kerry. Each were brilliant men and would have made fantastic presidents, but each were cerebral and stiff (yes, even Gore, who had the life poll-tested right out of him). While we, as thinking Democrats, like cerebral, cerebral doesn't win elections. People don't vote with their heads, they vote with their hearts.
So, we've all seen that horrible "Behind the Music" Clinton ad. You know the one. OK fine, have a yuk on me.
Terrible. However, I got to thinking, if Clinton wanted to make a decent ad that targeted my generation, what should she do? This naked pander obviously wasn't going to work. What would? Below you will find my script for a better Clinton ad.
I love violent movies. Give me splatter and gore and all manner of mayhem. The craft it takes to make viscera look real fascinates me. I don’t cotton to the sanitized, Michael Bay, PG-13, spasm-and-fall-when-shot violence. Give me the Grand Guignol. “I want,” as Arlo Guthrie once said, “to see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth.”
Now, I know some of you are asking yourselves, “What the hell is wrong with this sicko?” Let me assure you, I do not enjoy these moments in film because they give me some cheap thrill, like a snuff film. The Saw films all have plenty of gore, and I find them repugnant. The recent spate of torture-porn exploitations may not sanitize their violence but they certainly glorify it, which is almost worse.
According to the AP, the FCC has leveled a 1.43 million dollar fine at ABC over a five year old episode of NYPD Blue. What could possibly be so awful, so indecent, as to warrant a fine so hefty?
I cannot watch the Republican debates. My blood pressure runs too high, and I'm afraid I might die of an aneurysm. They are brain-bendingly stupid, all the way down to Alan Keyes. However, I do derive some pleasure from knowing that these men, old and grizzled and religiously crazy and mormon, will have to face one of our candidates. Any of our top candidates will trounce all any of their candidates next year.
Look at the policies these morons are espousing. Are any of them different then Bush? All of the top tier of candidates in the Republican field run either with Bush on almost all of the issues, or to the right of Bush. It's completely ridiculous, considering that Bush is both the worst and least popular president of all time. He's at thirty percent or below in every single poll.
Yet, it's not so ridiculous if we consider who makes up that thirty percent. They are the rabid, hardcore Republican partisans - the Kool-Aid drinkers. To them, Bush did everything right. They are also the base of the GOP, and if they make up thirty percent of the nation at large they must make up a pretty good chunk of the primary voters. That is why I see no difference between the Republican field and George Bush.
If you see a movie trailer in which nobody speaks except a narrator it is because the movie advertised is in a foreign language. When marketing foreign language films for American audiences studios always try to hide the fact that audiences will have to read subtitles. Every time I go to a foreign film that gets a lot of exposure, I know unsuspecting audience member who didn’t do their homework will bitch and moan that they have to read at the movies. Horror of horrors. I always say the same thing to these people. “If you don’t like it, there’s the door.” Subtitles do not bother me. Ignorant and rude moviegoers do.
So I hope your not afraid of subtitles, because tonight’s list is all foreign language films.
