Future Poltergeist

The 2005 Best Picture noms were announced today. You can read the list here . Frankly, it's a kind of a dreary list. Same as last year, I haven't seen any of them before so I can't comment on the quality of any of them. Frequent commenter, Carrie, recently saw 'Brokeback Mountain' and review it here . She liked it. Thought it was powerful. It's the nominee that I'm most likely to see but I'm a bit leery. I thought that 'The Crying Game' benefited because critcs were afraid to not like it. Afraid that they would be seen as anti-gay. The same danger obviously exists here. That's why I've waited for the recommendation of someone I know before seeing it. The others? I might see 'Munich'. Speilberg is one of the best directors around (even if 'War of the Worlds' left was less than thrilling). And the arguments about the movie's message are interesting. I'll probably see 'Crash'. It got great prai...

Found this this morning on Deadspin (very funny site): The news: Favre is kind of maybe considering the possibility of mulling the idea of the notion toward the contemplation of perhaps retiring … but he’s not sure. This breathless scoop is brought to you by Chris Mortensen, whom we’re still sure gets prank calls from a bored Bill Parcells. In the interview, Favre treats retirement like it’s the Zapruder film, something mysterious and maddening, saying he “wishes he knew where he stood” as to whether or not to retire, as if he were waiting for a committe to make a decision or something. My prediction is that he comes back to lead the Pack to a glorious 5 win season next year.

(It begins again!) This is a good movie. It tells the life story of Loretta Lynn, literally a coal miner's daughter. The movie opens with her father emerging from a coal mine and taking his kids into the store to buy them shoes for the winter. We see a family living in deep poverty. At the store, Loretta (Sissy Spacek) first sees her soon to be husband Dolittle (Tommy Lee Jones!). He impresses her by driving a jeep up a pile of mine tailings. Soon he comes a courting and asks her for her hand in marriage. She's fourteen. Her parents consent on two conditions, that he never hit her and that he doesn't take her far away. Both of these conditions are soon broken and they move out of state with a bun in the oven. As they're raising children, Dolittle comes to appreciate his wife's musical talents. In place of a wedding ring, he gets her a guitar. And then a gig at some honky-tonks. And then a record. He helps her to become a music star. She enjoys fame and...

 

 

found here . Frank Thomas signed with the Oakland A's for this upcoming season. Not really a surprise but still sad. In related news, Oakland plays the twins at the metrodome in mid-April. Think I've just made some plans.

and more from our most recent favorite show found here . Doogie, who? Update: Actual article linked in title found here .

About time I do a wrap up from last year's movie project . Here's each year's review 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Out of the 50 movies, I rated 17 as great, 9 as very good, 14 as good, 6 as fair and 4 as bad. The four bad ones? Dances with Wolves, Il Postino, the Godfather III and Thin Red Line. I agreed with the Best Movie pick six times. Of the ten movies that I hadn't seen before, Remains of the Day was probably the best. I forced the FP Gal to watch many movies, Life is Beautiful being the best one that was newest to her. The best musical score was Shakespeare in Love. Most surprisingly good music to me was Thin Red Line. The whole project was so much fun that we're doing it again this year. After much deliberation, I'm going with the 1980's. Same rules as before, each of the best picture nominees from each year. Should be fun!

My last couple of posts have dealt with conservative and/or liberal movies. I find the intersection of movies and political philosophy interesting. And I found the sneering tone of a Chicago Sun-Times editor interesting too. The last post brought about this comment from a good friend of mine who is actively involved in the movie industry: I'm still confused as to why movies have to be classified as liberal or conservative. Granted - a movie MAY be that way, but why do they have to be politically divided from the start? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm just really actually curious. I guess I've just never thought of them that way before (okay...maybe there are a few political satires which obviously fall one way or another but just normal run-of-the-mill-movies? Am I missing something?) This is something I've thought about over the last week or so and I can think of three reasons: One, a political commentator may want to act as a guide to others. Imagine a cou...

Not meaning to keep harping on this, but Jim Emerson has written a follow-up column about the Liberal movies of 2005. Column might be overstating, as it's mostly a link to this column by an LA Weekly author, John Powers. The column is a list of the most obvious liberal movies of 2005 (Powers doesn't describe them as the 'best'). The list mostly attacks the movies for being insufficiently liberal. Ironic, as that's what Emerson dismissed conservatives as doing. Powers suggests that These days, liberals don’t even understand themselves. They’re not sure what they’re supposed to believe in — besides, of course, the monstrosity of the Bush administration. He then goes on to suggest that even liberal movies are confused. He offers 'I (Heart) Huckabees' as an example. The FP Gal and I rented that last spring and found it vaguely amusing. It details the efforts of a confused young man to find his way in life by hiring metaphysical detectives. It was amus...

My dear old dad gave me this list of movies last week to look at. It's the top ten conservative movies of 2005 courtesy of FrontPage magazine, a conservative website. I haven't seen any of the movies listed but I wasn't particularly impressed with the description of a 'conservative movie' or with the individual movie descriptions. For instance, 'King Kong' may be a great movie, but it'll take quite a bit to convince me that it's particularly conservative. The author, Don Feder, describes a conservative movie like this: Let’s start with what it isn’t. It’s not about men with bulging biceps and even bigger guns. It’s not cartoonish action heroes. It isn’t revenge tales masquerading as heroism. Conservative cinema does more than entertain; movies that do no more are visual candy. It instructs and inspires. Conservative films celebrate virtue. They tell timeless tales of individuals overcoming all manner of adversity to achieve true greatness. Th...

 

 

 

 

 

 

And we had a great time. With the end of the honeymoon we're officially done with wedding stuff. I'm told the marriage stuff continues. Day One Miami. Nice and warm. Our taxi ride was exciting. We noticed some damage from Katrina. Mostly missing letters from signs, nothing major. Hit a snag with our hotel room. Found out that the hotel was filled with Penn St fans for the Orange Bowl. (Last two items related.) Walked around downtown Miami. Found out the T'Wolves were in town. Swam in the hotel pool for almost three minutes (brrrrr). Played cards and went to bed. Day Two Walked to a bridge and got our first view of the cruise ships. Was overwhelmed by size. Checked out of hotel. Ate at BK. Checked in at the ship. Again, very very very big. Found our room. Met our room steward (very nice guy). Toured the ship. Had safety drill. Declared 'five-meal-a-day-plan'. Started plan. Watched ship pull out of port (very cool). Continued eating plan. Me...