Chemistry. Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn had it. Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd had it. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson had it. Who has that kind of chemistry today?
Just watched the last half of the movie and was reminded how good Scully and Mulder were together. Where are Duchovny and Anderson now? Duchovny became something of a parody of himself but I don’t recall seeing much about Anderson. Good for her.
Gillian Anderson was white hot. She was put-a-sparkler-on-your-tounge hot. She wasn’t Victoria’s Secret beautiful…but she was leave-a-note-and-run-away-from-home sexy.
Aging white radio personality (Bill Murrary) gets fired for racist remark. His career appears to be over until he’s hired by the owner (Bernie Mac) of a struggling, urban (Detroit?) radio station. Seems the radio personality saved the station owner’s life in the jungles of Viet Nam.
The station manager (Queen Latifah) doesn’t like the idea at all but the program director (Jack Black) –a white man who longs to be black– sees big ratings.
The local minister/activist (Eddie Murphy) keeps the heat on to get rid of “this loud-mouthed saltine!”
The station sales manager (Regina King) sees nothing but angry advertisers but soon finds herself falling in love with the repentant Murray character.
As with all my movie ideas, I have no third act, but know Kay will come through as she always does. I guess I need a title, too. Maybe, “What’d I say?”
As impressed as I was with Blue Man Group, I was even more knocked out by the wizard that opened for them. Mike Relm is harder to describe than BMG. Take 1,000 milligrams of military grade amphetamine, mix it with an arena-sized sound system and a MacBook Pro.
If you don’t know who Eddie Haskell, Wally and Beaver Cleaver are… the photo above is sad but doesn’t make you want to blow your brains out. [Thanks, Lew. Thanks a lot.]
Good Will Hunting is ten years old, but this scene seems as fresh as today’s news:
NSA Guy: The question isn’t… why should you work for the NSA… the question is…why shouldn’t you?
Will Hunting: Why shouldn’t I work for the NSA? That’s a tough one. But I’ll take a shot.
Say I’m working at the NSA and somebody puts a code on my desk. Something no one else can break. Maybe I take a shot at it and maybe I break it.
I’m real happy with myself because I did my job well. But maybe that code was the location of some rebel army in North Africa or the Middle East and once they had that location they bomb the village where the rebels are hiding… fifteen hundred people that I never met, never had no problem with get killed.
Now the politicians are saying, oh, send in the Marines to secure the area ’cause they don’t give a damn…it won’t be their kid over there getting shot, just like it wasn’t them when their number got called cause they were off on a tour in the National Guard.
It’ll be some kid from Southie over there taking shrapnel in the ass who comes back to find that the plant he used to work at got exported to the country he just got back from and the guy who put the shrapnel in his ass got his old job ’cause they’ll work for fifteen cents a day and no bathroom breaks.
Meanwhile, he realizes the only reason he was over there in the first place was so we could install a government that would sell us oil at a good price and of course the oil companies use a little skirmish over there to scare up domestic oil prices. A cute little ancillary benefit for them but it ain’t helping my buddy at two-fifty a gallon.
They’re taking their sweet time bringing the oil back, of course maybe they even took the liberty of hiring an alcoholic skipper who likes to drink martinis and fucking play slalom with the ice bergs.
It ain’t too long till he hits one…spills the oil and kills all the sea life in the North Atlantic .
So now my buddy’s out of work, he can’t afford to drive, so he’s walking fucking job interviews, which sucks because the shrapnel in his ass is giving him chronic hemorrhoids, and meanwhile he starving ’cause every time he tries to get a bite to eat, the only Blue Plate Special they’re serving is North Atlantic Scrod with Quaker State.
So what did I think?
I’m holding out for something better.
I figure while I’m at it… why not shoot my buddy…take his job…give it to his sworn enemy…hike up gas prices…bomb a village…club a baby seal… hit the hash pipe and join the National Guard. I can be elected president.
What is really amazing to me is that gasoline today –at my local pump– is very close to $2.50/gallon. Nothing close to that when GWH was filmed, let alone written. Interesting, no? If I could ask Matt Damon and Ben Affleck just one question, it would be… tell me how you came to write that scene.
David Fincher’s new film, Zodiac, runs 2 hours and 40 minutes and doesn’t have a chase scene or an explosion and only a couple of moments of violence and held my attention from start to finish.
Other films by Fincher: Panic Room (good); Fight Club (I was confused); The Game (very good); Se7en (very good); Alien3 (no so good).
Throughout Zodiac, I kept whispering to Barb, “Where have we seen him/her?”
Brian Cox –the original/best Hannibal Lector played Melvin Beli; John Carroll Lynch is the Zodiac and saw him on the HBO series Carnivale. Same for Clea Duvall (if you didn’t watch Carnivale, it doesn’t matter); If you’re old enough to remember Candy Clark from American Graffiti (’73), you might have spotter her brief appearance; John Mahoney –Frasier’s dad– had a small part; and Phillip Baker Hall plays a document expert. I remember him as Lt. Bookman, the library cop on Seinfeld.
Campus Ladies follows Joan & Barri, two middle-aged best friends who decide it’s better to be a freshman at 40 than unhappy housewives forever. Ditching the suburban life of minivans and malls for keg stands and co-ed dorms, Joan and Barri enroll in school in search of the wild college years they missed the first time around.
Campus Ladies is based on characters created by comediennes Carrie Aizley (Joan) and Christen Sussin (Barri) while performing with the famous comedy troupe, The Groundlings. The series is executive produced by Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and co-executive producer E. Brian Dobbins (Reno 911). Among others.
It took me a while to become a fan of the U.S. version of The Office but I’m there. It rivals the original UK verson. But I’ve got some catching up to do and started this weekend by watching the entire first season on DVD. Including deleted scenes. The second season DVD is calling to me but I fear if I put it on I’ll watch the entire season in one setting. Comedy this good should be savored.
I think a lot of movie goers will hate The Good Shepherd, a story about the early history of the Central Intelligence Agency, starring Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt and directed by Robert De Niro (I didn’t recognize Keir Dullea and Timothy Hutton).
I was lost and confused for much of this story. I found the plot very complicated and difficult to follow. But I really liked the movie. I came away with the sense that this is what this world is really like: you don’t know what’s really going on, whom to trust. This ain’t your standard Hollywood spy story. Skip it unless you willing work pretty hard for almost three hours.
I’m still searching for an explanation that will untangle the plot for me.
Sheryl Crow received (a couple of weeks ago) a Golden Globe nomination (Best Original Song) for her performance of Try Not to Remember from the film “Home of the Brave.”
The movie tells the story of returning Iraqi war veterans who have to adjust to life again. I had not heard the song but just watched/listened to a “behind the lyrics” video at TMZ.com. A pretty –and heavy– song.
Chemistry. Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn had it. Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd had it. David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson had it. Who has that kind of chemistry today?
It took me a while to become a fan of the U.S. version of The Office but I’m there. It rivals the original UK verson. But I’ve got some catching up to do and started this weekend by watching the entire first season on DVD. Including deleted scenes. The second season DVD is calling to me but I fear if I put it on I’ll watch the entire season in one setting. Comedy this good should be savored.