Tag: movies

Woody Allen is 75

Last month, TV writer Ken Levine wrote an open letter to Woody Allen, which suggested that Woody:
Take a break.

I have noted more than once that Annie Hall is my all-time favorite movie; moreover, it was commercially successful and critically acclaimed. Nominated for five Academy Awards for the 1977 season, it won four – Best Picture, Best Actress (Diane Keaton), Best Director (Woody Allen), Best Original Screenplay (Allen and Marshall Brickman), losing only Best Actor (Allen).

Yet, when making a list of his six best movies – ZELIG, PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO, HUSBANDS AND WIVES, VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA, BULLETS OVER BROADWAY, MATCH POINT – Annie Hall was not among them. Is it unreasonable to suggest that a director is mistaken about his own films?

I saw all the movies mentioned except Match Point; I can say that Vicki Christina Barcelona clearly does NOT belong on this list. I’d be hard-pressed to actually come up with my other five on a list – Hannah and Her Sisters, and Zelig, for sure, maybe Bananas, Broadway Danny Rose, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Purple Rose of Cairo, Radio Days, or even Manhattan if the parallel with his actual life didn’t creep me out so much.

Slate takes a crack at Copy-Editing the Culture: The Rise and Fall of Woody Allen, as Experienced Through His Punctuation.

Last month, TV writer Ken Levine wrote an open letter to Woody Allen, which suggested that Woody:
Take a break.
Stop making movies.
At least for now.
Please.
It’s time.
It really really is.
An interesting discussion ensued.

Read some interviews, some recent, some historic, that delve into Woody’s mind. Also, on May 6, 1971, Johnny Carson’s guest host on The Tonight Show was Woody Allen, whose guests included Bob Hope and James Coco.

Happy birthday, Woody. No matter how much I think you’re off your game, you provided me with great cinematic pleasure for many years.

Thanksgiving DVDs

This article from the Washington Post inspired this post, but please don’t feel limited to their list.

What’s your favorite Thanksgiving film?
The Daytrippers
Pieces of April
Miracle on 34th Street
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
The Ice Storm
Home for the Holidays
Funny People

What, no Alice’s Restaurant?

For me, it’s a no-brainer; it’s Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It’s my favorite John Candy film, and though I suppose this is sacrilege, it’s my favorite John Hughes movie as well.

What’s YOUR favorite Thanksgiving movie? I hope, for your sake, it’s not the very depressing The Ice Storm.

Watch Turkeys Away from WKRP in Cincinnati.
ROG

October Ramblin’

Tegan and Johnny Bacardi have been blogging EIGHT years!

From a friend of a friend:

Today I don’t have to think about those who hear “terrorist” when I speak my faith.
Today I don’t have to think about men who don’t believe no means no.
Today I don’t have to think about how the world is made for people who move differently than I do.
Today I don’t have to think about whether I’m married, depending on what state I’m in.
Today I don’t have to think about how I’m going to hail a cab past midnight.
Today I don’t have to think about whether store security is tailing me.
Today I don’t have to think about the look on the face of the person about to sit next to me on a plane.
Today I don’t have to think about eyes going to my chest first.
Today I don’t have to think about what people might think if they knew the medicines I took.
Today I don’t have to think about getting kicked out of a mall when I kiss my beloved hello.
Today I don’t have to think about if it’s safe to hold my beloved’s hand.
Today I don’t have to think about whether I’m being pulled over for anything other than speeding.
Today I don’t have to think about being classified as one of “those people.”
Today I don’t have to think about making less than someone else for the same job at the same place.
Today I don’t have to think about the people who stare, or the people who pretend I don’t exist.
Today I don’t have to think about managing pain that never goes away.
Today I don’t have to think about whether a stranger’s opinion of me would change if I showed them a picture of who I love.
Today I don’t have to think about the chance a store salesmen will ignore me to help someone else.
Today I don’t have to think about the people who’d consider torching my house of prayer a patriotic act.
Today I don’t have to think about a pharmacist telling me his conscience keeps him from filling my prescription.
Today I don’t have to think about being asked if I’m bleeding when I’m just having a bad day.
Today I don’t have to think about whether the one drug that lets me live my life will be taken off the market.
Today I don’t have to think about the odds of getting jumped at the bar I like to go to.
Today I don’t have to think about “vote fraud” theater showing up at my poll station.
Today I don’t have to think about turning on the news to see people planning to burn my holy book.
Today I don’t have to think about others demanding I apologize for hateful people who have nothing to do with me.
Today I don’t have to think about my child being seen as a detriment to my career.
Today I don’t have to think about the irony of people thinking I’m lucky because I can park close to the door.
Today I don’t have to think about memories of being bullied in high school.
Today I don’t have to think about being told to relax, it was just a joke.
Today I don’t have to think about whether someone thinks I’m in this country illegally.
Today I don’t have to think about those who believe that freedom of religion ends with mine.
Today I don’t have to think about how a half-starved 23-year-old being a cultural ideal affects my life.
Today I don’t have to think about how much my life is circumscribed by my body.
Today I don’t have to think about people wanting me cured of loving who I love.
Today I don’t have to think about those who view me an unfit parent because of who I love.
Today I don’t have to think about being told my kind don’t assimilate.
Today I don’t have to think about people blind to the intolerance of their belief lecturing me about my own.
Today I don’t have to think about my body as a political football.
Today I don’t have to think about how much my own needs wear on those I love.
Today I don’t have to think about explaining to others “what happened to me.”
Today I don’t have to think about politicians saying bigoted things about me to win votes.
Today I don’t have to think about those worried that one day people like me will be the majority.
Today I don’t have to think about someone using the name of my religion as a slur.
Today I don’t have to think about so many of the words for me controlling my own life being negatives.
Today I don’t have to think about still not being equal.
Today I don’t have to think about what it takes to keep going.
Today I don’t have to think about how much I still have to hide.
Today I don’t have to think about how much prejudice keeps hold.
Today I don’t have to think about how I’m meant to be grateful that people tolerate my kind.
Today I don’t have to think about all the things I don’t have to think about.
But today I will.

What happens when you point the Hubble Space Telescope to a seemingly blank patch of sky? A view that takes you to the edge of the universe!

Salon writes about The viral genius of “Sesame Street”; With its clever riffs on popular culture, the 41-year-old children’s show has become hipper than ever. And in that vein, Renaissance Geek did five Muppet-related posts the week of October 11-15, including not one, but THREE versions of “Manha, Manha”. Curse you, Eddie!

And I love how the Sesame Street video I Love My Hair has gone viral. ABC News even did a story about Sesame Street head writer Joey Mazzarino, (pictured) who adopted a little girl from Ethiopia named Segi, who hated her hair. “She was going through this phase where she really wanted like the long, blonde hair. … She would look at Barbies and really want the hair.”

Felix culpa, which translated means “happy fault.”

Ken Levine is an Emmy-winning writer who has written/directed and or produced for shows such as MASH, CHEERS, FRASIER, THE SIMPSONS, WINGS, EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND, BECKER, and DHARMA & GREG. He wrote a review of the new movie The Social Network, and someone asked in the comments whether he thought the movie was sexist. The writer of The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin, answered the question in Levine’s blog. Why has the great Sorkin deigned to respond to a query on someone’s Blogspot blog, the less informed in the blogosphere wondered? Levine notes the fallout.

Speakings of The Simpsons, here’s the Banksy opening. Am I the only person who has NO idea who Banksy is?

Dick van Dyke sings the theme to the Dick van Dyke Show, as well as telling us what he knows about Dicks, vans, and dikes.

The Brooklyn Superhero Supply Company. All proceeds from the sale of the products go directly to support the free writing and tutoring programs at 826NYC, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6-18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write.

Stan Lee Discusses SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK
When Captain America Throws His Mighty Shield, he’ll be played by Chris Evans, formerly The Human Torch in The Fantastic Four. That’s two Marvel superheroes and two Jack Kirby characters for one career. (Thx to JF for the comics-related stuff.)

ADD reviews Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Human Sexuality. Incidentally, I found this amazingly sensual.

BTW, ADD is having a Trouble with Comics’ Emergency Rent Sale.

10 Unluckiest Musicians In Rock History.

Stayin’ Alive In The Wall (Pink Floyd vs Bee Gees Mashup)

Singer Janice Whaley is covering every Smiths song by the end of the year, using just her voice and some digital trickery.

NASA is in the process of selecting a “wake-up” song for space exploration. The Star Trek theme has fallen to #2! Guess what’s #1.

Tegan has been blogging EIGHT years, as has Johnny Bacardi, which I find incredible.

RepubliCorp™, Buying Democracy, one race at a time.

When Eisenhower took office in 1953, a group of conservative Republicans claimed that the outgoing Democrats had been stealing gold deposits from Fort Knox. Bowing to pressure from the DAR, Ike had the gold counted. Sure enough, it came up ten bucks short: The depository contained only $30,442,415,581.70.

I’m trying to drink more water, so I really needed to know why ice cubes fuse together in water.

A palindrome reads the same backward as forward. This video reads the exact opposite backward as forward. Not only does it read the opposite, but the meaning is also the exact opposite. Make sure you read as well as listen…forward and backward. This video, less than two minutes long, was submitted in a contest by a 20-year old. The contest was titled “u @ 50” by AARP.

MOVIE REVIEW: Easy A

Maybe Easy A is trying too hard to be the next John Hughes movie.


The date movie with the wife for the month, Columbus Day, was Easy A, based on some positive reviews. High school student Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone, from the movies Zombieland and Superbad) finds herself invisible in high school. She ends up lying to her best friend Rhiannon (Alyson Michalka from some Disney shows and the current Hellcats) about going away for a weekend sex romp with a fictional college freshman, when in fact she barely left her bedroom. After the lie gets out, she finds that people ARE noticing her, for the wrong reasons. She then embraces her inner Hester Prynne from the book “The Scarlet Letter,” which she is currently reading in school.

I don’t see a lot of “teen comedies”, but I did enjoy this one, albeit with some reservations. I totally believed that one can get lost in high school, even someone as bright and attractive as Olive. Definitely bought the notion she could have a vapid BFF like Rhi, who she’s known since grade school. I can relate to the intoxication of sudden attention. When she agrees to help out a bullied gay friend, Brandon (Dan Byrd from Cougar Town) by pretending to sleep with him, her image rapidly goes downhill; that part is certainly believable, though played a bit loosely.

I also enjoyed Stanley Tucci and especially Patricia Clarkson, as Olive’s liberal and trusting parents, Dill and Rosemary, who occasionally offer TMI, though it sometimes felt those scenes were from another, better movie. And I really enjoyed Thomas Haden Church as her concerned English teacher, Mr. Griffith.

I was less impressed with the caricatures that the religious fanatics, i.e. born-again Christians, led by Marianne (Amanda Bynes, from What I Like About You) are portrayed. It’s not that I don’t think Christianity can’t be knocked, as this article seems to suggest. It’s just that they are painted with such a broad, and lazy brush. Also, a simulated sex scene is more slapstick than the rest of the movie, giving it an uneven tone.

Maybe Easy A is trying too hard to be the next John Hughes movie. Hughes gets namechecked more than once.

Let me say again: I liked the film. It didn’t drag, I didn’t want to check my watch, and I liked spending time getting to understand Olive’s motivation as her life gets spun around. And if the ending is a tad predictable. and maybe a little rushed, that was OK too.

Recommended for rental.

M is for Mockingbird

A marathon reading to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee’s classic novel TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD and raise funds for Literacy Volunteers of the Greater Capital Region will take place on Saturday, November 6, 2010 from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Townsend Park Bakery LLC, 238 Washington Ave., Albany.


2010 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. If you are unfamiliar with this classic, which won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize, read here, and the affiliated links. But basically, it’s about a young white girl named Scout, a/k/a Jean Louise – the “tomboy” narrator of the tale – growing up in a U.S. Southern town in the 1930s with her older brother Jem, whose lawyer-father Atticus Finch ends up defending a black man accused of raping a white woman, and the repercutions the trial has on all involved, indeed on the whole town. The case was almost certainly inspired by the Scottsboro Boys trials of the 1930s in Alabama, where nine black teenagers allegedly gang-raped two white women, a crime that never actually occurred.

The story is probably best known through the popular 1962 movie adaptation starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, Brock Peters as the accused, Tom Robinson, and Mary Badham as Scout, Oscar-nominated for Best Supporting Actress. The film also featured a young Robert Duvall, in his film debut, as the mysterious and misunderstood Boo Radley, a role some have compared to his part in the 2010 film Get Low.

The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, but lost to the epic Lawrence of Arabia. It won three awards: Peck for Best Actor Award (his first Oscar win, fifth nomination); Horton Foote for Best Adapted Screenplay; and the team of Art Directors/Set Decorators. Hear one of the most famous speeches from the movie, as well as its musical theme from the Oscar-nominated score by Elmer Bernstein.

From Wikipedia: In 1995, the film was listed in the National Film Registry. It also ranks twenty-fifth on the American Film Institute’s 10th-anniversary list of the greatest American movies of all time, and #1 on AFI’s list of best courtroom films. In 2003, AFI named Atticus Finch the greatest movie hero of the 20th century.

Atticus Finch is considered not only one of America’s most beloved lawyers but also one of the greatest cinematic fathers.

Earlier this year, I got a chance to see a play adaptation of the story at Capital Rep in Albany. While not as strong as the movie – how could it be? – it was nonetheless enjoyable.

For the 50th anniversary, CBS Sunday Morning reported on the celebratory events taking place in Harper Lee’s hometown. Notably absent was the reclusive Ms. Lee herself, who never wrote another book because she felt it could never be as good as her first one.

An interesting dichotomy: To Kill A Mockingbird is taught all over the country – here’s a readers’ and teachers’ guide – but also one of the books most banned or challenged.

A marathon reading to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Harper Lee’s classic novel TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD – To Kill A Saturday – and raise funds for Literacy Volunteers of the Greater Capital Region will take place on Saturday, November 6, 2010, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at the Townsend Park Bakery LLC, 238 Washington Ave., Albany, NY. Rumor has it that I will be one of the readers.
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And now for something completely different: Mockingbird – Carly Simon and James Taylor.

ABC Wednesday – Round 7

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