Indiana Jones and the Casting of Blanchett
Mar 16Cate (the actress, not my daughter) joins Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones 4.
Unfortunately, thanks to that spoilsport Moriarity, we won’t enjoy nearly as many vicious, mocking, evil fake titles this time around.
Can I just say something? I was listening to Star Wars music in the car the other day, and thinking about what unbridled and awesome fun both Lucas and Spielberg can create at the movies when they are on their respective games, and suddenly, I realized that I very much WANT Indiana Jones 4 to be good. I want what would essentially be one last popcorn movie fling by the modern masters of the genre. I want one more event movie that redefines the idea of “event movie,” packed to the gills with giant silly set pieces and pithy one-liners. I want Harrison Ford to smirk just right, I want Marcus Brody to putter around like an idiot, and I want the Nazis to lose.
Come on, guys. Just be exactly like you were thirty years ago. One more time. Please.
The Best Host Not Played By Andy Hallett
Mar 15I saw The Host this week and it’s just as awesome as everyone is saying: endearing characters, amazingly cool monster and some surprisingly deft humor. Go see!
But…groan, sigh, etc. As is the case whenever there’s a smart genre movie with something to say, critics are going out of their way to point out how the smartness and the something to say part mean The Host isn’t really genre.
Take this, from Time‘s Richard Corliss:
I’ve seen this sentiment echoed in other discussions of the film and it really sticks in my craw.
How many times do we have to say it? The best genre works usually have something to say beyond “monster go boom” or “spaceship go bang” and that’s why we love them and worship them and dissect them for pages and pages on the internets. Not that “monster go boom” isn’t entertaining, but you know what I mean.
I know that slapping two-toned face paint on Frank Gorshin seems sort of dorky now, but it counted as Metaphor With Something To Say back then. And there are countless other examples like that, but I shall not list them, for I know I am preaching to the choir.
Anyway. For its next trick, maybe Time wants to run an article about how comics aren’t for kids anymore? It’s always fun to watch Chris turn purple.
(My)Space: The Final Frontier
Mar 15So who here MySpaces?
I know — you are now wondering if a time machine has suddenly transported you to the magical year 2003(ish). But look, I’ve been quite firmly on the anti-MySpace bandwagon for a good bit now. Not that I think the thing is bad, it just riddles an awkward person like myself with all sorts of anxieties. For example:
1. That having a MySpace page will allow people that I have left firmly in the past to find me and try and talk to me and shit. Blah! With the talking!
2. That the whole “top friends” thing will make me throw up a little. First of all, how do I CHOOSE AMONGST MY FRIENDS? I guess I could be cool about it…like my pal Mary, who “doesn’t do top 8” and still has that diabolical genius Tom as #1. But I have a feeling this would fill me with anxiety as well. And what if nobody deigns to deem me a “top friend”? Won’t this send me back to the cold, cold halls of junior high, when nobody wanted to be my locker partner and someone scribbled a monkey face on the Danny Wood portion of my New Kids poster?! (I didn’t care that much because Danny was my least favorite.) What if I am everybody’s NINTH FAVORITE FRIEND?!
3. That my MySpace page will simply sit, unloved, like my long-forgotten Friendster page, and will just give me another thing to not update on the internet.
HOWEVER. I have been advised by others that MySpace can be used for happy things! Such as…
1. Re-connecting with people I actually DO want to talk to! And keeping in better touch with other friends.
2. Putting up a little link to this here blog, in order to direct curious users to our nerd corner of the web!
3. Being able to view all sorts of funny/cute pix of friends and their offspring and shit like that.
Also, perhaps it would be a good tool for me to attempt to LET GO of some of my neuroses (see Part 1, #2), which I am trying to do now that I’m schmirty. OK? MySpace as therapy!
So who here MySpaces and what do you use it for and how has it improved (or detracted from) your glorious life?
"PETER PAN?!?!?!"
Mar 15Yes, Cap’n Hook–Peter Pan. The Disney movie, and a REMARKABLE four-part posting of actual story notes from the film’s “sweatbox” go-round.
Good News/Bad News
Mar 14Which do you want first? Oh, fine, ya old softie.
Good News: Paul “Geoffrey Jellineck” Dinello is attached to direct a pilot for Fox entitled “Me & Lee?”
“Me & Lee?” a half-hour single-camera comedy, centers on a guy with chronic back pain who gets more than he bargained for when he undergoes “bionic” back surgery in a secret basement lab run by Lee Majors.
Bad News: Fucking Viacom is suing fucking Google and fucking YouTube for $1 billion over copyright infringement.
The rotting corpses of the Old Media cling with skeletal hands to the edges of their deeply-dug graves.
