a bigger splash - good girls (love bad boys)

the song i'm currently obsessing

new order meets the belle stars? and see, 1970's cinema is useful!

Star Wars: In Concert

we're seeing this tomorrow. you may be jealous, i know i would be.



the reader has to understand that i listened to selections from the star wars album twice a day, everyday, for a year after it came out. pretty much ruled my life back then.

muzak of the day

muzak of the day: hold me now, thompson twins



for a 23 year old BYU student in the 80's, this song was terribly important.

and the video heavily, horrifyingly, influenced that student's concept of "dancing" at the time.

re TV

first, the new stuff:

• flash forward was cancelled. two episodes remain this year, and that's the end of that. i'm disappointed, because i really got into the premise, that the entire population of the world blacks out momentarily, except for a couple of people, during which they see a few seconds of their just-weeks-away future. how will they force that future "to come true", or prevent their perceived future from happening? i had a hard time watching joseph fiennes "act", but the inclusion of a few favorites from LOST (chah-lie, penny) as well as john ("the cho") cho, and some clever plot twists, made the show very watchable.
  
  
• community will continue on next year. hooray. it might be my tied-for-favorite show this year.
  
  
• modern family will also continue next year. hooray II...the other tied-for-favorite show this year.
  
  
• glee remains an enthusiastic viewing experience, even if the episode plots are so, so overdone now (yeah, someone's going to do away with the glee club; yeah, kurt's dad is kinda okay with the gay; yeah, this girl is dating that guy still). what i would like to see: a true musical episode -- they've come close -- where the characters play out their lives in song, as opposed to selecting a song for their weekly assignment that coincides with the moral to be learned in that episode.
  
  (note about musicals in general: why do they always have to be about performers, or people who dream of becoming performers? remember in the old days, when songs were part of the dialogue among characters, and not just "numbers" strategically placed to hold our attention?)

old stuff:

• LOST ends sunday night. this show, i'll miss it...it was engrossing, even during the season(s) where i couldn't figure out what the eff was going on, or keep track of the several new characters, and their place in the overall story. funny how a viewer comes to "care" so much about fictional characters. these characters, i'll miss them.
  
  
• so long, scrubs, you lost me at "med school". bye to better off ted, as well, which i didn't trust with the first episode or two, but thereafter became enamored.
  
  
• the office is still entirely watchable, as is parks and recreation, which finally doesn't look like the little sister of the office. 30 rock is forever hilarious.

Twin Peaks - MC Chris

this video starts out really irritating, but since it's twin peaks, just have to watch, right?

don't question senor chang

...or you'll get bit

that's good

there are few songs i'd stop a conversation to listen to, but devo's "that's good" is one of them:



wait, what were we talking about?

more movies

more movies over the past couple days:

• land of the lost: you want it to be funny, but it just isn't. will ferrel needs to try a new character. not a recommendation.
  
  
• you don't know jack: the story of dr jack kevorkian (filtered through that al pacino character), featuring the too-rarely-seen brenda vaccaro. another product of the liberal media that shows how the fundamentalist right consistently takes the most inhumane positions when dealing with other people's business. a recommendation (see it on HBO).
  
  
• capricorn one: one from my teen-age years, and the only movie i own with brenda vaccaro (yeah, never was a fan of that supergirl movie). faked mars landing of which the astronauts become victims, and attempt to abandon. all star cast, including hal holbrook's hair, OJ simpson, the guy from "law & order", josh brolin's dad, and two helicoptors that turn to face each other to communicate. classic soundtrack score by jerry goldsmith. a recommendation, if you promise not to laugh at me for liking this, afterwards.
  
  
  
  
• the man from earth: as college professor prepares to leave town, he tells his associates that he's actually a caveman who has somehow avoided death for the past several thousand years. what an odd movie, but it keeps the viewer involved by laying out a train of thought and chugging along that track for an hour and a half. best aspect: religious christian woman is offended by the man's perspective on living through the new testament era, and yet...comes to "believe in him". not all aspects of the movie were this successful, and an event between him and an older psych professor at the end of the movie is fairly offensive. recommendation? eh...maybe.
  
  
• superman returns: haven't viewed this for a couple of years, and wanted to revisit it after offending some of the family by disavowing my allegiance to the mythology. and i do like it. for whatever faults so many critics say it has, the initial rescue scene is fairly perfect in capturing superman's return. i've noticed in previous viewings, though, that the movie captures this weird dark turquoise-blue hue, pasted all over the movie. not sure what that's all about, but i noted for the first time the strong connection with...water. hmmm. and the guy who played jimmy olsen, sam huntington, is a real standout. finally, the chopped up movie score is criminal.
  
  
  

out of boredom

i did this last night...

the husband is out of town for the weekend, returning today.

HURTS - 4Play (Channel 4)

movie update

DVR / on demand / netflix streaming movies last weekend:

• heaven can wait: movie from my childhood, i was glad to see that it holds up pretty well. warren beatty is pulled to heaven sooner than planned, and just before playing in the super bowl; he finagles with mr jordan (james mason, playing god for real, this time) to let him get in a substitute body in order to play. in the meantime, he foils a murder plot (by the hilarious charles grodin and dyan cannon) against his substitute host, and falls in love with julie christie. cute. LOVE the theme from this one, written by david grusin. definitely a recommendation.

• dim sum funeral: i have no idea why i selected this, and it was terrible. terrible and awful. terrible and awful and horrible. no redeeming quality whatsoever. avoid at all costs.
  
  
• harold & kumar escape from guantanimo bay: had its funny moments, and didn't vary far from the first movie (what i remember of it, anyway). it's mostly stupid, of course, but that is sort of the point. a recommendation.
  
  
• rachel got married: so much talk about this when it came out, and deservedly so. for my taste, a little too much emphasis on the wedding itself (i mean, seriously, they must have had half an hour of the ceremony and reception). recovering addict stories are always (necessarily) uncomfortable, but as ugly as several characters' actions may have been, this telling was totally believable and engaging. definitely a recommendation.
  
  
• ciao: a little off-beat, but "nice" movie about two guys who have suddenly lost a friend and (potential) partner. i get what they were trying to convey with so many shots of the main character quietly staring into space, but there was too much of that. still, the connection between the three of them seemed real. as we watched the two survivors review a video left behind by mark, the deceased, the husband mentioned that mark didn't seem worth all the pain these two were going through because of him. the husband is right; the telling of mark's character should have matched the portrayal of him in that short scene. and, for the lead character's mostly wooden portrayal, his breakdown scene was well-timed, and really stood out. a sort-of recommendation.

i

i could spend an entire afternoon watching "match game" from the 1970's -- this i know, because i did so, yesterday

i'm 50

i'm rounder than i want / expected to be, but won't stop eating sugar

i have a memory of guy projectile vomiting off the curb outside a nightclub at closing time, as the "sidewalk sale" was gathering -- that lot of hungry fellas looking to see what's leftover at the end of a disco night

i may never suspend my quest for finding new music that sounds like old music

i think the adjective, "amazing", is used inappropriately for the most part


wouldn't it be good, nik kershaw

work stuff

work: one of those in-between days when you circle around, waiting on others to respond to your several requests that have been piling up.
 
makes one feel unproductive. some would be bothered by that.
 
i am not.

schmeligion

let's talk religion, shall we?

when one is put in the position of proclaiming that, "i don't believe in god", invariably the question comes back, "well then, what DO you believe in?"

i used to think this was an invalid question, that belief wasn't something to be supplemented if god-deficient...but i've come to rethink this...indeed, one does substitute god with something. but what?

my standard answer (it's surprising how many times i've been asked the question) has been "the common decency of humans". and i think i'm staying with that. i mean, i don't see that i avoid killing people because i'm afraid on an imaginary superhero sending me to the firey depths; rather, it's just something that i think will injure someone else, and i don't see as acceptable in our current version of society. same for lying, stealing, and coveting asses.

(graven images, i'm okay with.)

movie weekend

movie weekend:

• the grocer's son: the lead male's presence alone makes this movie entirely watchable, but it has many other appeals, as well. a french movie that centers around a young man's need to reconnect with his hometown past via customer service skills required for carrying out the family business during his father's illness. americans would say it's ironic that a french movie pushes the value of friendly customer service, but whutevs.
  
  dysfunctional family relationships abound, and a crush he has on his paris neighbor doesn't seem to stand a chance against his need to not-connect with others.
  
  gorgeous scenery -- one wishes that one could live in such a picturesque village, while still enjoying what the city has to offer, but that's probably unrealistic. fun characters in the collection of townies that lead boy needs to deal with. a series of ups and downs, but ending with that lesson learned. a recommendation.
  
  
• precious: finally! pretty compelling, great characters throughout. a few surprises here and there (particularly as it applies to the mom-character's level of hostility, and mariah carey's presence in general), but nothing detracted from the title character's journey. my only concern: why was the father character completely absent? i know that happens in real life, but movie-wise, he kinda got off the hook, there. a recommendation.
  
  
• gay | not gay: i've seen many short movie collections that are homo-centric, and generally speaking, the entries are pretty odd in their undeveloped characters and premature endings. are the gays so shallow, or can they not tell a story in 15 minutes or less? this collection, though, has an interesting premise: the interaction of a gay with a non-gay. a couple came off entirely "odd", but one was somewhat affecting, cowboy forever, from central america. i guess because it was done so much as a low-budget first-person documentary, with lots of non-actors, that this viewer kinda fell for the authenticity.
  
  float, from south africa, wasn't bad, though i always have issues with depictions of artists in movies (usually childish and not in touch with themselves), compounded here by an on-again, off-again OCD condition. and again, the ending wrapped up a little too quickly, a lot too easily. sort of a recommendation.
  
  
• mammoth:
intersecting story lines a la crash. slow-paced, but still engaging from start to finish (thank you, english-speaking gael garcia bernal). just a little disappointment on where gael's story goes, but not unexpected; michele williams seems like a real adult for the first time; the philippines angle got creepy...but again, not completely unexpected. potentially too much kid-trauma, but it doesn't really get horrible. i was even able to watch without averting my eyes, a rare occurrence. a recommendation.