There was a morning bike ride and breakfast followed by an hour-long Oscar Poker chat, and then the IKEA guys deivered the couch…not a single piece but in sections inside big boxes and plastic cases with wing nuts and screws and slipcovers, etc. So I had to put it together — not any kind of a problem but it took about 90 minutes. Time flew.
God, these guys were perfect in 1950 or ’51! Why can’t they invent a drug that prevents you from physically aging beyond the age of 22 or 32 at the oldest for the rest of your life while allowing for the usual gathering of intellectual knowledge and spiritual wisdom? It wouldn’t be for everyone and perhaps not for most, but…
One question: where did Lewis Black get that ’70s tie? It’s like a satin shawl.
Listen to this fascinating discussion of the impossible-to-swallow, fantasy-projection finale of Martin Scorsese‘s just-restored Taxi Driver by Slate‘s Dana Stevens and John Swansburg. It feels like a two-character play about a gap in comprehension among two extremely bright observers, and how they can absorb every detail of a classic film and still miss something really obvious.
Stevens and Swansburg list all the incredulous stuff during the film’s final minutes — tabloid news stories describing Robert De Niro‘s East Village whorehouse shootout as “heroic,” Jodie Foster‘s parents writing to thank him for saving their daughter, Cybil Shepard getting into his cab out at the very end and giving him admiring looks, De Niro’s Mohawk haircut completely grown out two or three months later — and they still can’t accept and in fact half-dismiss that the dreamlike coda is fantasy. Why? Because there hasn’t been any “precedent” or “cue” for a fantasy sequence. Swansburg actually calls it “a little bit of a false note.”
If I never see another movie about fierce and growly Asian guys leaping around and fighting each other with swords, it’ll be too soon. I’m serious. If powerful forces were to sent a rep to my door with this message — “You will never again see another Asian-machismo sword-fight movie in your life” — my answer would be, “Okay…I can live with that.” And I’m saying this as someone has has three real-deal swords in his apartment, including a samurai sword.
I’ve always respected and admired director Todd Haynes, and I realize that Mildred Pierce (Sunday, 9 pm) has been well-reviewed, and I accept that I’ll be seeing all five episodes…but I just can’t get it up so far. I respect James M. Cain but I don’t relate to women-suffering-in-the-’30s atmosphere. Plus I didn’t get any screeners or screening invites and…I don’t know. I just don’t feel involved.
President Obama will explain the Libyan adventure early Monday evening. Most people support limited military action to take out the bad guy and prevent the killing of civilians, especially if it doesn’t drag on for years and cost hundreds of billions. It seems to me that for the first time in I-don’t-know-how-many-decades, U.S. military action is actually up to something half-good.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules will be the weekend champ by Sunday night with a likely $22 million and change, according to boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino. And the deeply loathed Sucker Punch, which made $8 million yesterday, will come in second with about $20 million, and possibly a bit less than that.
The Lincoln Lawyer — a nice score for all concerned and particularly Mathew McConaughey — will come in fourth with approximately $10,300,000 and a two-week cume of $28,267,183, give or take.
And Tom McCarthy‘s Win Win, by far the best film out there right now, is in limited release and doing well given the potential audience, but is basically making nickels. It’ll gain ground as it expands, of course.
$150 for the used bike (Craigslist, used as a prop on a TV show) and $180 for the front light, the horn, the rear blinking light, the rear-wheel rack, the black basket, a three-pronged bike wrench and a snake lock with two keys. My last bike was stolen; good to have one again.
I know what this sounds like (i.e., “aah, the good old days!”), but I really can’t imagine someone making a more satisfying, better-photographed, delightfully performed and tonally spot-on Three Musketeers than Richard Lester‘s 1973 version…or versions, I should say, since a not-quite-as-good Part 2 installment was released the following year. Plus you have to assume that 3-D will degrade things.
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So in addition to buying stand-alone, multi-region Blurays of Stanley Kubrick‘s Barry Lyndon and Lolita as well as a French-language-only Bluray of Rififi during a half-week stopover in Paris following the Cannes Film Festival, I’ll also be visiting the Stanley Kubrick exhibit (now through July 23rd) at the Cinematheque.
