Category: Arts & Entertainment
-
R.I.P. Peter Boyle
I guess it’s a little weird to be upset when celebrities pass away, but then few celebrities are as cool as Peter Boyle. He’s got a permanent place on my cool list just for his performance in Young Frankenstein, of course. But he was great in everything I saw him in — the “Clyde Bruckman’s…
-
Best Actress in a Supporting Role
I was surprised that For Your Consideration had such a low rating on Rotten Tomatoes until I started following the links. Some of the reviews, like the one from The Onion’s AV Club are critical of the movie but still give it a recommendation. I guess that’s a sign that a pass/fail rating isn’t suitable…
-
Stop winding it up so much please thank you.
I was watching “Saturday Night Live” this week (eyes over here, Mrs. Beatty) and the first musical guest was Gwen Stefani doing “Wind it Up” with an over-enthusiastic drum line and a throng of badly-dressed dancers. It’s difficult for me to describe my reaction to seeing this, but in short: I became firmly convinced that…
-
The Man With the Golden Franchise
When I heard they were doing a reboot of the James Bond franchise, I thought it was a terrible idea. The series has degraded so far down to parody at this point, the only way to do it correctly would be to start releasing them as period pieces. Not Austin Powers parody, but just turn…
-
A Tale Told by an Idiot
I mentioned RiffTrax a while back. Tonight I finally got to try it out. Fans of MST3k have wondered a lot what it would be like if the guys had been able to do a good movie for a change. Well, I still can’ tanswer that, because I saw The Phantom Menace. (Yes, I own…
-
Guilty Pleasure
I honestly can’t tell if “Heroes” has gotten significantly better since I first saw it (and mercilessly ragged on it), or if I’m just starting to come down off my high horse and admit that my tastes aren’t as highbrow as I like to think. I’ve still got problems with it. Biggest is that the…
-
Roast in a 250 degree oven for 45 minutes, then rub it with a turtle
That’s Pearl Forrester’s turkey recipe from Mystery Science Theater 3000. A post on Rain’s blog reminded me how I used to gather round the VCR on Thanksgiving day, watching or recording as much of the MST3K marathon as I could manage. I had moved on from that profound sense of loss, so thanks to Rain…
-
It can make your head hurt
Everybody knows that when you’re faced with an overwhelming amount of work, not because of outside pressure as much as because you’ve been slow to get things done, the best course of action is to procrastinate some more. The past couple of nights I’ve been hard-core with the procrastination; I did something I can’t remember…
-
Flushed Away
One thing I forgot to mention: Flushed Away is a lot of fun, and I highly recommend it to anybody who likes Wallace & Gromit. It’s pretty dire for the first ten minutes or so; the whole thing has the taint of DreamWorks about it, and you’re likely to believe that the whole thing’s been…
-
Chick movies
This week I had an inadvertent Mary Harron film festival, because I rented The Notorious Bettie Page and American Psycho without realizing they were both by the same director. You can understand my confusion — one’s a biography about a 50s pin-up star, and the other’s a horror/black comedy adaptation of a satirical novel about…
-
I Don’t
Ha! Boom! Suck on that witty post title, “Lost!” Looks like the show has finally hit me with the one-two punch: a mediocre episode followed by a long break to completely ween me of any sense of involvement in the series. It’s their own fault; they’ve been hyping this thing since even before the season…
-
Subtropical Homesick Blues
Oh boy! My blog’s first post-by-request. Granted, it’s about “Lost,” so I would’ve ended up talking about it anyway, but still. It looks like the “Lost” backlash is in full effect on the internets, to the point that even the complaints have gotten stale. For my part, just over the last four or five weeks…