#16 — Apollo 13 (Ron Howard, 1995) There’s never any doubt about the outcome of Apollo 13. It’s not just that the troubled NASA mission it depicts is a part of history, and anyone with a cursory knowledge of the … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the — Number Sixteen
I’ve got all sorts of things to write, but my brain’s not up to it today. I’ll drink some of this tonight– –and I’ll be ready tomorrow. (Due credit: I got the image from an amazing corner of the Interweb.) Continue reading Avocados filled her breast, cauliflower filled her brain
Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris, 2008). The Oscar-winning documentarian turns his attention (and his Interrotron) to the appalling abuse of prisoners inflicted by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison. The resulting film is exhaustive and exhausting, laying out the ugly details of the matter with an appropriate relentlessness. Morris corrals interviews with most of the principals, and their collective testimony seems painfully honest if sometimes buffered down in the name of understandable self-preservation. Morris inserts a handful of subdued and yet entirely unnecessary recreations. It’s a tactic that he’s notably employed before, but this time out it’s just intrusive. The … Continue reading Benedek, Lang, Morris, Scorsese, Wilder
To the best of my knowledge, December 31, 1989 was the first time that WWSP-90FM spent New Year’s Eve counting down the top ninety albums of the year. I took all of our charts from the yearly, dutifully compiled and … Continue reading One for Friday: Fetchin Bones, “I Dig You”
“‘But Grandma never said anything about how the places might make you feel. She wasn’t a talker, especially not about things like that. When she did talk, it was to tell you how to do something, or to tell you something that had happened before you were born, or to remind you how to act right. She had strict ideas about acting right. She wouldn’t touch you much either. What she liked to touch were woods things, things that came out of the ground. But even without the talking, she taught me to let into my insides the real of … Continue reading Great Moments in Literature
Just a quick reminder to myself: I really need to read a little tonight. Continue reading When your dreamboat turns out to be a footnote, I’m a man with a mission in two or three editions
Earlier today, The Retroist posted an old TV commercial that got me thinking about the betrayals of my childhood years. Okay, maybe that’s unduly harsh, but I do have a short list of playthings that I longed for as a … Continue reading Charge it like a puzzle, hit me wearin’ muzzles
Clearly I need to figure out how to channel my inner gorilla. Continue reading Don’t worry be happy, things will get better naturally
#17 — Searching for Bobby Fischer (Steven Zaillian, 1993) There are so many things that movies do wonderfully well, arguably better than any other medium, and those naturally tend to be the elements that grab the attention more forcefully and … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 90s — Number Seventeen
I have a very busy day at work today (what’s holiday weekend of which you speak), but at least as I abandon the other member of the household, I can take solace in the fact that one of our movie channels has programming an offering seemingly just for her. Continue reading “There’s tentacles between our worlds,” he said, “so I believe”
