Edgy MD

He's just dropping her off at the Early Burnout Young Actresses of the Eighties Poker Game. He was probably there to make a play for Jamie Gertz.

My issues weren't technical. They remain, as usual with these thingies, writing that's both incoherent and uninspired. I don't get how this is missed. It's one thing when these films are composed on a storyboard. It's another when they are composed in the editing room. I find myself watching a scene, understanding where they are trying to get to, and re-writing the dialogue in my head as it happens. Technically, these things tend to be brilliant, even when flawed, but all so meaningless.

Yeah, and now 4-9 with three walks: .444 / .583 / .778 // 1.361. You know the Japanese teams must be clamoring for him. A Bondsonian start.

It's not a question of what you are or are not entitled to do.

There's a story about DeNiro zipping in to the set of The Fan by helicopter, doing his scenes, and zipping out. When he complimented John Kruk on his acting chops, Kruk supposedly responded with "How the fuck do you know? You're never here." That said, I think labeling these guys with generational supremacy only encourages that sort of thing.

It's a whole category unto itself --- Hollywood legends who never stopped working despite abysmal batting averages over the second half of their careers. Paul Newman DeNiro Woodsy Allen Francis Ford Coppola You know, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is a perfectly decent film, but in it you can watch three careers clearing the shark at once in Coppala, DeNiro, and Brannagh. And Brannagh was too young to be doing no shark jumping. Flying toward legend status and then blammo, his career was going nowhere. He may be the latter day Orson Welles.

Funny that you list all those names and leave out Bono. He was demonstrating good sense and taste. Because, really now, someone else says "the Muscle Shoals sound", and the first thing I think of is Bono. What a fucking attention whore he turned out to be. Hasn't the world had enough of Bono pontificating? And what the hell does Bono have to do with Muscle Shoals anyway? Less Bono. More of Duane Allman wailing on the the back end of Wilson Pickett's Hey Jude. But how do you really feel? The quick zip through the seventies left one thing unclear to me: Were all those monsters recorded at the Swampers' studio while Fame faded? Or were they both churning out hits?

I saw it in the first post of the thread. He's a fair-skinned infielder under six feet with fringey talent. Sure, but aren't they all compared to Eckstein? But, you know, part of the punishment for your first PED offense is that you forfeit any and all rights to the label "scrappy."

Funny that you list all those names and leave out Bono. He's so omnipresent that he's the forest you miss for the trees. I mostly liked. They really seemed to stay away from the race questions, and suddenly they dove right in. But I'm not sure they tackled the race angle as deeply as they might've. Fascinating thing to realize that a trip through Fame Studios was a step toward sophistication for the likes of Percy Sledge. But for Wilson Pickett, it seemed, it was the exact opposite. You got the idea that going down south to a studio amid the cotton fields was for him frightening --- something akin to getting sold down the river by Atlantic. To hear him and Rick Hall tell it, it was like he was afraid from the time he landed that he wouldn't be getting out. They may have played the spiritual/animism side of the story too much. On the other hand, it mostly worked. I would have liked a little more about the technical side of what made those records work. How did Hall place his mics? What sort of reverb was his signature? I really liked learning that Pickett's "Hey Jude" recording was Duane Allman's idea, and the Swampers' notion that that session with Allman on slide was the birth of southern rock. I was very surprised to hear that Aretha only got one side ("I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)") out of her sessions at Fame and then the Swampers followed her up to New York and played a bunch of her other Atlantic classicks. Gun to my head, I'd've sworn that the bulk of her hits were cut in Alabama. But really, even when they left Fame, this was the story of Rick Hall. That guy had enough tragedy in his life to make Roy Orbison blush, but he built his little kingdom down there despite it all, and it's a chapter in the rock 'n' roll story that stands side by side with Phil Spector's or Berry Gordy's or Ahmet Ertugen's or the Chess Brothers or anybody's. So yeah, most of my quibbles were... more! More technical information. More wrestling with the racial dynamic. More recounts from the seventies period, when Muscle Shoals stopped producing soul that rocked, and started producing rock with soul. There are seven musical Osmonds and they couldn't talk to one of them?! Nice ending with Alicia Keyes and Swampers cutting the Dylan song.

When dudes are getting stronger at 20, it's pretty consistent with their peer group. Asides, minor leaguers have a lot tougher time evading testing scrutiny.

The guy is hitting .600, Ash. It's March 6. Enough with the rush to surrender.

Yeah, that Sri Lankan Dutch kid was a trip. He seems to place his whole self worth on winning the Worlds, or at least elevating his finish significantly from last year. He's convinced it's all he has, while he in fact has this wonderful skill, a great family who perhaps saved him from a far tougher life in an orphanage, and every girl in his dance studio is breathless when he walks by.

One subplot along the way is a group of young adults women from Russia competing as an ensemble. It's not stated but you get the idea that they fell into stepdancing because they couldn't cut it or didn't have/couldn't achieve the body type to make it as Russian ballerinas. Their coach files in from Ireland every few weeks and he's young and funny and enthusiastic, but what he keeps trying to get across to them is that they're solid mechanically, but their dancing is so utterly joyless. He tries all the teasing and charm he has, but you get the idea they can't project anything but how miserable it is to be a young woman in Russia these days.

Hello, I'm... "Ewan Herndt." And you are...?

Heartbreaking to see a joyous art form reduced at it's pinnacle and supposedly highest expression to a joyless competition that leads to heartbreak for all but the very few. Also the trashy make-up-and-spray-tan culture that has sprung up around it can't not lead to Toddlers and Tiaras or Strictly Ballroom moments of how-did-it-come-to-this? head shaking. I did not know this, but somehow along the way, since (1) a commonly accepted defining trait of the idealized Irish lass is ringlets, and since (2) ringlet curls aren't so common as all that, and (3) keeping a girl with straight hair in curls is a pain in the ass and possibly damaging, literally every last one of the female competitors wear ridiculous wigs, no matter how lovely their natural locks are. The girl on the left above, for instance, seems like sweet and level-headed girl from Derry, Northern Ireland, but her costume makes her look like Marie Antoinette in drag. The one on the right, a New Yorker, seems to be in transition. She clearly started this dancing thing on a lark, but somewhere along the way, it changed to the most important thing, and then to the only thing, for her and her mother, who you can see transitioning from a decent person to a tiger mother/helicopter mother hybrid. Clearly, the child's future psyche is on the line at this tournament. The film, for better or for worse, isn't trying to necessarily lead you to the horrified conclusion I came to, but I might like a little history. When did the "Worlds" start becoming so global? When did the wigs first appear? When did they become de riguer? How much did participation spike after Riverdance? How much are the coaches getting paid and the families getting soaked? Are there any positive outcomes outside of a slot in a touring company of Riverdance or Lord of the Dance? I mean, how big is the professional world?

Vic Sage wrote: And i would disagree somewhat with your characterization of the plot of VERTIGO That's not my characterization of the plot.

The ironic thing is that Novak's career-defining role was as a woman who submitted herself to artificial transformation, and became a monster for it.

Wilco, definitely. Perhaps more than the other three. But they're not one of the big three. They're Wilco. Heck, Wilco in many ways, is Big Star, as far as being a moody tasteful band that has achieved every thing a band could ever hope to achieve, except get a song on the radio.

What's available through streaming is a terribly cut cross-section. It seemed early on that they were just cycling through getting TV shows up and were holding back on getting a critical mass of films. But then good films started coming DOWN, and what the fuck was that about? I'm guessing: (1) TV shows are a winning ticket for them --- rights-acquisition-wise and customer-satisfaction-wise. A commitment to And Justice for All is a commitment of two hours by the viewer. A commitment to LA Law is a commitment of 250 hours. (2) It probably makes business sense to put the shitty films online. Who is going to wait a few days for Caddyshack 2 to come in the mail? But maybe I might drunkenly make it my impulse selection to tide me over while I'm waiting for Apocalypse Now to arrive in my mail box. It's the electronic version of selling Goobers at the counter.

Good point. I'm going to go and rent Argo again tonight just 'cuz.

Bleh. Lot's of stuff stolen right out of Lord or the Rings, including the whole prologue.

I think once they got that Mitch Williams parallel in there, they couldn't let go. As if he's the first or greatest high whiff/high walk reliever. In a farm system loaded with young, power arms, a lefthanded strikeout machine named Jack Leathersich isn’t the Mets’ best pitching prospect. But he’s surely the most intriguing. "Surely"? Not "possibly" or "arguably"? You've surely painted yourself into a corner with your lede.

The Rocket trying to dial down the Nook Laloosh act.

Welcome back, Ash. Hope you're alright.

No, I wasn't counting Blues Brothers. I should have. I would rank 'em: What I've seen: The Blues Brothers Stuart Saves His Family Wayne's World A Night at the Roxbury Wayne's World 2 Coneheads What I haven't seen, listed in the order my assumptions of their relative goodness, or unbadness. Blues Brothers 2000 Superstar The Ladies Man MacGruber It's Pat: The Movie