Edgy MD

My dad had his own parking space at King's Plaza. He broke up a ring of robberies there, and as a thank you, the managers and merchants had a brief ceremony and surprised him with this special reward. He took the presenter aside briefly afterwards and told him he couldn't possibly accept this honor. It was illegal enough in general, but after the Serpico hearings, anything that smelled of graft would have been a serious threat to his career. But they had marked the spot as reserved and left it that way. So, occasionally we would go by King's Plaza and I would ask, like an annoying kid always does, "Is THAT your spot, Dad? Is THAT it?" as we circled looking for a real spot. He was a cop, so he probably could have left his car, idling, anywhere he wanted, but he couldn't use that damn spot. I remember going to Kings Plaza at Christmas time, and there were no available spots, and we circled and circled with the rest of the dopes and my Dad's head was turning red and building up pressure and ready to blow. Couldn't take the chance that another cop would spot his green VW wagon in his personal grafty-grafty spot. It taunted him.

Hmmm... just me again, huh? Well, you're not missing anything. I mean, you're missing a step on the evolutionary ladder of what filmgoing is to become, but other than that... no. Seems like Jackson did everything he could to avoid being the director on this series, and when it came down to him, he was more interested in using the property to advance filmmaking as a science, with no regard to filmmaking as an art. He also seems sad and angry. In many ways, Smaug seems like an analog for Jackson. He's achieved his wildest dreams of success and power, sitting on top of an unthinkable pile of wealth and artistic artifacts, and yet unsettled in it all, making a fight out of his encounter with Bilbo just to have a project to escape the day-to-day banality that complete worldly success brings. Jackson has taken on Bilbo and the dwarves for seemingly the same reason, and he's similarly awakening from a torpor and blowing a lot of smoke and wrecking something beautiful. The main result of the ballyhooed 48 fps technology was --- from my seat --- to make the sets look so vivid... that they look like sets, and the CGI looks like CGI.

Peter Jackson returns to add a second of three scheduled installments to his adaptation of Tolkein's beloved novel. [fimg=1000:3uywtqwp]http://cdn.fansided.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/229/files/2013/10/The-Hobbit-Desolation-of-Smaug-Poster.jpg[/fimg:3uywtqwp]

batmagadanleadoff wrote: 1. What's the first movie you ever saw in a movie theater? I think it was Day of the Dolphin, with George C. Scott --- a family movie but not really a kids movie. batmagadanleadoff wrote: 2. What's the worst movie theater experience you ever had as a youngster/toddler/elementary school aged kid? Watching Augustus Gloop being sucked up the plexiglass tube, and piecing together that this Wonka guy my parents took me to see was really an infanticidal maniac, and I cried and screamed bloody murder, because bloody murder was what I was sure I was seeing.

I'm giving it three stars out of five. Not bad, but painful in watching repeated and extended flashbacks of her childhood with her beloved self-destructive father --- and with Colin Farrell, his self destruction has to be romantic. I'm barely old enough to remember Walt Disney as a TV figure --- he was dead by my time, but there was plenty of footage of him introducing features on The Wonderful World of Disney. And anybody who does remember him will find that Tom Hanks' characterization barely hints at the man we recall. The real story is the torment of P.L. Travers, and Emma Thompson gives a nuanced portrayal that could have easily (and sometimes did) sink into merely a comic old pain in the ass. But now I'm afraid Disney has this new vein of gold they've struck, and will make a whole bunch of films about the story behind the story of all their evergreen films. Rudyard Kipling, Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen, brace yourselves.

An insistent Walt Disney tries to convince, cajole, and dazzle a deeply resistant P.L. Travers to allow his studio to adapt her novel Mary Poppins for the big screen, as she reflects on her childhood from which the novel sprung.

Muscle Shoals' Fame Studios makes an appearance in the film, as the site of the awkward place where some of these talented African-American singers get asked to sing on... a new single by some guy named Leonard Skinnard called "Sweet Home Alabama." They recognize the song's theme seemingly before even seeing the lyrics sheet. They're deeply conflicted but, for reasons that aren't quite made clear, they accede to the advice of older peers and an older husband to sing on the song, and making their own statement by singing the hell out of it.

Documentary visits some of the most prolific backup singers from the entire span of the rock era (did you know a teenage Darlene Love sang backup on "The Monster Mash"?), looks at the alignments of fates that allowed them long careers but kept them forever in the shadows of higher-profile, but often lesser, talents. [fimg=600:2x2y2oqb]http://25.media.tumblr.com/04ad958a6170ec2bd9f13461d7819ca0/tumblr_mm6mcw3TR61sn7wjto1_1280.jpg[/fimg:2x2y2oqb]

Time's getting away from you. It was 1989.

I tend to find biographical epics overblown Oscar grabs, but LoA is a Seaver in a high school filled with Selmas.

Vic Sage wrote: High Spirits (1988) � This comic fantasy features O�Toole as the lord of a haunted castle; the film is ruined by the presence of Steve Guttenberg (which is true of every film he was ever in). I'm telling you. One day, the world's going to see. Neil Jordan just doesn't have the stuff. Interestingly, one of O'Toole's recent credits is as the narrator of Eldorado --- a horror comedy also featuring Gutenberg and Darryl Hannah. Somebody in the world somewhere --- somebody with money --- decided a High Spirits reunion was what the world needed. One thing worth including was his voice acting for Ratatouille. Notable that his last three films all seem to be religious subjects.

Congratulations as usual to the designers and photographers, but the film I saw was bloated and hamfisted.

I always thought of You Can Count on Me as a Schenectadyish film. Hmmm... I think I need to produce a central NY film festival.

I won't go for "totally," but it's good enough to defeat what I thought was my safest rule --- that any movie that features a promotional poster of the lead character or characters sassily peeking over his or her or their sunglasses is a tipoff that absolutely nothing good whatsoever is on offer.

Nice bonus: the precinct commander for Mellisa McCarthy's character was played by Biff Tannen.

Strange to see such an enigmatic and haunted title applied to a my-bad-ass-hobby-becomes-a-vehicle-for-adventure film. It's like The Fast and the Furious meets Mystic River.

You'd figure Knieval's leathers are so distinctly recognizeable that he'd be easily fingered by his victims.

Rotten tomatoes: Fans: 68% Critics: 10% Wow.

Marcia Gay Harden is a wronged wife who ends up interrupting the suicide of her husband's young paramour. Not letting on who she is, the two become best buds, and end up on stage together in King Lear. Seriously. A worthy entry in the film festival I hope to someday present, exclusively featuring films featuring bad theater. Noises Off, A Bleak Midwinter, The Goodbye Girl, The Dresser, To Be or Not to Be, An Awfully Big Adventure... that sort of thing. [fimg=350]http://www.aceshowbiz.com/images/still/if-i-were-you-poster01.jpg[/fimg]

Sandra Bullock is a cool, smart, and by-the-book FBI agent. Melissa McCarthy is a crude, foul, loose-cannon Boston detective. Can these two mismatched cops find a way to work together on catching the bad guys without killing each other? If that doesn't sound eighties enough for you, did I mention there's a dancing/drinking/bonding montage in the middle? Because there is! Oh, you've seen this film before, but this time they're women! And Melissa McCarthy's... thing... is still relatively fresh, so the tired excuse for a vehicle may offer you a laugh or two. It just may.

Anthony Hopkins is the title character, an Australian consultant to Australian companies with waning profits, called in to help them make the hard calls to turn around their business. His lifeless marriage (and isn't Anthony Hopkins the bard of domestic sterility?) provides an icy contrast to the communal warmth at his new assignment a --- woefully inefficient moccasin factory, filled with affable eccentrics, overseen by a kindly paternal figure of an owner, keeping the place alive long after its time has past. The film is called Spotswood in its native Austrailia. The plot is similar to, and probably inspired, the later Kinky Boots. Come for glimpses of young Russell Crowe and Toni Collette. Sty to find out why and how this film became a favorite of Rupert Murdoch. [fimg=200]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JWVXJCBNL.jpg[/fimg]

Shikey, that guy needs a break. I mean, a symbolic break.

So, when you talk about The Swimmer, you do talk about yourself. Or at least, your dad.

Yeah, but Marvel an DC are on a roll. Every guy (seemingly) Green Arrow hunts down, or the assassin he hires for him... it's all: "Jan Van der Sloot, you have failed this city!" "Jo�o Infante, you have failed this city!" "Natasha Grishkin, you have failed this city!"

I'm starting to get the notion from all Marvel superhero movies and TV shows that the greatest threat to makinkind is modestly charismatic Eurotrash and their damned fay hairstyles. Those fuckers apparently are so totally devoid of empathy.