Edgy MD

I might've agreed once. And then Duets happened. (Duets was actually watchably bad. I mean, there was music and stuff.)

Fascinating.

Has nobody seen anything else besides Grav? Anything? How 'bout that porn addict movie?

I got ripped at a business meeting. A training, actually Supervisor: "So before we begin, it looks like we're waiting on few folks. Everybody have a nice weekend?" All: "Grumf. Grumf." Supervisor: "Edge, what did you do?" Edge: "Went to the movies." Supervisor: "Oh, cool. Anything good?" Edge: "Mmmm. Not really." Supervisor: "Ohhhh. Have you seen Titanic yet?" Edge: "Well, actually, that's what I saw?" Supervisor: "Oh, I heard it was really good. What didn't you like?" Edge: "Just not for me, I guess." Fellow Trainee, tightening up: "What 'wasn't for you'?" Edge: "Um, just didn't... I dunno. A bunch of storyboard dialogue. Two dimensional stereotypes for characters. A bunch of real people with real stories died on that ship. But then there's this fictional girl who wants to kill herself when her mother tells her to stop smoking." (I went way too far before that remark, but kaboom! that one broke the camel's back!) Fellow Trainee: "It's a GREAT movie with WONDERFUL characters, and if you weren't a MAN you'd understand that!" Edge: "OK" (thinking silently) "of course, a man wrote it, directed it, designed it, used his stupid sketches for key incidental art, and ditched his wife for one of the stars during the filming." (/silent thoughts) Supervisor: "Well, I guess... we're all... entitled to different opinions." Fellow Trainee: "We're not entitled to STUPID opinions." Edge: (thinking silently) "People are really fucked up. And yet, you totally could have avoided this, you stupid, big-mouthed career suicide." (/silent thoughts) *** After training... Another fellow trainee: "Well, I guess that we can add film to religion and politics among the subjects you shouldn't discuss in polite company or at work." Edge: "I wouldn't be seen talking to me if I were you."

I would not think to encourage you to.

There seems to be developing an anti-hater backlash on this film not seen since Titanic where to dislike it is in some quarters is to provoke outrage and heartbreak and to place yourself outside the realm of decent society.

An inquiry reveals doubts both inside and outside the organization. The guy making the inquiries, however, remains more optimistic.

Everything is in the past. Doesn't mean it doesn't speak to the present and future. And he did fail a test. It may not have been a chemical test, but it was a test nonetheless. The idea that he passed urine tests vindicates his performance kind of ignores the obvious notion that he was playing with a body developed while breaking the rules at an earlier time.

It's an issue. I disagree that his numbers present an unambiguous argument.

Lest it go unsaid, one may suspect a possible cause/effect relationship between the PED usage and the numbers.

Neil deGrasse Tyson ? @neiltyson Mysteries of #Gravity: Satellite communications were disrupted at 230 mi up, but communications satellites orbit 100x higher. There you go. I ain't so dumble dumb.

Vic Sage wrote: I think our views overlap more than they don't How do you feel about Sears?

Harris also got to wear a pressure suit of a different sort in The Abyss (his inner space movie). But really, this is an Ed Harris film only in the most literal sense.

I didn't mean to say this character was oily, only that some may find him generally so. And "doesn't hit as deep as it could" does not mean to suggest that it's "an empty thrill ride of a movie."

Oh, and I went shopping at Sears afterwards. It had been a while, but I bought a coffee maker and a hair clipper and I can't say enough loving things about that place. I was thinking it might actually go out of business while we were in the store.

Well, this was really a visually arresting movie, with all the action taking place while the rivers, forests, painted deserts and civilizations of the world rotate beneath you in the corner of the screen. It's almost 100% a two-character film, with everyone besides Bullock and Clooney being mere radio voices or figures in the distance who exit the show pretty early on, as the same disaster that sets the film in motion also takes out communications satellites. In other words, the skills of Ed Harris (as the voice of Ground Control), such as they are, are totally not needed, so he's there pretty much entirely to draw a parallel between this film and Apollo 13, but he's not getting them home this time. These two are totally on their own. Except for the whole world passing silently below. As beautiful as it is, it's totally a thriller, and reminded me of Aliens in how it doesn't bother building tension toward a climactic peak, but rather threw one tense sequence upon another bam-bam-bam through most of the movie. This is it's grace (among it's many graces really), as a character is frequently left with one chance to grab onto another or onto the hull of a ship, or be thrown off into the horror of drifting forever into space, waiting for their oxygen to run out and to die utterly alone, and I imagine carbon dioxide poisoning is a shitty way to die. But it's also a failing, as it doesn't hit as deep as it could, or wrestle much with the big questions that hovering over the planet with one's existence on the line might raise, such as 2001 or Solyaris did. (Interestingly, Clooney's last space vehicle was Solaris, an English-language remake of Solyaris.) Bullock becomes sort of a female version of a Jack London-type protagonist, a mission specialist (and therefore not a career astronaut) who starts the film overwhelmed by the challenges of space work even on a run-of-the-mill mission, but when everything goes haywire and the mission turns to survival, somehow finds a way to go on even though she has every reason to quit, and somehow finds just enough of her training stuck with her so that when calms the heck down and stops hyperventilating and gulps all her oxygen away (if you watch in 3D, you'll want to slap her), she's able, maybe, to figure out a way home. The science in it is both great the realities of pressure bursts and Newtonian momentum in space, the magic of weightlessness as she swims from chamber to chamber on the space station, or when she starts sobbing and her tears detach from her face and float out toward you in beautiful glycerin globules. and not so great All the space stations and vehicles that they hop across trying to find a way home --- their shuttle, the Hubble telescope, the international space station with a docked Russian capsule, the Chinese space station with a capsule of their own --- are not only in reasonably close proximity, but in more or less the same orbit as each other They are also in the same orbit as communications satellites, which I would imagine orbit at much higher altitudes than the International Space Station. But, while Clooney may strike some as a little oily in general and over-ingratiating in this role, if you don't root for Sandra Bullock, then you're not particularly American. (I'm not saying that this is a jingoist movie, I'm just sayin' what I'm sayin'.) This movie's a heckuva thing, even if not quite a helluva thing.

George F. Clooney and Sandra Bullock are two astronauts cast adrift on a spacewalk like Major F. Tom. Get these guys home, Ed Harris. Going to see it now.

I found and watched a chunk of it on YouTube. No idea if it's complete.

Frayed Knot wrote: The main difference here is that the movies were made a quarter century apart and therefore the protagonists are considerably older and their pasts further into the rear view. Redford seems to get confused about how old he is. In The Natural, he was supposed to be at the end of a typical baseball life --- 35-37 or so. He would have been about 47 at the time of filming. In Legal Eagles, he was a big comer as the youngest DA in his city's history, when he actually would have been about 49. He's developing now an adaption of A Walk in the Woods, a book Bill Bryson wrote about walking the Appalachian Trail in 1997, at the age of 46. Redford is 77. He originally wanted to cast Paul Newman as Katz, Bryson's contemporary, school chum, and walking companion. Newman, of course, is 88 and dead at the present time.

I meant no offense.

Kevin Costner films tend to be filled thematically with sorting out the meaning of our radical youth --- Field of Dreams speaking specifically about Baby Boomer radicalism, but also Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and Dances with Wolfies..

They actually don't try and make it end particularly happily, as a big theme of the story is that his MLB redemption (and I guess going from convict to big leaguer is almost a literal redemption) is all about keeping his kid brother from making the same street-life mistakes he did, and his brother ends up dying. Strange that Jordi had enough gravity (or menace) to become a star playing a defiant slave refusing to yield to his identity as he takes his whipping, but not enough to play a stickup artist turned centerfielder. I guess Hollywood softened him pretty fast. It's got many of the flaws that made-for-TV films tend to have, but I thought it was remarkable to see so many Tiger legends playing themselves. And as I said, Martin seems strangely OK. I remember him working the broadcast booth for the Yankees, doing the pre-game during one of his enforced vacations from managing the team, and he looked absolutely desperate in front of the camera.

A ho-hum season at Brooklyn (17 games and a 4.67 ERA, matching his 2012 number egg-zackly), and it remains to be seen why this strapping cowboy keeps making the prospect lists while not making a big splash in the games. He struck out 15 and walked 13, and that's no good. He did post his lowest WHIP, but it ain't that great and 17 innings ain't that big a sample size. I'm scared and I'm thinking that maybe he ain't that young anymore.

Made-for-TV biopic I just developed some curiosity about and watched some clips of, so, you know, not worth pollling But I was surprised to see a lot of baseball figures --- including Norm Cash and Al Kaline --- playing themselves. Billy Martin seemed more comfortable in front of the camera playing himself than he ever seemed being himself, if you know what I mean.

Not that it works that way, but I tend to think of him as the Byrdbooty, and Black as the Buckbooty.