Edgy MD

sharpie wrote: Y'know it's been a long while since I've seen it and maybe there was some fudging. I mostly remember those scenes with Claude Rains and the party and the wine and the great crane shot plus some probably fake Rio scenery. Yeah, everything in Rio de Janiero is done with rear projections. It looks less fakey than Spellbound, though.

There's this period of a few weeks after they arrive in Rio, when they're waiting for her assignment, and the two develop the relationship that becomes the cause of so much of the later conflict. Don't they kind of fudge that part?

Ingrid Bergman plays the daughter of a convicted Nazi agent, recruited herself by an Amerian intelligence officer (Cary Grant) to infiltrate a ring of Nazis in Rio de Janiero. Hitchcock directs and suspense happens. Not to be confused with Notorious (2009) about the life of rapper Notorious B.I.G. That was different.

Plus it was awesome.

Sheesh, even by your standard of not wanting realism to conflict with fantasy, it doesn't work. The Adventures of Superman had Mole Men, a Kryptonite-powered robot, Professor Pepperwinkle turning the world upside down, and stuff. I mean, it was cheap and awful but they worked in what fantasy they could on their budget. Besides, comic books were full of gritty realism in the seventies. Ghost Rider was running into Jesus hippies and fighting drunk drivers, while Batman shipped Robin off to college and went solo crawling around in the shadows again. I like that realism stuff in a hero show. It makes it more believeable that this freak character exists in my world --- or a world very much like mine... except for his freaky self. Really, the show The Incredible Hulk was most like was The Fugitive.

Totally not analogous to The Adventures of Superman. So totally not!

Well, it's only natural that the Thing and the Hulk probably have some hangups about each other and each other's shows.

I agree it shouldn't be borrowed from too much, because you can't just bottle that sort of awesome and re-package it. The Incredible Hulk TV show was seven degrees of awesome.

OK, first of all, that's six paragraphs with not one citation from the article. Seond of all, "the writer assumes Hitchcock was living in 2010" and the author holds Hitchcock to 2010 standards are two different statements. One of them is completely untenable. Third, presenting a charge that is pointless to deny, because the perpetrators are always blind to themselves, is a cheap rhetorical trick that even a Hitchock character would recognize and scoff at. Lastly, if you read the article, you'd see it was written in 1990, not in 2010, so the party most guilty of presentism appears to be you, though I'll resist the temptation to claim that it's pointless to deny it.

Well, if it's an accusation that is pointless to deny, I won't deny it. I'll just leave it as self-evidently absurd.

He assumes Hitchcock was making his films in 2010?

Wretched, boring, and plotless, except where it was boringly predictable.

That's quite the non-sequiter in the outfield fences thread.

I think they stopped including a trophy with a figure on top when Bill Buckner took his bat and whacked the top off of his.

Well, (1) he confesses at the beginning that he's playing around by psychoanalyzing Hitchcock, and (2) there's something more that's going on if you if you look at the whole. For a "great" filmmaker, he didn't have to do anything. He chose these stories, these themes, and these storyboards. And he didn't just put them in distress. Sometimes, he really fucked around with them. For high-end film-making, that's some oddball stuff. Plus there's stuff this: GREG GARRETT: Miss Hedren, there's a story about the little coffin that was supposedly sent to you by Hitch. Did it contain a little doll with a noose around the neck? What did that mean? Was that a joke? TIPPI HEDREN: This is the first time I've heard about the noose around the neck. I was called in to do � have a mask made of my face. And I really didn't think anything of it, because at the make-up facility at Universal there are faces of every actor up on the wall. So I thought, well, gee, I'm just going to join all that. That's fine, that's wonderful. It's a rather painful experience to go through this, with the plaster on your face and the straws up your nose and that sort of thing. However, I weathered it through. The outcome of that was a doll that was made for my daughter [Melanie Griffith] for a Christmas present. And the difference in this little doll was that most of the time when a doll is made of a celebrity or whatever, it's sort of a caricature of that person. This was an absolute replica of my face. Bob Dawn, who was absolutely brilliant in his field of prostheses and that sort of thing, had taken that mask and taken it down to this tiny little face, and it was absolutely perfect. The doll was then dressed in the green outfit that I wore in The Birds for six months. Unfortunately, they put the doll in a pine box. And then it was presented to my daughter for Christmas. And my little girl, Melanie, looked at it and just blanched white, and we had to put the doll away. Now this was not � and I truly believe this � this was not an intentional thing for Hitch to hurt my daughter. She was hurt by it. But this was not intentional on his part. I mean, he did a lot of really weird things, but this was not intentional, and there was no noose, believe me. No noose. GARRETT: Was it a joke? HEDREN: No, it really wasn't a joke, either. It was supposed to be a very, very, kind of wonderful, thoughtful gift. And one that had taken great thought, great effort, great expense, I'm sure. So it wasn't � I can't say that he was trying to hurt anybody. It was just unfortunate. It's hard to think she's not being over-generous there. The guy's attitude toward women is certainly worth examining. A lot of great directors have some mostrously strange egos. Ford did, Huston did, Cameron does. I think Scorscese does. But it's stilll worth turning a mirror on the guy supposedly turning a mirror on us.

Both movies have to be understood as shot through the lens of Paramount, so you konw a gentle, pulled-punches take had to be practically in their mission statement.

In the sequel to the 1997 documentary about loyal Star Trek fans, Denise Crosby logs some air miles to track the phenomeon internationally (England, France, Germany, Brazil, and whatever country Belgrade calls home now), as well as catch up on some of the figures the first film made famous. Things I did not know before viewing this movie: Sacramento musicians consider the city to be the Theme Band Capital of America.

I've long enjoyed Joe Queenan's take on Alfred, which was pretty much that he was as good a flimmaker as one can be without being great. Or (re-reading), he is great, but not great-great. Pretty good work by Queenan from back when his snark content was about 40% instead of the 80-85% it runs at now that he's a brand name.

Could a man have more eyebrow and still play ball? I don't think so.

Another excellent point. And as a means to the end of these tastey-assed cards? What a contest!

Willets Point wrote: Edgy DC wrote: But the day-to-day stuff --- where (to mine eyes) Pagan is a very-good-to-excellent centerfielder and Wright merely a fair third baseman --- hasn't been well represented in my voting, I'm afraid. Pagan never called you "my man" and wished you a happy wedding day. A more-than-excellent point.

Even in such cases, I try to catch the video on mets.com, and award excellence accordingly. But the day-to-day stuff --- where (to mine eyes) Pagan is a very-good-to-excellent centerfielder and Wright merely a fair third baseman --- hasn't been well represented in my voting, I'm afraid.

I kinda like Pagan over Wright. But we don't score the daily defensive contributions as aggressively, I gather.

"OK, guys, before we begin, let us bow our heads and pray for Nieve, wherever he is."

Special congratulations to Takahashi. He earned it. Congratulations to all releivers for surviving Jerry and getting no respect for it.