And a few things for which I'd LIKE to be thankful (shameless plea)...

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UB40: Greatest Hits
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Opening Credits Laptop

I thank you.

How about some Monty Python for your "Black Friday" morning?

A few things for which I am thankful...

In, as usual, no particular order.

The 99% movement

My friends

Sarah Jane Smith/Elizabeth Sladen

My West Wing DVDs

Keith Olbermann

Rachel Maddow

The unreasoning stupidity of my nemeses

That my local library carries lots and lots of "elegant comic books" (some people call 'em "graphic novels")

Keitha and Annabel, as always

The nephew, with whom I'll be seeing The Muppets this afternoon

iTunes and my iPod

My blogs

Finding a city worker who actually helps me

Erasure mixes

My cat

My mothers' cat

Wolves

Dolphins

Otters

Jesus Christ Superstar, the movie

Kristen Stewart, Ashley Greene, Pink, Salma Hayek, and so on and so forth...

Bananarama

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, even though I've come to think that the story will never be resolved...

Marc Maron's WTF
And yes, still, Saw
Courtney Love

And, what the hell, Facebook.

"Melancholia" is not about depression

Melancholia is a very dark film...but ultimately in a nice way.

Actually "nice" isn't quite the right word--better to say that although it looks fairly unrelentingly at the dark, it does not scorn the light, strangely does not wallow in misery.

However, that said, fair warning: There's a famous quote from Francis Ford Coppola who said of his film Apocalypse Now, referring at least in part to the mind, body and soul-breaking experience of making it:

"My film is not about Vietnam, it is Vietnam."

Well, Melancholia is not about depression. It is depression. It gets misery so right that it literally sickened me (insert here joke about my stomach for the Saw films' gore).




Yet in the end, by the very end, I felt spoken to. As though someone had painted a portrait (and the look of the film is quite painterly) in which I recognized...oh what the hell, I'm just going to dive into pretension here-part of my soul.



(This is as good a place as any to link to this NPR interview with Dunst about the film.)



That it does not overindulge in the blue colors is due in part, but only in part, to Kirsten Dunst. In what I take to be an imaginary sequence at the films' beginning, she is shot so lovingly that she instantly gained my affection.



Which was good, because the character was going to need it.

Incidentally, this is what I mean by painterly.

You kind of expect that it will be dark, given the title, and if you go in knowing something about the plot: A young woman tries to fight off her depression long enough to enjoy her wedding night...while the end of all life on Earth is in the stars.



Obvious but necessary statement: Dunst is a woman now. Obviously in physicality, she's been one this whole century (yes, even when she was "Bringing It On")--but what I'm referring to is the female human adult that this film lets her step into playing.

The difference between this and arguably her most famous roles as the attractive, nay beautiful Mary Jane in Sam Rami's Spider-Man films

and the cheerleading captain in Bring It On, is night and day.

Much of the talk here and elsewhere about this film is about Dunst; with good reason, but I must remind myself not to be stinting in my praise of Charlotte Gainsbourg who has the less-showy, maybe even more admirable performance.





She's Dunst's sister who tries to do the decent thing but deep, deep down suspects that her sister may be right about the meaning of lives (not a typo) or lack thereof.

Life is only on Earth. And not for long.

I was not crazy about the first (and last) Lars von Trier movie I saw, which was Breaking the Waves, another film about a mental breakdown and a marriage.

Ondas do Destino, a photo by vcheregati on Flickr.

I'm afraid I just couldn't see how nobody in the coastal town of that film would help Emily Watson's clearly distressed young woman.

No matter how buried their collective throats were by the boot of religion.

A similar question pops up here through the first half of the movie, namely, has no one in Dunst's circle heard of Prozac? In the second half, though, as the movie's spotlight of destruction widens out from just the one person to the whole world; then contracts again to just a few...Prozac hardly would've spoken to the reality of the situation.

In that case, guys, you should have no objection to opening your mouths and letting us spray a shower of the stuff right in there, should you?

On Monday night, O’Reilly Factor host Bill O’Reilly and Fox News host Megyn Kelly sat down to discuss what really happened at UC Davis on Friday and whether campus police acted appropriately in showering a group of sitting students with pepper spray. Their conclusion? No big deal.

“Pepper spray, that just burns your eyes, right?” O’Reilly asked Kelly.

“Right,” Kelly said. “I mean, its like a derivative of actual pepper. It’s a food product, essentially.”

Maura Tierney IS Rachel Maddow!

...and the cause of same

Psycho turns 50!, a photo by klimari1 (JUST SHOOT IT! Photography) on Flickr.

11/365: Shower Paranoia...

11/365: Shower Paranoia, a photo by Betsssssy on Flickr.

Have you ever wondered what all the Disney princesses would look like as mermaids?

No, I hadn't either, but this artist has, and did kind of a nice job with it, too.


Disney's Pinup Mermaids by *erikasss on deviantART

How attitudes to women do change

See, now, I know this is just supposed to be a little cheesecake. And lord knows I'd be a hypocrite if I said I were opposed to that. But still, looking at this piece of artwork from the late 1950's, I can't help thinking it looks like it should be captioned...



..."Prelude To The Afternoon Of A Rape."

Why "Star Wars" fans are dumbasses

From page xiv of the introduction to the book A Galaxy Not So Far Away: Writers and Artists on Twenty-five Years of Star Wars, by that volume's editor Glenn Kenny:

Kevin Kline's character in The Big Chill has a much quoted "no good music since year X" line that I can't bring myself to quote accurately, as it would mean looking at the movie again...

The accurate quote is actually this exchange of dialogue from Kline's character and Jeff Goldblum's:

Michael: Harold, don't you have any other music , you know, from this century?
Harold: There is no other music, not in my house.
Michael: There's been a lot of terrific music in the last ten years.
Harold: Like what?

I pulled that from the IMDb page, but I could've done it from memory, because even though as a rule, I hate boomers, I happen to love that movie. Go figure. I am large, I contain multitudes. For example, the title of this entry notwithstanding, I'm something of a Star Wars fan.

But anyway, that Kenny clearly doesn't love a movie which I do is not why I've made him exhibit Z (or whatever) in my case for why Star Wars fans are dumbasses. For that, we have to go two pages later, and read this from page xvii:

Empire's dialogue was a lot snappier than Star Wars' (I like to think that a lot of what I enjoyed in Empire was due to the participation of veteran screenwriter Leigh Brackett...

Glenn, Glenn, Glenn. You're making this all too easy, Glenn.

If I may hit you with a few more quotes, these are from the Lucas bio Skywalking:

Lucas had one lengthy meeting with Brackett to outline the story and turn his notes over to her, and by March 1978 Brackett's first draft was done. It was also her last-she died of cancer two weeks later.

One meeting. One draft. Still, I'm sure Brackett's participation is what paid off in enjoyment for Kenny and most others, including myself. Except that:

Lucas shelved Brackett's script and started anew. If he could get a new first draft done, he could turn it over to a new writer, and they could pass versions back and forth until Lucas was satisfied.

But who would be his new writer? Well, a few months later, one Lawrence Kasdan turned in a screenplay Lucas had hired him to write for something called Raiders of the Lost Ark, and he and Lucas went to lunch...

Lucas abruptly launched into the story of Leigh Brackett's untimely death, his problem with Empire, and his need for a writer to polish the new draft. He'd be happy to give Kasdan screenplay credit in Empire (Lucas planned to take none himself) but asked whether Kasdan would mind sharing it with Brackett. He wanted her estate to benefit from a profit percentage of the film.

And that was, indeed, how the writing credits for Empire ran: Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan, (screenplay); George Lucas, (story).

So then, who's responsible for the snappier dialogue and other joys missing from Star Wars that appeared in The Empire Strikes Back? Well, clearly, demonstrably, Kasdan.

Who is also screenwriter, co-screenwriter and/or the director of a dozen-plus other movies, including, what?

The Big Chill.

I repeat: Star Wars fans are dumbasses.

Quick quiz: How many of you remember...

...when I mentioned that Jennifer Connelly's husband is sexually insecure?

On a completely unrelated matter, his next role will have him playing, and called, a "Master of Sex."

I'm sure I wasn't the only one

But for the record, yesterday I sent the Keith Olbermann show's contact email address a link to this story about Ford's Theater "banning" Bill O'Reilly's Lincoln book for factual inaccuracies.

I figured it was right across Olbermann's strike zone (did I use that metaphor right?)

Sure enough, on tonight's show...



Now, as I say, I'm quite sure I'm not the only one to have thought of that. Plus Keith and/or his staff probably would've found it anyway. But...

Happy Birthday, Wendy Carlos!

I've seen Tron Legacy three times now. You know how with some movies...you like them when you first see them, especially if it's one you've been looking forward to for a long time. But then with repeated exposure, you realize they're not terribly good movies (cough, Saw V, cough--although Saw 3D makes Saw V look like Saw III. But I digress.)?

My point is, Tron Legacy ...is not one of those movies. I still like it a lot, at least as much as the original; in some ways, even more so. But one place in which it doesn't even come close to topping the original is in its score. If I had the know-how and the equipment, I think I'd dub myself a version of the new movie that used Wendy Carlos's music in place of Daft Punk's, as much as possible.

Nothing against Daft Punk. It's just that, as most of you know, I'm a big fan of Carlos' score for the original Tron, and consider it a key factor in shaping my love for electronic, synthetic music. So naturally here, in celebration of Carlos' 72nd birthday, is a theme from Tron played by hand on a genuine guitar.

This I've got to see

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus defended the GOP on Sunday against the notion that its policies only favor the rich, arguing that Republicans are out to create jobs and cut taxes for people of all income levels.

Really? Right, well let's see him then.

"Of course the party doesn’t favor the rich, but what the party does favor is reducing taxes on every single American out there," Priebus said on CNN’s "State of the Union." "Making sure Washington is focused then on job creation, on cutting spending, on reducing the size of government -- these are things that will spur the economy and these are things that are cornerstone to the Republican Party."

I count about five empirically provable lies in that paragraph. How many can you name?

A recent CBS/New York Times poll showed that 69 percent of Americans believe Republican policies favor the rich. Only 9 percent believe they help the middle class.

Priebus blamed that perception on President Barack Obama.

Oh please, Reince. We wish...

What kind of fools could be foolish enough to fall for this fool's foolishness?

Kim Kardashian Wedding Made People Feel Like 'Fools'

By the same token: There are billions of people the Manson family *didn't* kill...

Cain responds to accusations. For every woman who says I harassed her, there are “thousands” who say I didn’t.

Fucking well good.

Okay. One reason I'm taking a particular interest in this Joe Paterno thing is because it's reminded me of something. Something which I should know full well, but due to the whole "my not giving a fuck about sports" thing, I sometimes tend to forget.

This is namely, just how deep up the ass of sports my country has its head. Case in point:

Nike has no plans to change the name of the Joe Paterno Center, a child day care facility on the World Headquarters Campus near Beaverton, in response to a sexual abuse scandal involving one of Paterno's former Penn State University assistants, a Nike spokeswoman said this evening.

Really, that's just sad.

But on the bright side, it looks like my curse is taking.

Penn State football scandal will cost school millions

Good.

Now let us pause for this very important message

I'm sorry, you can't what?

Okay. As most of you know, I don't give a fuck about sports. So, the first I heard about the Penn State University/Paterno scandal--

Former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky has been charged with 40 criminal counts accusing him of sexually abusing minors. As the scandal unfolded, it became known that Penn State officials, including Joe Paterno, had known about Sandusky's unlawful behavior.

--was yesterday when Keith Olbermann made Paterno his "worst person in the world" and called for his immediate firing, both of which he repeated today. A few hours later, Paterno was, in fact, fired, along with the school president.

You would think the Penn Board of Trustees would've done this because it is--clearly--the right thing to do in this situation. I would say this was a no-brainer: Coach fails to follow-up on reports that his employee raped children (in the coach's own locker room, no less) coach loses his job. At least.

Yes, I would say this was a no-brainer, but I want to reserve that honorific for the football-lovers who care more (they really do) about a game, a team, and/or a coach's career than they do molested children.

This brings me back to the Penn Board of Trustees. Dig this quote from an AP story on the firing.

Asked what Paterno did wrong, [board vice chair John] Surma said: “I can’t characterize that. We thought because of the difficulties that have engulfed our university, it was necessary to make changes.”

You can't characterize what he did wrong?

Think. Try to stretch your mind. Take a minute if you have to.

Or in other words, you fired this man not because he committed foul sins, but because people knowing he committed those sins is making your school look bad.

Metaphorically speaking, I hope your school gets stomped hard in the face with football shoes, every game for the next 30 years.