RandomCha

Name one good thing that’s happened to you today.

(For me: Lucky Charms for breakfast.)

Brandon, I feel for you and your tale of the bizarre Thanksgiving. But here’s a little competition for you. As you know, my brother has been staying with us all weekend. He’s a fairly low-maintenance guest and yet his presence has thrown everything off. In fact, sometime yesterday I wishing he was on his way home. Andy’s been walking around with little clouds of steam escaping from his ears. He wanted me brother to be staying in a hotel this whole time. But was quite nice, accomodating. Anyway. Be that as it may, my brother left for the airport this afternoon at 3 to catch his return flight. I had some lunch and then a nap.

Then the phone rang.

My brother bought his return ticket for DECEMBER 27th. And just realized it NOW. Today, of course is NOVEMBER 27th. So as I write this, he’s on his way back here. And the soonest return flight he was able to get is TUESDAY.

O yeah. You know. Great. Great family time. Andy may kill me. So if for some reason I’m not at work tomorrow … it means I’m dead.

Last night we went to River East 21 and saw “The Ice Harvest.” Hmm, middling. **1/2 out of ****. It was well-cast. I can’t conceive of any actor besides John Cusack who could play such a scumbag and still come off as charming. Billy Bob dug into his slimy con man role with relish and tossed in some amusing bits (most notably involving a locked trunk and a golf club). It definitely had its moments, both comedically and dramatically, and the Christmas Eve in Witchita setting was novel. But, in the end, it was just another film noir variation where everyone’s crooked and a lot of people get killed. The one really memorable performance came courtesy of Oliver Platt, playing Cusack’s very very drunk best friend who causes all manner of catastrophe over the course of the evening. The scene where he invades the family Christmas dinner and wrestles with a turkey leg was a highlight.

Worth a peek on a slow night, but if you’re looking for a dark holiday film then stick with “Bad Santa.” I wish “Syriana” had been playing instead.

The HOLY FOUR:

Bunuel
Hitchcock
Altman
Lynch

Why do I take such gleeful pleasure in this? Here are some of the better zingers in the new crop of “RENT” reviews:

Jim Ridley in the Nashville Scene: “Watching the movie version of Rent in 2005, I know how ex-hippies felt watching Hair in 1978. God knows HIV and poverty aren’t going away anytime soon, but the late Jonathan Larson’s East Village reworking of La Bohème attacks them with the kind of earnest Broadway bombast that dates on arrival – especially when it purports to rock.”

In the New York Observer, Choire Sicha establishes the historical context of the play before turning to the film: “It makes the East Village look a little less authentic than Sesame Street, a little more than It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s illusory, despicable and the worst sort of rewriting of history, because that history has actually never really been written in the first place.”

Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times: “Rent is commodified faux bohemia on a platter, eliciting the same kind of numbing soul-sadness as children’s beauty pageants, tiny dogs in expensive boots, Mahatma Gandhi in Apple ads.”

Stephanie Zacharek in Salon: “I wasn’t sure a movie musical could be worse than last year’s styrofoam-and-gilt swan-boat travesty Phantom of the Opera, but I’m afraid Rent proves me wrong.”

Jorge Morales (Voice): “Rent is about as timely now as Gigi.”

Cheryl Eddy in the San Francisco Bay Guardian: “It doesn’t do what Chicago did, reimagining and stylizing the source material for the big screen.”

Karina Longworth at Cinematical: “By erring, at every turn, on the side of fan-wary caution, [Chris] Columbus has made a film that will probably go over splendidly with devoted ‘Rentheads.’ The problem will lie in not just pleasing, but in fooling, everyone else.”

Nathan Rabin at the AV Club finds it “plays like Last Exit To Brooklyn as reinterpreted by Up With People.”

Dylan Hicks in the City Pages on trying to review the thing: “[I]t feels like shooting fish in a barrel, only the fish are puppies.”

(from http://daily.greencine.com)

Last night I had the recurring dream again, the one that involves my teeth. At first I feel a slight pressure in my upper jaw. Then, steadily, almost imperceptibly, the pressure increases. My upper jaw begins to swell, squeezing inwards. The ends of my row of teeth squeeze towards the middle. My two front teeth have nowhere to go. The pressure continues building. And then I know that it’s just a matter of time before my teeth begin to crack and shatter. I feel my two front teeth begin to be pulled out by the roots from the pressure and drip blood. They break into little pieces like bloody china and I catch them in my hands. I rush into the bathroom and stare in the mirror, trying to come up with a way to paste them back into my jaw. The person in the mirror doesn’t look anything like me.

On the off chance someone will be interested, I am selling my complete Talking Heads Studio Albums collection on eBay … you can browse the listing here

If anyone from LJ ends up as the winning bidder, I’ll throw in a mystery bonus gift too!

The graves were closer together than he was expecting. It was sort of like a tenement of graves; they were not exactly stacked on top of each other but were squeezed in, side by side. And the place was plotted on a grid, laid out with avenues like a little dead metropolis. The walls seemed to be keeping everything from bursting onto the streets outside. Continue reading →

This was what Friday’s cookie read:

“Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.”

Mmmm reading all about how to make gravy. That’s my idea of a great Sunday morning.