I just saw this and liked it. Ah, bygone times!
Incidentally, Charlie Chaplin was one of my favorite actors when I was younger. I have no idea why–the only movie I think I’ve seen of his is that one where Morton Downey Jr plays him. I did read a biography about him, though, so there’s that.
You know this is all bullshit, right?
Best part is really Rudy doing his best to separate his face from his skull, looks like. The “Mitt Romney, you’re a racist” lady is, while probably right, a little too 2011 for my tastes. Of course, I still like the glitter bomb, so what do I know?
(By the way, the better video is at TPM, Giuliani is way more entertaining there)
The Wichita bus service has always been something to brag about–if you happen to be bragging about transportation that hasn’t been updated since the Jurassic period–and it’s looking like it’s going to get even better by that measure. A story on this little radio station highlighted the looming budget deficit faced by the MTA, half a million dollars. This is after a fare increase last year, as well as reduced service in some areas.
I don’t ride the buses because they absolutely suck. The routes are generally crappy and the availability/frequency is mostly inconvenient. That said, does it make sense to continue to cut services and routes in order to hang on to the remaining scraps of what we’re calling a “transit system”? If it gets more awful, I’d think less people would use it, leading to less money and then more cuts and then rinse/repeat.
A better solution is to place a value on the ideology of public transportation. Is it something that we can all appreciate even if we don’t use it? I would gladly pay an extra two bucks a year to make up that gap in the budget if it meant having a less-awful transit system. I’d pay an extra five dollars a year if it meant having an awesome transit system. I might even use it, then.
The argument is that a useful, and not merely functional, public transportation system is a service a city ought to have, period, like parks or libraries or public schools. Even if you don’t use those services frequently or at all, you still benefit from the “halo” of improved quality of life that these things give your fellow citizens.
I know I should probably have added more “blue” words to this, but it just seems so darned commonsense. Meanwhile, tax breaks for private businesses continue.
Because what else are you gonna do?
This is one of the most uncomfortable moments of schadenfreude I have ever experienced:
Best comment: “Unintentional milk challenge.”
Note: you gotta at least watch until 2:30 or so. After that, it’s just bonus.
Drive
Nicolas Winding Refn
2011
I feel like it’s become a problem, me starting out these posts by saying, “I want to be clear that I liked this movie, because I’m worried it might not sound like it.” But what can I do? I want to make that especially clear for Drive, because I really don’t want to ruin anyone’s experience of the movie, and a lot of people really, really loved it.
I liked it. I liked it. Somewhere between a decent amount and quite a bit. There’s no doubt that it’s a fresh take on what could have been a standard genre picture. It’s highly stylized and all that. There are some wonderful and fantastic pieces of movie making. Gosling’s character is in the vein of Alain Delon’s Costello. Most of the things that people have said about this are true.
But for some reason I’m not going nuts over it. I feel like the reason might be that I didn’t go into it completely blind, with the idea that it might be a decent genre picture, and then get smacked with something very different. By the time I got to it, it was very clear to me that this was going to be something different. So I didn’t really get smacked with anything.
Except maybe some of the violence. Goodness. Am I the only one who felt that level of graphic violence was unnecessary? I’m not squeamish, I don’t usually mind that kind of thing, at least in the context of a movie. But it really took me out of the experience, here. It just seemed like way too much. Why was it there? What did it do for us? I suppose it was supposed to jar us, but I just didn’t feel like it added. In fact, for me, it detracted. It put me out. It committed one of the worst sins for me as a movie-watcher: it ejected me from the movie. It pushed me out of the world I’m supposed to be enveloped in. And I don’t quite know why it was necessary for that to happen.
I don’t think Albert Brooks was robbed of an Oscar nomination. He was just fine, but part of that was because he just wasn’t funny at all, and so I think he seemed extra-good because of that (funny man isn’t telling jokes!). But I didn’t watch him and think, “Oscar performance.” And I mean that in an ideal sense, not as compared to the actual nominees for this year, because Jonah Hill is still the only Supporting Actor nominee I’ve seen from last year. So I don’t know how he stacked up against the people who were actually nominated.
Bryan Cranston annoyed me. Maybe this was the point. Still, he did.
So, see? I spend a lot of time talking about what I didn’t like. Why? I don’t know why this happens, except that maybe a lot of people have spent a lot of time talking about what’s great about this movie. I think most of those things are true, I just think these other things are true, too. If I remember right, this was JP’s favorite movie from last year. I have no problem with that. It wasn’t mine, but that’s all. I did like it.
But can anyone explain to me the font that they used for the credits?
And an old thing on the interwebs. But I’ve been having a little more fun with highly-amateur photo editing, so the logical step was to go full gross-out. Look, and be amazed:
Oh, yeah. It’s gonna be a good day.
I just bought my first e-book (or ebook, or whatever. Not a book), and checked it out, fascinated. I think (hesitantly) that it’s right up my aisle–the format; the book is obviously my style or I may not have bought it…for full price.
Got excited for a couple minutes browsing the iTunes “not-a-book” store, and then ended up ogling over Zizek books on Google. This is where it got weird. I started seeing so many books by and about Zizek that I hadn’t read, I felt like I was getting nervous. I was.
I have no idea what that was about. But I quickly closed the tab and came here to tell the seven of you about it.
Fletch
Jeremy
Zack!
joshuastough
pfe115
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