I am wading into my Xmas gift BluRay pile.
Captain America first, then Super 8. Maybe Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes if not sleepy.
Unleash the Merlot!!
I am wading into my Xmas gift BluRay pile.
Captain America first, then Super 8. Maybe Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes if not sleepy.
Unleash the Merlot!!
Just got propositioned by two girls outside the hotel who turned out to be prostitutes... oh well.
I got propositioned by one of the sexiest women I have ever encountered when I was on the beach in Rio.
I hated to see her go, but I loved watching her leave.
In the last couple days I've watched the S3 finale of 'Justified', which I thought was pretty good. It's a show that I don't think has had particularly great finales for its first two seasons, so I think this might be their best one so far. I also watched 'The Crazies' with Timothy Olyphant; better than some horror movies, I suppose, but I got bored with it as it went on. I also watched 'The Ides of March'. This started off pretty promising: it felt like a smart, detached (as in not obsessed with convincing its audience (or celebrating being on the same side as its audience) about political issues). But then there was, what seemed to me, a disastrously stupid plot point.
SPOILERS!
Ryan Gosling's character has drinks with the campaign manager of the rival Democratic candidate (the movie is set during the Democratic Primaries), where the rival campaign manager (Paul Giamatti) tries to get him to switch teams, which Gosling declines (Gosling also acquires valuable intelligence about the enemy campaign during this meeting). Later, the story of Gosling meeting with Giamatti leaks to the press, and they act like this is going to be a big deal that will damage the Gosling character's career. I was left totally befuddled that anybody could buy this. They kept acting like it was going to blow up in the press. Seriously? I was trying to imagine a real world story about a guy on one campaign being offered a job with the competing campaign and declining, and anybody anywhere giving a shit (okay, that's maybe an exaggeration: during our current insane 24-hour news cycle it probably would get some play, but it would look worse for the opposing campaign that they tried to poach one of their opponent's guys and failed). The Primaries were supposed to be almost over, anyway, at which point everybody on one of the campaigns was going to be out of work, and some of them would surely end up joining the rival campaign for the general election. Anyway, the situation leads to Gosling being fired by his boss, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, which I at least found a little more plausible, though still pretty ridiculous that he would fire Gosling just because Giamatti tried to woo him and Gosling gave it a listen. Hoffman gives Gosling some big speech about loyalty, telling a story about his first election campaign many years ago where a rival candidate tried to woo him but he stayed loyal (he apparently missed the point where Gosling had declined the job offer). Gosling then goes to Giamatti, who tells him he would've hired him if he'd taken the job before the story was going to break (really, before the story broke about him being fired? That'd be a tough story to beat. I suppose he meant the story about Gosling and Giamatti meeting, the story which was going to make the cover of 'Time', 'Newsweek', 'The New York Times' and 'The Washington Post').
NO MORE SPOILERS
Anyway, despite the stupidity of some of the plot points, I still thought the movie was okay.
ETA: I just realized I can get a free week trial of Hulu+. Time to see how many episodes of 'Community' I can cram in over the next 168 hours.
How much did the hookers charge you, Dalty?
We didn't discuss a price, they asked if I was interested in any trade. At this point I turned into Hugh Grant. Slick!
What could you have possibly traded them for sex? What are prostitutes interested in?
I'm only up through episode seven of the first season of 'Community', but I just wanted to let everybody know that I called Pierce as being dressed up as the Beastmaster at Annie's halloween party before he revealed what his costume was. I felt more ashamed than anything.
ETA: I just watched the episode where Abed was making videos that predicted what the study group would do before they did it; that was pretty excellent. I think this show stands up to marathon viewing better than any comedy since the heyday of the US 'The Office'. On the other hand, I don't watch any sitcoms these days, so I don't have much to compare it to.
Rocky III.
Great movie. Under appreciated, even with the short-shorts beach running.
When I was a kid, my favorite part was the wrestling match. Now my favorite part is the whole movie.
He would soon be neutered by the A-Team. Making him a household name was a white supremacist plot to punish him for being intimidating in Rocky III.
Drago in 'Rocky IV' was intimdating to white audiences because he was Russian, a much more PC route to villainy in the latter-era Cold War 80s. That wasn't nearly as effective as having a black antagonist with a mowhawk, so they had to make him 6'5", which, standing next to Sly Stallone, was roughly the equivalent of being eight feet tall. That still wasn't nearly as scary to white audiences, so they had to have him beat a black man to death in the hopes of making him Black+ on the intimidation scale. Still not as scary as Mr. T in slow motion with accompanying slowed down growling.
Also, I just watched the 'Goodfellas'/chicken mafia episode of 'Community'. It was excellent. I particularly liked the part where they played the music from the montage in 'Goodfellas' of all the dead people being found that Jimmy had had whacked to the montage of the members of the study group finding that Abed had destroyed or removed the things he had bought them with his chicken spoils. Also, I thought Annie had looked her sexiest yet (and her boobs had looked especially large (with at least one nipple protrusion)) as the bad cop in the last episode, but her boobs looked even bigger in her blue shirt in this one. Now I have to find the porno parody version of this show and hope that her character has been cast to my expectations.
ETA: I just got finished with the 'Modern Warfare' episode of 'Community', which Quasar had been touting as excellent. The moment when Chang walked into the study room with his machine paintball gun I totally lost it. I also liked that they worked a dig at 'Glee' into the episode (Troy says that he heard the glee club was luring people into sniper traps with cheery renditions of hit songs); I think there have been several of those in the first season, and I've seen critics comment on 'Community' taking shots at 'Glee'.
Wasn't Clubber supposed to be a mix of a young George Foreman and Sonny Lister, whereas Apollo was based on Ali?
Quay and I saw 'The Cabin in the Woods'. I liked it, though I'm not sure whether or not I really, really liked it. Probably not quite that much, though I thought the first two thirds to three quarters was very good, especially that middle section. The climax for me was the scene where they played REO Speedwagon 'Roll With the Changes'. I don't think they necessarily could've ended it there, though I'd be interested to see an alternate version of the movie where that scene was the actual climax, then followed with a denouement of five or ten minutes that explained the backstory to some degree. Anyway, I thought that REO scene bordered on brilliance, a perfect melding of horror and comedy. After that it was more jokey, and a little cheesy and the reality of the movie slipped a bit. Still, I liked it and think it was the best horror movie I've seen in a few years, though I've seen some people argue whether it is an actual horror movie or not, but I'd put it in the horror and horror comedy genres.
Jesus, I had forgotten just how blatant the propoganda was in this movie.
I like how the movie pretends America is the David to the USSR's Goliath, and how it suggests with a straight face that America would take the folksy, back-to-nature approach to building itself back up while the USSR relied on state-of-the-art technology.
The saddest part for me is that Apollo Creed presumably dies with James Brown watching. I'd be too embarrassed to be killed in front of James Brown.
If you really think about it, the movie is condemning the knee-jerk patriotism represented by Creed. I'm with the confused and disgusted Drago in that scene where the Vegas showgirls and flashing lights descend upon him. That shit's pretty fucked up. We need to be knocked down a peg from that behavior. It's sad that Apollo Christ has to die for our sins (Apollo is an oracular god, after all), but at least it brings the reality of the struggle back into focus.
All right. Maybe the movie isn't condeming it. Still, it helps to set up/give weight to Rocky's back-to-nature approach--ludicrous though it may be.
Apollo also represents the Americans' sense of play. It's clear as he enters that this is just a game to him. For Drago, it's serious fucking business. Both are representative of extremes. A middle ground needs to be found. Drago finds this middle ground by the end of the movie, thanks to Rocky's good example.
If Rocky and Drago can change, and you can change... everybody can change!
Thank you for double-handedly stopping the Cold War, Rocky and Drago.
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Posted: 11 years 50 weeks ago
Just finished watching Adventureland. Sort of 'meh' about it. It had some funny moments, but I wasn't really drawn into the story. Probably explains why the DVD has sat in my backpack for months.
Next up from netflix, new Muppets movie! wakawaka!