fine whine

As another aside to yesterday's Straight story story, Harry Dean Stanton, who played Alvin's brother Lyle in the film, is still alive and acting. He just finished a small role in the Wilson Brothers' The Wendell Baker story, which looks to be perhaps a pretty decent film.

Owen Wilson is probably the best-known brother, and I just saw him in that travesty known as Starsky & Hutch. Actually to call that remake a 'travesty' is akin to calling being beaten to death with one's own brutally amputated leg a 'flesh wound'.

Not that I'm bitter or anything. I'm no longtime fan of the show, having first seen any of it in March of this year. The first season DVD set was a nice introduction to a show that deserves more respect. Certainly more than is given it in the movie that recasts Starsky and Hutch as buddy-movie stereotypes and tries to inject in-jokey humor that was probably a blast for the actors but only drags a bad movie even more for the rest of us. To have made the partners a laughingstock in the movie world is a fitting finishing touch on what the filmmakers did for the whole project in the real world. As for Vince Vaughn, woo hoo for him and the whole bat mitzvah thing. At the movie's release, much was made of him playing the part as such (for reasons better left unknown) but to me he's just playing the same part he's played before in, oh, Swingers, Made, and Old school. Nothing to see here, folks, keep moving.

For another re-hash (I expect a 'remake' to stay closer to the source material) we go next to the straight-to-DVD Ripley's game. It's somewhat based on the same Patricia Highsmith novel that spawned Wim Wenders's The American friend (with Dennis Hopper), but this time around Tom Ripley's been reimagined as much older and a fair bit more sophisticated. This also has little to do with Anthony Minghella's The talented Mr. Ripley, its roots lie in a different Highsmith novel. Back to Ripley's game, we have not Dennis Hopper nor Matt Damon but John Malkovich in the titular role. He does pretty well in a role that seems well suited to him, having played everything from an addlepated moron (Of mice and men) to an evil genius (almost everything else). The movie is a bit slow and a bit sad but is worth picking up if it's on the library shelf, for Malkovich and Highsmith fans if nobody else. I've checked out the novels but haven't slogged through them yet.

Third in the sort-of trifecta of remakes, rehashings or re-imaginings is the 1999 Dark Castle House on haunted hill. I'd seen it a couple years ago and wasn't too impressed (or scared), but having seen it on the shelf at the local entertainment resale shop for under three bucks I decided that the few noteworthy scenes were noteworthy enough to part with less money than it would've cost to rent the disc.

I'd like to plug said resale shop, as I like it and would like them to stick around for a while. It's called Buyback, and can be found at the intersection of Cleveland Avenue and Dublin-Granville (161). The store's something of an experiment by the CD Warehouse people, but the prices are more resonable (if not quite rational, as some discs are marked at $1.51 or $0.01 or $2.43 or $7.52 and others at $9.99 and so on). If you're in the area, certainly drop in and buy something.

Back to the film, though, I'm not so willing to recommend it as readily. I've mentioned it before as a movie with a couple interesting moments and having re-watched it, stand by my opinion then. Watching it again, even with the commentary, didn't add much to my opinion of the film. But I did re-watch it recently, and it seemed to fit well with what I am writing. Let me know if you want to borrow it, by the way.

Linking House on haunted hill to X-men (1.5), another film I've previously seen but not mentioned before, is Famke Janssen. I'd seen this in the theater on first-run with some buddies, but not Jessica. This time I brought it thinking that she'd like it, and she at least paid attention to it. I'll let her weigh in with a comment, hint hint. We'll watch the sequel soon enough, I suspect, as I am number one on the reserve list for it at the library. As for me, I think it's a pretty decent movie, going in with little knowledge of the universe as I did. I'm not among the fanboys who demanded more naked blue woman screen time, either. Frankly I thought Mystique looked somewhat nasty.

I don't know of any way to link X-men with Jim Jarmusch's Ghost dog: the way of the samurai (and I'm not going to try) other than that I enjoyed both. Ghost dog is a better film, though in nowhere the same league, action-wise, despite its subject matter. The most recent Forest Whitaker movie I'd watched was David Fincher's Panic room (which cost me $1.86 at Buyback) and I'd like to track down more of his work if these two films are any indication of his capabilities. He carries Ghost dog effortlessly, and for that matter everybody gives a good turn, particularly the stage actors playing mobsters. The little touches really add to the film, whether it be the boss's favorite cartoons or the delightfully repetitive conversations between Ghost dog and his French-speaking, ice-cream selling best friend. Neither understands the other's language, but both end up at the same conversation one way or another. I've reserved the soundtrack from the library hoping to get more of the score than the actual songs, but overall the beats and whatnot were rather quite appropriate, or at least not too distracting. This is a movie well worth watching.

Not so worth watching was Alfred Hitchcock's Rope. I guess I wasn't paying enough attention, as I didn't notice that it was done as a near-seamless realtime composition. To me it was just long and relatively dull. It struck me a play on screen, down to the small set and obviously fake backdrop. For all I know this was Al's aim in the first place, but it made for a disappointing movie. He's capable of far better, and in all optimism I can only hope that he was able to leverage what he learned in making Rope to the making of his other better films. Jimmy Stewart was all but wasted as the only actor I recognized. Skip it.

I tried to watch The deer hunter but only made it through the first two hours. It just wasn't my cup of tea at the time, but since I've only got about one hour left of it to watch it shouldn't be too tough for me to finish some other time.

And not too long ago I watched Levity with Billy Bob Thornton and Kirsten Dunst, but I don't have enough to say about it at the moment to write a sentence not beginning with 'and', let alone an entire paragraph. Sorry.

And in other movie news, Altman's Secret honor, a little film starring Philip Baker Hall as Nixon, is being released as a Criterion Collection DVD. This means that I can stop chasing the laserdisc of it on ebay.

For me to say that I don't watch any television is somewhat deceptive. I work with a guy who actually does not watch any television, namely because he does not have one. On the other hand I do have a TV, a 27" flat screen behemoth with two tuner-PIP and surround sound from Philips. It is a pretty nice TV, though its two tuners aren't great for receiving broadcast stations. Meant for cable (or better) it seems to only support antenna tuning out of some obligation to the FCC or the fraction of homes without better reception. Like mine. So the picture's crap, even with a ten dollar rabbit ears gizmo from Radio Shack. I don't watch any television, though, so this does not bother me (well, it does bother me when Jessica expects me to get her better reception to be able to watch the news, as though I'm more masterful with the little antennas).

Nope, I just don't watch any (broadcast) television. I never got hooked on the whole reality craze (whoa, take that one out of context) nor the news nor much anything else. There are some worthwhile shows, I admit, but never when I want to see them.

Enter the DVD. The studios have realized that there are other people out there like me (and ones willing to buy the sets, not borrow them like I do) who want to watch the shows, sans commercials and the dreadful wait between airings. For those people they release sets of current and classic shows on DVD. This is how I've watched M*A*S*H, The Sopranos, Starsky & Hutch, Futurama and the Family guy, though with those last two I'd seen many an episode on a computer screen, if you know what I mean.

Recently I checked out Showtime's Dead like me's first season and the entire run of the John Lovitz Critic cartoon. Both have humor mixed into them, and take place in or near NYC, but the similarities end there... or do they? Both had made a major misstep, from what I saw, by having an episode devoted to clips of other earlier episodes.

Yes, the dreaded clip show.

These are reviled by a lot of people, and I believe there is a shark-jumping category devoted to them. I don't like them either, but for a somewhat different reason.

The way that I'm watching these shows, when the regurgitation episode pops up it is within a couple days, if not hours, of the shows it is spitting back up (digested, or not). I know my memory's bad, but I don't need a recap that soon. I'm the sort of guy who fast-forwards through the "previously on" sequences, after all.

"I've lost my ability to tell between what's cute and what's idiotic."

Today I noticed that my garage door and my car's retractible antenna descend at the same rate.

I have a much more serious topic to discuss, though, as I have been watching the collected complete series of the Critic. That's where the slightly relevant quote up top first appeared, though I plan to now use it in my everyday conversation. The show's as funny as I remembered, and even more so now that I can catch more than half of the film in-jokes (before, I'd probably not have noticed a reference to Every which way but loose, though any mixup with Clint Eastwood and a chimp must just be funny).

That said, I'm having trouble enjoying the show without recognizing voice actors (at least, their voices) from Matt Groening shows (and possible even Nickelodeon). I'm starting to wonder if Mark Hamill's in here somewhere, but I'm not holding my breath.

But really, this DVD set is serious business. Why, here's the WARNING that appears before each set of episodes:

The copyright proprietor has licensed the programme (including, without limitation, its soundtrack) contained in this video cassette or Digital Versatile Disc for private home use only. Unless otherwise expressly licensed by the copyright proprietor, all other rights are reserved. Use in other locations such as airlines, clubs, coaches, hospitals, hotels, oil rigs, prisons, schools and ships is prohibited unless expressly authorised by the copyright proprietor. Any unauthorised copying, editing, exhibition, renting, hiring, exchanging, lending, public performances, diffusion and/or broadcast, in whole or in part, is strictly prohibited. Any such action establishes liability for a civil action and may give rise to criminal prosecution.

I didn't make any of that up. In fact it worries me that I transcribed it, threats of civil action and prosecution and all, because I'm sure doing so was unauthorised (with an 's' no less). Go back and read that again (if I can, I authorise you to do so).

Oil rigs? Hospitals? Oil rigs?

I'm tempted to grab my portable DVD player and take this to a school, airline or oil rig and watch it without authorisation. Then I'm going to go out and figure out how to diffuse it too, while I'm there.

Have you ever taken a good look inside your refrigerator? I mean, when you're not looking for munchies or trying to communicate with leftovers that have gone bad. Chances are good that there's a dial or two to control just how cold the fridge and the freezer get. Chances are even better that there's a label somewhere there that says something like "9 is coldest".

I've noticed this inside more than one fridge lately. I've never checked if there's anything past 9. You know, to see if one goes to eleven. That'd be pretty cool.

Five years of engineering school and I can't figure out why radios with volume controls don't use numbers but fridge coldness dials do. Is there something easier about keeping the fridge at 4 than adjusting it a little bit, then a bit more, until it gets just too cold and then you go back a tiny bit? I mean, isn't that what everybody ends up doing anyway, eventually hitting somewhere around 4 anyway?

So why the numbers?

Anyway, I've been watching the first season of Dead like me, and I've noticed that Mandy Patinkin's character, Rube, lives in apartment 41. There's three ways that I can take this. First is that it's mere coincidence. Behind door number two is the possibility that somebody at Showtime's making a slight jab at Fox's X-files, since Fox Mulder famously lived in apartment 42. Third (and finally) I could just be a colossal goober for having noticed.

I'd normally write something about the mildly delightful time Jessica and I spent in two of Columbus's finest MetroParks today, hiking and spotting the various forms of poison ivy and sweating, but I find myself compelled to write this down instead. Ever since I bought that secondhand boxing monkey, I've had a phrase in my head. Here is my horrible rendition of it: MMMOONNKKEEEYYY!

Um, yeah. So that kept running through my head, and until moments ago I couldn't place the source. It's from the first season of the BBC Office show, from a part or two where affable/cringeworthy loser boss David Brent is showing somebody around the office, points out a stuffed monkey, and apparently does a horrible impersonation of some comedian who hasn't caught on over on this side of the pond.

Well, hey, it matters to me.

I've finished Curb your enthusiasm, and I'm slowly forming my opnion about the show (well, its first season at least). This opinion of mine isn't shaping up to be very positive, despite what I might have said before. The show's just too mean-spirited and abrasive.

It is nice to see Richard Lewis getting some work again, though. But there's little else to redeem the series, other than I can now say that I have a much clearer idea why I don't really like Seinfeld. Sure there were laughs, but they weren't, you know, good ones.

On a more serious note, tonight we watched The day the Earth caught fire, which though it is a very good movie, is up there with Day of the Triffids for having a deceptive title--it covers several weeks of events! Of course, for an apocalyptic vision of the near-future-of-the-past, it's much more rooted in fact and steeped with credible stuff. And it also doesn't cop out with villians who just happen to be vulnerable to salt water.