'Best of TBH Politoons'
Baron Dave Romm
Monster House
By Baron Dave Romm
I can't recommend Monster House too highly. It's an amazing film, with great animation and great storytelling. I'm not going to tell you too much about the movie: you shouldn't go with any expectations, except that it's an animated children's horror film that everyone (including me) speaks highly of. Go. (You don't have to wait until the end of the credits, though you shouldn't leave just when they start rolling.)
If your movie theater has a poster of Monster House, be sure to walk around, checking from different angles...
Who Wants To Be A Superhero is a six-episode "reality" tv show on the Sci-Fi Network. The big draw is Stan Lee, co-creator and True Believer/Tireless PR Flack for most of the Marvel Universe. Stan hovers over the action, speaking directly to the contestants through a tv screen in the Donald Trump ("You're fired")/Charles Townsend (the disembodied voice of Charlie's Angels) sort of way. Many people auditioned to be Superheroes, and the montage of failed candidates is one of the best parts of the pilot. Only a handful made the final cut, and Stan has to winnow the bunch down to just the one superhero who will get his own comic (or something). Much of the show is incredibly stupid, even by Marvel Comics standards, and the cutting is too fast and the camera angles are distracting.
Still, the first episode was endearing. Amid all the blowhard pomp, some real people came through. The contestants are geeks, and that's a plus (usually). The first superhero challenge was presented well, and did indeed demonstrate the heart of a hero.
One show does not reality make, nor a superhero. Still, Who Wants To Be A Superhero will have me watching the next installment.
The other premier on the Sci-Fi Network is Eureka. I'm not going to link to their distracting and graphics-intense website but if you want some spoilers of the pilot go to the Wikipedia entry on Eureka.
In short: I liked it, though not a lot. The super-secret town of Eureka is filled with scientists with big budgets, and a home-town sheriff to keep the peace. Into the town wanders an FBI agent agent with a rebellious teen-aged daughter. Scientific problems follow, and the soap opera begins. The special effects were good, the characters (mostly) believable, and the writing was okay. I have hope, though not a lot.
Eureka is reminiscent of the failed Disney show Eerie, Indiana. I liked Eerie, but I was one of too few. The right assortment of weird and entertainment for the masses is a delicate balance. For the most part, really smart people are the comedy relief and/or the sidekicks. One of the few shows to successfully combing both highbrow and lowbrow humor was Frasier. Science fiction shows tend to be a bit better about requiring the brain to be in gear, but not always. Many of us who use our brain during the day want to turn it off a night, alas. The concepts simple, the laughs easy, the characters sharply drawn. Whether Eureka can walk the tightrope remains to be seen.
Sci-Fi is also making Webisodes that won't be seen on tv. I'm not going to link to that site either. The first two one-and-a-half minute vignettes were awful.
I rarely re-watch movies. But DVDs are a whole new way of watching cinema, a whole package of trailers, movie, extras, commentary and subtitles all in one small disk. I've been going back and catching up on my favorite directors. Some new (to me) favorites have emerged, notably Akira Kurosawa. As I've seen more and more Kurosawa movies, often with commentary, he ranks higher and higher in my director's pantheon.
The director who's suffered the most from re-watching has been Frederico Fellini. Indeed, the whole Italian neo-realism school has been notched down a peg or two. I finally saw The Bicycle Thief a few years ago, and wondered what the fuss was about. Mainly, because everyone stole the idea and it's been done many times since. The 1948 De Sica version is good, but dates poorly. I give them lots of credit for creating cinema out of the ashes of Mussolini Fascism, but I wish they'd done a better job.
As a young man, the excesses of Frederico Fellini were a joy to behold. Simple but effective stories told with deceptively simple visuals. Tremendous acting, and even small parts had unforgettable faces.
La Strada is an early work, from 1954, and was hailed as a masterpiece from the beginning. Again, I don't see what the fuss is about... now. La Strada -- The Road -- doesn't tell much of the background of the characters. Anthony Quinn is terrific as Zampano, a brutish strong man with the lusts of life overriding the occasional moments of tenderness. Richard Basehart is terrific as The Fool, a circus performer who is very smart but doesn't seem to think things through. Guillieta Masina (Fellini's wife) creates instant empathy as Gelsomina, an innocent but not particularly smart woman who is bought by Zampano and taken on the road.
The DVD comes with an introduction by Martin Scorcese, who claims that many of his films are built around the Zampano character. Scorcese is a big Fellini fan, who met him early on, and the influences are there, at least in retrospect. I suppose "brutish strong man" describes a lot of thugs, and I can see how he used Fellini's character in modern crime settings.
Still, much of the film reminded me more of Erich von Stroheim's Greed, from 1924, than a more modern take. In Greed, a strong but clueless McTeague wanders through life, eventually dragged down by his own bad decisions. In La Strada, Zampano is strong and Gelsomina is innocent and the combination drags them both down.
Scorcese claims that the movie sounds better with the Italian soundtrack (both the English and Italian versions are dubbed later, and the American version has subtitles). I tried that for a bit, and the major beneficiary is Masina, who has a voice to match her diminutive physique. I watched the DVD in English with the subtitles, which was enlightening. For example, in one lengthy sequence the subtitles read, "he likes you" but the soundtrack says, "he loves you".
La Strada is still a good movie, fifty years later, with gorgeous photography and good acting which tells a simple tale with many reverberations. But it doesn't stand up as a great film, at least to me. Recommended, but not as your first Fellini.
Baron Dave Romm is a conceptual artist and a noble of Ladonia who produces Shockwave Radio Theater, writes in a Live Journal demi-blog, plays with a very weird CD collection and an ever growing list of political links. Dave Romm reviews things at random for obscure web sites. You can read all his music recommendations from Bartcop-E. Podcasts being reworked. Recent radio programs can be accessed on the Shockwave Radio audio page.
Thanks to everyone who has sent me music to play on the air.
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Freshly Updated!
Dick Eats Bush
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
House Conservatives: $2 For Workers, But Only If Paris Gets Millions (thinkprogress.org)
The estate tax - aka the Paris Hilton Tax - benefits only the ultra-wealthy. This year, the exemption level is $2 million ($4 million per couple), which means only 5 out of every 1,000 people who die will pay the tax.
Republican Says We Need A Dem Congress (seeingtheforest.com)
I am a Republican, intend to remain a Republican, and am descended from three generations of California Republicans, active in Merced and San Bernardino Counties as well as in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Archbishop Bruce J. Simpson, OSJB: How can Israelis be antigay? (advocate.com)
A nation born from the hatred and violence of the Holocaust ought to be the last place on earth where citizens offer a bounty for the murder of an entire class of people. But World Pride has provoked some Israelis to Nazi-like behavior.
Frederica Mathewes-Green: Pride: The Anti-Self-Esteem (beliefnet.co)
We're supposed to instill pride in our children to make them stable people. But humility works even better.
Debra Dickerson: Envy: The Key to My Success (beliefnet.co)
Envy, then, need not be the dark side of admiration; it can be the catalyst for healthy competition. Envy adds to the luster of those you envy, it doesn't catch you up to them. You can join them, not beat them.
Shmuley Boteach: Lust: God's Favorite Sin (beliefnet.com)
Rav Kahana lay under the bed of Rav, his illustrious teacher, who was carousing and speaking frivolously with his wife of sexual matters; afterward, the teacher had intercourse with her. Kahana made his presence known and said to his teacher: "You appear to me to be like a hungry man who has never had sex before, for you act with great fervor in your lust."
John D. Spalding: Gluttony: Not Just About Food (beliefnet.com)
You don't have to live at the all-you-can-eat buffet to make a pig of yourself.
Jack Miles: Wrath: If God Smites, Why Can't We? (beliefnet.com)
How the wrathful God of the Old Testament had a change of heart.
Phyllis Tickle: Greed: The Mother of All Sins (beliefnet.com)
Many world religions say greed is the stuff the other deadly sins are made of.
Steven Waldman: Sloth: Look Where Hard Work Got Us (beliefnet.com)
Working harder only gives us more sloth-inducing gadgets.
Letterman: Clinton responds to Coulter-parody (Video)
Hubert's Poetry Corner
RICKY'S POKE OF THE FOLK
Real Texas women always distrust an incumbent 'FEE MALE' politician with hair that's prettier than theirs!
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Finally returning to more seasonal temperatures.
No new flags.
Dixie Chicks 'Got A Raw Deal'
Willie Nelson
Willie Nelson says the Dixie Chicks "got a raw deal" from a disapproving public following their criticism of resident Bush.
"I think the fact that they were overseas and onstage had a little bit to do with it because you're speaking to other people about our business," the 73-year-old country crooner said in an interview in this week's Time magazine.
Nelson said he was surprised his remarks about Bush a year earlier during an overseas news conference didn't incite a similar controversy.
"I said 'He's not from Texas and he ain't a cowboy, so let's stop trashin' Texans and cowboys.' It got a little chuckle, but I didn't get run out of the country," Nelson told the magazine.
Willie Nelson
Helps Union In Puerto Rico
Danny Glover
U.S. actor Danny Glover on Sunday helped launch a campaign to rally Puerto Rico's hotel workers to join the local branch of a large U.S. labor union in a bid to gain better pay and benefits.
Glover, whose movie credits include "The Color Purple" and the "Lethal Weapon" series, joined leaders of the Gastronomical Union, which represents about 2,100 employees at nine hotels in the U.S. territory, to call for the island's hospitality workers to unite under a single banner.
"The union's fight is to construct a world in which we want to live," Glover said at a news conference at the Condado Plaza Hotel & Casino in the capital of San Juan.
Danny Glover
Republican Hugs
Michael Moore
Michael Moore -- gadfly filmmaker, liberal activist and political lightning rod -- says he finds himself being hugged by a lot of Republicans these days.
On the streets of Traverse City, where Moore is working on last-minute preparations for a bigger-and-better sequel to the film festival he launched last year in his home state, the Oscar-winning director says he is approached all the time by conservatives ready to make peace.
Moore has not budged from the central claim of his 2004 documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" -- that the Bush administration misled the American public about the reasons for war in Iraq -- but he says that more people have come around to his view.
Used to traveling with security and encountering a barrage of hostility, Moore said he finds people now more accepting, even to the point Republicans are spontaneously hugging him.
Michael Moore
Film Studio Fire
Pinewood Shepperton
A large fire seriously damaged the set of the latest James Bond movie Sunday, caving in the roof of a sound stage transformed into a replica of Venice for the production of "Casino Royale."
Pinewood Shepperton, the studio complex where the fire erupted, said filming for the Bond production had been completed.
The Buckinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service said several cylinders of flammable gas exploded during the blaze, which took eight fire engines to extinguish.
Pinewood Shepperton
Mom Defends Meal Ticket
Lindsay Lohan
A studio executive was "way out of line" for scolding Lindsay Lohan for her absences from the set of her new movie, Dina Lohan, the teen actress' mother told "Access Hollywood" in an interview set to air Monday.
Last week, James G. Robinson, CEO of Morgan Creek Productions, chided Lohan in a letter for her behavior on a movie set and doubted her absence was related to heat exhaustion.
"I feel when you are 19 (years old) it is way out of line. ... Maybe he has personal issues with whomever and it came out with my child," she said in an interview with Billy Bush. "I don't know him. I can't judge him. I don't think it was a smart thing to do to a young girl."
Lohan acknowledged that Lindsay has been late to the set on occasion and that the production once had to be scheduled around her to accommodate her lateness.
Lindsay Lohan
Slams Film Protesters
Salman Rushdie
British novelist Salman Rushdie has squared off against feminist icon Germaine Greer, labeling her support for a group of Bengali film protesters as "philistine, sanctimonious, and disgraceful."
The protesters oppose the film version of Monica Ali's book "Brick Lane," a story about a Bangladeshi woman living in the area of east London, because of the way the book depicts people in the area. Their campaign has led to the cancellation of plans to shoot scenes for the movie in the neighborhood.
Greer wrote that locals had a right to prevent filming, and that Ali failed to realize that some residents might have found her plot outlandish. Others have supported the book and film.
Rushdie, who received death threats after writing "The Satanic Verses," lashed back at Greer with a letter in The Guardian newspaper.
"At the height of the assault against my novel 'The Satanic Verses,' Germaine Greer stated: 'I refuse to sign petitions for that book of his, which was about his own troubles.' She went on to describe me as 'a megalomaniac, an Englishman with dark skin.' Now it's Monica Ali's turn to be deracinated."
Salman Rushdie
Fallout
Mel Gibson
The arrest of Mel Gibson for drunk driving prompted renewed accusations on Sunday that the Oscar-winning director and actor harbored anti-Semitic feelings.
Gibson, whose controversial 2004 film "The Passion of the Christ" was a major hit, was arrested in the early hours of Friday morning for allegedly driving his 2006 Lexus at 87 mph (140 kph) along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu, the beach town north of Los Angeles.
Celebrity Web site TMZ.com posted portions of what it called the arresting deputy's original report, which said Gibson was abusive, shouted anti-Jewish slurs and boasted that he "owned Malibu."
The Los Angeles Times reported on Sunday that a civilian committee overseeing the sheriff's department would investigate whether officers tried to cover up Gibson's behavior and statements to save the star from embarrassment.
Mel Gibson
Check Mate For Sheriff's in Gibson Case
Mel Gibson Case -- An Outrage
Gibson's Anti-Semitic Tirade -- Alleged Cover Up
Leader Bans Usage Of Foreign Words
Iran
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as "pizzas" which will now be known as "elastic loaves," state media reported Saturday.
The presidential decree, issued earlier this week, orders all governmental agencies, newspapers and publications to use words deemed more appropriate by the official language watchdog, the Farhangestan Zaban e Farsi, or Persian Academy, the Irna official news agency reported.
Among other changes, a "chat" will become a "short talk" and a "cabin" will be renamed a "small room," according to official Web site of the academy.
Iran
Unsuitable Names For Children
Malaysia
Malaysian parents will no longer be allowed to give their children names deemed unsuitable by authorities, a report says.
Malaysia's population of 26 million is dominated by some 60 percent Malays, 26 percent Chinese and eight percent Indians. Among the Malays, names such as Zani -- which means male adulterer, and Woti -- sexual intercourse, were banned, the report said.
For Indians, Karrupan, which means black fellow, is equally as taboo as are names which denote "fair skin," such as Sivappi and Vellayan, it said.
Jainisah said parents could not name their babies after colours, animals, insects, fruits or vegetables.
Malaysia
1916 Blast Anniversary Observed
Black Tom
The sound of the blast was unearthly, and the tremor was felt 100 miles away in Philadelphia. The night sky over New York Harbor turned orange. People were jolted from bed and windows shattered within 25 miles.
The Statue of Liberty, less than a mile away, was damaged by a rain of red-hot shards of steel. Frightened immigrants on Ellis Island were hastily evacuated to Manhattan.
The epicenter of the blast - a small island called Black Tom - all but disappeared in what was then the largest explosion ever in the U.S., on Sunday, July 30, 1916 at 2:08 a.m.
It destroyed about 2,000 tons of munitions parked in freight cars and pierside barges, awaiting transfer to ships and ultimately destined for the World War I battlefields of France.
Black Tom
Mirage Could Be Real
Lake Erie
Scientists say it's a mirage, but others swear that when the weather is right, Clevelanders can see across Lake Erie and spot Canadian trees and buildings 50 miles away.
Eyewitness accounts have long been part of the city's history.
"I can see how this could be possible," said Lawrence Krauss, chairman of the Physics Department at Case Western Reserve University.
Krauss and Joe Prahl, chairman of the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at Case, said mirages can occur during an atmospheric inversion, in which a layer of cold air blankets the lake, topped by layers of increasingly warm air. When this happens, it can cause the light that filters through these layers from across the lake to bend, forming a lens that can create the illusion of distant objects.
Lake Erie
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