I’ll give you this, Lost-ies: the first season was pretty good. By the end of the second season, however, I was annoyed. I’ll give it credit for trying something different–and I use “different” here in the strictly value-neutral sense. “Different” is only different until it suddenly isn’t. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: actors, audio clips, friends, Hollywood, Lost, NPR, The Onion, TV, Twin Peaks, videos, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me
Normally, I look forward to screener season. Woohoo—free movies! At least once a year, for a few weeks, my SAG dues seem to deliver a tangible benefit.
Last night was my first viewing of any of the four screeners I have (thus far) received, and it was not an auspicious beginning. Up in the Air looks like it might be a pretty enjoyable movie. Might be, that is–I couldn’t say for sure, because the DVD I got is either a faulty reproduction or some kind of Special Jigsaw Puzzle/MadLibs/stoned Director’s Cut edition.
But if you read it anyway, you’ll know how I felt.
My DVD’s rendering began with a phone call scene between the George Clooney and Vera Farmiga characters, in which she reprimands him for having transgressed the boundaries of what apparently had been their rather casual relationship. Cut to George in the office of his boss Jason Bateman, who lets him know that someone named Natalie has quit. Cut to George receiving his 10-million-miler status card during a flight, complete with congratulatory announcement from the flight attendant and a special sit-down visit from the pilot (Sam Elliott). Cut to aforementioned Natalie character (Anna Kendrick) taking a picture of George holding a cardboard cutout of his sister and soon-to-be-brother-in-law in front of the St. Louis Airport terminal.
“Wow,” I thought, “they’re really going all-out with this whole non-linear narrative thing. But why are the edits so abrupt? Like, with some of them coming in mid-sentence?” Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: actors, awards season, DVD, Hollywood, movies, SAG, wtf?
Peter Gammons (Flickr/Trev Stair)
Sagely baseball writer Peter Gammons, asked by MLB Network analyst and former big-league pitcher Mitch Williams whether he will now vote for Mark McGwire’s induction into the Hall of Fame:
I think it’s going to be hard now to vote for Mark. I reserve the right to change my mind. I voted for him this time because, you know, he never was suspended… but once you’ve admitted [to using steriods], I believe that… I mean, you guys know how hard it is to be a Major League player. The Hall of Fame is an honor, not a statistical right. I really do look at it that way, and for [you] and all the people we know that did not use any performance-enhancing drugs, I find it hard to vote for him.
What’s going to be fascinating to me–and I hope it doesn’t impact–but I think there are going to be some people that just because writers say, “My eyes tell me he must have done steroids,” that there are going to be one to five people that were innocent that don’t make the Hall of Fame because of the people that did cheat. And that really breaks my heart, knowing how hard all of you worked to get where you are.
Tags: baseball, ethics, Hall of Fame, lies, Mark McGwire, news media, Peter Gammons, sports, steroids, writers
Hallelujah. Somebody with a much bigger name than mine (in every sense) blogged this so I don’t have to. Now I can simply linkblog it, which is ever so much quicker.
We can finally drop the “thousand.” Last year may have been two thousand nine, but this year, mercifully, is twenty ten. And next year will be twenty eleven. And so on until—well, until the year 3000.
Sing it, Rick. I for one am in favor of anything that signifies departure from the last decade.
Everybody got that? “Twenty ten.” Woohoo! Our long extra-syllable nightmare is over!
Tags: decade, Hendrik Hertzberg, words

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