Desipio Message Board

As usual there are a lot of movies playing that I just have no interest in seeing.  So how bad could a movie with Steve Carrell and Tina Fey be?  It is not only not bad, this is a very entertaining movie.  I went to it thinking that I had seen all of the funny scenes in the ads on tv.  I was wrong.   Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis made a similar movie years ago called "The Out Of Towners".  This is funnier.  If you think that you have seen all the ways that a car chase could be filmed, wait until you see this one.  If you think that Tina Fey is just not sexy, you are right, but you can't have everything in a movie.  There is a good supporting cast.  The black boarder from "Curb Your Enthusiasm", whose name I should know but don't.  James Franco has a hilarious scene.  This movie is unrealistic, a little stodgy, and a good way to spend $8.

I rest my case.

Will Leitch wrote a decent article about the 2010 season and the Cubs.  He admits his Cardinal fetish, but gives Cub fans credit as not necessarily all frat boys.   

http://deadspin.com/5498446/chicago-cubs-this-is-the-golden-age

Now.  About that Toyota sign.  What the hell is that logo, anyway?  A cowboy?  A longhorn steer?  A devil?  Absolutely nothing?  It is hauntingly ugly, whatever it is.

"I hope you burn in hell."   These were among the pleasantries left on the web site of a high school student by  some of his classmates.  They also told him that they wanted to "rip out your fucking heart and feed it to you,"  "kill you" and "pound your head with an ice pick."  Notwithstanding that they claimed that these things were intended as jokes, the appellate court was not amused when a lawsuit was filed by the student.  The defendants moved to dismiss on the ground that this was  protected speech, in part, because the student aspired to a theatrical career and was therefore a public figure.  The boy's parents, on advice of the police, not only took the boy out of that school, they moved him from Los Angeles to Northern California.  The Court said that these were not a few words shouted in the midst of a brawl.  "It was a series of grammatically correct sentences composed at a computer keyboard over a period of at least several minutes."   

I don't have a citation to give you for the 41 page opinion, it will be published tomorrow.

The story is important enough to be worth a movie on its own.  How we were lied to about weapons of mass destruction in order to sell us on a war.  But Hollywood, being what it is, decided to make it into an action movie.  Well if that is what it takes to get a mass audience to see what happened I think that I am all for it.  It is a worthwhile way to spend almost two hours.  That is, if you can take the damn "shaky camera" that is employed throughout the movie.  Matt Damon plays Jason Bourne, again.  Brendon Gleeson loses his accent and it is difficult to know what he is supposed to be.  Greg Kinnear plays the Pentagon villain.  I think that I heard my Berkeley audience mates  start to hiss him eventually.   

I have been a Cub fan since 1942.  I have been a California Bear fan since 1953.  The Cubs haven't won a pennant since 1945.  The Cal Bears haven't been to the Rose Bowl since January 1, 1960.  Cal's last Pac 10 (or whatever they have called it through the years)  Basketball Championship was 1960.  Today Cal won the Pac 10 Men's basketball championship, ending a 50 year drought.  I have always thought of the Cal Bears as the Cubs of college sports.  If the Cal Bears can do it why not the Cubs? 

(I was working my way through law school back in 1959 and had to work on New Years Day, tending bar, so I couldn't go to the Rose Bowl.  I said that there would be other Rose Bowls so it didn't matter if I missed that one.  I also couldn't get away to see the Bears win the NCAA Basketball championship that year.  I wasted my youth.  But that's what us Depression Era babies were like.)

''We can create more runs,'' Guillen said. ''In the past, yeah, we could score 10, but all of a sudden, when we need to score one, we can't. That's why our philosophy changed.

''We have a bunch of guys in the lineup who can hit 20-plus home runs. I would rather have 10 guys hit 20 home runs than have one guy hit 50."

Let me understand this.  He would prefer having a lineup that produces 200 home runs to having a lineup that produces 50 home runs.  You know, he's got something there.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/02/14/entertainment/e223604S10.DTL

I know that it isn't fair that Kevin has to pay for two seats.  But when I have to spend five hours on Southwest and have paid for my entire seat I don't think that it is fair for him to use part of it.

Now that I have seen watched it all the way through and know how it ends I am going to watch it a second time to see if I can figure it out.  It is a caper movie that overuses flashbacks so you have a hard time figuring out where and when it is going on, especially since the main characters constantly admit that they are lying to you.     Cast: Julia Roberts, looking like she is getting close to regretting all of that cosmetic surgery; Clive Owen, whose stardom is a little baffling; Tom Wilkinson, who is an outstanding actor;  and  Paul Giamatti, one of the best character actors whom I have ever seen.

I am not sure why this movie was made.  Someone bought the rights to a book by an L A Times columnist and had the wherewithall to get it produced.  Nothing happens.  A middle class guy befriends a homeless man who was a music school dropout and who is schizophrenic.  He convinces him to go to a shelter.  End of movie.  However, the acting is brilliant.

Thirty seconds into the movie and you know that except for the names of the characters this has nothing to do with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  Nevertheless it is fun.  Great mood.  Grimy, muddy 19th century London.  Robert Downey Jr.  doesn't get to wear a clean shirt or to clean his fingernails throughout this movie.  Dr. Watson apparently had a gambling addiction.  a fact that I found interesting having read the entire canon.  Only once, I admit, but nonetheless I did read it very closely.  Mary Morstan and Irene Adler make it into the movie, the latter cozily portrayed by Rachel McAdams.  Mark Strong plays the villain (no not Moriarity, they are saving him for the sequel).  Halfway through the movie you realize that Strong would have made a far more convincing Holmes than does Downey.  But go see it, great special effects, and the closing credits are the best that I have ever seen. 

Matt Damon said it best in an interview about this movie.  "As holiday movies about rugby go, this is up there with the best of them."

This movie has gotten a lot of hype.  It deserves it.  Clooney plays a man who works for a company that fires people.   He constantly travels all over the United States, and has no roots.  It is a lifestyle that he has chosen in preference to committing to anything permanent.  His job is a metaphor for his philosophy.  You know what is coming.  A crisis causes him to question his choices and the movie ends, literally and figuratively, up in the air.  It is funny.  Clooney is smug and charming.  His bed partner is attractive and interesting.  You see a lot of the United States that you didn't particularly care to see. 

Do not watch the new "Scrubs".   End of announcement/

I want to give this one my endorsement.  It is about mid-life crisis.  At one point I felt dubious about watching it to the end.  There is a lot of self pity going on.  But the three men are very good actors, and the writing is intelligent enough to make its points without going overboard

including Mike C

with lust in their hearts.

No, seriously.  This movie surprised me.  After reading the reviews I didn't expect it to be any good.  It is a very dry comedy about what would happen if the Army ever decided to incorporate new age philosophy.  They do it because to Soviets bought misinformation that the Americans were doing it, and when the Americans learned that the Soviets were doing it, the Pentagon started a program because, God forbid, we couldn't let the Soviets get ahead of us in anything.  You have got to admit that is pretty funny.  Clooney is excellent.  Jeff Bridges is closer to his Lebowski character than in anything that he has done since Lebowski.  Kevin Spacey has a limited but juicy villain part.  They only kill one goat, but that is only one small part of the nonsense of this film.  Very few laugh out loud moments, but I thought that it was well crafted. 

Ah!  The Sixties.  The Beatles.  Cream.  The Who.  The Stones.  Janis.  Dylan.  Weed.  Sideburns.  Wide lapels and bell bottoms.  One of the characters in this movie says to another, "You know what is really sad?  These are the best days of our lives."  While I was sitting in that dark theater I believed that. 

I am a terrible person for taking delight in what happened to the Deadbirds in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and a soft line drive to the greatest mid-season acquisition in the history of the major leagues.  I will have to atone for that sin in 11 months.

This is the best reason for going to the movies that I have seen in a long time.  Very accurate period piece.  The only drawback is a very corny concluding scene.