November, 2007 Film Viewings

11/1 The Wire 1.9
11/2 The Suburbanite (1904)
11/3 The Wire 1.10
Twilight Zone: The Movie (Landis, Miller, Spielberg and Dante, 1982)
11/4 The Wire 1.11
11/6 The Wire 1.12, 1.13
11/8 Beauty in Trouble (Hrebejk ,2006)
11/9 The Nines (August, 2007)
The Island (Lounguine, 2006)
11/10 The Wire 2.1, 2.2
Blood Car (Orr, 2007)
11/13 Times and Winds (Erdem, 2007)
11/14 The Wire 2.3
11/15 Fireworks (Anger, 1947)
Rabbit's Moon (Anger, 1950)
Scorpio Rising (Anger, 1963)
Kustom Kar Kommandos (Anger, 1965)
Mouse Heaven (Anger, 2004)
Elliott's Suicide (Anger, 2004)
My Surfing Lucifer (Anger, 2007)
11/16 The Return (Zvyagintsev, 2003)
11/17 Freaky Friday (Nelson, 1975)
11/18 The Wire 2.4
11/20 The Wire 2.5
11/21 Superman: The Movie (Donner, 1979)
11/22 The Wire 2.6, 2.7
11/23 The Wire 2.8, 2.9
11/24 1408
11/25 The Wire 2.10
11/26 The Wire 2.11
11/27 The Wire 2.12
11/28 The Wire 3.1
11/29 The Wire 3.2

#13

*

I've never read any of her books, so I've got no context apart from admiring the directness and obviousness of this statement from Jodi Picoult about her writing habits:

"I may write garbage, but you can always edit garbage. You can't edit a blank page."

Isn't it really that simple?

Kicks

[Screams]

October, 2007 Film Viewings

October One- The Wire 3.3
October Four- Pittsburgh (2006)
October Five- Shut Up and Sing
October Six- Cat People (Tourneur, 1942)
October Eight- The Black Dahlia (DePalma, 2005)
October Nine- Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (Story, 2007)
Prison Town, U.S.A. (POV)
No Angels in the Outfield (POV)
October Fourteen- Little Miss Sunshine
October Sixteen- For Your Consideration (Guest, 2006)
October Eighteen- Viridiana (Bunuel, 1961)
October Nineteen- Dough & Stuff (Puiu, 2001)
October Twenty- Eastern Promises (Cronenberg, 2007)
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Dominik, 2007)
October Twenty-One- The Devil Came on Horseback (Sundberg and Stern, 2007)
Several Vitaphone Shorts
The Wire 1.1
October Twenty-Two- Fast Food Nation (Linklater, 2006)
October Twenty-Four- The Wire 1.2
October Twenty-Five- The Wire 1.3
October Twenty-Six- The Pursuit of Happyness
October Twenty-Seven- R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: Don't Even Think About It
Into the Wild (Penn, 2007)
October Twenty-Eight- The Wire 1.4, 1.5
October Twenty-Nine- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1910)
October Thirty- The Wire 1.6
October Thirty-One- The Wire 1.7, 1.8

Halloween Costumes 2007

We went all-superhero this year: Batgirl, Wonder Woman and Wolfpack from Weird War Tales.

He Is Always Watching Me

Best $14.99 I've ever spent. I hope response is strong enough that they make the nurse.

Week #7 NFL Picks

Wherein the slide continues...

NEW ORLEANS over Atlanta
BUFFALO over Baltimore (who hasn't beat a good team all year)
DETROIT over Tampa Bay
WASHINGTON over Arizona
HOUSTON over Tennessee
NY GIANTS over San Francisco
New England over MIAMI
OAKLAND over Kansas City
CINCINNATI over NY Jets
SEATTLE over St. Louis
DALLAS over Minnesota
PHILADELPHIA over Chicago
Pittsburgh over DENVER
JACKSONVILLE over Indianapolis

Last week: 6-7. Season: 55-34.

Three Rivers Film Festival 2007

The Three Rivers Film Festival website posted its list of films recently, and I'm a bit disappointed. I suppose I shouldn't be; I've seen the up-and-down crowds at the screenings I've attended over the past few years. But I remember how exciting it was to see Notre Musique in a packed theater on a Saturday afternoon. And three years ago Guy Maddin appeared at the festival's opening night with Cowards Bend the Knee, on the same night they screened Moolade. Don't get me wrong-- there are a few really great films in there. We'll get a baby sitter and see Persepolis, and I'm going to catch the Kenneth Anger program and the Burnett film and a couple of others look really good. I'm sure there are some great films in there that I just haven't found yet. I had just been hoping we'd get more of the Toronto films, like we have in years past. I'm not as surprised that 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is absent, but from the nothing I know about festival programing it seems like Silent Light or The Banishment or The Man From London or Secret Sunshine or Useless would have been in the range.

As always, any recommendations would be warmly appreciated.

Week #6 NFL Picks

KANSAS CITY over Cincinnati
JACKSONVILLE over Houston
CLEVELAND over Miami
CHICAGO over Minnesota
N.Y. JETS over Philadelphia
BALTIMORE over St. Louis
Tennessee over TAMPA BAY
Washington over GREEN BAY
ARIZONA over Carolina
DALLAS over New England
SAN DIEGO over Oakland
SEATTLE over New Orleans
N.Y. Giants over ATLANTA

Last week: 8-6. Season: 49-27.

I am fading fast.

Week #5 NFL Picks

PITTSBURGH over Seattle (the bounce-back, Super Bowl XL was no fluke game)
NEW ORLEANS over Carolina (the season's not lost yet game)
KANSAS CITY over Jacksonville
Detroit over WASHINGTON
TENNESSEE over Atlanta
HOUSTON over Miami
NEW ENGLAND over Cleveland
Arizona over ST. LOUIS
N.Y. GIANTS over N.Y. Jets
INDIANAPOLIS over Tampa Bay
DENVER over San Diego (the Travis Henry swan song go-crazy game)
SAN FRANCISCO over Baltimore (the Trent Dilfer revenge game)
GREEN BAY over Chicago
Dallas over BUFFALO

Last week: 6-8. Season: 41-21.

It seems to me...

It seems to me that the pertinent question is not whether it was proper for the Mayor of the City of Pittsburgh to use a vehicle purchased by Homeland Security for personal engagements, but rather whether the City should want to have as its Mayor any individual who willingly spends his leisure time at a Toby Keith concert.

September, 2007 Film Viewings

9.1- Trust
9.2- Donkey Skin
9.3- Blades of Glory
9.4- Le Retour a la Raison
9.5- Rhythmus 21
9.6- Anemic Cinema
9.7- Ballet Mecanique
9.9- Baby Doll
9.10- Symphonie Diagonale
9.11- Le Vampire
9.12- The Hearts of Age
9.13- In the Company of Men
9.14- Blazing Saddles
9.18- Croupier
9.21- Marooned in Iraq
9.22- The Fountain
9.23- Death of a Cyclist
Day of Wrath
9.24- Hua Yang De Nian Hua
9.25- Stranger Than Fiction
9.26- Iraq, My Country
9.27- Hotel Chevalier
9.28- Knife in the Water
9.29- The 40 Year-Old Virgin
9.30- The Wire 3.1, 3.2

Irony Update

Just in case you didn't know, there is no longer any ironic value in the "You're the Best/ Around/ Nothin's Gonna Ever Keep You Down" song. The reason why this is the case, above and beyond any internet overuse, is because Adam Laroche is presently using the song for his at-bat music.

Week #4 NFL Picks

Pittsburgh over ARIZONA
MIAMI over Oakland
Houston over ATLANTA
Baltimore over CLEVELAND
DETROIT over Chicago
Green Bay over MINNESOTA
DALLAS over St. Louis
BUFFALO over N.Y. Jets
CAROLINA over Tampa Bay
Seattle over SAN FRANCISCO
SAN DIEGO over Kansas City
INDIANAPOLIS over Denver
Philadelphia over N.Y. GIANTS
New England over CINCINNATI

Last week: 10-6. Season: 35-13.

Week #3 NFL Picks

PITTSBURGH over San Francisco
BALTIMORE over Arizona
NEW YORK JETS over Miami
TAMPA BAY over St. Louis
PHILADELPHIA over Detroit
KANSAS CITY over Minnesota
San Diego over GREEN BAY
NEW ENGLAND over Buffalo
Indianapolis over HOUSTON
DENVER over Jacksonville
CHICAGO over Dallas
OAKLAND over Cleveland
SEATTLE over Cincinnati
ATLANTA over Carolina
WASHINGTON over New York Giants
NEW ORLEANS over Tennessee

Last week: 12-4. Season: 25-7.

funny/not funny

funny: the combination of the words "man" and "sandal" to form the hybrid word "mandal", meaning a derisive term directed toward men's sandals.

why it's funny: because in the combining of the two words, the essential phonetic identity of each word is preserved.

not funny: the combination of the words "man" and "nurse" or "man" and "purse" to form the hybrid word "murse", meaning either a derisive term directed toward male nurses or men's handbags.

why it's not funny: the phonetic structure of the word "man" is abandoned, and isn't adequately conveyed by simply replacing the first letter of any noun with "m." It's lame.

Week #2 NFL Picks

Cincinnati over CLEVELAND
Indianapolis over TENNESSEE
San Francisco over ST. LOUIS
New Orleans over TAMPA BAY
Green Bay over N.Y. GIANTS (taking too many road teams here)
PITTSBURGH over Buffalo
CAROLINA over Houston
JACKSONVILLE over Atlanta
DETROIT over Minnesota
Dallas over MIAMI
ARIZONA over Seattle
CHICAGO over Kansas City
DENVER over Oakland
BALTIMORE over N.Y. Jets
NEW ENGLAND over San Diego
PHILADELPHIA over Washington

Last week: 13-3. Season: 13-3.

Week #1 NFL Picks

Just straight winners-- no point spreads, as I'm not interested in gambling for serious money.

INDIANAPOLIS over New Orleans
HOUSTON over Kansas City
BUFFALO over Denver
WASHINGTON over Miami
GREEN BAY over Philadelphia
Pittsburgh over CLEVELAND
New England over NEW YORK JETS
MINNESOTA over Atlanta
JACKSONVILLE over Tennessee
Carolina over ST. LOUIS
SAN DIEGO over Chicago
SEATTLE over Tampa Bay
OAKLAND over Detroit
DALLAS over New York Giants
CINCINNATI over Baltimore
SAN FRANCISCO over Arizona

Yeah, I generally went home teams, and at this point I'd trust the Football Outsiders guys if they predicted the sun would start revolving around the earth, so I'm going stronger on the Panthers and Packers than I would otherwise.

four years old

The Contents of Our DVR (9/02/07)

Frenzy
Cujo
High School Musical 2 (yeah, this one's not mine)
Gosford Park
Juliet of the Spirits (HD)
The Illusionist (for Ali's Edward Norton hangup)
The Young Girls of Rochefort (HD)
2 Episodes of P.O.V.
Au Revoir, Les Enfants
High Plains Drifter
Mr. Death
Trust
The Best of Youth
Cruel Story of Youth
Tsotsi
Greed
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
All About My Mother
Croupier
Vampyr
The Honeymoon Killers
The Devil and Daniel Johnston
Cache
The Battle of Algiers
The Conversation
Viridiana
F for Fake
The Immortal Story
Mr. Arkadin
Spirit of the Beehive
The Magnificent Ambersons
The Dreamers
Germania Anno Zero
12 episodes of Justice League
10 episodes of Superfriends
Black Narcissus
The Return (HD)
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
Broken Blossoms
The Funeral
Hannah and Her Sisters
2046
I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang
The Lady From Shanghai
The Sweet Hereafter
Ararat
The Wages of Fear (HD)
Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
The Trial
Throne of Blood
Sisters
Written on the Wind
The Killing
Proces de Jeanne d'Arc
Dodes Ka-Den
The Best Years of Our Lives

You wouldn't think that filling two hundred hours would be so easy.

August, 2007 Film Viewings

August 5: Spanking the Monkey
August 6: Dead Man
August 7: Fixed Bayonets
August 8: The Prestige
August 16: Smiles of a Summer Night
August 17: High School Musical 2
August 18: The Painted Veil (2006)
August 19: Superbad
August 20: SUV Taggers
August 21: The Young Girls of Rochefort
August 25: Art School Confidential
August 26: Three Colors: White
August 27: Three Colors: Red

Dans l'Obscurite

Last month my friend Doug sent me a link to the above video, the contribution from the Dardenne brothers to an anthology of shorts, TO EACH HIS OWN CINEMA, devoted to celebrating the Cannes Film Festival and the idea of film as a collectively-experienced human endeavor. The latter concern is particularly timely. It's not at all hard to find people who will tell you that they love to watch movies and that they watch them constantly but that they loathe theaters for the same reasons that people dislike public toilets. The masses are noisy and inconsiderate and things are just cleaner and better at home at my theater of one or two. As we become more and more attached to lives with fewer and fewer human contacts, we feel at ease in the self-controlled environment of home theaters and pause-able DVD. Home video windows continue to get smaller and there are fewer compelling reasons to go to the movies, the thinking goes. But what if one of the distinguishing characteristics of film as an artform-- one of the things that makes film film-- is its ability to wrap itself around a group of people simultaneously and draw their subjectivities in together? Of course, you don't need to spend much time telling the people who go to festivals that there is still profound, irreplaceable value in seeing films with groups of strangers. DANS L'OBSCURITE approaches the question from even higher ground and posits that there is an actual moral benefit to the theater.

Doug's got a great formal analysis of the short at his website. The short features two actors with connections to past Dardenne films. Jeremie Segard plays another dark blonde-haired young man who needs to be rescued from wayward living, while Emilie Dequenne plays the woman he tries to rob. The casting is a thank-you note to Cannes, as Segard played a pivotal role in L'ENFANT, which won the Palme d'Or in 2005, and Dequenne conquered the known universe as ROSETTA, which took the top prize in 1999. And after having their names associated so often with Robert Bresson (while essentially remaking MOUCHETTE and PICKPOCKET), it feels like a reunion of sorts, or like cutting out the middleman, to have the short take place against the backdrop and under the weighty influence of AU HASARD BALTHAZAR. Apart from those connections, what's most fascinating to me is how this three-minute film manages to perfectly distill the Dardennes' aesthetic. It contains every element that makes the features so powerful-- the unknown or unspoken motivations of the characters, the conflict, the moment of encounter, and the quick cut away after the moment of encounter, as the Dardennes don't presume to tell us how the work of redemption is brought to completion, if it ever is. The touch is light and the emotions are genuine. For the longtime fan, it's a chorus or reprise of the themes they've been tracing throughout. For the uninitiated, it's a perfect three-minute introduction to their form.

There are two ways I can think of to read the young woman's actions; either she knows full well what the boy was in the midst of doing and is moved by the film to immediately forgive him and seek to redeem his actions, or she is "merely" so moved by Bresson's film that she is in need of some human touch and she grasps the first hand that comes to her, oblivious to his intent. It's difficult to overstate just how audacious the first reading is, and I prefer it thoroughly to the other. This sort of forgiveness and indifference to one's own self-preservation is so implausible that it's generally the sort of thing seen only in advertisements. But the Dardennes are way too earnest to pull something like that. Instead we're faced with the challenge that a movie--that the right movie--has the power to confront us with enough beauty and compassion that we would be inspired to forgive and embrace a person seeking to rob us.

I would rather be rendered permanently mute...

...than to have to ever use the word "ginormous."

DAN ROONEY: FOAM PILLOWS ONLY

The Smoking Gun has published the document sent out by the Steelers describing their hotel requirements. It's bland reading beyond the first few pages, but it provides a little insight into the sort of overblown production created by a traveling NFL team these days. And while I've seen it mentioned a few places that the restrictions on incoming calls to players' rooms after 11 p.m. are an incoming booty call-deterrent measure, I think it's more likely the team is trying to prevent enterprising fans from the home team from prank-calling players and disrupting their sleep. And I totally understand their efforts. You can't be too careful these days, lest you end up with another Chiefs incident.

WORLD'S FINEST WEBJUNK (Installment #1)

Virginia's Favorite Superhero Is Elektra

INT. HOUSE - VIRGINIA'S BEDROOM - NIGHT

VIRGINIA (3 years old) is being tucked into bed by ALI

VIRGINIA
Why didn't daddy choose me when he was finding a wife?
(considers the matter)
Oh, I wasn't a grown-up lady when you were a grown-up lady.

ALI
...

(after a beat; out of nowhere)
VIRGINIA
Daddy's better than you.

CUT TO:
INT. MINIVAN - DAY

VIRGINIA (to ALI, unrelated to any conversation at hand)
When you die, daddy and I will live happily ever after.

ALI
(laughing)

LEAH and RUBY (in unison)
What did she say?

ALI
Oh, nothing.

VIRGINIA
Tell them!

EBERE!

Our God is good.

The New Man in Black

It's been really hot the last two weeks-- mid- to high nineties and humid. Mike Tomlin's the only guy in Latrobe wearing black clothing. Last year his predecessor spent the dog days of training camp wearing a straw Bermuda hat and white or khaki clothes. At various times in the past few years home teams in hot climates (notably the Jacksonville Jaguars) have worn white jerseys when the Steelers came to town in hopes of making them uncomfortably hot. So why the hot clothes, coach?

Tomlin has worn black every day of training camp, but for the past two days he's at least in shorts and not the long pants he wore last week. He's still wearing long-sleeved black shirts, though, as temperatures hover around the 90s at Saint Vincent.

Finally, yesterday, he let on why.

"It's part of the mental warfare. I don't want guys coming up to me and talking about how hot it is because they know I don't care. And that's part of it. I hope it gets hotter."

Picture and text courtesy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

I've yet to read anything about Tomlin that didn't make me like him more. I'd like to see him carry the color scheme over to the regular season sideline and make it into a sort of identity, like a Jerry Glanville who can actually coach.

July, 2007 Film Viewings

7.4 THE NAKED KISS
7.9 HUMAIN, TROP HUMAIN
7.13 SPIDER BABY
7.14 FULL METAL JACKET
7.18 HAPPY TOGETHER
7.19 IDIOCRACY
7.21 GEORGE WASHINGTON
7.25 WENDIGO
7.26 KNOCKED UP
7.27 NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
7.29 THE ILLUSIONIST