#61 Lady Vengeance

Okay, well if you're going to have a violent antihero protagonist, at least do it right.

I'm sorry but the Kill Bill comparison is unavoidable. I want a signed release form saying each director was unaware of each other's movie so both can remain untainted in my mind. Not that I'm not aware of Tarantino's borrowings, but dammit, at least he picks good sources.

The set design in this movie is just stunning. Her bedroom when she leaves prison

So yes, like The Bride (or maybe the Bride is like Lady Vengeance. I refuse to consider any timelines), Lee Geum-ja is out for revenge. She has been framed for murder by a man who has taken her child away from her and sent to prison for 13 years for a crime he committed. And he will pay.

But instead of relying on assassin and martial arts skills, she gets to him with careful planning, a network of friends that she made on the inside, and an ornate antique pistol that she will not hesitate to use.

Along the way there's the usual noir touches, as the bright beginning slowly gets all the color bleached out of it until the end is faded colors and black and white. Cigarettes in bed, a naive young and loyal lover for the ex-con, decaying abandoned buildings, a disenchanted homicide cop that knows there's more to the case, an innocent child representing the life that the heroine could have had, and a villain that's so black-hearted that you don't doubt for a second that he has ruined her life and couldn't care less about it.

The villain's my only complaint actually. I'm still not sure what I think about plot twist at the end, but let's just say it complicates the idea of him getting a hot load of lead vengeance blown out the back of his head even less. Is it now even to the point that it's cliche to humanize the villain a little? Make the wronged hero a little bit in the gray area? Is it now avante garde for him to be even worse than you thought, and have no mitigating circumstances behind his crime against the hero but that he's dyed in the wool evil? I don't know but at least they do some interesting things with it after that.

I'm seriously going to have to watch a lot of Korean movies. Between this, The Host, The Good, The Bad the Weird, A Bittersweet Life...and the good things I've heard about all those directors' other films, there are a lot of beautiful visuals and fantastic storytelling coming out of that country's film industry.

#60 Son of Rambow

Spe-heaking of glorified violence in movies, here's a sweet British tale about a child from a strict religious family whose first exposure to pop culture comes from watching a bully's bootleg tape of Rambo: First Blood. Of course his reaction is to start wearing his tie around his head and volunteer to be the stunt double in the boy's action movie.

It's the director of Hitchhiker's Guide, and you can see some of the same imagination in this one as the two children, the sheltered Will and the neglected and abrasive Lee start making their action movie with a home video recorder. It's cute as hell, and it did feel true to the period it was homaging, the 80s, in the attitude towards these children's misbehaviors. I miss 80s movies, though I know it's just nostalgia. I like how these kids played like William Tell with a crossbow, and no one batted an eye, you could never do that in a kids' movie now!

Though, I think this is more meant for children of the 80s than for today's children to learn about the 80s. It gets a little heavy-handed towards the end. But hey, it's still darn cute.

#59 Armored

I'm not claiming it's art or anything. I watched it for two reasons. I wanted to get some screen grabs for my comic of an armored car. And I was bored.

But as B Movies go, at least this one's trying to be Assault on Precinct 13 era Carpenter instead of Michael Bay or Uwe Boll or something. I'd heard of it in any case because the director is this Hungarian guy who has also done the Predators remake, but I knew him from when my roommate rented Kontrol, this really great Hungarian movie about being a subway fare cop, and thus loathed by most of society. It's kind of like Clerks in Hungarian, but you know, with some great visual sense and some really graphic and chilling scenes of people getting run over by subway trains that still make me look over my shoulder and stand away from the platform edge sometimes.

But anyway, I saw one of his American offerings - Armored.

I just keep going back to the 70s in it. In the best of ways, it does feel like it could have been filmed back then. Stock characters saying cliche class warfare type junk, but over some very well-plotted suspense.

Even the fact that getting signals on the cell phone is drama makes it almost feel like it could have been a forgotten script that someone found in Don Siegel's closet, and someone just threw the cellphone reference in there to update it to modern times, but still keep the hapless would-be criminals out of communication with the outside world while they attempt their misdeeds.

It has a really equilibrium when it comes to the violent actions taken by the crew when they realize that the heist they're attempting has gone way off the rails. The violence isn't glorified. No slo-mo, no minor keys score, no attempts to pretend it has solved anything, but has only created more problems. Nor is it casual and thoughtless. It happens all too easily, but still keeps its weight.

And halfway decent cast: Matt Dillon, Laurence Fishburne, Skeet Ulrich, that guy with the bangs from Heroes, Fred Ward, Jean Reno. All that for roles that mostly consist of a dimension and half, a motivation and a reaction shot? In fact, the ostensible lead is a guy I didn't even recognize, and you surround him with those guys. Interesting call.

Anyway, good for what it was. And sadly, that does mean something these days of Gerard Butler being an action star. Yech.

#58 Poltergeist

Oh my god, I forgot I'd watched this on Watch Instantly. One of those classic 80s horror bits I'd never gotten around to.

Seriously? This was PG? Man, I missed out not being a kid in the 80s. It's ridiculously scary, and just imagining watching this as a kid, when the whole movie is based around putting the children in danger and the parents just feeling terror about it, it just hits you on this primal level.

Plus, the parents smoking pot and getting giggly, but before and after that just being part of the picture of an all-American family until Satan shows up? Can you imagine that in a PG movie now, when the whole rest of the movie is all about family values doing battle with underworld threats? That shoulda made Reagan's head spin around and explode or something.

And the effects? I gotta say, and it pains me to do so, I hope the Ghostbusters team threw some props these guys' way, because when the Poltergeist starts showing his face, it's scary as hell.

Great movie, and darn scary.

#57 Flying Dog Garde Dog

Ah fuck, I knew I should have read the label more closely. It's a wheat beer, or hefeweisen or something fruity and dry like that. Oh wait, label says French Farmhouse Ale. Guess I have a new genre of beer to say good bye to.

Oh well, at least it's cold.

#56 A Film with Me In It

I'm not the only one to make the comparison but sort of like Withnail and I...if it had some gruesome plot twists.

The Withnail stand-in being Dylan Moran in his typical charming drunk character. Seriously, I can no longer remember a time when I thought of him as that uptight guy from Shaun of the Dead.

The And I stand-in being the guy who wrote the movie, Mark Doherty, playing a failed actor, but talented clarinetist.

They're neighbors in a Dublin flat, have a sketchy and unpleasant landlord, and varying degrees of problems with their apartments. It all seems to be heading towards a flick about wannabe artists with Peter Pan syndrome living on the edges of society and then well, it takes a sharp left into surreally improbable gory accident territory.

Worth seeing, if you're an Anglophile with a morbid sense of humor...or whatever the equivalent is for the Irish...Eirophile? I dunno.

Way better than his cohort Pegg's attempt at the crime-gone-wrong movie I went on about earlier. Yech.

#55 Terribly Happy

Danish crime movie. It kept on popping up in reccommended for me, and then the Science...sort of guys had reviewed the trailer and said that it looked Coen-Bros esque, so I thought I'd give it a try.

It's not really Coen-bros esque, but it does have some interesting plot twists throughout, and it's tense as hell. Plus, who doesn't love a story that starts off with the good ol' "Once upon a time, an outside lawman came to a small town that seemed quiet. Too quiet."

Because there's always some dirty secrets under there, and a couple of bad decisions and naive falls to temptation later, and the outside lawman winds up pretty dirty himself. And that's all she wrote. Even if it's in Danish.

Plus, talking cats and inappropriate drinking contests when you least expect them. It's a pleasant use of an afternoon

#54 Party Down

Ah, from uplifting to depressing. Last weekend watched a marathon of this because I had an afternoon after that was treating me pretty darn raw, and though it is definitely funny, it might not be the right kind, considering the overall mood of it is rather depressing.

Trust Rob Thomas, when his once intelligent, original and whip-sharp detective series (if you look past the sins of Season Three: aka The Shrewing of Veronica and the Neutering of Logan) fails to come back with a meticulously observed comedy about taking demeaning jobs when the Hollywood Dream fails you.

It's more in the Arrested Development vein. The comedy of awkward, off-the wall characters interacting with normal, and somewhat miserable folk, stand-ins for the audience. Also no laugh track.

But there's smartness in the mix. For some reason, I just marvel at how accurate Roman is. I've definitely met a few of those in my time. Perpetually angry, withdrawn, their lack of success not a symptom of anything wrong with them, but because everyone else is stupid. Nevermind they don't take criticism, or even show their work to anyone for feedback. I love the episode where the Goot, Steve Guttenburg has them do a reading of their stuff, and once it improves after feedback, he's just sitting there stunned. "Rewriting? How come I've never thought of that.

And you got your bruised and sympathetic everyman, had talent, but did that one commercial and now he can't get work because he's THAT GUY, so he has to fall back on catering. And of course, the sarcastic, sassy, intelligent and emotionally unavailable lady he falls for.

Plus Vinnie Van Lowe and Dick Casablancas, and a healthy smorgasboard of guest stars? Hell yeah.

#53 Daytrippers

Graphic novel...I think, I could be wrong, it could be a collection of issues, but it was clearly meant to be read all at once.

But it's about a man, and each issue tells a different story of a way he died. Whether it be childhood accident, a brush with random violence, or another ten or so things, you get a window into Bras de Olivia Domingos's life, what he thinks of his own and of life in general, and then it's over, and what he has done and who he has touched, is summed up in a few paragraphs of obituary, the common thread being that Bras for most of the stories, is a writer of obituaries.

At first I just thought, okay, cool gimmick, but the more I read of it, and the more I think of it afterwards, it really was a very affecting work. The point being, is that maybe you don't need to do anything grand to be remembered, for most people, it's just enough to be remembered well by the people that mattered to you.

Because in the end, though you spend your whole life writing your own story (and how easy it is to forget that for the most part, it is you behind the wheel), it's in other people's stories of you, that you continue once you can no longer write your own.

Good though, glad it got recommended to me at the comic shop because this is the type of thing that I'd never think to pick up on my own.

#52 St. Peter's Old Style Porter

Umm, I was feelin' down so a big ol' bottle of expensive beer seemed in order. I was not disappointed. Rich. Delicious. Yum.

#51 Monk

Thrift store in Williamsburg. Never stepped foot inside. Great selection. Sane prices. PLUS, unlike "we're assuming you're vegan and anorexic" Beacon's Closet, they put their sizes on the hangers. Serious? That must be so difficult.

Must go back.

#50 Big Nothing

It has Simon Pegg in it. It's a dark comedy. With crime even! And Local H at the start! How can this lose?

Oh it does, utterly.

How much of a miscast is this? The protagonist, who you're supposed to like and feel bad for, and identify with? David Schwimmer. Seriously.

The skeezy con-man whose kind of pathetic, and oh yes, AMERICAN? Simon Pegg.

Wrong.Wrong.Wrong.

Man, I love aimlessly fatal yet funny bleak crime-gone-wrong movies more than the next girl but this one just kind of kept on throwing more characters, gags, and "surprises" that one would think that the odds would mean that at least ONE would have to be good.

No dice.

Blech. Glad it was Watch Instantly.

#49 Brouwerij Lane

How have I not gone here before? It's right on beer o'clock corner. I guess probably because it closes at 10.

Half-servings for three, full half-liters for $5 or $6 of anything your heart desires from about two dozen different kinds of beer. On draft. Fresh. With a couple of coolers of to-go bottles and cans of more micro or international brews.

Yum. Unfortunately I don't remember the names of the two beers I had or the one I had the week after. Those are going uncredited, but they were delicious.

#48 Cutting off all my hair.

It was terrifying. The shortest I've ever gone is shoulder length. This is a good inch or two above that.

Haircut like this. Everyone notices. Everyone comments. And while I was still getting used to it, I was terrified they were all just being nice because it's too obvious not to comment, and if you comment, of course it has to be a compliment unless you're trying to be a total asshole.

But now? I'm used to it. It's downright liberating. No styling. No feeling like I'm wasting this hair that I've been growing for years by either wearing it down and praying it doesn't tangle, or just putting it away in a shabby ponytail.

Also, it's so thick and fluffy.

I could see keeping this up. Not a bad idea, even though I did feel pressured into it at the time. Guess it was a good call.

Scary that I can't hide behind my hair anymore though, but that's getting to feel freeing.

#47 Justified

And if we're keepin on keepin on with Old West, might as well move forward a bit, and watch more Timothy Olyphant, still in a cowboy hat, but this time in modern-day Kentucky.

I'd been itchin' to watch this on account of its association with Elmore Leonard, but figured they'd just slapped his name on this and then taken some liberties. Not so!

I'm a huge fan of the guy in part because of his dialogue, and that translates so fully to this TV series. Seems only natural that the guy that started out Westerns then moved to crime could be used as source material for a series that combines the two.

Only three episodes in and I hear it just gets better.

#46 Deadwood

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#45 Adventures of Brisco County Jr.

Really not sure what took me so long? Maybe the certainty that I'd like it. And the shame that comes with it. I know, I know, I'm late to the party by darn near 20 years.

But god I love Bruce Campbell's sincere B-list cheesiness. And this show suits him perfectly. Nobody is more equally hilarious when thrown out a window, or when hitting on a woman, than Bruce.

It's got an almost Back to the Future, old-fashioned rollicking adventure, with an undercurrent of optimism. But with these strange, winking touches that remind me of the Tick.

Second disc was less enthralling than the first, so I'll be giving it a break for a bit, but the next time I really need something dumb and fun, I'll move it up in the queue.

#44 Peak Organic Simcoe Spring Ale

Refreshing, but with hoppy smoky taste to it.

Little early for it though UN-Fortunately.

#43 Harpoon Celtic Ale

Dry. Spicy. Rather like it.

#42 Brooklyn Blast

8%

A real strong, almost fruity tasting light ale.

Yum.

#41 Hop Devil

Shit, it's a slap in the face with hops. It burns but good. Still haven't found that Pale ale that'll turn my fancy from stouts and porters though

#40 Touchez pas au grisbi

Meh. I was expecting Rififi and this ain't it. Still pretty entertaining. Touches on all the proper noir crimes and consequences. But not in the league of the best noir I've seen.

#39 Luna Park

Lyrical...sad. The art is great too, just my cup of tea, and it's combining the tragic vengeful betraying grandeur that is Russian history with sad-faced dirty clown that is Coney Island. Sign me right up. Get it.

#38 Anchor Bock

Well, after all, Anchor has yet to steer me wrong, and their porter just became my new go-to if I don't want to eff around and just want a porter I KNOW will be awesome.

Their bock doesn't disappoint. Malty, sweet, kinda nutty almost, with chocolate hints.

Is it actually a sign of distinction that I like stouts and porters, or does it mean I'm a sucker for sweet things. Like I want the milkshake equivalent or sugary equivalent of beer. Am I having a frappucino instead of black coffee? But with beer.

I'd like to think not.

#37 Naburo Brown Ale

Can't believe it's an ale and not a porter.

Port her? I hardly know her.

#36 Hud

So they tried to make Paul Newman an asshole. A valiant effort. But the bastard's still likeable, and I guess that's sort of the point. Sometimes a rotten way of living looks plenty good from the outside.

Also Patricia Neal was excellent in it. I feel like I've seen her in something else, but it's not coming to me. Roald Dahl's wife according to wikipedia, damnnnn really? Neat.

#35 Mezcal

See the aforementioned three beers. Then I moved to Mezcal when there was a large gathering at my house. Had about two and a half shots of that. Jumped around in the snow. And the next day, not a whiff of a hangover.

I think it's magic. And magic tastes good.

#34 Anchor Porter

Ladies and gentleman, I've found another go-to. Shit that's damn near anything I could want in a beer. Creamy smooth, and a higher than normal alcohol content.

#33 Hop Back Amber

Hoo! That hop ain't referring to no bunny. It's smooth to be certain, then those hops kick in at the back of your throat, give you a little prickle.

#32 Flying Dog Pale Ale

Smoky, Tangy, Strong. Still haven't gotten on my hands on the Gonzo Imperial, but the Steadman/Thompson affiliated brewery hasn't let me down yet.

Glad I got the one, it's not much on the drinkability. I couldn't down these, but they've gone with well with Spaced, some Reese's and true to the name, they've provided some much needed hair of the dog.

#31 Vincent Van Gogh Double Espresso Vodka.

"You never tried it? I'm buying you a shot."

I have trained my associates well.

One sufficed. Though I think it may have been a double. See friendly bartender at #30.

This...well it sure ain't Kahlua, though it would be aces in a White Russian. It made me even more ashamed of the plastic bottle of coffee liqueur that me and my roommate had on top of our fridge in Allston, because this stuff was quality, it had real coffee flavor and was actual vodka underneath.

Yurm.

#30 Brandy's Piano Bar

If I'm on the Upper East Side, this is more my speed. Quiet except for conversation, and the promise of piano that never quite delivered while we were still there, but I bet it was a doozy. You know that fifteen years ago, it was full of cigarette smoke. Now it's an expensive but cute place for a cocktail or two. I encourage my friend to become a regular there. Friendly bartender. Which brings me to #31

#29 Maz Mezcal

Personally, I like my Mexican food cheap or plentiful. This place was neither. But hey, I was on the Upper East Side. Don't know what I was expecting. Fortunately, the drinks weren't bad.

#28 Danger 50,000 Volts

Started with the zombie one, natch, as it's good to see Simon and Nick together, at any time, but about to check out the rest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnNIs4YKtZM

What a great comic team, huh?

#27 Samuel Smith - Oatmeal Stout

I have seen the unusual shaped bottles with the archaic label in stores before, but the price tag always made me shy away. This time, it's miserable outside, and there was no price tag on the bottle. Out of sight, out of mind, and I got a bottle of it.

It does not disappoint. Strong, molassy thick stout. Dark but not too smoky. Sweet, but not too sweet. This is beer heaven and well worth it.

#26 Magic Hat - Demo

Yes. It is a dark beer. But it is cold outside.

Smoky, but somehow with this sort of candy-ish sweet undertone that I'm not that into.

Like I ain't still drinking it though...c'mon!

#25 Science...sort of

This is more my style. They're still nerds, but they're the kind that read science papers. Still they're equal part or more part geeks because they will wonder aloud "What would happen if a werewolf bit a vampire? What about the other way around?"

I just really like their personalites. I mean on the first ep, there's this clearly tacked on section at the beginning that they must have made up after they figured out the audio kinks, where it's them claiming they've come from the future to tell you that no worries, they're on podcast #4,000 and they've figured out all the kinks. "Trust us, we're from the future.""We're further in the time stream than you, listen to us!"

Only four in, but there's a hefty backlog which makes me happy, because overall I like it. I'm not a fan of all the segments, like the trailer review sequence, but that's likely in part since these are about movies that were out 15 months ago since I'm starting at the beginning.

This is kind of like the lighter version of Skeptics Guide - a podcast I'm not likely to run out of soon since it's been up weekly for 5 years in hour long segments, but one thats overall seriousness can get to me. Sometimes I just want to listen to people joke about how stupid the Google Loch Ness Monster looks, or how kooky and fraudulent it is that some new quack is claiming an imminent free energy solution without it being followed by a lengthy discourse on how impossible it is to trust claims that don't follow the scientific method to prove themselves. Not saying I don't agree, but sometimes I'd prefer the junk food version. And so far Science...sort of seems to be the Goldilocks of that. Not too dumb or credulous, not too serious, just right.

http://www.sciencesortof.com/

And here's a song I learned from this show

#24 The NerdList podcast

http://www.podfeed.net/podcast/The+Nerd+List/18695

Not to be confused with The Nerdist, which I do indeed check in on from time to time (pretty much just when they have a guest I'm interested in - Weird Al, I'm looking at you!)

Found out about it when they had one of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe guys on to discuss his top ten fictional technologies, and he mentioned it on that podcast. I'm pretty willing to listen to a podcast with nerd in the title, so I gave it a shot.

Have only listened to three of them so far, as I went right to the ones about zombies and the apocalypse after the one with Bob Novella from Skeptics on it, as I am wont to do. They're nerdy all right, but a bit dudish for me. That being said, as a northeasterner, it's extremely funny to hear obscure bits of sci-fi nerd-dom discussed in southern accents, imagine "Have you read that Avengers: New Initiative storyline?" but in the same tone of voice used to discuss ammo (which one of them does, at length in the zombie podcast 'I got a Beretta. It holds 20 rounds') Neato.

They have backlog enough that I can cherry pick the topics I want. It's in a list format and there's generally two hosts, so each one picks ten and then they argue. If there's guests, there's usually two and each picks five. It's a nice concrete format for a podcast, though.

The zombie survival team podcast left me with two main thoughts: 1) Really? No Omar Little? No Ripley for chrissakes? and 2) Who was the guest who wanted George Washington on his team under the rationale that zombies can be bitten if you have wooden teeth?

1) is unanswered, and unanswerable to me really, because how good would Omar be with zombies! Honestly? And Ripley's used to fighting intelligent creatures with acid blood in an enclosed space-ship. Fighting braindead zombies, even if they're the fast kind on an open playing field would seem a breeze after THAT?

2) Leads t0 my next podcast discovery. Science...sort of.

#23 Two Lane Blacktop

So that's what racing for pink slips is. I just thought it was something Keith Mars had picked up from a Springsteen song.

Like a modernist novel of a movie. Actions speak louder than words. Characters speak in sparse tongues that are more about subtext than natural dialogue. Things just sort of happen. People waft in and out of each others' lives. Nameless. Less a person than an idea.

Captures the road trip ethos, the long pauses, milling around at filling stations, your body not used to the stillness, restless to keep on moving. It's an undisputable road classic. Might just come in close behind Easy Rider.

Warren Oates is of course fantastic. Over the top. Guy writing himself out loud to anyone he stumbles across. You might think he's a blowhard, except he seems to make it a point to never talk about himself no matter how many times he starts off on an outlandish story of something he's just done. Not really telling them a thing about himself, not anything that's true. He's just making up his own story out loud. I should see more of his stuff. He's a great anti-hero.

Entirely weird to see James Taylor acting. My roomie says he heard in an interview that Taylor had never even seen the movie. He does seem kind of stilted in it, but it's hard to read how much of that is just the character. Also, back in the day? Stone-cold fox.

Highly recommended.

#22 Gilda

Rita Hayworth is smokin' The sort of gal that men hurl themselves to their death for and she puts on no airs about her nature.

There's some great bitchy insults hurled back and forth between her and Glenn Ford. Yes, I did just call him bitchy.

However. SPOILER I wasn't a fan of the tied up too neatly ending. I'd thought it was noir for chrissakes, isn't everyone supposed to end up dirty and miserable?

Maybe I went too far in my earlier rant about how the Hays Code helped movies. I think this is an example of "But yeah, not all the time. Sometimes people just turn out to be not as bad as you thought and get married to make the code valid instead of ending up dead or in jail." Laaaaaame. I expected tragedy for reckless younguns toiling with powerful men above their heads, instead of a proposal and a free and clear escape from mysterious and dangerous Argentina.

I guess that it's not a good sign that I'm unhappy about happy endings, is it?

#21 - Sam Adams - Latitude 48 IPA

Maybe I should consider breaking my stout and porter monopoly more often. I just don't give pale ales their due often enough.

So here it is, a beer made from hops taken from around the 48th latitude. At least that's what the label tells me. It all sounds kind of arbitrary, but it's a pretty neat beer actually. It's hoppy, sweet and with just a hint of bitter smoky aftertaste.

Alright Pale Ales, maybe I will stop ignoring you in favor of your stout brethren.

#20 Fright Night

One of those 80s classics according to what I heard. Maybe I'm just not in the mood, but not all that impressed.

Here's a couple of things I expect out of an 80s cult movie.

First, let's say what this does deliver on for me. A specialty of the 80s low-budget is practical special effect that go ludicrously far over the top. The budget and materials are such that you're not going to believe what you're seeing anyway, so you might as well be impressed with the imagination of it all. Think early Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi, or more specifically the big dreaming nobodies who loved them. This movie sits on these effects mostly until the end of the movie, but they are absolutely worth it.

Then there's the requisite dance in a club to synth scene. It was sensual, it was neon, it was disturbing and weird. Done, done, and done. Villain from Princess Bride, who knew you could be a sexy beast.

But, then for me comes the real test for an 80s movie. The eccentric characters. The memorable dialogue. I watched it yesterday and I don't remember a single quote that wikipedia didn't tell me to. I answered my phone "Thrill me," for days after seeing Night of The Creeps.

Right, the aged horror TV host the hero idolizes...he's got less charisma than Detective Cameron's ceiling fan from that movie. The kids themselves? They're hardly the knowledgeable equivalent the Frog Brothers or the Monster Squad, nor do they inspire much sympathy like Ash or Nancy Thompson before they wise up. When those characters are in peril, you feel desperate fear because they're quirky and lifelike and likeable. These ones, not so much.

There's just the tongue-and-cheekness I've come to expect from 80s cult movies that was missing from this. Bummer.

#19 Real Genius

As cult 80s movies go, it's not the best I've seen, but it's so great to see Val Kilmer in a spaced out slacker smartass type role. He never really made a dent with me until Kiss Kiss Bang Bang when I went, my God! This man is funny! And How!

And I guess I'm 25 years behind on that realization, because in the wake of MacGruber and Bad Lieutenant, everybody was going on about the return of funny Val Kilmer. I didn't know there was a former incarnation until now.

Plus, the bad guy from Ghostbusters shows up playing a prick again.

I know that appealing hokeyness and 80s movies go hand in hand, but after the third montage sequence, I couldn't help but giggle in a way I don't think was intended.

Still 80s Val Kilmer. Hot. Funny.

#18 Spook

I really dig her style, and I'll confess I went into this half hoping she'd had some amazing discovery. Because if she'd believe it, I'd believe it. The way she comes at it the perfect mix of curiosity and skepticism. This lady knows how to mix a fun attitude and Occam's Razor.

I just like how she treats all these people of varied backgrounds with some degree of dignity, even if they've been judged by history as being outright frauds, like the ecto-plasm producing mediums who bilked dozens and tied up major university researchers. There's always a cocked head and wry grin way to look at these peculiar characters.

She kind of sums it up at the end. It's a question of what you know vs. what you believe. Based on what she saw, so far there hasn't been a way for science to know that there is any kind of afterlife. But it almost seems like it's a non-choice to believe that there's something, more of an effort to believe that there isn't. Sure this is mostly in the face of apocryphal evidence, strange stories someone has told you that they swear happened to them or someone they know, eerie feelings you get somewhere without necessarily knowing it's got a haunted reputation, the kinds of things that have a convoluted but still probably scientifically based explanation. The feeling that there's something hovering around just past the edges of what has been explained so far in measurements and statistically significant results. There's no shortage of really neat things inside those edges, and we shouldn't discount any of it because there might be something past those edges, but somethings are more fun to leave unexplained. And shit, if this is it, why not have fun.

As she put it "The debunkers are probably right, but they're no fun to visit a graveyard with."

Amen, sister.

#17 Johnny Thunders - Que Sera Sera

The man was rock and roll to his very bones. There's all the necessary ingredients, hand claps, harmonica, horns, call and response, girl group sensibilities, a snarl that can sound snotty or wounded.

But this isn't a time or place to go on about that poor fragile bastard. That could go for pages. This is just on the one album.

Yup, he can record a song about how there's a little bit of whore in every little girl, and it's a partying rocker and not the least offensive.

Wonder if he recorded "Short Lives" with any kind of foreshadowing in mind.

Even the half-Calypso sounding Cool Operator doesn't ruin it. "I could make Godzilla give me head." Wow. I'm still kind of sure I don't hate it though.

Anyway, glad I picked this up on a whim, and glad it's on vinyl.

#16 The Crazies (the remake)

I guess it was better than some remakes of classic horror. It's at least still a coherent suspenseful movie even though it dumbs down the themes of the original. The horror that governments are capable when few are weighed against the many gets condensed into some satellite zoom-in shots and faceless soldiers herding people around. Part of what made the original so awesome is it followed at least the middle-management of government atrocity around, made them people, instead of faceless beings that are just boogiemen, doing evil because it's something for the protagonists to battle. Liiiiiike the remake does.

It's to the point where I'm not sure how it's a remake instead of just another one of those contagion movies that admittedly, I'll see with little or no encouragement. Why is it "The Crazies" instead of some contagion movie that owes a lot to The Crazies? Ehh, someone had the rights to it.

But it's still plenty scary. I mean, I was yelling at characters to get out of rooms. So yeah, more Zack Snyder Dawn of the Dead, less Nick Cannon Day of the Dead.

In the first one, the crazy virus inspired a lot more than just walking around menacingly with weapons while having a crazed look in one's eye. There were also nonsensical people sweeping up thrown in with the charging hordes, and oh yeah...consensual incest. This one it's just an excuse to have the 28 Days Later zombies learn to use guns and bonesaws.

But worth a view. There's some painfully suspenseful scenes. The acting's pretty decent. Let's just put this on the list of one more reason I really need to get around to watching Justified because Timothy Olyphant...worth some more viewing.

#15 This Film Is Not Yet Rated

There's just something in me that giggles in anarchic glee when information about people in high hidden places get some secrets revealed. I mean my first thought about the whole Wikileaks thing, was YES! this is what the 80-90s hacker movies have promised me. Who could have known that the soundtrack to top secret leaking would be Lady Gaga instead of Prodigy? I know it's juvenile, I know it's a tendency of a culture that lets our judgments about people's tawdry side get in our way of being able to judge their fitness or non-fitness for public office. And we have paid for it. But I'm not saying I don't still giggle about it.

You can definitely tell that the director Kirby Dick feels the same way while tailing possible MPAA raters with his hired private-eyes. It is written all across his face "oh my god, I'm tailing a car, with a private detective, with a lesbian private detective, oh my god, my life is so cool."

In all fairness, who could feel differently?

I feel like it's all summed up with a simple fact. Jack Valenti doesn't want child behavior specialists on the board. Not, like that he doesn't exclusively want child behavior specialists, he doesn't want them at all. He just wants regular folks with kids. He doesn't want people who have done studies on children's reactions to what they see in the media, and can argue their points based on studies they have read, or tendencies they have observed in more than a few instances. Just people who have at one point (most of the raters they found had children long grown out of the 13-17 range) had children and knew what they personally wouldn't have felt comfortable with them seeing.

And their decisions are sometimes a little on the suspect side, letting major studios get away with more than independents, and no wonder, the agreement creating it was designed by all the major studios of the time, and the appeals board is staffed heavily by those from major studios, plus a few clergy members, and most pointedly, in the area of what sort of violence is allowed to be shown, and what sort of sex is allowed to be shown.

I wonder if this reflects America's confusion on this idea, or if it perpetuates it.

On one occasion, when I was working at a movie theater, a mother comes up to the window with her about three of her early teenage-years looking kids, the oldest probably 15. The movie in question? Freddy vs. Jason. Fuck, I don't care if she buys the tickets for her kids and goes in with them or sneaks down the hall to see Legally Blonde 2. She's buying a ticket too, I don't get in trouble for selling to underage kids, and I'm not about to pretend I'm not grateful to clerks who let me into see such 90s cinematic gems as Scream 3 and Urban Legend. But before she surrendered her kids to a fate no worse than them spending the afternoon on HBO and porn sites, she just had one question for me.

Does this movie have nudity?

First off, does this slasher flick have nudity? I think the real question would be how many people die while naked? Is it like just the one topless chick, just one couple that was screwing while surprised by Freddy or Jason, or do the villains wreck more than one date night?

But other than that, I was a little dumbstruck that it concerned her more that her teenage kids might see some B-movie star's rack and feel a little randy, than that they could see some hideous decapitations and bisections that would give them nightmares. Good thing I didn't tell her there was lots of pot humor. Then she'd have been real pissed.

I believe my response was "Nudity? You want to know if it has nudity? Ummm, probably, I'm not sure, think they're too busy with the murder." Sure I let 'em in. Sure I went to see it myself a couple of weeks later and hooted and hollered at the pure ridiculousness of it all.

I'm definitely not saying I don't enjoy some entirely unrealistic Freddy Krueger style violence as much as the next chick, but this sort of double standard isn't exactly encouraging.

The dichotomy is pretty undeniable in one instance that the Boys Don't Cry director Kimberly Peirce pointed out from her struggle to get rid of the NC-17 slapped on her movie. The MPAA board had no problem with the lead ending up getting graphically shot through the head after being beaten and raped but objected to Chloe Sevigny's having an orgasm from oral sex that was "too long." The director sighs in exasperation "I mean, no one's ever died from having an orgasm that went on too long."

For whatever reason, what makes them uncomfortable are things that happen in real life, being shown in a way that approximates reality, while not necessarily being played for laughs. Ladies seeking sexual pleasure? Good god, no! People talking frankly about sex? Men and women? Oh my.

But they have little problem with you seeing things that don't happen that way in real life. After all, shoot dozens of faceless henchman near-bloodlessly in a Bond movie, you get a PG-13 (although, as wikipedia pointed out they had to cut Halle Berry moaning in a sex scene first) , show graphic war carnage in Saving Private Ryan, you get an R. It's kind of weird that people are more okay with little-consequence violence being shown to kids than the gory kind. But shit, I ain't gonna pretend I didn't watch every second of R rated movie that I could between the years of 12 and 17, and I still think it comes down to the individual kid being able or not able to recognize the difference between fantasy and reality. But the kinds of people who have those kinds of double standards, probably raising some kids with some issues anyway.

#14 Unforgiven

I mean, its a Western directed by and starring Blondie from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. How on earth was it going to be anything but awesome?

I honestly don't know what to write about this on a first viewing, that hasn't already been said or doesn't deserve more attention than a blurb like this can give it. I could say that the formerly bad man being forced to revisit his past yarn is done with so much grace and sad humanity.

Talking at a party last night about Clint Eastwood being a real renaissance man reminded me that I'd never posted this yet. Also it informed me that he did some composition

Hey, this is the second Gene Hackman film I've seen where they cribbed a line of his for The Wire. What's up with that? Do I need to work my man's entire oeuvre until every character is accounted for? You know, I might just give it a shot. He doesn't get enough credit. He's got this great everyman quality that makes it look like he isn't even trying. The scene with him in the jail with the writer and English Bob where he tears down the myths of the Old West and its heroes that the writer has tried to spin about English Bob. It's mesmerizing. Anyway, who'da thunk I'd see a movie with Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman in it and rave about Gene Hackman. Not that I'm saying that they weren't good. I just can't talk about their beautiful acting moments without major spoilers.

#13 Pete's Wicked Ale

7.99 for a six-pack at the grocery store. And it was an actual beer! With a label not painted on it. That came from a location! For the same price as a PBR six pack! How can I lose?

Well, it doesn't taste a whole lot different from those kinds of beers. Just kind of tastes like it's trying to. Little sad.

And here I remembered all their radio ads from when I was a little non-drinking tyke "Get Wicked, Pete's Wicked Ale," and assumed it was a New England thing. Maybe so, but it's no Sam.

#12 Body Heat

I really love me a totally unrepentant femme fatale: Jane Greer in Out of the Past, Linda Fiorentino in The Last Seduction, and the one whom Kathleen Turner in this movie has been most compared to, Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity.

This kind of femme fatale is one without some poor me back story that in any way justifies her actions. Conniving is just second nature to her, not even a willful act, just an instinct as natural as breathing. And it's just riveting guilty pleasure to watch her at work.

Watch that noose tighten and William Hurt stay willfully oblivious and post-coitally stupified the whole time. He never had a chance

Oh man, and Micky Rourke? Young? HamanaHamana! Who'da thunk it? Man I gotta watch more 1980s Micky Rourke. Dancin' Ted Danson? Frickin perfect addition.

Does this make me want to rewatch Double Indemnity? Of course, but more in the way that Kiss Kiss Bang Bang makes me want to rewatch The Big Sleep and less like the way that the wake of Scary Movie makes me yearn for Airplane. Neo-noir that flies dangerously close to one of the classics of that period, but has enough going for it that it doesn't crash and burn.

#11 Stiff

Man, this lady has my number!

Midway through Spook right now as well, more on that later, but this book is unbelievably morbid and interesting. All the stuff you were a little ashamed that you wanted to know about what happens to corpses in the name of science but didn't know who to ask.

Sure it's still respectful and all that, but you never feel chided for your curiosity, because the author is enjoying finding this stuff out as much as you do.

Nice to know that being a woman with ghoulish proclivities and fascinations doesn't prevent you from getting interviews with respected scientists and being published. If only I'd learned that sooner to give it some impact on my life.

Great read though.

#10 Smuttynose Robust Porter

Baby, now this is more like it. Bittersweet, almost dairy-like thickness. Like a cup of black coffee and a cigarette in a candelit wood-paneled bar.

Yup. Don't think I'm switching up beer preferences just yet. Liking Porters and Stouts isn't a habit I'm even trying to break.

#9 Flying Dog Dogtoberfest

Never been one for these kind of light beers, but it's from the brewing company capitalizing on/affiliated with (one or the other, who cares) the legacy of the the fantastic Dr. Hunter S Thompson.

I mean, it's not my thing, but it's clearly high quality. Drinkable. It's definitely strong with a smoky flavor, and it puzzles me, that when those things are something I prize so highly in a dark beer that they elicit only a shrug for me in a lighter one? Do I judge a beer by its color instead of the content of its character? God forbid! But those German pilsner-ish Octoberfest lagers always have this undertaste to them that I just don't cotton too.

Dah well, I took a shot at a new breed of beer.

#8 Electra Glide in Blue

70s movies, man, how can one decade be so great.

"Big" John Wintergreen is a short motorcycle cop with dreams of being a big-shot detective, and he thinks that he has his big chance when he smells a rat about a drifter's lonely death. Not suicide, but murder. His pluck earns him a place at a side of detective Harve Poole and they start investigating the case.

Except for Harve, scene stealing monologues about the coming police genocide notwithstanding, is kind of spent old man who knows more about looking and acting like a hardass, take no guff po-lice, than actually being one. Great scene by his barmaid girlfriend attesting to this. Sure it's a monologue we've all heard before, but it sounds so true coming from her, so sad.

It's got such a slick look to it too. The high contrast of the dark uniform and motorcycle jacket, set off by the white helmet and bike, against the pale desert highway, makes the scenes look like poster art, purposely iconic. And let's not forget that last shot leading up to the credits. The tracking shot rolling down the highway, far away from....something (oooh, mystery) and whatever lens they were using had the neat effect of making the highway and sky seem to get larger and larger while the gorgeous buttes of Monument Valley stayed the same size, timeless, unchanging.

Great flick, really.

#7 Going to a taping of a TV Show.

That's right. The Daily Show. An institution in my life since college, though admittedly one that's fallen out of my life a little since I've gone TV-less. I'd been tuning in more as of late. After all, how it found its way into my life, into many of our lives, was as a cathartic device. 8 years of that dope without some laughter would have been mighty rough. So it's probably not a good sign that I'm going back to get my fix off him after only a couple of years out of that administration.

Anyone who watched last night knows that it is an episode more in the serious vein. We were all primed and strongly encouraged by everyone working on the show to laugh loud and clap long, because we weren't mic-ed as much as Jon and the other anchors, and we were providing the laugh track. Except there wasn't exactly a ton of that.

Sounds like a swipe, but you know what happened this weekend. We were actually kind of wondering how it was going to be handled. Little too soon for the usual mockery from the sidelines. And I'm pretty impressed how it was handled. Plus how fun it is to actually hear him swear without the bleep.

Sure it was partially scripted, but some of it seemed off the cuff, judging on the pauses, and him looking off of into space. So yeah, I'm impressed that at a moment that a whole lot of other people used to highlight the particular things they found wrong with people that disagree with them, or use it to make the point they've been making all along. If they're on the left, it's that the Tea Party are a bunch of violent hicks, if they're on the right, it's that the left is against them and making cheap accusations against them. He didn't play that game, because that would be cheap and dishonorable.

Shit, I've dragged this all down. This was a birthday mission. Annnnd in that spirit, my friend did get a Happy Birthday out of him. With my line!

There's a Q & A session before the show and she raised her hand and said "Would you like to wish me a happy birthday?"

He looked puzzled "I...uhhh...did. Oh you mean out loud? Happy Birthday. How old are you?"

"28"

Then I swear he started to make the classic cheesy compliment of "Oh, if I were a younger man," and then moved on to the next question, where some kid asked him exactly how he lost his virginity. You can guess that went over awkwardly.

Anyway, it's free. You just have to reserve tickets on line, get there early, and then wait in line for a bit, but hey, so totally worth it. Even if it wasn't for a show that exceptional, it still would have been neat to be in a television studio. It all looks so different. The set pieces all look smaller because the stage is so big. The rafters above you extending up for ages, with all kinds of cords, mics and cameras dangling from them. Reality constructed right before your eyes in a way that it fits inside a little box.

#6 History of the World in Six Glasses

For a while now, probably if I'm gonna tie it down to a date, about since my birthday, I've been all about accepting and encouraging my inner nerd. A part of me kind of wants to make a vow to read nothing but nonfiction for, I guess not the rest of the year, but hey, maybe the next six months? And reading books like this makes me feel that promise might not be so hard to keep.

Standage takes beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and coca-cola, and shows how we've hauled them with us through the growth of our civilization, from the very first groups in Mesopotamia that decided that agriculture was way cool (maybe in part because it meant they'd have BEER) to an individual product becoming one of the most recognized words worldwide.

I could go on and on. There's so much packed into this book, connections you'd ordinarily never make between, say, that tea you had this morning and its legacy as being connected to empire, the rise of the world-dominating corporation, the opium trade and even wars. That's really what makes history so interesting isn't it? Seeing how things were knit together to create the world you live in today for reasons you'd never expect based on the rudimentary education most of us got in the subject as schoolchildren.

It's very well-written and entirely fascinating. And on goes my vow to only read non-fiction for the next...ah, let's say three months for now.

#5 Bellhaven

An unexpected stop into the local pub. Just gotten back from watching the Celtics kick the Raptors back into the Cretaceous, though really it's the Raptors...winning by anything less than 10 would have been an embarassment, get a text from some friends and decide, yeah, I could get another round in.

Bellhaven was written on the board in what I thought was the $4 line (nope, the five, drat) and I thought it sounded properly classy and British so I ordered it.

I noticed when it was poured that the bartended had to use the same method as Guinness, my old standby, leaving it to settle when it was about 2/3rds full, which got me a little excited, thinking I'd managed to order myself some kind of thick porter by blind good fortune, but no. When it finished settling it was on the much paler side. Darn.

That being said, it was quite tasty and smooth. If it was in the four dollar line, I'd order it once in a while.

#4 Misfits

Every once in a while, maybe once or twice a year, something comes along, a song, a band, a movie, or in this case a TV show, that you take an instant dizzy addiction to.

For me, this is one of those.

On the shelf, it sounded as one of those things most likely to suck, with a small but significant chance of being totally awesome. Sure, sometimes teens with superpowers stories turn out to be Runaways, filled with all the fun and angst of adolescenthood and sometimes it's Heroes filled with cardboard characters, spectacle and using a dour mood to create the illusion of depth. Man...I'm so sick of all that time travel.

But, this recommendation came courtesy of Buckley, whose tastes and mine overlap on average about 70% of the time, but when it comes to all things British, our anglophilia chromosomes exhibit similarities in something like the 98th percentile. So I went into this pretty assured that this was going to be good.

How good?

First off, you have the delinquent teens in question. On most television shows, they'd show their delinquency by doing some cute shoplifting, maybe smarting off to some dickish authority that totally deserved it, you know, getting your sympathy the easy way by being more rebellious in the ways that a whole lot of people wish they were but without straying too far out of the norm as to be alarming.

Not quite so these kids. In the first episode there's more swearing and sexually explicit language than I've ever heard on a show this side of the pond that wasn't HBO, there's drug use, and most of all, these delinquents aren't just unpleasant to authority, they're just generally unpleasant for most of it. It gets set up like you're being dared not to like them.

I mean, you have Nathan, who even after we get shown that his outer asshole exterior is masking inner pain, it doesn't in the least mean that the writers pretend that he doesn't still act like a total asshole and would be wholly annoying to be around, if funny to watch through a little box. Christ that kid has some comic timing though.

The plotting for the rest of the first season (I'm midway through the second season which has so far taken some weird turns that I'm not sure how I feel about, so bear with me) is just A+ work. For all the possibilities of deus ex machina that turn up when a story's being told that involves superpowers, these are used sparingly and nearly without exception, to clever effect. The characters get in trouble when they fuck up instead of having the plot rely on a false pretense that a really shite idea come up with by say, Simon, is a good idea and will work because it works for the story. The tension is built masterfully leading up to the last episode of season one. Though one part of the tale involves a story we've all seen before it's shot through with such believable sadness and loneliness, and doesn't take the easy way out by dividing people into good and evil, that it ranks with some of my favorite TV storytelling.

So, tune in and thank me later. Remember, never fuck a wounded bear and Charles Darwin once said you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

#3 V

The original, of course. Far be it from me to judge a book by its cover, but Inara notwithstanding, the new one looks far too close to these substanceless lets play it safe network TV shows that have mysteries but not a clue that have all popped up in the wake of Lost. When in doubt, let's have something weird happen and if we make a few references to current events, someone will think its an allegory or something. Pfahhh.

Can see why it would get itself remade though, it is a rarer version of the alien invasion tale.

Excluding extraterrestrials of the sort in The Thing or Alien which are just evolved to biologically take over which is its own kind of terror, usually when movie aliens decide they want to take over our planet and enslave and/or harvest our species they do it one of two ways.

There's the overt War of the Worlds type way, where they just show up and start blasting away. Everyone knows there's a huge invasion going on, that the aliens are the enemy and that it's time to lock and load, whether with nukes or with a virus that can somehow stop alien technology. (I know, I know it's been said, but Roland, aliens use windows? Really?)

Then there's the insidious X-Files/Invasion of the Body Snatchers type of way. The aliens take on human appearances, or hybridize with them, or take over human bodies or minds, whatever. Most of earth's citizens, except a plucky band of folks in the right place at the right time have no idea that there are aliens at all, that they aren't our friends, or that they are invading. Not only are these aliens trying to run a successful invasion, but also trying to run the biggest coverup in the history of massive coverups.

The V version...is a mix of the two. Everyone on the planet sees the hovering saucers emerge over major cities but these aliens are attractive and charismatic and promise a better new world while making still making the people feel like they are needed, and not necessarily an inferior species. But underneath...damn, that reveal is so good. Poor hamster.

Like both of those other alien invasion archetypes this one is meant as a social allegory. It started out its life as an adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, and the fascists were changed to aliens because TV execs weren't sure the American public would watch it otherwise.

But hey, let's give them a pass on trying to remove the main message of the original, that it is not inconceivable that all you ordinary Americans could let fascism rise within the country, instead having it pushed on you by a foreign power. They get the pass because even after it becomes clear that something isn't right about how the aliens are acting, huge amounts of the population help them with the invasion, ratting out dissidents and joining with them to go where the power is.

They start with the scientists, the intellectuals, the people most likely to be the first to sniff out fraud, and the most likely to figure out what to do about it once they have. The population of the world is more than happy to believe the aliens that promise them wine and roses than the scientists who've never made the promise to solve all problems in their lifetime.

That all seems frighteningly plausible in a country where somewhere around half of the population doesn't accept evolution when the evidence is enough to reach a near total scientific consensus because a church tells them not to. But I digress.

This has an almost Carpenter type feel to it. Found myself reminded of They Live more than once, even though this is entirely earnest in tone.

Fully intend to explore it more, anything featuring old ladies wielding makeshift Molotov Cocktails is good in my book, but another sci-fi series has gotten my attention in the meantime.

You shall find out more with #4

But right now, to contemplate fighting the system, we need some MC5.

It also seems like a good idea this time.

So try two. The one where the internet hopefully won't disappear on me a few months in, and I lose steam and peter out on this. 365 days, 365 new things tried in 2011.

#1 - Only natural for New Years Day, I try a hangover remedy I've heard about. Coconut Water. Supposed to be chock full of electrolytes, vitamins and most importantly hydration. I slept most of the day away, so by the time I dragged my ass out of the house to get this remedy, the gremlin tearing apart at the inside of my skull had mostly tuckered itself out.

So the fact that I actually managed to eat something after finishing it, could be due to my delay in trying it, but I did feel a lot better. Not sure if I could have stomached when I'd first rolled out of bed that morning, when it might have saved me from having the usual New Years Day of being completely useless to all the world. Don't think the so sweet it's nearly rotten type taste would have sat well with my enraged stomach. Maybe I'll give it a shot.

#2 - The Hudsucker Proxy.

Already knew I was heading out to see True Grit the next day, because dammit, something that good on paper cannot stay in theaters for too much longer without me going to see it, companion or no companion. So I thought I'd plug one of my few remaining Coen Bros. blind spots.

All I knew about it was that there was an iconic hapless bastard POV sequence of falling from the top floor of a high rise. Which it totally does. Wow.

Oh and it's got Paul Newman in it. Seriously, Coens...you hadn't even made Fargo yet, and bloody Butch Cassidy is in your movie? What a coup. According to wikipedia it was even first offered to Clint Eastwood, who would have taken it but for scheduling conflicts. Nothin' but love for Newman of course, but my heart flutters to think of the Man with No Name in that role.

To be honest, it's not really in their top echelon. I get it for what it is, a send up of all those 1930s and 40s screwball movies that in the end reinforce the notion that having a good heart and keeping it will make you win out in the end in this great land of ours. Art direction-wise they freakin' nailed it, but there's just something missing from it. Plus Jennifer Jason Leigh's fast-talking career woman voice made me totally unable to take her seriously.

Dah Well. Guess no one bats 1000. True Grit was freakin' awesome though.