The Oncoming Hope

Arnold Vosloo has been cast on Bones as "Evil Booth!" He'll play a rogue sniper in a 3 episode arc next Spring, according to Ausiello. Everyone who knows me knows I love both the Mummy movies (non Rachel Weisz movies don't count!), and one of the crowning joys is "Imhotep! Imhotep! Imhotep!". etc.

 First, watch this video:



Second, read the accompanying article and comments:
Good Men Project


Third, thank God, Buddha, and the Spaghetti Monster that there are still people with the courage of their convictions in the United States. To the politicians and pro-life activists that have sold out women on reproductive rights, you are not just hurting those supposedly real women who have monthly abortions before their mimosa brunches. You are hurting families who have already agonized over their decision.


You go, Aaron.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was always my favorite Indy movie, for quite a few reasons:

-Julian Glover as villain!
-Inherently over-the-top conclusion!
-Stunning special effects for the time!
-Weird Nazi book-burning subplot!
-John Rhys-Davies!

But most importantly, it was very very funny (and intentionally funny, unlike Temple of Doom).

And now I know why. According to this terrific bit of information,  Tom Stoppard rewrote almost every line of dialogue in the whole movie! (Tom Stoppard is most famous for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (brilliant and hilarious) and for writing the screenplay for Shakespeare In Love (another candidate for criminally overrated, mind you).

He also was invited, along with M. Night Shyamalan, to draft a script for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but lost out to David Koepp (screenwriter of Jurassic Park!).

Something that gives me great joy every time I think about it is the fact that Amy Poehler and Will Arnett are married! (And have already produced 2 future comedy geniuses?)

Has there ever been another married couple who so frequently show up on each other's shows??

The photo that inspired this post:

Back when I was first introduced to the fact they were married (I tried to find the photo where she was  committed Abu Ghraib on Gob, but screw you internet. And yes I am too lazy to screencap my DVD.):


As incestuous brother and sister on Blades of Glory:


When he creepily tried to MRI her on Parks and Recreation:


And just for funsies:

It's bad enough that they're making a new version of The Crow at all, but I received a tiny bit of news today that disgusted me.

Thankfully he has yet to accept (and if there is a God, he won't), but the initial offer of the role has gone to....MARK WAHLBERG!

Horrible. The Crow is one of the only comic book adaptations that Hollywood got right with the first try. It perfectly balanced that fine line between camp and classic.

Dear Hollywood, please leave Sandman on the shelf is this is your idea of an effective adaptation.

Two million dollars was all it took for Debra Granik to make the best film of the year, with superb performances from its young leads, and no sacrifice of atmosphere. Jennifer Lawrence stars in this tale of survival in the land of Ozark hillbillies, where the family trade is crystal meth and livestock are the only currency.

Like Precious and Fish Tank, the story revolves around the desperation of one young girl facing a life of extreme poverty and deprivation. But Ree is a different animal; she's tough and she's hopeful, even faced with the knowledge that she might lose her only home thanks to her father's jumping bail. And so she is forced on her own Odyssean quest, facing temptations and threats at every pitstop on the way to the truth.

Winter's Bone has moments of unspeakable violence, proving that sometimes the most dangerous people around you are your own blood. And no one lets Ree down more than her kin, from her bail-jumper dad to her mentally unstable mother. But they're not half as terrifying as Ree's motley crew of 'cousins,' who we meet one-by-one, each with their own brand of domestic abuse, silent recriminations, or open threats.

Without such a compelling heroine, the film might have become unrelentingly bleak, but thankfully we have Ree Dolly to root for. Jennifer Lawrence has already been snapped up by Hollywood, with a lead roles coming up in the new X-Men film. Hopefully, Winter's Bone is just at the beginning of its award run, with the Sundance prize already in the bag.

Hey guys, I realize I've been quite un-generous with personal detail (ah, the world wide stalk-o-sphere), so I'm doing this so that you can get to know a little bit about me and my reading taste (and probably make fun of me, but oh well).

1. What author do you own the most books by?
For reasons having to do with frequent out-of-town tennis tournaments when I was younger, it's probably Robin Cook.

2. What book do you own the most copies of?
For some reason, I have three copies each of The Fountainhead and of Mrs. Dalloway. The Fountainhead because I love it, and have been frequently seized with a necessity to read it while living in different countries. Mrs. Dalloway, on the other hand, I keep picking up in charity shops because I forget I already have a copy (it took me years to finish this book, cause I kept picking it up and then forgetting about it!)

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Should it worry me that I didn't notice or care?

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
In my extreme youth I was in love with Frank Hardy (Hardy Boys), then when older, I was in love with Marius (Les Miserables), until I graduated to my true love, Bran, the man with the facial tattoo from Juliet Marillier's Son of the Shadows, Book II of the Sevenwaters Trilogy (I don't really read much fantasy, but I LOVED that series).

5. What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children)?
Hmmm…lots of children's books certainly. I have read Goblet of Fire many times, but probably not as much as particular Nancy Drew books, or Les Miserables. I particularly reread the one where Nancy hooks up with Frank Hardy a million times.

6. What was your favourite book when you were ten years old?
That would definitely be The Secret Garden.

7. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
I hate to admit it, but it might be 2666, by Robert Bolano. I love his short stories, but this one was boring and pretentious (and I didn't finish it, though I might still try)

8. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
Easy. We Need to Talk About Kevin, by Lionel Shriver.

9. If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
We Need to Talk About Kevin, it's just so disturbing and wonderful, and goes places you'd never expect.

10. Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
Me.

11. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
I want to see a proper, big budget adaptation of Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain. I LOVED them when I was young, and the Disney version of The Black Cauldron was dire (so dire, in fact, that Michael Eisner almost shut down their animation division afterwards).

12. What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Oh, there are so many options here. I am very worried about the We Need To Talk About Kevin movie, but they've cast Tilda Swinton so there's still hope.

13. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing. Extremely difficult bits to get through, but I'm so glad I did.

14. Roth or Updike?
As David Foster Wallace describes them, 'The Great White American Narcissists.' (I'm surprised how often I've been able to use that quote of late). I vote for Richard Yates. Go read Easter Parade if you haven't.

David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Eggers wins this one by default, I've never read Sedaris (nor do I have any particular desire to!)

Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Chaucer.

Austen or Eliot?
Again, this is Austen by default. I really should read Middlemarch at some point. But I somehow doubt that Eliot can transplant Austen in my heart.

In one sentence: misogynistic twaddle.

Now let me say straight up, I am not one who puritanically hates violence in entertainment; a hallmark of a great film is violence used effectively in the service of character, comedy or horror. I DO have a problem with 'men can only take back their masculinity from evil modern women's equality by BEATING THE CRAP OUT OF EACH OTHER.' It feeds into this whole bullshit theory (that feminists are equally guilty of defending) that men have an innate NEED for violence, that their manhood is inherently tied up with brutality.

That said, I have a general disdain for any story that has a main theme of 'men being emasculated.' Again, the whole concept means there is a clearly defined version of what being a male means, and a feeling of emasculation usually reflects some form of misogny. This misogyny is further reflected by the fact that while the movie tells of the man-destroying feminization of the world, there is only one female character, and that female character is a balls-out male fantasy, ill equipped to challenge the movie's main point (though at least she doesn't confirm it).

This sort of surface deep analysis of social issues is rampant in the film. Now that we've got wussification of men out of the way, lets attack consumerism! In the stupidest, most idiotic, 'I wanna be a Red Army Faction Black Shirt but without any political ideology' kind of way. Back-fat soap is the instrument of horror, but like everything else in this movie, it's cheap and shallow.

Fight Club also commits the ultimate crime in fiction of any form; the illegitimate twist ending. An ending that completely removes the validity of the entire world the audience has been subjected to, an ending that exists only because the writer cannot be bothered to come up with something better.

WOMAN ON THE AGORA
I thought I was alone in hating this movie, but here are some of my more legitimate (employed!) brethren on the film:

Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times): "Fight Club" is the most frankly and cheerfully fascist big-star movie since "Death Wish," a celebration of violence in which the heroes write themselves a license to drink, smoke, screw and beat one another up."

Peter Bradshaw (The Guardian): "But, by the end, it has unravelled catastrophically into a strident, shallow, pretentious bore with a "twist" ending that doesn't work. And it is a film which smugly flirts, oh-so-very-controversially, with some of the intellectual and cultural paraphernalia of fascism - but does not have anything like the nerve, still less the cerebral equipment, to back this pose up."

And my personal favorite, by Lisa Schwarzbaum (Entertainment Weekly): "The giant international furnishings chain IKEA is responsible for many consumer-based phenomena, among them our docile acceptance of cheap, hinged desk lamps that droop like spent lilies. But I hadn't realized that overexposure to IKEA results in limp penises, too, until I saw Fight Club. David Fincher's dumb and brutal shock show of a movie floats the winky, idiotic premise that a modern-day onslaught of girly pop-cultural destinations (including but not limited to IKEA, support groups, and the whole Starbucks-Gap-khakis brand-name axis) has resulted in a generation of spongy young men unable to express themselves as fully erect males. And that the swiftest remedy for the malaise lies in freely and mutually beating the crap out of each other -- bleeding, oozing, cracking, and groaning until pulped bodies crumple to the floor in a poetically lit heap."