1. "$175 burger: You want gold with that?": From MMMmmmSNBC.
["Its creators admit it is the ultimate in decadence: a $175 hamburger. The Wall Street Burger Shoppe just raised its price from $150 to assure its designation as the costliest burger in the city as determined by Pocket Change, an online newsletter about the most expensive things in New York. “Wall Street has good days and bad days. We wanted to have the everyday burger (for $4) ... and then something special if you really have a good day on Wall Street,” said co-owner Heather Tierney. The burger, created by chef and co-owner Kevin O’Connell, seeks to justify its price with a Kobe beef patty, lots of black truffles, seared foie gras, aged Gruyere cheese, wild mushrooms and flecks of gold leaf on a brioche bun."]
2. News of the moment: "Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's cancer doctors plan more diagnostic tests" (from the LA Times); "Clinton scores a win, Obama nears finish line" (from CNN); "Va. Abortion Law Overturned Again" (from The Washington Post).
["Stricken with a cancerous brain tumor in the autumn of his storied political career, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was facing a daunting treatment regimen with "good spirits," his doctors here said Tuesday, while his family and political friends struggled with the uncertain realities posed by the stark diagnosis. Medical tests performed over the weekend revealed that the 76-year-old Massachusetts Democrat has a malignant glioma on the left side of his brain. About 9,000 malignant glioma diagnoses are made in the U.S. each year, and survival rates are bleak for severe cases."]
3. "There's something in The Mist": So Ted Pigeon tells us.
["No single image in The Mist is more frightening than the sharp blade grasped on one end by human hands plunging into the stomach of a fellow man. Encircled by a crowd function as a larger body of righteousness, the defenseless man is the unfortunate target of the twisted logic determined solely by his social position (an army officer). He is reduced to nothing more than the means by which members of a dominant majority can carry out their insatiable desire to provide meaning and structure to things that, quite simply, defy explanation."]
4. "The Cannes Film Festival Thus Far": J. Hoberman reports for The Village Voice.
["No need for dreaming here. Each Cannes Film Festival generates its own metaphors for a 10-day regimen of visions in the dark. It's impossible to forget, let alone transcend, one's unnatural situation here."]
5. "Clint, Angelina and the movie with no name": Andrew O'Hehir reports on the film formerly known as Changeling.
["Whatever it winds up being called, "L'Ex-Changeling" got a warm reception from the press this morning. Whether that really reflects the film's inherent qualities, or just the experience of observing two prodigious stars of different eras collaborate on a major Hollywood project that wasn't made for morons, is open to debate. For anybody who's ever felt passionate about the movies, it was impossible to resist the spectacle of Eastwood, looking both dapper and weatherbeaten in an elegant cream-colored suit, strolling slowly through a rooftop garden here with the gloriously pregnant Jolie on his arm. It was of course the impersonation of casualness and spontaneity rather than the real thing; they were walking through a forest of photographers on their way to the press conference. But the appearance of being at one's ease while maximally exposed to public scrutiny is the essence of stardom."]
Quote of the Day: Jon Arbuckle
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): "American No-Place": From Jeremy Bushnell's contribution to the Production Design Blog-a-thon. More links here.
Clip of the Day: I hope he wasn't talking oral sex statistics.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Links for the Day (May 21st, 2008)
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6 comments:
re: clip of the day
in soviet russia, cock blocks you!
Re #3: A great piece on what I thought was a very underrated movie. Catching "The Mist" on DVD a month or so ago, I was genuinely surprised what the movie was saying about the nature of humanity. Not very subtle, but still quite effective.
For all the movies that attempt to make grand statements on Iraq, I thought this movie tackled what I felt was a more important subject: the horror of group mentalities in this country.
I'm hoping more people re-discover "The Mist" like they re-discovered John Carpenter's "The Thing" years ago.
I liked Ted's piece on The Mist, though my initial reaction was more mixed than positive. Allow me, if you will, to give an excerpt:
There are also holes in the narrative that you could drive a fleet of trucks through, and they are apparent in both the novella and the film. After the hero, David Drayton (Thomas Jayne), and a few others, have a close confrontation in the loading dock with some obviously not-from-this-world tentacles, and lose one of their numbers to the beast, they decide to enlist the help of Andre Braugher’s bellicose out-of-towner Brent Norton. He dismisses the idea that there are monsters out there in the mist, which, I find, is the natural position to adopt when confronted by relatively frequent weather phenomena. However, when they say they have the severed tip of one of the tentacles in the loading bay, he refuses to even go in and take a look, thinking that this is all just a big joke being played on him by the locals. It’s such an arbitrary scene – so obviously a plot device – that it, too, distracts from the actual film. I wanted to shout at the screen, “just kick him the heck out of there,” which, given the film’s tone, is obviously not the intention. Another plot-device-cum-character is the religious zealot Mrs Carmody (delightfully hammed up to the max by Marcia Gay Harden), who starts ranting and raving the minute the mist appears, and who starts gathering followers with each passing moment. There is a nice point here about people succumbing to their deepest fears in times of great crisis, but the apparent dichotomy between Drayton’s positivists and Carmody’s nutcases goes up to eleven, and this lack of subtlety drains the confrontation off its emotional resonance (and timely relevance).
Nonetheless, during its better moments, the film feels like the more competent examples of mainstream horror of the 70’s, and I was reminded of middling, yet enjoyable, fare such as Deathdream, The Other, Burnt Offerings, or even The Nanny (OK, that’s the sixties, but still). It is also unflinching in its inexorable journey towards an unusually dark and disturbing catharsis. In a bizarre way, you can see the love that went into the making of this film, similar to the kind of love Darabont must have poured into The Shawshank Redemption (overrated) and The Green Mile (underrated). It might work better as part of a Friday night DVD double-bill (unless, that is, you have a life).
And here I thought I was the only person who put gold leaf on my hamburgers.
Re: #5. Does anyone know of an actual transcript of the Changeling/Exchange press conference? Because it could very well be unrelated, but this--"It seems like every two or three decades, the police department and the political structure in Los Angeles goes through some kind of revolution or crisis....This was one of those periods. There's a period of corruption, followed by some kind of house-cleaning."--seems like a response to the question about democracy cleaning its own house that O'Herir implies Eastwood dodges.
Ali: "...I was reminded of middling, yet enjoyable, fare such as Deathdream, The Other, Burnt Offerings, or even The Nanny (OK, that’s the sixties, but still)."
I get what you're saying, but have to stick up for The Nanny as far more than middling. It has a better and fairer grasp of the sorrow of madness than most horror films; skirts the line between indulging childhood perspicacity and criticizing childish paranoia quite brilliantly; and the tub scene is a magnificently staged heart-stopper.
The Mist I enjoyed as well, though I prefer the novella's haunted open ending to Darabont's admittedly effective brusque shocker. Even if King himself apparently doesn't.
Re: L'Ex-Changeling
Maybe, in honor of its star, they could call it Changelina.
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