1. Just 'cause.
2. GreenCine gathers the first reviews of Frost/Nixon from the London Film Festival. No doubt this part inspired Langella's take on Tricky Dick.
["Frank Langella rolls over Sheen like a tank in a way that Nixon failed to do with Frost in art or in life. Frost is nervy, darting, ineffectual, but Nixon moves slowly and easily, as if to the beats of some invisible band playing a leisured version of Hail to the Chief. Nixon is a juicy part and Langella extracts every tasty drop."]
3. "Are Hollywood's politics killing the movie business?": By Patrick Goldstein for the L.A. Times.
["Leonardo DiCaprio is a big supporter of saving the planet. George Clooney is always at the U.N., trying to prevent more mass murder and starvation in Darfur. Matt Damon recently criticized Sarah Palin, saying if she were elected vice president it would be "like a really bad Disney movie--'The Hockey Mom.' " Agree or disagree with their stands--would that really stop you from seeing their movies? If you ask conservatives, the answer is yes. I wrote a post yesterday analyzing the box-office failure of "Body of Lies," which starred Russell Crowe and DiCaprio in a Middle East political thriller. According to my favorite conservative blogger, Dirty Harry (who was nice enough to call my post "thoughtful"), I missed the real issue. As he put it:"]
4. "Drive-in theaters still popular after 75 years": From CNN.
[" The drive-in theater, that uniquely American institution which turned 75 this summer, is experiencing an unexpected renaissance. After decades of closures, about 100 drive-ins have opened or reopened since the mid-'90s. In these digital days, you can see a movie on a laptop computer, an "in-car" entertainment system, even on a cell phone. What would compel anyone to sit through a double feature in a dusty parking lot, trying to make out dialogue over the occasional coughing motor, and breathing air that smells, at times, as though you poured oily popcorn butter and diesel into a humidifier? The answer can be found only by venturing to a drive-in, bug-repellent wipes at the ready. Among about 400 choices nationwide: Bengies in Baltimore, Maryland; Red's Crescent in Crescent City, California; the Pink Cadillac in Centerville, Tennessee; and the big daddy of them all, the Thunderbird in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, which doubles as the world's largest daily flea market. Or you could come to the Silver Moon, located in semi-rural, central Florida -- where the Outback steakhouses and stucco subdivisions that are closing in have not completely erased the scent of hay and manure, the mom-and-pop berry stands, the archways of Spanish moss."]
5. "World’s Strangest Restaurants": From Travel + Leisure magazine. Be sure to check out the accompanying slideshow.
["You cross a wooden walkway, walk down some steps, and find a restaurant with just six tables. Not so strange. On the menu are items like reef-fish carpaccio and Wagyu beef. Not so strange either. But look up and you’ll see what makes Ithaa, a $5-million eatery in the Maldives, so unique: an acrylic bubble overhead that showcases the stingrays, collared butterfly fish, and blue-faced angelfish that swim through the crystal-clear water. Welcome to the world’s first aquarium-style underwater restaurant."]
Quote of the Day: George Washington
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): Thad Starr's 1,528 lb pumpkin, winner of the World Championship Pumpkin Weigh-Off.
Clip of the Day: Scary British Information Films Of The 70s. Splink! (Hattip: Jeremiah Kipp)
_____________________________________________________
"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, October 15, 2008
Links for the Day (October 15th, 2008)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
I went to my first drive-in last month, the Galaxy in Ennis, TX (yes, the town is even more boring than it sounds). To call it an "interesting experience" would be my personal understatement of the year.
A better description that I came up with on the spot: it's the perfect setting to begin a horror film. Dark, desolate, a creepy mini-golf course with an abandoned baby stroller sitting in the middle of it.... I made sure to tell my girlfriend to "be nice to the hicks" or who knows what Slasher Film mayhem may have ensued.
It was a fun time. We watched Grease through the FM transmission of the audio. But I think this specific drive-in isn't capitalizing on its potential. It's quirky, weird, and old, but their main features are movies like Death Race or The Dark Knight. The only way I'd see a film like The Dark Knight at that drive-in is if it was my 3rd or 4th time seeing it. Big films like that, in my opinion, deserve pristine surround sound and DLP projected images, not the grains, pops and scratches of a dusty print or the barely-stereo audio transmission.
Oh! What I meant to say in the first place:
Even though this article speaks of a relatively recent resurgence of drive-ins across the land, at this specific drive-in that I went to, I was treated to a pre-film plea for help by way of a trailer saying something like (and I paraphrase): "There used to be 4,083 drive-ins... now only 400 remain...." It was quite depressing.
Regarding Patrick Goldstein's article:
The movie business feeds off public sentiment -- off feeling that are in the air, whatever strikes the industry as a consensus. The public consensus that the Iraq war was a dandy idea was based on an adrenaline-jacked desire for 9/11 payback. It wasn't rational or deeply felt, and it really lasted only a few months, and started to waver after Bush's little dress-up stunt on the aircraft carrier in May, 2003, when it became clear that the president was lost in some kind of bizarre adolescent fantasy, that this thing wasn't going to be cakewalk, and the administration hadn't done a thing to prepare for the possibility that it might go less than swimmingly. After that it was all uncertainty, arguments; the movies about that conflict (and TV series, too) either tried to have it both ways ("The Kingdom") or went negative/cautionary/mournful. This seems about right to me; if there's a persuasive case to be made that Hollywood misread the public mood, I haven't come across it; all I've seen are articles bitching that Hollywood is full of lefties rooting for Bush's failure, which, while surely true, doesn't constitute a coherent argument. Really, now: Who today besides a Bush admin lapdog would defend the means by which the country was led into war, much less insist that those who dreamt it up had a well-thought-out plan and that anybody who criticizes them simply hates America? Nobody -- at least, nobody living in this world, rather than the world of ideologically-driven fantasy.
Similarly, the tone of American movies in the 60s and early 70s was antiestablishment and antiauthoritarian more often than not (the wave of badass cop/urban vigilante movies being a conspicuous exception), and with good reason. It was an era of domestic unrest, intergenerational distrust and resentment, government by clusterfuck, and a war which (like our current one) was gotten into (under a Democrat!) via speciously concocted rationales (the Gulf of Tonkin incident which precipitated the influx of U.S. ground troops is now recognized as a scam job -- an "enemy attack" that didn't even happen, and that was designed to make full-scale military intervention possible and circumvent the Constitution's demand for legislative oversight of executive war power). The generally foul mood expressed in American film during that era was strongly rooted in the emotional/political reality of that era. To argue that it wasn't representative -- that it was just Hollywood propaganda -- is a denial of reality, a form of wishful thinking. When conservatives ask, "Where are the movies in favor of the Iraq war/cheering for Bush/telling us everything is fine?", it's a way of wishing that the tenor of the times was something other than what it really is.
On the other hand, post-Pearl Harbor, there was a widespread sense that war with the Axis powers was inevitable and justified and that no matter how difficult the effort, it was something we had to do, had to commit to; movies reflected that. During Ronald Reagan's presidency, liberals were the ones who felt out-of-step when they went to the movies; for eight years -- more, really, since the cinema of the 80s persisted into the early 90s) cinemas were filled with jingoistic military and cop fantasies ("Rambo," "Top Gun," "Red Dawn," two more Dirty Harry movies and a second wave of urban vigilante/revenge of the persecuted white guy pictures) and various paeans to a classless society in which anybody could be a big success if they just applied themselves ("Flashdance" and "Working Girl" being probably the foremost examples). Even supposedly apolitical entertainments contained jabs at the legacy of FDR; remember the sniveling little EPA regulator who tries to impede our free-market buccaneer heroes in "Ghostbusters"?
Be patient, conservatives. When the times truly favor your worldview, the movies will crank out product that valorizes it and make liberals feel like they're standing outside the candy store looking in. I promise.
Well, said, Matt. What I was thinking, but far more eloquently put.
...On a lighter note, about the restaurants - there's a lot of great design collections like that over at http://weburbanist.com/
I think we're all missing the big picture, and that's that John Nolte is an angry, unhappy, punishing person.
Post a Comment