Ritz !!!

I got a zero. Or perhaps I am a zero. Hmmmmm gotta think about that.

Okay, well I am a 50 year old jazz musician who lives in Arizona.

Mornin’ ya’ll

Oh I love that movie… what joy!

Shakespeare rocks!

A favorite of mine, always picks me up, is Stanley Tucci and Oliver Platt’s The Impostors. Its a big wet kiss to Marx Bros. style comedy, a complete farce, with a great cast. Absolutely ridiculous.

My other fave that way is Happy Texas. If you haven’t seen it, it is a perfect lazy Saturday movie.

My wife (for 22 years so far) is from South America. If things don’t work out for this next election I’m considering leaving the country. Now you know a little about me. More than you wanted I am sure.

Family intrigue AND “the great American novel” = Sometimes A Great Notion by Ken Kesey. It is a wonderful read and a fascinating study of the Great Northwest.

I just recently re-read The Kite Runner and House of Sand and Fog. Both heartbreakingly beautiful.

I saw Running Scared the other nite and cannot stop thinking about it.

The one movie that spoke most viscerally to me recently is An Inconvenient Truth– please see it, everybody.

Wallace and Gromit– all of them, Chicken Run, Fahrenheit 9/11, Finding Nemo, Harry Potter, Monty Python, and The Lion King make me sane.

Movies: “Waiting For Guffman” and “Best In Show”.

I read 9 books in June (productive vacation :) ) and think Carl Hiaasan is always good for a quick, funny read – the one I read was “Skinny Dip.” Also liked Ann Tyler’s “Back When We Were Grownups”. I’m impatient Daniel Silva’s next book- all of his stuff is great (read “Prince of Fire” in March) and am reading Joyce Carol Oates “The Falls” currently. It’s a good read.

I wish it was a holiday weekend. Gotta work Monday. Out of town, too. (The company is paying for one night’s room and one meal; I can’t really complain much.)

This weekend: starting to scan and OCR the Civil War letters and journal of my great-grandfather’s older brother; it got typed up by one of my grandmother’s uncles, and lives at UNorth Texas in the oral history collection. I want to put it online with my great-grandfather’s letters: the journal as the frame and the letters linked at the appropriate dates.

Looking at the headlines of what the Israelis are doing: the Syrians should be complaining loudly about the overflights of their country – I doubt that they were asked for permission, and doing it with a fighter is provocation – and we ought to be backing them up. But probably won’t, because the Israelis have bought enough of Congress to get a pass; backing Syria might also make people look closer at our own actions in the Middle East, and Cheney certainly doesn’t want that.

Also one of my fellow commuters wondered the other day if a RICO action could be brought against this maladministration, or at least the GOoP, given that there seems to be a pattern of criminality and corruption. I will admit that an attorney who tried it might wind up in, say, the Aleutians, but it’s a thought.

I liked the film, “Kingdom of Heaven”.

It was about the crusades (the 3rd, I think around 1400 B.C.) and climaxed when Saladhin took Jerusalem back from the Christians.

It had a great overarching peaceful message. In addition, it helps one to broaden the historical perspective and understand the origins of strife in the middle east as witnessed throughout the ages.

I cannot verify the historical accuracy of all of it, but wikipedia helped me determine that it was “directionally correct”.

Anyone else like that one?

I’m a 50 something engineer that lives in Huntsville, AL, for work but my heart and home are in rural Tennessee. And, I’m a a rock ‘n’ roller that’s grown to be a jazz fan, by way of the blues.

Sympathize w the three year old, my three year-old is autistic but plays well w his one year old brother.

This has been a while, but I loved the ensemble cast movie “Crash” in that it made everyone, even villains, seem profoundly human and real.

The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon. An historical novel of mystery and magic set in 1950s Barcelona. A young boy, living with his widower father, finds and reads a book by a mysterious writer that soon engulfs the boy’s life. Who is this writer? Why did he write this?

Brilliant stuff, and a cracking translation from the Spanish by Lucia Graves (yes, the daughter of the I, Claudius Graves).

BTW my wife has licensed me to be in love with Emma Thompson, it’s only fair.

I like to watch the original JAWS over 4th of July weekend because it’s the 4th in the movie also. Gonna make some peach ice cream and dig up weeds in the backyard. It should be good.

I adore that movie and the sound track is fabulous, too. I was so broken up about Branaugh/Thompson divorce, much more so than about any other celebrity divorce. They were just so – well, perfect – together!

Though it’s not in quite the same league as “Ado”, you may want to see “Casanova”. It’s almost as beautiful and fun, and also has the most divine sound track.

Also, if you’re looking for fun reads, pick up Adam Langer’s two books about Chicago, “Crossing California”, and its sequel, “The Washington Story”. Set on Chicago’s North Side, in the years between 1979 and 1990, they follow a core group of about 10 people, mostly high school kids, through the years. Langer’s writing is wonderful, the characters stick with you forever, and, believe me, you’ll never hear the word “which”, again without associating it with “Crossing”. Langer has the most wicked sense of humor and the books are laugh-out-loud. And, you needn’t be a native of Chicago – which I am – to love the story and characters.

Enjoy.

on Thursday I picked up my paperback copy of “An Inconvenient Truth” — lots of pretty pictures. I’ve just skimmed through it — there are meaty “articles” in it, it seems. Later today I’ll take it downtown to the Circle, sip iced green tea and read through it while checking out cute guys in the sun …

Ooo, I loved that movie! Thompson was never more delicious nor Branagh more engaging (remember his fight with the lawn chair — the kind that my and, I bet, your granny still had? I use one of my granny’s to this day … on those rare moments when I’m not on FDL).

Okay, my recipe theme for today will be Key lime. Back after I do a heap o’ typing (if only *ilson would teach me how to turn it all yellow-green) . . .

As far as books go, “God’s Politics” by Jim Wallis lays out a compelling argument on how to take back the religious high ground from the fundie theocrats.

The top of that hill really is ours for the taking. It starts with the teachings of tolerance, charity and equality.

Any of folks that have been called to serve in the Church have thoughts on it?

Steve Clark at 3, When Stereotypes Collide: I must confess that “a jazz musician who lives in Arizona” caused me some cognitive dissonance. :) But I’m a jazz fan as well – what do you play, may I ask?

Just saw ‘Amadeus’ on vido tape for the first time in a few years. What can one say? The contrast between F. Murray Abraham (Best Actor Oscar) and Tom Hulce, the contributions from Jeffrey Jones (Emperor Franz Joseph) and Elizabeth Berridge (Wolfie’s wife Constanza), the glorious music – Figaro, Don Giovanni, snatches of piano concertos. My only regret is that The Magic Flute didn’t get more time, but that is in keeping with its opening very close to Mozart’s death. The final credits with the slow movement from Piano Concerto no. 26 – sublime.

I cannot recommend it too strongly.

Been reading the site since forever, but rarely post — sometimes under my own name, sometimes under my blogging pseudonym. I’ll try for more consistancy. :) Former lawyer, now software engineer. Former father-of-three-year-old, now father-of-eight-year-old. Former liberal, now angry liberal.

I think I must be getting old, because I find myself re-reading favorite books more than exploring new ones. I find that John LeCarre and Jane Austen are often on the bedside table. (God knows what they’re doing there when I’m not around.)

Christy:”(Ah, the good old days%u2026I still count “Henry V” as one of my favorite movies of all time.)”

I second the emotion. And add Hamlet while your’re at it. The twin peaks of Olivier’s movie career. Not to mention that he directed himself in both.

Leslie, I am a drummer. I lived in California for 18 years until the Northridge earthquake scared the hell out of me. I’ll be in L.A. for the Sweet and Hot Jazz festival over labor day weekend, for whatever that is worth. I play with an eclectic band called Igors’ Jazz Cowboys.

I like to read detective stories that include good food descriptions and take place in well described foreign lands. Death of a Red Heroine by Qui Xiaolong and The Snack Thief, by Andrea Camilleri both fit the bill. I like Bangkok 8 by John Burdett too. For Movies I like a nice ghost story, The Uninvited is one of my favorites, “ahh, the scent of mimosa”

T at 12: 3rd Crusade was 1189-1192

If you want a good novel about that period and place, read Jerusalem by Cecelia Holland.

Steve Clark: Where in S. America will you go?

just wondered.

Listening to Phil and Friends whom we saw in Asheville NC last Tues.
My husbands the Deadhead but these guys are great!
Been working hard all summer, selling at craft shows so not much reading.
I like “The Pickup” by Nadine Gordimer though.

lotus: please go back and look at your comment at # 20 …

I’m reading this great book called Gestures, by H.S. Bhabra, an Indian writer who was born in Bombay in the early part of the 20th century and became an English diplomat. Really well written and intriguing read.

Chisty:

If you’re a Henry V fan, you might like “Fortune Made His Sword” by Martha Rofheart.

Since many here seem interested in the global warming issue, I thought I would pass along athe following. There has been some action (although still somewhat quiet) in the Senate on this topic.

Last year the Senate passed a Sense of the Senate resolution stating that “It is the sense of the Senate that Congress should enact a comprehensive and effective national program of mandatory, market-based limits and incentives on emissions of greenhouse gases that slow, stop, and reverse the growth of such emissions…”

Bingaman and Domenici (who is serious about doing something on this) have committed to working on a bill together. (Info here).

In short, there is a good chance of getting climate change legislation through the Senate next year.

Oh, and a recent release that is really excellent is Nine Lives. Nine shorts that vaguely overlap, showing slivers of women’s lives. Incredible cast and stories about women you do not see in film basically ever.

Inconvenient Truth finally made it to my town this week, so it is on the agenda (along with Superman).

My wifes family lives in Cochabamba, Bolivia. I’ll be heading down there maybe opening a jazz club for gringos.I’d rather live under “leftist” Evo Morales, than fascist GW Bush and Co.

mary jane, have you read A Small Death in Lisbon? I read it several years ago and don’t remember how much food was in it, but it was very well written. The author is Robert Wilson.

Oh-ho, the peanut is up and peeing. I’m doomed.

My all-time fav movie for 4th of July viewing is Altman’s “Buffalo Bill and the Indian’s or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson” — there are so many great scenes in it, like the one where Bull circles the show arena silently, the first time to the crowd’s boos, the second to it’s cheers — that provoke so much thought about what’s hiding behind American symbols and the exceptionalist myths they signify.

And that last shot of Paul Newman as Bill in all his heroic glory — with the look of panic in his eyes. Rent it or buy it and watch it often. In my opinion the best commentary on the nexus between entertainment and myth-making ever made. And most of it’s historically true.

JB, 23:”My only regret is that The Magic Flute didn’t get more time,”

You can make it up by getting (if you can) Ingmar Bergman’t movie version of the Magic Flute. Dazzling.

And BTW, as you probably know, Salieri did not poison Mozart. It did give Murray Abraham a good character to play though.

Hulce’s Mozart was over the top, but not entirely. Mozart was a bit of a flake, very scatlogical in his letters to his cousin, and is suspected to have Tourette Syndrome, which goes with the scatology. Worth the price of genius I would say.

Thanks to Christy for the Sat morning Pull up a Chair. It is a great relief to put aside the horrors of the world out there for one thread, and just hang out.

Bill Shakespeare? Truly an artist for the ages. Perhaps you like Will’s predecessor. Geoff Chaucer too. Both these guys have been friends of mine for what seems forever.

Thought I’d take this opportunity to de-lurk and say hi. My favorite book from the last few months of reading is Living Next Door to the God of Love by Justina Robson. a wonderful combination of philosophy, myth, lust, romance, and string theory. It’s what’s known to science fiction insiders as “literary hard SF”. Right now I’m half-way through Pretender, the latest in C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series which some people, including me, think is the best on-going series in science fiction. It’s as good as always, but it’s number eight in the series and if you want to uinderstand what’s going on you have to start at the beginning with Foreigner.

Okay, be vevvey, vevvey quiet. I think he fell asleep again.

Movies, hhhhmmmmmmmm

Inherit the Wind
(from proverbs, “He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind”) May it be so in DC.

King of Hearts–particularly applicable right now, the escapees of the asylum have taken over.

Harold and Maude

and for wished for parallel universe, though it was kind of gushy in a nice way, the American President

Books: anything by Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, still.

and for those wanting a really good read, an oldie from about 8-9 years ago, The Fourth Procedure. It’s about an anti-choice chief justice of the Supremes who is shown the light in a rather dramatic fashion! The one book in years that I literally couldn’t put down until I finished it.

Well, my unlawfully wedded spouse is reading “Shalimar the Clown” by Salmon Rushdie right now and enjoying it.

I’m really enjoying some of the VOOM network HD films I’m getting off of the DISH HD package.

“The Decline and Fall of the American Empire” (A French Canadian film about enmeshed academics that preceeded the Barbarian Invasions by the same director.) Seijin Suzuki Films like “Tokio Drifter,” “Branded to Kill,” and “Gate of Flesh.” Spanish films like “Nico and Dani” (I think they had a mini-Almodovar festival a few months ago…but that was before we picked up the new HD DVR that lets us time shift films for enjoyment. It also has a “Kung Fu channel that also has some classic Kurosawa as well as staples of HK films like “A Chinese Ghost Story.”

Right now its the best way to enjoy HD movies at home–especially non-blockbuster ones.

Well since you gave me the oppurtunity, I have to pimp my all time favorite movie (and one that I adored LONG before The West Wing appropriated it anonymously as Pres. Bartlett’s favorite), The Lion in Winter.

The movie, though set in the 12th century, manages to be humorous, suspenseful and dramatic. It stars Katherine Hepburn in a role that, at the time, could ONLY have been played by her (and, judging from the attempts made by Glenn Close and Stockard Channing to revive it, may still be the case) and Peter O’Toole in what should have been an Oscar-winning role.

It also features the screen debut of a then-unknown actor named Anthony Hopkins, as well as a young Timothy Dalton.

Trust me, watch it and tell me you don’t laugh out loud when Hepburn says, “A little? How about eternal peace, now THERE’S a thought.”

HinTN @ 8: “Sometimes a Great Notion” is a fantastic work of fiction. I grew up in a Pacific NW logging town, I KNOW those people.

I’m about halfway through Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, still not sure if it’s fiction or fact. Heartbreakingly beautiful stories of the horrors and farces in a ‘Nam grunt’s experiences. As much as I hate war, it makes for some fantastic writing. Mark Helprin’s “A Soldier of the Great War” is one of my all-time favorite novels. I disagree with most of Helprin’s politics, but the man can flat-out write.

Just watched “Syriana” for the second time, I shoulda taken notes, because I’m still confused. Oh, well, it’s a very good movie.

New England comfort food, guaranteed.

large roasting pan

calculate how many pork chops to cover the area
(usually 8 or so)

fry pork chops in cast iron skillet (salt and pepper chops); remove chops and put on a plate. put aside pan (remove excessive drippings, depending upon quality of chops; leave some grease)

peel many potatoes, slice into quarter inch slices

cover bottom of roasting pan with sliced potates to about 1/2 inch from the top

put milk into the frying pan, and warm; stir the drippings into the milk

pour milk over potatoes to cover

place chops on top

cover with tin foal

place in oven at 325 for about an hour to an hour and a half

the potatoes and chops will steam

remove when potatoes are soft

Branagh’s latest offering.

dratty:

Did you see the remake of Lion in Winter with Glen Close and Patrick Stewart? It’s pretty good, except the character of John is all wrong.

The Hero with a Thousand faces by Joseph Campbell is the most influential book in my life. There , I’ve said way too much.

One of my favorite books ever is Derrick Jensen’s The Culture of Make Believe.It’s astonishingly beautiful and haunting.He weaves together his story of childhood abuse and the sickness of our culture,while telling of his own healing and connection with the land,sea and stars,which saved his life.His latest book is called Endgame,which is actually two books,part one is called The Problem of Civilization,part two is called Resistance.I haven’t started to read them yet,but Jensen is a brilliant writer,unlike any other I’ve read in my 46 yrs.

I loved Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees,I don’t read alot of fiction,but this is one I really loved.The Alchemist is another good one,and I loved Under the Tuscan Sun(and the movie isn’t even close to the book,what the hell happened there?)and The Kite Runner.

50 Acres and a Poodle is a cute book,about a lady who buys a farm after living her whole life in a big city.

Rose Madder is my favorite Stephen King book.

The Curious Incident of The Dog at Midnight was a surprise find,my son is autistic,the main character in the book is too.It gave me some insight into how my son thinks.

I watched To Kill a Mockingbird the other night,it’s pretty amazing that movie got made in those times.Old Hitchcock movies are a great way to spend an evening too,IMO.

The best movies of all are the ones that play in my mind. Not that I expect anyone to agree. But isn’t this true if you have to be perfectly honest with yourself?

Rustler’s Rhapsody, a parody western along the lines of Airplane, but a bit more gentle. Tom Berenger is the Good Guy, the white hat cowboy. Andy Griffith plays the gay rancher who runs the town. My favorite movie, along with 2001, A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, and Blade Runner. Oh, my, almost forgot Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Recent wonderful book – Bright Earth (by Philip Ball), about the technology of paint. Artist’s paint that is, but then I’m an artist and was interested to leard how much art criticism over the years is completely senseless bereft as it is of any technical and economic analysis of the times…

Good morning,

My recommended reading is out of the humor section: Barbie Unbound
by Sarah Strohmeyer.

It’s Barbie for grown-ups, and it’s like the Ann Coulter Barbie version! Very funny and fun!! Enjoy!!

Steve Clark at 26 – I just read an article a few days ago that said the southern end of the San Andreas is due, probably overdue, for The Big One. It hasn’t produced an earthquake in 300 years.

I have relatives in the Los Angeles area, including my mother and one of my brothers – so I sent them a link to the article and encouraged them, gently, to think about relocating.

Leslie @ 37 — I loved A Small Death in Lisbon, and I rarely like mystery novels. Perhaps I will re-read it this weekend.

orangejumpsuit40: And BTW, as you probably know, Salieri did not poison Mozart.

That’s the least of its historical innacuracies. First off, I think if you’re going to make a movie about a great genius, said genius should be the protagonist. Seriously, shouldn’t Mozart have at least been the main character?

christy, from a previous thread i got the impression you know northampton, ma…..did you go to school there? an inconvient truth is playing at the academy and i plan on seeing it this weekend…

Haven’t had time to read since going back to school full time at 51 (and for respiratory therapy-not easy for an old libral arts major!)

but
#47 Tim O’brian- GREAT writer. Still has impact altho I read him over 20 yrs ago.

#46 Lion in Winter- AMAZING movie…those who refuse to understand histroy are doomed to repeat it and all that….

Thanks for the great drop in-I am making a list for my next librar trip…..

I LOVE the Lion in Winter (I went through a retro Peter O’Toole phase as a teen), and Joseph Campbell has changed my life too. But lately I spend my time reading this blog! Yeah to the internet and unlimited reading materials, but I do love the feel of a book in my hands. My most recent read was the infamous “Lolita” a very challenging (as a mother of two preteen girls) but masterfully written book. Makes me wish I knew how to read Russian…

Some Like It Hot

The Dresser

A Lion in Winter

The Insider

Gods and Monsters

Nobody’s Fool

Gosford Park

40 Year Old Virgin

I’ll stop for now.

dratty:

What family doesn’t have its ups and down?

Oh snap douglass! Thanks for mentioning probably my favorite movie of all time: Hedwig and the Angry Inch!

Leslie, I go to this web-site first everytime I turn on my computer. http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/ I think I have post traumatic stress disorder from the Northridge quake. I pay very clse attention to these maps, especially when I am going to go play in California (which is fairly frequently)

I’m a 53-year-old resident of northern New Hampshire, a New Jersey transplant.(Surprisingly, plenty of libruls here…)

For true relaxation, when I want to get away from the horror that is American politics, I turn to Bette Davis. There is really no Bette Davis film that I don’t like, but her films from the late 30s (”The Letter”, “Now, Voyager”, and “Jezebel”) are completely wonderful. I’ve seen them each about a million times (my husband thinks I’m insane). For true escapism, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Space Cowboy at 59 — Yes, I attended Smith for my undergrad degree. Ahhh — I miss seeing movies at the Academy. They used to have a movie poster sale there every year at the start of term, and I had the most gorgeous poster from “Out of Africa” in my room for four years. Love Northampton…the whole five-college area, really. From the Albion to the now defunct Black Sheep Deli to the Bread and Circus out by the mall…ah, now you’ve made me homesick for my college days.

Riesz, 58: Agree 100% There is plenty in Mozart’s life to make for interesting drama, not the least of which was his extremely complex relationship with his father (love/hate/jealousy/adoration/etc.) Mozart had the genius his father wished he had himself. On the other hand, his father nurtured Amadeus to become the musical god of his time.

This Mozart was made to play on Broadway.

back to Amadeus : the very name itself means “lover of god” . It was also W.A.Mozart’s middle name. Was his music so great that it showed he glorified God? or was Salieri one who worshipped Mozart as a musical god? Is poisoning another human something that a lover of god should do? The movie wasnt called “Mozart” or “Salieri” but the Latin word for “lover of god” — ambiguity!

jb at 23 loved that movie, named my dog(the fact that she was a she didnt matter, lol) wolfie in his honor

I am still stuck hopelessly on the movie “Crash”. The thing I liked the most about it, the thing that made me feel like maybe there should be some hope, was that the movie made it ever so clear that we all make judgments that impede the valid truths of life. These judgments whether we are black, white, american indian, Israeli, palestinian etc…impede our lives.

I think it can be said with certainty that every war was predicated on judgments about the other side. In most cases those judgments proved to be false after the wars were over. War is an emotion mind job. It requires lots of energy and therefore lots of emotion…that is where the danger lies. The American people are vulnerable to making emotional decisions instead of rational ones. The war mongers use this to their advantage. Fear is an emotion and one that is often fed by theory and judgments that fan it with fuel.

My work allows me to practice a nonjudgmental stance. When we do it at work, we literally call ourselves and each other on our judgments and rephrase them factually. (judgments for humor are treated diffently…this is practiced only when we are making a big decisions, or experiencing misery due to emotion.) The practice has changed my view of life. I thought I was nonjudgmental before but I was so far from being where I wanted to be. It was amazing how my judgments created misery about my boss, my work and yes, the president of the united states.

Interestingly enough…if I write out my judgments of Bush and then a list of facts to counter them…there are amazing facts, that make it clear what the country needs to do. I know that my reality is straight…by confronting my judgments of Bush with the facts, my wise mind seems even more secure. Facts reinforce the truth and blow apart the myths on which we live!!

I am less miserable about Bush when I use facts…why?? because my fears about the future are not facts. Anything could happen (that’s a fact)…I did not expect that Clinton would leave 8 years of office with a surplus. I had felt pretty depressed about the deficit before Clinton came into office. (of course it’s small change now…but my point is that one politician with a little bit of power could make the wealthy share the bills again and we could turn the deficit around quickly). According to Warren Buffet an increase of 1% in taxes for those making more than 250k a year would pay us out of the deficit. (he made this statement on Larry King in October of 2004….the deficit has increased since then).

Anyway, the facts tell me there are solutions and that this president will have consequences at some point because it follows in the laws of nature.

Love to all and happy fourth!!
Katie

The movie crash could change lives…but not because it was pleasant to watch.

George RR Martin’s series, A Song of Ice and Fire now has 4 books and is the best fantasy out there. It has elements of some of the English wars in it (there’s a wall similar to Hadrian’s wall that is keeping out something fearful). Martin, as a warning, has no compunction about killing off the good guys.

And, as far as historical fiction, there is no better writer than Dorothy Dunnett. I cannot recommend her two series (the Lymond Chronicles and Niccolo) more highly.

And for those who love reading, Powell’s Bookstore in Portland (one block of heaven) sends out daily via email, a recommendation of a new book and a recommendation of a book that’s been out for a while. I’ve read a number of books as a result of their recommends. Go to the Powell’s website and sign up. I think it is http://www.powells.com. You will be glad you did.

sorry christy…..i lived in hamp for a while, my ex is from there and i love to hang around downtown, just watching and enjoying, she is also a graduate of smith, through the ada comstack program

AAOB, I love To Kill a Mockingbird.

popomo at 42 – hi! Glad you delurked. The Robson book sounds fascinating. And I’ve read lots of kudos for the Foreigner series, but haven’t ventured there yet.

OK at 41 – Will and Geoff are good friends of mine as well (as my cat Chaucer can tell you).

As for recent reading, I’ve become quite the fan of another Jeff, Jeffrey Eugenides. I read Middlesex first, and then went back and read The Virgin Suicides, which I read in a single, can’t-put-down sitting. He’s now on my “read anything by this author” list.

Moe99 — I loved all eight books of Niccolo, but I couldn’t finish the first Lymond book. Go figure.

Other great historical fiction writers:

Sharon Kay Penman
Bernard Cornwell
Nigel Tranter
Parke Godwin

I’m not bit on hist. fantasy, but I do like Guy Gavriel Kay.

moe99 — I’ll second that on Martin’s Ice and Fire series. His writing is amazing, and consistently the best there is in fantasy series. I interviewed George for a now defunct British sff magazine some years ago, and he is as amazing an interview as you would expect. (And, like me, he has a certain fondness for Tyrion — although he swore to me that this fondness did not mean safety for the character. Which, I think, is one of the reasons his series is so well done — like real life, no one is safe from harm, not even your very favorite character in all the world.)

I almost forgot: Best historical novel ever — Katherine by Anya Seton. (primarily chick lit., but very accurate 14th century history, i.e., plague, war, religion.)

I recomend (as I always do, the greatest motion picture eer made, Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train.

If you’ve got the onloing Fundamentalist Jihaad on your mind, then take a look at the greatest of all American films, Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955) with Robert Mitchum killing for Jesus, and Shelley Winters as one of his many victims.

The above of course is rather heavyweight stuff, so if you’re looking for pure entertainment these old stand-bys are sure to do the trick: Some Like It Hot, Singin’ in the Rain, Good News, The Shop Around the Corner, The Awful Truth, Trouble in Paradise, The Lady Eve, The Palm Beach Story (Mary Astor in The Palm Beach Story is my role-model), The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, The Harvey Girls, The Band Wagon, Top Hat, Swing Time, A Room with a View, and Shampoo.

If you happen to own a multi-region DVD player (and I hope you do as it’s the only way to travel) then you should know that the British company “Masters of Cinema” has just released a deluxe DVD of F.W.Murnau’s Faust (1926) in the most complete version ever, with a full-length commentary track by yours truly and Bill Krohn. Also in the same series you’ll find Bill and I doing the honors on Nicholas Ray’s The Savage Innocents (we even sing a chorus of “The Mighty Quinn” at the end), and an edition of John Ford’s The Prisoner of Shark Island in which I am interviewed (and thus appear on screen for you home entertainment pleasure.)

These DVDs aren’t for sale in the U.S. so go to on-line sources like “DVD Beaver” to get them.

For pure “lowbrow” fun, I really enjoy the Stephanie Plum series. Wacky cast of characters, great dialogue, guaranteed entertainment.

To Kill a Mockingbird is prolly my all time favorite and I just loved Babette’s Feast, too.

Christy, all other stuff is pushed out of my brain this morning as I go over the archives in my head. Thank you!

“Hedwig and the Angry Inch”

There is something terribly terribly punk about drag.

I realized this while forcing my spouse to listen to “Kiko and Herb will Die for You”

Happy Saturday-Holiday weekend. Headed up your way on Monday Christy to see Mom in Princeton. She is recovering well from surgery and a small stroke. Thought I would share a recipe this morning since most of the movies I like will just generate laughter(judging from the list here so far. Reading Jared Diamond’s Collapse right now and have Guns, Germs and Steel waiting. Here is the recipe:

Fallenmonk’s Meatballs

3 lbs. ground beef or better (1# beef, 1# pork, and 1# veal)
1 c. bread crumbs (I use Vigo Golden dried breadcrumbs)
1/2 c. (Reggiano) Parmesan cheese, grated finely
3 large eggs
4 – 6 cloves, finely chopped garlic

2 Tbsp Tomato paste
2 1/2 tsp. basil leaves (rubbed fine)
1/4 cup finely chopped parsley
1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt (or to taste)
1 tsp. freshly ground black pepper (or to taste)
2 Tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive oil (EVOO) to be added last to prevent sticking

Depending on how big you make them this recipe should make a couple of dozen.

In large bowl, combine ground meat, bread crumbs, cheese, garlic, tomato paste salt, pepper, basil, parsley, and eggs. Mix and blend thoroughly. Add oil and mix again.

Roll meatballs about the size of a ping-pong or golf ball. To keep them from sticking to your hands, keep hands moist with water. In frying pan, heat 1/2 cup peanut or canola oil. When oil is a very hot, brown meatballs quickly. Don’t crowd the pan so fry in two or three batches. You may have to add additional oil. Make sure they are brown enough, but be careful not to burn them. Set them aside until sauce is ready.

Once cooked and cool some of these can be frozen in zip lock bags into single servings and the rest used immediately with your favorite sauce and pasta.

Better yet warm the meatballs (5 %u2013 6) with some left over pasta sauce and then fill a mini baguette from which you have cut off one end and removed most of the soft inner bread leaving an intact crust as a holder for your hot meatballs. Don’t forget some more grated Reggiano and a bit of grated mozzarella and some chopped fresh basil.

netflix recommendations:

Map of the Human Heart
Washington Square
Lonely are the Brave
Love with the Proper Stranger

I adore progressive labor movies something awful. Comes to mind, “How Green Was My Valley”, “The Devil and Miss Jones”, “On the Waterfront”, “Grapes of Wrath”, and so many others.

My Brilliant Career
Harold & Maude
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Chicken Run
Vanishing Point
Blue Angle
Paper Chase
The Constant Gardner
Duck Soup

Any thing written by Angela Carter

It’s hard to say what books are my favorites … there are so many. Ones I’ve read in recent years that have stuck with me for one reason or another are Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafasi, Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Unusual Life of Tristam Smith by Peter Carey, and The Kiterunner by Khaled Hosseini. I totally love films and have gone through periods where I see as many films from the 1930s as I can, all the films of Billy Wilder, etc. If I ever catch Wilder’s “The Apartment” on TV or see it in the video store, I watch it. I love anything with Katherine Hepburn, and I have seen “Amelie” three times in the theater, though Audrey Tatou’s subsequent film, “Dirty Pretty Things” was also excellent. I love little weird quirky films like “Household Saints” with Lili Taylor and Tracey Ullmann or “A Man of No Importance” with Albert Finney. And I may be alone in the group to prefer the post-Branaugh Emma Thompson (ah, Wit). Branaugh’s acting has always distracted me–a little overbearing. Though I do generally like his films overall.

David E at 78–thanks for the tips! I’ve seen most of the “entertainment” films, but the others are new to me.

Thanks to Phoebes (No. 18) for the kind words on the soundtrack of “Casanova.” I adapted, edited and produced that soundtrack. It was great fun.

Christy -

Longtime lurker, first time poster. I have been a huge fan of the site for almost a year now and this warm summer morning, I finally bring myself to post something.

Current Favorite movie/book: Master & Commander – spurred this land-lubber to set sail with the books, which I did from first to last in a matter of a couple of months and I am starting my second trip through O’Brian’s universe. Just bought a flat screen TV last week and it makes watching the movie at home almost as good as the movie theater, if I sit really close.

Riesz Fischer at 58, Amadeus isn’t really about Mozart, which is why he’s not the main character. The movie and original play are about our reaction to the opaque majesty of genius and the brilliance of Peter Schaffer’s script, and this is even more true of the original play because of the nature of live performance, is that because the story is told from an outside agent’s viewpoint the audience has the same experience in the presence of genius, and it reinforces Salieri’s isolation as Mozart’s genius grows. The moments where Salieri curses God for giving him the talent to hear genius but not create it himself is something we all can at least recognize if not sympathize with. Making Mozart the central character would have been a different story.

Thanks again ya’ll at FDL. I click here a couple of times a day. Christy, Jane, TRex and the rest, you have a wonderful community here and I look forward to my visits.

dratty:

What family doesn’t have its ups and down?

Of course he’s got a knife! He’s got a knife, I’ve got knives, we’ve all got knives. The year is 1184 and we are all barbarians!

Some of the best scenery chewing ever filmed. I’ve also got the producers pretty much memorised (the real one, no one can replace Zero Mostel).

We used to have a bumper sticker that read “Honk If You Love Ishtar” — you’d be surprised at how many did. Now my daughters give prospective boyfriends the Ishtar laugh test — those who don’t, don’t get to come back!

How can you not love a film with lyrics like:

Telling the truth can be dangerous business.
Honest and popular don’t go hand in hand.
If you admit that you can play the accordion,
No one’ll hire you in a rock ‘n’ roll band.

But we can siiinnnngggggg . . . our hearts out (all night)
And if we’re lucky, then no neighbors complain.
Nobody knows where the beginning part starts out (sing all right)
But being human we can live with the pain.

Because life is the way we audition for God;
Let us pray that we all get the job.

Great tunes; great buddy flick . . .

Christy, rent A&E’s Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth for hours of fun! also Kung Fu Hustle is a surprise Gem. For reading -nothing beats the Elvis Cole detective series by Robert Crais. Oh and Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series (early ones are best!)

lina 83
the last two, really interesting choices. Douglas at this best and McQueen, ah . . . . bells and banjos, if I remember correctly.

Some one mentioned Elia Kazan’s “A Face in the Crowd” a few weeks ago on this site- it really is a great watch especially for fans of FDL for it’s sharp political forecast on the power of corporate media in politics and corruption.

I bought a grill !! Ha !! One of those little ones, where you screw in the propane bottle. I’ve discovered new aisles in the grocery store, full of wonderment. I’ve had, so far, steaks, pork chops, and chicken breasts.

Meat on the grill, baked potatos wrapped in plastic (toss ‘em in the nuking machine for 8 min – done) a can of baby peas w/butter and sugar, and salad out of a bag with bottled dressing. That’s a darned good imitation of a real meal.

I’ve taken to strolling my “old” haunt, the frozen-food aisle, showing off my real-live adult food, and am mastering my best imperious glances at the poor schlubs who have not attained my gourmet meal-approximation status. I scoff at them.

No way I’m through with my cheese-cake phase yet. I’m very phasey. I’m thinking chocolate cheese-cake tonight.

“Wit” with Emma Thompson was devestating. After you see that, read “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying” by Sogyal Rinpoche for contrast.

Hi everyone! I’ve commented a few times (and once I thought I got to be the one to declare the initial “Fitz” on a string, but alas was beaten out by mere milliseconds), but I stop in for a good read at least once a day. I just love the way this community has evolved!

My husband and I have always been liberal-leaning; now we’re both angry liberals and getting very active about things. It feels so good to be taking some (any) action to set things aright.

We’re both psychologists, so books and movies that are psychologically-minded are of greatest interest to us.

A fabulous book to check out is “Gibson’s Decline and Fall” by Sherri Tepper. She’s a sci-fi/fantasy author; this one is about the increasing marginalization and demonization of women in society.

The process starts innocently enough, but becomes truly disturbing and even frightening as it progresses. It’s quite a metaphor for current events, and I guarantee you’ll never look at the hard-right fundies the same again!

Good books lately? Yes. Just finished re-reading the Katharine Hepburn bio. Now there was a progressive giant. Wonder what a Kate Hepburn blog would look like.

Fire —

Loyal & daily! — reader…sometimes a poster. Former Hill staffer and lifelong big D Dem.
Angry? No — Mad as Hell!! at war supporting and now spineless DEMS! Esp. Chuckles the Clown Schumer and Billary — my 2 useless Senators.

But, more to your site, your work — I enjoy it very much and respect the huge amount of LABOR it takes. I have been contributing to your friend NED! as a way to show some gratitude and of course to get rid of JOEmentum.

Anyways, someone early mentioned Stanley Tucci. One of my all time favs — “Big Nite” –excellent and very funny movie. Don’t watch on an empty stomach — or you will run to the nearest Italian restaurant and eat yourself sick!

Thanks again. JBK

Books: I’ve been on a Richard Powers kick for ages. Plowing the Dark is an extraordinary novel. I would say that Powers is probably the best American novelist writing today.

Everyone got a little excited about Annie Proulx because of the movies “The Shipping News” and “Brokeback Mountain,” but an earlier book of hers, Accordian Crimes, is one of my favorites.

Movies: I dunno, but fifteen or so years ago, I started feeling that movies were getting, well, a bit… thin. Maybe I was just getting out of touch, but I tend to revisit old oddball films these days. “Montenegro” is definitely oddball, as is Herzog’s “Stroszek.” If you’ve not seen it, another Herzog film, “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” is worth the view. I’m partial to the old Ealing Studios Alec Guinness films, such as “The Man in the White Suit,” “The Ladykillers,” and, while not one of the Ealing comedies, “The Horse’s Mouth.” The book on which the latter was based, by Joyce Cary, is also quite good.

jayt at 95 — if you want an amazing grilling experience, get yourself some fresh pineapple, slice it thick-ish and grill the slices along with some chicken kebabs that have been marinated in teriyaki, and are threaded onto the skewers with some onion and green or red peppers. Yummy. Also, peaches and nectarines are yummy on the grill as well. (Look, it’s another aisle in the grocery store! Sweet!)

Steve Clark – I meant to say, I love your band’s name!

ppp at 94, I need to put that on my Netflix list.

lurkers’r’us – Mmmm. Colin Firth.

Armadillo Joe, howdy. Good to have you with us. Agreed on Amadeus. Equus is also a very good play.

Not a movie, but the shadowy and mysterious Codename V. has just shared this helpful guide on how to tell if your child is being molested or haunted with me…

I can’t stay long, but everybody must see Night of the Hunter, starring a very creepy Robert Mitchum and a very young and pretty Shelley Winters–and Lillian Gish! It was the only movie that Charles Laughton (Mutiny on the Bounty) directed.

I can’t say enough about it, so I won’t. You watch-y, you likey.

Lion in Winter and Love with a Proper Stranger both get thumbs up.

Anything with Hepburn, but these days, if it’s farce, it’s better. Bringing Up Baby and Arsenic & Old Lace top my list right now.

Although the actual movies are hit and miss, if it has Emma Thompson or Alan Rickman – I’ll watch it.

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaimon combining for “Good Omens” was a fun read. Especially on apocalyptic days.

“Montenegro” is definitely oddball, as is Herzog’s “Stroszek.”

“We can’t stop the dancing chicken.”

I’ll second tommy yum on Night Of The Hunter, and throw in my possibly-completely-inaccessible favorite, Koyaanisqatsi, which is completely nonverbal but powerful, at least for me.

Just your mention of Kenneth Brannagh makes me remember: How to Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog (2000).

I feel like I am the only person on the planet who saw it, but I just loved its smart humor. It was so hilarious – back before this smarmy, cruel administration dominated our days.

Recently I enjoyed a comic, Robert Newman, with really smart material in a 45 min. bit called, “History of Oil.” Well worth your time on Saturday A.M. You can find it on Google Video.

Best in Show too.

I have two left feet.

Re: Kung Fu Hustle.

I’m waiting to find Stephen Chow’s God of Cookery in an anamorphic version. It’s one of those HK films with more brio than production values, but if you enjoyed “Kung Fu Hustle” there is nothing quite like the pleasure of sorrowful rice.

You’re welcome, SimoneB!

Those in the market for obscure French musicals should look for The Young Girl’s of Rocjefort, Jacques Demy’s masterful follow-up to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg starring Catherine Deneuve, Francoise Dorleac, Danielle Darrieux, George Chakiris, Grover Dale and Gene Kelly.

Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Demy-inspired Jeanne and the Perfect Guy is also great, and greater still is Alain Resnais’ Not on the Lips his recreation of a French operetta of the late 1920’s starring the babe-a-licious Lambert Wilson.

Obscure American musicals I adore include The Girl Most Likely, I Love Melvin, and Give a Girl a Break.

What about Shaolin Soccer, also by Stephen Chow? Hilarious.

Movie – Baraka

Beautiful cinematography and soundtrack. A must see. It gets it’s point across without spoken word.

Without words, cameras show us the world, with an emphasis not on “where,” but on “what’s there.” It begins with morning, natural landscapes and people at prayer: volcanoes, water falls, veldts, and forests; several hundred monks do a monkey chant. Indigenous peoples apply body paint; whole villages dance. The film moves to destruction of nature via logging, blasting, and strip mining. Images of poverty, rapid urban life, and factories give way to war, concentration camps, and mass graves. Ancient ruins come into view, and then a sacred river where pilgrims bathe and funeral pyres burn. Prayer and nature return. A monk rings a huge bell; stars wheel across the sky.

Leslie, It’s not MY band. It’s Igors….check-out the web-site. http://igorsjazzcowboys.com/ We stay sort of busy, jazz festivals here and there. We’re doing an Alaska cruise in September for our fans (firedoglake should do a cruise, wouldn’t that be fun ?)

Christy Hardin Smith says:

Grilled Fruit? The heck ya say.

Okay, I’m feeling adventurous – why not?

I’ll take your word that there is such a thing as a fruit aisle – maybe it’s close to the cheese-cakes?

There’s no stopping me now.

Since the sprout, reading is something I can only do in small increments, alas. I used to read, sometimes, 5 books a week, PK (pre–kid). So, most of my fav. novels are from quite some time ago.

I love anything by Barbara Kingsolver but especially “The Bean Trees” and “Pigs in Heaven”. I re-read them bi-anually. I love her cogent observations and gentle humor.

Another summer read – if you’re trapped on a Caribbean island in a huge storm with the rain blowing sideways and you can’t leave your room; it’s 900 pages – is “The Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All” by Alan Gurganis
(sp?).

I’m sure I’ll think of more as the day goes on. I love mysteries and look forward to Elizabeth George’s and Minette Walters’ lastest with the most relish.

Joseph Campbell’s PBS series with Bill Moyers sends me.

Don’t get to see many movies lately, but we did make a special effort to see ‘V for Vendetta’, which I adored. I also liked ‘Curious George’ movie a lot and highly recommend it for young ‘uns.

Some oldies I love:
‘Into the Night’ with Michelle Pfeiffer and Jeff Goldblum, from 1985. From the music over the opening credits (BBKing – yeah!) to the ending, it’s chock-a-block with actors, directors, local culture. John Landis, the director, is very funny as one of the Iranian assasins.

Also love “Smoke Signals” made from Sherman Alexie’s novel “Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven”. It’s about reconciliation and family myths. It’s lovely.

Pach, great list! I was also going to note 40 Year Old Virgin. And I had forgotten about Nobody’s Fool.

Somebody above mentioned Blade Runner. Many times I have seen some small heartbreak or minor act of kindness and the phrase “tears in the rain” comes to mind. That line will be with me for the rest of my life.

The full blown version of Brazil just keeps getting better with each passing year.

Someday I hope they make a movie of Dick’s “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch.”

And I never tire of watching “A River Runs Through It”.

Leslie in CA #37. Yes, thats a goodie.I Can’t remember the author either. Makes me think of those Portugese custards which is making me hungry….

all elmore leonard, but especially 2 of his
new books tishimongo blues and the hot kid.
most of the gritty novelists of the last 20 years (movie directors soderburgh and tarantino,too) have learned their tricks at
leonard’s knee.

David at 111 — Oh, I love it when you show up for a movie thread. I always pick up so many fabulous suggestions! (And its also fun to see how our movie taste intersects — Some Like It Hot and The Shop Around the Corner are both fantastic and favorites in the Smith household.)

Hepburn. Love Among the Ruins.

Mary, 105
Alan Rickman, yes. Loved him in Truly, Madly, Deeply, and Love Actually. Not his usual kinds of parts. and a better Severous Snape they couldn’t have found.

And for the morning of the Fourth of July

“Born Yesterday” with Judy Holliday and William Holden, directed by George Cukor.

jayt, CHS – a variation of the grilled pineapple – brush pineapple rings with honey and grill on hot grill, enough to get some grill marks. You could even coat them with a little hot pepper jelly instead of honey b4 grilling for a little added kick.

For pure snark, bile, late-50’s New York niteclub settings and a twisted morality play — tricked out with the greatest acid-laced dialogue of all time — you owe it to yourselves to check out SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS, starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, and directed by the great Alexander Mackendrick, my personal God.

You won’t be disappointed — it’s a cookie full of arsenic.

I LOVED this movie (Much Ado…).

I find that Deadwood is incredibly Shakespearean, especially this season. The first two season of The Sopranos was chock full of Shakespeare, too.

I watched North By Northwest last night for the zillionth time, and was struck by new things that are so wonderful about it. The details of that movie are such that every time I watch it I get something new from it. Last night, I was struck by how beautiful and how brilliantly it is scored. By how self-possessed and poised Eve-Marie Saint was at such a young age. Amazing movie that one.

Also, The Philadelphia Story, where every part is so juicy they could all be considered leading roles.

The Lion in Winter, the film with Hepburn and O’Toole, in delicious with language.

I must confess, my current reading is trashie summer novels. For Christy, it does get better…my son is almost five, and this morning I got to lie in bed, with NEW high thread counts sheets ( a sin to be sure), the perfect cool breeze flowing across the bed, reading a trashie novel, by myself, until almost ten o’clock!! That would have been UNHEARD of when he was three. Bu the good news is that I got a nice half hour cuddle time break with him in there at about eight. So there are days when you get both, I am thrilled to report!!

Have a lovely day everyone. I am off to go sailing with the family. Finally, the sun shines!!

I have soooo many favorite movies and books, it’s very hard to choose, but one actual series stand out for me as a sure-fire route to escapism…Firefly, by Josh Whendon (the series). In attemptiong to discern just why I love it so much, perhaps it’s becuase of the ‘rebel’ faction. My fantasy is to join the crew of Serenity so I can thumb my nose at “The Alliance” (aka an imperialistic universal government), and free myself of earthly ties. It’s an all-round winner for me. I am reading “The Life Of Pi”. Wonderful story!!!

David E,
since you mention the most beautiful, Catherine D., Belle de Jour ranks up there.

Oops…meant to type Whedon.

OK, I wasn’t going to mention but now I have to – I have had a serious crush on Alan Rickman ever since “Diehard”. My husband indulges me when I watch Truly Madly Deeply again and again.

As far as books, I’m an unabashed sci-fi buff – the creation of entire universes adds a whole new dimension to the story for me. Some of my favorites:

Queen Of Angels, Eon, and Forge Of God by Greg Bear.

The Gap series and The Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson.

The Uplift Trilogies by David Brin.

The Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia Butler.

Books:
The Illustrated Winespeak-Ronald Searle
Letters from a Nut books-Ted L Nancy
Handling Sin-Michael Malone
The Handyman-Carolyn See
The Flamingo Rising-Larry Baker
Fried Green Tomatoes-Fannie Flagg
The Road Less Traveled-M Scott Peck
People of the Lie-M Scott Peck (a dark book)
Snapping-Flo Conway & Jim Siegelman (old one, 1976, on emergence of sudden personality changes, cults, therapies, religions)
Bushwacked, Shrub-anything by Molly Ivins
Movies:
Best in Show & Waiting for Guffman
Raising Arizona
Breaking Away
The Songcatcher
How to Talk Minnesotan
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Harvey
A Christmas Story
Young Frankenstein
Slap Shot
Arsenic & Old Lace
Beetlejuice
Bruno
Malcolm in the Middle-1st season
The Daily Show-Indecision 2004
Grosspoint Blank

OK, I wasn’t going to mention but now I have to – I have had a serious crush on Alan Rickman ever since “Diehard”. My husband indulges me when I watch Truly Madly Deeply again and again.

I have a serious crush on Juliet Stephenson.

Gotta love, “You Can’t Take It with You”.

re #40, Orangejumpsuit

I was going to mention anything by Ingemar Bergman, especially Seventh Seal and Through A Glass Darkly. But The Magic Flute is one of his that I’ve never seen. The sunny, half Irish wife thinks Bergman goes with my “Nordic gloom”. :)

I was going to mention anything by Ingemar Bergman, especially Seventh Seal and Through A Glass Darkly. But The Magic Flute is one of his that I’ve never seen. The sunny, half Irish wife thinks Bergman goes with my “Nordic gloom”. :)

How about Hour Of The Wolf?

RevDeb 93–

and for more Natalie Wood:

This Property is Condemned
Inside Daisy Clover
Splendor in the Grass

Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Ooh la la. If anyone’s up to the hunt, Julien Temple’s ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS is another hyper-designed meta-musical, set in the London of the late fiftes but with the political sensibilities of the post-punk era (Temple worked a lot with the Sex Pistols.)

The film’s uneven but largely brilliant, visually sumptuous with a truly generous spirit — music and cameos by Bowie, Sade, Paul Weller, the great Gil Evans and more.

It died a quick undeserved death in the mid-eighties — too British for the US –but is a valiant attempt at a politically themed entertainment piece.

What we load the DVD Player up with for the Fourth of July Weekend?

The Patriot
1776
Gettysburg
The Wind and the Lion

I’m currently reading The Novels of Raymond Chandler – The Long Goodbye

Happy Saturday Everyone – Time for Futbol!

If you like Sci-Fi, my favorite author is Louise McMaster Bujold–great complex characters.

And for summer historical fiction reading, I really enjoy Diana Gabaldon’s Dragonfly in Amber series. Again, great characters.

I love to post about what I’m reading, watching, listening to, etc.

Watching: I just finished getting caught up on some of the back episodes of House MD that I missed from the first season. Truly, this is one of the best television shows ever. Hugh Laurie is magnificent in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. I’ve been a big fan of his going back to A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Black Adder and, of course, Jeeves and Wooster but he has simply surpassed himself. I should mention that the BBC is finally releasing A Bit of Fry and Laurie–at least the first two seasons–on DVD at the end of August…pre-order on Amazon now…you will not be disappointed. Very funny stuff!

As for movies, I never get tired of Lonestar, The Awful Truth, Cinema Paradiso or Sense and Sensibility. (4 movies that have practically nothing to do with each other.)

Reading wise, I’m finally getting ready to tackle the Flashman series. I’ve heard it’s great fun.

Whoops. Almost forgot “Putney Swope”.

I love a lot of the movies already mentioned, but I can’t resist chiming in with a few more. I tend to like more of the “chick flick” types, and my favorite original sequel ever is “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset” with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy (sp?). Two others that come to mind are “The Importance of Being Earnest” for those who like Colin Firth, and one I stumbled across at the video rental store, “Possession” which has a parallel story of a modern romance between Gwynth Paltrow and Aaron Eckhart and a Victorian romance between Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle. Really a lovely film and fascinating mystery I thought.

Oh I loved Smoke Signals too,I forgot about that one.Ian Frazer’s book,On the Rez is both funny and sad,it would make a good movie I think.I know people on the Pine Ridge reservation,that book made their life there more real to me.

And there is nothing more lovely than Wendy Froud and Terry Windling’s wonderful”kids”books(in quotes because grown ups like them too).A Midsummer Night’s Faerie Tale,The Winter’s Child,The Faeries of Spring Cottage(and I await the one for autumn,I haven’t checked if it’s come out yet),the pictures alone are worth the price of the books.

If you like gardening,Sharon Lovejoy’s books are wonderful.Roots,Shoots,Buckets and Boots is my fave of all,but all of them are lovely and full of awesome garden ideas.(those books also explain why,if you visit my house,you’ll see my son’s old rain boots now being used as marigold planters,lol)

BTW, Diane Lane reminds me a lot of Natalie Wood. Same mannerisms.

Best Diane Lane movie: A Walk on the Moon

(plus there’s Viggo for the ladies – if you’re so inclined).

Thank you mommybrain.
Truly Madly Deeply is one of those quirky films that I eat up. Thinking of others on the thread, Love with the Proper Stranger is another one you just don’t hear about. Good to know we’re in good company here.

Almost ANYTHING Helpurn– either Kate or Audry will do fine.
And I’m a sucker for Cary Grant. always have been.

Does anyone remember “Rollerball” with James Caan and maybe Raquel Welch? I keep thinking we are there now, nations no more, just corporations, killing to be Number One.

Great to see so many new “faces” here!

The most compelling and hypnotic film I’ve seen in a while is director Atom Egoyan’s 1994 “Exotica.” Here’s the capsule description from Internet Movie DataBase:

“The ‘Exotica’ is a nightclub on the outskirts of Toronto, where Eric, a DJ and MC, watches nightly as his ex-girlfriend Christina performs. Watches jealously, especially as far as the extra attentions regular customer Francis garners are concerned. Thomas, meanwhile and erstwhile, goes through a series of, um, interesting situations involving his pet shop, a gruff taxi-sharing stranger, unexpected tickets to the opera and smuggled eggs of a rare bird. Multiple story lines unfold in a splendid tangle of cutbacks, forward and backward references and recurring themes, all woven around the Exotica, its customers and employees. A calm roller-coaster ride of a movie, visually and intriguingly and emotionally moving. O, and the sound track is notable, too.”

I’m generally skittish of “splendid tangle” movies that play games with chronology; most are too cerebral for me to connect with on an emotional level but “Exotica” is in a class by itself. Packs a powerful punch.

“Houston! Houston!”

Two of my favorite movies, both semi-sleepers-

Local Hero- a big oil company tries to buy a whole Scottish town on the coast to build a refinery. There is something so soulful, funny, bittersweet about this movie. I’ve probably seen it 7 times over the years. I first saw it when I was maybe 16 on HBO back in the ’80’s and it was not the kind of movie that would have typically interested me at the time, but I was captivated.

The Might Quinn- Denzel Washington plays the chief of police of a fictional caribbean island. His boyhood friend, (Robert Townsend) is a semi-legendary rapscallion who is accused of killing an American businessman with ties to the Contras. Politics, intrigue, romance, comedy, and an awsome soundtrack. Beautifully filmed, the colors really do “pop” off the screen.

another rental for English history fans:

The Last King

It’s a BBC production with Rufus Sewell as Charles II.

Yummy.

I also like almost anything by Samuel Fuller. Pickup On South Street, The Big Red One, The Naked Kiss (opening with a bald prostitute beating the crap out of a deadbeat john with her shoe), Shock Corridor (”I… am… impotent! And… I… like it!”).

Eli 132 – Supposedly, Anthony Mingele wrote The part in Truly Madly Deeply expressly for her.

And I love the Thomas Covenant Books, too. Have you read anything in the SFF genre by Don Webb? He was my most favoritest, bestest writing teacher but I haven’t read anything by him (blush).

Another Paul Newman/Sydney Lumet favorite: The Verdict

Has anyone mentioned Cold Comfort Farm yet?

And I love the Thomas Covenant Books, too. Have you read anything in the SFF genre by Don Webb? He was my most favoritest, bestest writing teacher but I haven’t read anything by him (blush).

Donaldson has recently returned to The Land – not sure whether I like it or not. Have not heard of Don Webb, I’m afraid.

I’ve never read Trollope and decided that it was high time to begin. I started with the Palliser novels, the first of which is Can You Forgive Her?, and I’m loving it. In fact, I blogged about it, and even blogged a pertinent passage from the book. One blog I quoted has this interesting observation:

“Anthony Trollope is one of the greatest nineteenth-century novelists with whom (oddly) the majority of readers come into contact on their own %u2014 that is, without first having been assigned to read a novel by him in school.”

mommybrain, I also love those Kingsolver books. She is one of my favorite writers.

Leslie in CA @ 102

Thanks for the hello. I agree. I actually played the boy in Equus many moons ago and it remains one of my favorite scripts of all time. Schaffer is my favorite playwright because it was with him that I saw for the first time how big ideas addressed in fiction can be far more illuminative than in non-fiction. It was revelatory.

Morning All!

Wish we could send some of today’s OH sunshine out east to help dry out.

What’s it gonna take to convince jr. global warming’s real?!?
For awhile I had visions of deadeyedick’s secret bunker floating away thru the mud and becoming lodged, sideways, in some forgotten culvert. At the very least, I hope it leaks.

I grew up on the east coast, and still miss the ocean, bigtime. A few times, our parents took us deep sea fishing with them. I didn’t particularly like the fishing part, but loved seeing the fish and birds, and just being on the ocean.

I see I’ve been “scooped” by Armadillo Joe at 89. I heartily concur, Joe! Cept, I’m not as fast a reader as you are.

My all-time favorite ocean movie is “Master & Commander…” Incredibly realistic footage, and a terrific all-round good yarn. Through it, I discovered the whole series of historical novels Patrick O’Brian wrote, following the adventures of Aubrey & Maturin. Best “escape” reading I’ve ever found.

Related nonfiction: “The Blue Planet” (series of 4 DVD’s), narrated by David Attenborough. BBC (probably available through Discovery Channel, & if your local library doesn’t have it in their collection, they should!). Breathtaking footage. Good science. Fascinating and fun to watch.

In fact, if you like nature programming, just grab anything narrated by Attenborough and enjoy. He’s quite a character, an old coot with all the enthusiasm of a 7 year old, and a master at making the “real world” exciting.
(Yes, even with the little ones; no endless bouts of zebras trying to dodge crocs, etc.)

Pach 153

Paul Newman and Liz Taylor at their most beautiful in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

And speaking of heat, Picnic with Kim Novak and Wm. Holden.

this is so much fun, so many flicks, so many memories.

You’ve got me going. If any of you haven’t seen GROSSE POINT BLANK with Jon Cusack, run don’t walk to Netflix. You’ll love it.

Casablanca. Say no more.

Sexy Beast, a criminal poem of with Ben Kingsley’s most amazing performance.

Neil Jordan’s INCREDIBLE The Butcher Boy.

Rififi, the unsurpassed French fifties heist film. They don’t get any better if you like hardboiled guys stealling things.

One of the greatest films of all time, The Third Man — Orson Welles in an indelible performance, directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene and with Joseph Cotten, who falls hopelessly in love with…aah, that ending, that beautiful ending…

Possibly THE greatest film of all time, THE SEVEN SAMURAI. Watch it twenty, better yet forty times, and watch new subtleties and levels of story leap out at you with each viewing. Incredible that it was made by human hands.

I love movies.

Oh, and the best movie that you would never, *ever* expect to be good: Fatty Drives The Bus. It’s like someone studied all the hallmarks of a bad low-budget movie, and then expertly skewered them.

Christy – I love “Much Ado.” I use it in classes to show my students very good acting (Branagh, Thompson) alongside very bad acting (poor Keanu). I use “Henry V” too; the battle sequence is incredible. Patrick Doyle is one of the best composers working in film today.

David Ehrenstein – Preston Sturges rules! One of the greatest American comedy directors. He’s unfairly overlooked, IMHO. “Hail the Conquering Hero” and “Sullivans Travels” are must-watch films.

Tommy Yum – “Night of the Hunter” is the coolest, weirdest movie. It’s surrealism on film. Lillian Gish is so amazing, it makes me wish she hadn’t stopped acting so young.

Any other “Cube” fans here? It’s a weird little Canadian mystery/scifi/horror movie with David Hewlett (currently on Stargate: Atlantis) and Nicole DeBoer.

My next DVD purchase is going to be “Talk of the Town” with Jean Arthur and Cary Grant, an old screwball comedy that is frequently overlooked. I’m a big Jean Arthur fan. “You Can’t Take It With You” (which stars her and Jimmy Stewart and Lionel Barrymore – it was directed by Frank Capra) is more well known but “Talk of the Town” is just as good.

And since it’s July 4 weekend, I’ll have to pull out my DVD of “1776″ – overlook the historical inaccuracies and sing along.

“In all my years, I’ve never seen, heard nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn’t be talked about. Hell, yes, I’m for debating anything!” :)

Oh, forgot to mention Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series. Great fun for those who love books.

Rififi, the unsurpassed French fifties heist film. They don’t get any better if you like hardboiled guys stealling things.

Have not seen, but I really dug Topkapi.

Any other “Cube” fans here? It’s a weird little Canadian mystery/scifi/horror movie with David Hewlett (currently on Stargate: Atlantis) and Nicole DeBoer.

Yes. The sequel only works as a comedy, though…

A quick note to Indy…

If you like Raymond Chandler, I strongly recommend the mystery novels of a Chandler admirer named Ross Macdonald, whose series of books about detective Lew Archer are set in a fictional version of Santa Barbara in the 1960s and 70s. I enjoyed them all, but probably his greatest achievement is THE UNDERGROUND MAN, which is how I first discovered him…this one drew a glowing review in the New York Times from, strangely enough, Eudora Welty.

Which reminds me of Welty’s stunningly beautiful memoir, “One Writer’s Beginnings.” Which reminds me of…gosh, this could go on ad infinitum, couldn’t it?

bg @ #146

Yeah, I think I have it on tape buried somewhere. It’s a little crudely done in places, but, still, the premises are relevant today–the increasing violence and corporatization of sports, a globalized economy, the vacuous rich (the scene with the drunk women blowing up trees always gets me), and John Housman is excellent as the all-controlling CEO.

JHC, re: The Importance of Being Earnest.

Check out the Anthony Asquith version of 1952.

Acorn video has Smiley’s People on DVD, which is a bit better than its version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

I also enjoy the House of Cards series. Any of the Miss Marple adaptations starring Joan Hickson are great. We also netflix the hell out of the Midsomoer Murders series for pure cheesy fun.

Another bizarro recommendation: Robert Downey Sr’s Greaser’s Palace. Almost indescribably surreal western, including Satan in a red three-piece suit and… space helmet.

Did anyone mention “Fawlty Towers”?

Totally politically incorrect, but ohmagoodness it’s a hoot!

Oh, and what about School For Scoundrels? A hilarious introduction to the principles of Lifesmanship.

re: “The Lady Eve.” I’m always a sucker for a movie where the the herpetologist gets the snake.

A little off subject, but Tom Toles from the WaPo has a great cartoon today. It is surely a sign of the times:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..06_520.gif

Jamie

I met Paul Newman years ago when I played in a band at one of his parties in Beverly Hills. He spoke about the profits of his various products going to charities and such. They paid to send a wonderful doctor over to help the children victims of Chernobil (sp). Paul Newman got all choked up when he spoke of it He became a hero of mine at that moment. What a wonderful person.

For all Emma lovers (particularly if you have kids, but even if you don’t) check out “Nanny McPhee”. Her screenplay is brilliant and of course her performance is top notch. And the kids LOVE it!

Some of my personal favorites:
“Resurrection” – Ellen Bernstien has a near death experience and comes back with the power to heal.
“Diva” – A French action film about a young man who has a crush on an opera star and gets mixed up wit international criminals.
“Contact” – My personal favorite Jody Foster performance. An uplifting and hopeful vision of first contact with ETs.
“Sorceress” aka “The Sorceress and the Friar” – French Canadian period piece based on a historical account of a monk who tries to condemn a local healer of witchcraft and heresy.

Armadillo Joe at 157 – funny, I played the mom in Equus, not so many moons ago. The film was atrocious, but the play is stunning. Our director was also a licensed therapist, and did, in my biased opinion, a wonderful job. One audience member said he’d seen the play performed several times, and ours was the first one in which he actually found the boy a sympathetic character (of course, I’m sure he hadn’t seen your show ;).

RevDeb, TMD was billed as “The thinking man’s ‘Ghost’” when it came out. Same theme as the Demi/Patrick blockbuster but better.

I count myself among the Hepburn fans. Philadelphia Story was on last weekend.

Welcome Armadillo Joe. Are you in Texas?

“Diva” – A French action film about a young man who has a crush on an opera star and gets mixed up wit international criminals.

“Je n’aime pas les ascenseurs.”

popomo I’ve just started rereading all of CJ Cherryh’s books. It’s a summertime ritual for me, just soaking her up. I try to read her in the order that the books were published it’s fascinating to watch her develop as a writer and as a thinker. Definitely good reading. Right now I’m up to “Serpent’s Reach” and you can see the germ of the ideas of “Cyteen”, “The Faded Sun” and “The Morgaine Saga” in there. Next time you re-read “Foreigner” read “Cuckoo’s Egg” first and see if you don’t see where the idea started in that.

And Diane #66 I too am in NH, hope you’re enjoying the lovely sun today. I *love* Bette Davis in “Now, Voyager” it has what I still think is one of the most sensual scenes ever in a movie, when the guy (forget his name) lights and starts two cigarettes and gives one to her, pure beauty in that.

Christy,
Here’s a great little movie–”The Wood.” It’s about three bachelors, one a groom with cold feet. It has the luscious Taye Diggs and the awesome Omar Epps.

Has anyone seen True Stories, David Byrne’s fake documentary about a small town in Texas, with some juicy cameos by Spalding Gray and a then-unknown John Goodman?

Movies and especially books these days seem to be dictated by The Kid. He’s just learning to read, and so we’re always on the hunt for good children’s stuff. Sadly, there’s a lot of schlock out there. . . .

Fortunately, there’s Dr. Seuss. Talk about a writer whose writing for both adults and kids! And he has such fun with words. I’m sure that’s where punaise got started . . . It sure worked on me.

Books . . . Beyond Dr. Seuss, recently I’ve been reading and re-reading SF, especially Orson Scott Card’s “Ender” series and Spider Robinson’s novels. Spider is a SF writer who takes reality as it is, then gives it a little twist to see what happens, and relates it all with a great sense of humor, timing, and surpise. “Suppose everyone’s sense of smell immediately became as sensitive as a wolf?” He takes on race, gender roles, “just war” politics, homophobia, and more. Always a good read, even the umteenth time around.

And Larry, he dedicated a number of his books to the inspiration of Mr. Jamesons.

American Psycho. Great movie. Great book.

Oh, rmpeditor at 88, wow, you must really be talented to produce that soundtrack! It’s truly wonderful. Did you also compose the music?

This is like crack.

Any sci fi fans who haven’t checked out the new BATTLESTAR GALACTICA — as I hadn’t before yesterday — do it immediately. It’s well-written and directed and the whole thing is a comment on the post 9-11 mindset. It’s brilliant.

The latest version of PRIDE AND PREDJUDICE was excellent. A fantastic French film, EN COEUR EN HIVER, a brilliant look into the nature of love and manipulation. and while we’re in France, anything by PATRICE LECONTE: MONSIEUR HIRE, THE HAIRDRESSER’S HUSBAND, GIRL ON A BRIDGE — all brilliant, witty and wonderful films.

A few comfort favorites: CHINATOWN. SHAMPOO. The original MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. The first two GODFATHERS (of course). Do yourselves a favor and check out Coppola’s THE COTTON CLUB and see what a superbly crafted Hollywood movie — that endangered species — looked like. An unfairly dismissed gem with the young Diane Lane.

Speaking of British Comedy series…

Black Adder II.

Peterr, have you seen The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. T? It’s a live-action Dr. Seuss film from the 50s with Hans Conreid as the mad piano teacher villain.

I also really like Card and the Ender series, and the Alvin Maker series. He’s a very good storyteller, although his ear for dialogue is a little clunky.

Philadelphia Story is one of those films I can watch over and over. And nobody yet has mentioned Guys and Dolls – should that be a guilty pleasure of mine?

Hey Mercury — Cat’s in the bag, bag’s in the river!

Petula has just come out on DVD. A central obsession of all of us who worship at the shrine of Julie Christie it was shot by the great Nicholas Roeg nd directed by Richard Lester,in a manner no one familiar with his other work would ever except. He got George C. Scott to give a restained and subtle performance, and Richard Chamberlain is amazing as Christie’s insane pedophile husband.

With a great score by Jane Birkin’s first husband.

Some recent Netflix favorites.

Z
Good Night, and Good Luck
The World’s Fastest Indian
Catch-22
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Blow-Up
Capote
Everything is Illuminated
The Tao of Steve

Not a movie person myself, (”F9/11″ and “Twelve Monkeys” being my only trips to the movie house in the last 10-plus years), but in all that time I did manage to see this little indie film called Static from 1985 that I thought was interesting. It’s about this guy who invents a device that lets him see heaven.

Oh, and Iain Banks is another very good sci-fi author, who can be both whimsical and vicious (The Wasp Factory).

Peterr (funny, that’s basically my name too) have you and your son seen THE IRON GIANT? It’s a beautiful, funny film that’ll have you both in tears by the end.

Eli, you’ve gotta see RIFIFI. It’s just fantastic. You mentioned Fuller up above, I just finished his autobiography MY THIRD FACE and I can’t recommend it enough. An incredibly entertaining read.

Thanks, mercury. I’m sure I’ll like Rififi, I just haven’t seen it yet.

I’ll see if I can find the Fuller book, but I usually have a short attention span if it’s not sci-fi…

This is the 90th anniversary of the start of the Battle of the Somme. A Very Long Engagement with Audry Tatou had some of the most poignant WWI trench stories I’ve seen.

Eli, 188
Talk about movies that haunt you in childhood! As a little girl it was hard to know if it was funny or scary. I’ll have to try to catch it again . . . . been a very long time.

If you’re in a dark mood, don’t read anything by William Gibson. Especially don’t start with Neuromancer.

And speaking of dystopia, why is Max Headroom languishing where ever? No one in N America has the rights.

Favorite Book –
ROUGHING IT, by Mark Twain.

Favorite Movies –
DERSU UZALA
THEMROC
EAST OF EDEN

Favorite Shakespeare –
Alls Well That Ends Well,
Act 2 Scene 1 — dialogue between Helena and the King. She persuades him to trust God and her alchemical healing art, and he is cured.

Yipes, we’re mostly reading and movie-watching today, instead of mostly cooking. Oh well, I love all three, and here’s a little more cooking . . .

Okay, last week I was on an okra tear (and, oh by the way, if you haven’t tried the pod marinated in a little olive oil and lemon juice then browned on the grill, you ain’t LIVED), but today I will take as my text the noble Key lime.

Mind you, I’m not talking Persian limes (about 2/3 the size of lemons, dark green) but those half-dollar-size globes with the yellow peel just touched with green. If your store doesn’t stock them, it probably has the bottled juice. Anyhow, these little numbers do wonders in drinks, entrees, and of course (!) the newly-enacted-and-signed-into-law-by-Jebbie-hisseff-TA-DAAA: Florida State Pie. Follow me . . .

FROZEN PISCO SOURS

Pisco is South America’s answer to grappa, a wallop-packing grape brandy over claims to whose provenance Peru and Chile may come to blows at any minute. I was introduced to it in Peru, so for me, that settles it. Here’s how to make a blenderful of Pisco sours, which will go rather farther than you may expect in inducing partay-tude.

1 egg white — blend at high speed; add
8 tablespoons sugar — blend; add
1/2 bottle Pisco
1/2 – 3/4 cup lemon juice, with a taste of Key lime juice
[equivalent of] 1 tray of ice cubes
BLEND WELL

Serve in juice-size glasses, garnishing each with a drift of cinnamon and a splash of Angostura bitters.

Serves 3-4 drinkers 2 rounds (and that’s ALL they should risk).

Now to the entree. I’ve spoken of my good friend who recently retired from the Palm Beach Post and moved out oilfieldguy and OK Kiddo’s way. She says the thing she misses most about her old job is this dish, concocted by the Post’s chef, served in the employee cafeteria, and finally shared with my friend, who sent it along to me. Friends to whom I’ve served it have sworn, to a one, that it’s the best thing they’ve ever tasted. I’m inclined to agree.

PALM BEACH POST GROUPER
(Parmesan baked grouper with tomato/basil/white wine sauce)

For fish:
2 filets of grouper or other firm, white-fleshed fish
flour for coating
2 eggs, well-beaten
1 – 1 1/2 cups seasoned Italian breadcrumbs mixed with 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Coat fish with flour, dip in egg to coat well. Coat well with breadcrumbs (you’ll have extra) and refrigerate.

For sauce:
1 large tomato, diced
1 small onion, diced
2 sprigs fresh basil, chopped
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup lemon or Key lime juice
1/2 cup white wine
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup butter, softened

Combine all sauce ingredients except butter in small saucepan. Heat slowly and cook until bottom of pan is just wet (don’t let it burn).

Heat oven to 350. When sauce is nearly done, heat an oven-proof skillet over medium heat and add butter or olive oil for sauteeing fish. Brown both sides of fish (do not attempt to cook it – you’re just browning), place skillet in oven, and bake fish uncovered for 8-10 minutes (if using thermometer, fish should reach 140 internal temperature).

As fish bakes, gradually add butter to the reduction, stirring CONSTANTLY or sauce will break. Once all butter is incorporated and sauce is smooth, keep warm to pour over fish.

When fish is done, place each filet on a warmed plate, spoon sauce over fish, and serve hot.

Serves 2.

And now for dessert, which must be the one-and-only Key lime pie, as made at Manny and Isa’s glorious little restaurant in Islamorada and published by Linda Gassenheimer in Keys Cuisine (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991).

MANNY’S KEY LIME PIE

Short Crust Pastry:
1 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt (optional)
2 tablespoons cold shortening
6 tablespoons cold butter
1/4 cup ice water

Sift the flour and salt into a cold bowl. Cut the butter and shortening into the flour, using a pastry blender or 2 knives, scissor fashion, until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. Make a well in the center of the mixture and add 1 tablespoon ice water. Mix with a fork, adding more water to the drier areas as needed. When the mixture starts to come together in a ball, knead it lightly with your hands. Wrap in a plastic bag in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.

To make the pie:
(Note: The acid content of fresh Key limes causes the pie to set immediately. If you are using bottled Key lime juice or regular fresh lime juice, then the pie will need to sit in the refrigerator to set.)

Short Crust Pastry
4 extra-large eggs, separated
1 14-oz can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup Key lime juice
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup sugar

Prepare Short Crust Pastry. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Remove dough from the refrigerator, roll it out, and line a 10-inch pie plate. Place a piece of foil or waxed paper in the pieshell and cover with rice, dried beans or pie weights. Place in the preheated oven for 10 minutes. Remove weights and foil and return shell to oven for 10 more minutes or until just golden. Cool.

Beat the egg yolks and condensed milk until creamy. Fold in the Key lime juice until the mixture thickens. Fill the baked pie shell with the mixture.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat the egg whites to a medium peak. Add the cream of tartar and continue to beat. Slowly add the sugar and beat until the mixture is stiff. Spread the meringue over the pie, sealing it to the crust. Bake until golden brown, about 5 minutes.

Serves 8-10.

Movies:
Kundun
Contact
Groundhog Day
Little Buddha

Books:
Authors:
anything by Barbara Kingsolver
Ursella LeGuin
Sherry Tepper
Science Fiction:
Dahlgren by Samuel Delany
The Sirian Experiments by Doris Lessing
and great fun for former catholics (or not)
Our Lady of the Lost and Found

For all you Deadwood fans out there…

“McCabbe and Mrs. Miller,” Altman, Warren Beatty, Julie Christy, and Leonard Cohen songs. Nuff said.

Favorite movies with a political edge (note these are all old 60s 70s):
Roi de Coeur (King of Hearts)with Alan Bates
The Americanization of Emily (James Garner, Julie Andrews)
The Manchurian Candidate (Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury, Laurence Harvey)
A Thousand Clowns (Jason Robards)- Not political but socially liberal

Fun with the Bard:

Henry V (Kenneth Barannagh)[my mother calls this play Hank Cinq]
Shakespeare in Love (Joseph Fienes Gwenyth Paltrow Judi Dench)

Has anyone mentioned Sullivan’s Travels, or the movie that took its title from it, O Brother Where Art Thou?

An obscure movie I just saw as I was over at a friend’s dog-sitting : Cleopatra Jones. So much fun. Shelley Winters was hilarious as the Drug Kingpin “Momma”.

We’re diving into Tom Sawyer this summer. If we like it, we’ll read Huck Fin. THere is a bronze statue out front our library (where, by the by, much of Gross Pointe Blank was filmed) of Mark Twain sitting on the bench. One leg is crossed over the other, one arm is across the back of the bench, the other is holding a book. It’s incredibly inviting.

Dave E — Are we kids, or what?

What a fantastic film, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. Not that anyone will care, but when I first saw it in the early 90’s, it connected with me so deeply that I wondered how I’d ever gotten along without it.

When I researched the director (Alexander Mackendrick) I found that he’d directed a movie that I saw as a child — SAMMY GOING SOUTH or A BOY TEN FEET TALL in the US — I saw the film once, and it rocked my little world. I never forgot it.

When I found out that Mackendrick had directed another film that spoke to me so deeply it made me really consider the power of art and the ability of one person to connect across time, across space, to affect the inner life of another person. It’s miraculous.

beard5 #182 – Thanks, Cuckoo’s Egg is one of the few Cherryh novels I haven’t read yet, now I’ve got a good reason to get to it. Re-reading Cherryh – that’s a great summer project. No one else I’ve ever read can put you inside the head of a character the way C.J. Cherryh can.

Good morning. Unfortunately, I cannot remember the title of my favorite movie. It is about an wife married into the Eastern Elite with their lawn tennis and frilly clothes. she wanted to be a writer which her husband forbade her to do.

So she left. Unheard of at that time. Bought a farm (ranch?) in the deep south in Bayou country and traveled their with little luggage.

Her journey to the house which was falling apart and her meeting of the people and their troubles in the deep Bayou is extraordinary. As is her discovery of herself, and belief in herself. I recognize that struggle and still watch that movie when I need time to heal.

I sob practically all the way through it and feel much better afterward. Doesn’t make much sense, but there is the absolute truth.

Now about the title of the movie…

Kristinejoy and Mommybrain–Oh, Alan Rickman is great! As is Juliet Stephenson.

Well, since he hasn’t been mentioned yet, Vonnegut!

new thread, btw.

kristinejoy at 61
as one who has read a little Nabokov in Russian, IIRC, Lolita was written in English, not Russian. Only his early novels and stories were written in Russian – that’s what first attracted me: the idea that he could write so wonderfully in his second (or was it 3rd, afater French?) language.

new thread –

http://www.firedoglake.com/200…..musements/

oh no – not epu’d again! I’m at work – can only type so much!

I’m sure my current reading will bore you all back to sleep.

I’m preparing a new approach to the music appreciation text I teach, _Music – an Appreciation_, by Roger Kamien, developing a more detailed powerpoint presentation than comes with the instructional packet. So I’m reading widely, loking for illustrative quotes about music, written during the time the music was created. A very good recent book about our music is _American Music in the 20th Century_, by Kyle Gann.

Best non-fiction book I’ve recently read is Michael B. Oren’s _Six Days of War, June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East_. Written from a strong pro-Israeli perspective, the book is well written and brings one back to that time when Arab nations were striving through post-WWII nationalist and quasi-socialist regimes, and when whacko religious factions had much, much influence on political decisions in Israel, Arab nations and the USA. Oren is least credible in his rendition of the USS Liberty tragedy, which cherry-picks from the most apologist of Israeli accounts.

Other current readings are the complete poems of Pablo Neruda and Jorge Luis Borges, for a song cycle I’m writing for performance in Chile in February.

My wife, daughter and son’s gf went last week to see and hear Barbara Kingsolver speak at UAA in Anchorage. All three of these ladies have read and enjoyed every one of Kingsolver’s books.

Only movie I’m interested in right now is one I can’t find. It is a PBS documentary from well over ten years ago, based on Stravinsky’s “Le Sacre du Printemps.” I think it was an episode of “Dance in America” or another of the since discontinued PBS programs which dealt in depth on some arts issue. In this one, a woman had rediscovered the costume and scenery drawings for the original 1913 production of Stravinsky’s greatest ballet. As she developed her research, she and some choreographers were able to recteate Najinsky’s bizarre original choreography too. The documentary concludes with a complete ballet performance of “La Sacre..”

BTW, much better soccer this morning than yesterday. England vs Portugal 0-0, but exciting.

GrandmaJ @ #208

Are you thinking of “Cross Creek” with Mary Steenburgen playing Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings? Sounds like it.

tejanarusa

Yeah, I wish I could read russian not for Lolita (written in English, agreed) but for his other works, because like you said, if he can write this well in his 3rd language, what must his works in his native tongue be like?

RevDeb 45 — I second your mention of Harold and Maude. What a good movie. Not to mention the Cat Stevens soundtrack. When I watch it now it makes me nostalgic for the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970’s. *sigh…*

As for other movie/TV series recomendations, I tend to like a good dystopic future with plucky heroes fighting sinister overloards (FDL vs. GOP?). Here are two of my faves:

The Matrix
Firefly (TV series)

If you haven’t watched Firefly yet, give yourself a treat, then follow it up with Serenity which is the movie based on Firefly.

I am also finishing up Six Feet Under on Netflix. I’m begining the fifth (last) season and I’m already grieving it’s inevitable end. It’s soooooo good.

The Sundance Channel has been introducing me to some fun stuff lately. I think there was a concert film Called Back to Boonaroo or something like that. Seeing the artists listed piqued my interest in Gillian Welch…

There was also a great documentary about life in a Stalinist Skyscraper that was delightfully odd.

I think they occasionally show the wonderful documentary on George Seldes called “Tell the Truth and Run.”

To phoebes (186). No, I didn’t compose the soundtrack (there’s about 10 minutes of composed music in the film). I enlisted an orchestrator/composer friend, Sonny Kompanek, to provide music for those few scenes the Baroque literature couldn’t cover (there were also a couple of cues by the French film composer, Alexander Desplat). I was also the music editor on “Much Ado.” I worked as music editor on something like 28 films with composer Patrick Doyle including all of Ken’s Shakespeare films save “Henry V” (I didn’t know Doyle at that time). We also did Emma’s “Sense and Sensibility.” How come no one has mentioned “Shakespeare in Love?” I had a great time on that one and the director, John Madden, is terrific to work with. From my perspective, it’s an almost perfect film.

“I do love nothing in the world so well as you, is not that strange?”

My goodness, to open the drawer of my favorite blog and find it full of so many things that I never guessed were precious to other people! Who knew I was a “type?” Or that you all were? I also loved Henry V, (take care how you rouse our sleeping sword of war) and thought they were an ideal couple, but by the time Frankenstein rolled around I realized I had been wrong and was able to witness the truely de-sanifying effects of love. Still worship Emma, que sera.

Epoh 15 that book sounds amazing. I need a good read for the sierras trip soon. It’s coming home.

Steve Clark at 17 Jaws is one of my favorite “men” films, I love the three archetypes together on the boat, and love the raw survival the film. Was dreyfus Hamlet? Was Quint Fortinbras? (the man of action?) Or was Chief Brody Horatio who survived them all?

MeanmrMustard at 24: Jane Austin & John LeCarre on your bedside table: LOL. I can’t tell you how many times I close the office door at work and wonder what the toys get up to while I’m away. Honestly, those dollhouse figures must have SO much to work out.

JB et al on Amadeus: Absolutely true, although I was always puzzled by how schaffer’s words made the music so much more beautiful.

Armadillo Joe “opaque genius” 89 What a magnificent phrase. You have to post more often. Is genius opaque both ways? Because I often think genius is blind to aspects of the outside world as well.

CS art is bread- istar at 91: You have truely frightened me beyond all knowing, as I was certain that I was the only person who roared laughing at this movie. The scene where they are wandering in the desert and making up suffering lyrics “poverty….” Still stays in my mind and makes me giggle. Before now I could only attribute this to my own childhood habit of making songs for every unpleasant occasion. Now I know I’m not alone.

My own recommendations:
All of six feet under on video
The Piano
Gladiator
Any Buffy episode
The Crito is still the best read for getting ready to do hard things.
If you haven’t read “the Golden Compass” (first book of the His Dark Materials trilogy) Get your hands on it now.
I’m also a hopeless fan of lemony snickett, which he is kind enough to produce a new volume each year on my birthday. Although this year will be the last.

Thanks for the discussion and the fine recommendations.

Riffing off of Nabokov, another great English as a second language was Joseph Conrad. And an oddly affecting biography of him was penned by Ford Maddox Ford in his book “Joseph Conrad A Personal Rememberance.”

Er, “English as a second language writer…”

Wow, what a great list! I LOVE Dorothy Dunnett – I agree the Lymond series can be a bit difficult to get into, given the flowery language in spots, but it’s wonderful if you stick with it (although harrowing when it gets to the harem scenes in, I think, the 4th book). I love Niccolo too – one of my favorite travel memories is sitting in the square in Bruges (or Brugge, I guess more correctly) reading the carnival scenes in the first Niccolo book that are set in that very square which hasn’t changed much at all since the time of the book (the 15th century).

I’ve got two of the George Martin books which I’m taking to the beach with me in a couple of weeks to see if I can stick with them, given the already noted sudden deaths of “good” characters from the very beginning. They seem to be sort of like the Sopranos set in a fantasy world.

Movies – I loved Much Ado as well, and one of my favorite escapist movies is Shakespeare in Love – I was one of the few people I know who was glad it won Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan. It’s an almost perfect movie, with one of the best scripts ever, I think.

I also love the Patrick O’Brian novels and loved the movie of Master and Commander (of course, I’m a Russell Crowe fan so I’m biased, but I thought he was perfect as Aubrey).

For anyone who likes mysteries, I recommend Charles Todd’s series featuring Inspector Ian Rutledge – a very different English procedural, set just after WWI, with a hero who’s literally haunted by a soldier he ordered to be executed during the recent war. Well written and very unusual.

Ishtar?

That reminds me. Elaine May’s “A New Leaf” desperately needs to be released on DVD.

Saw it on TCM a few years ago and I’ve never forgotten it.

“Much Ado” and “Henry V” both are on my list of all-time favorites as well. The reason “Shakespeare in Love” isn’t, is that it starts to wear thin after the 3rd or 4th viewing, whereas the other 2 have not.

A few other much-loved flicks:

Kundun (with soundtrack by Philip Glass)
13 Days
Topsy Turvy

And on a lighter note:

Big Trouble in Little China
The 5th Element
Twister

Movies:

Grose Point Blanke
Groundhogs Day
Roxanne
Shawshank Redemption
Gattaca
Twelve Monkeys
Caddyshack
Going South
Young Frankenstein
prizza’s honor
V for Vendetta
Blade Runner
Brazil

These are some of my favorite movies, I can watch them again and again. (I know kind of a sci fi bent but that’s also what I like to read.)

6 Gittes pounds the photos on the desk, shouting;

GITTES
I’ll tell you the unwritten law,
you dumb son of a bitch, you
gotta be rich to kill somebody,
anybody and get away with it.
You think you got that kind
of dough, you think you got
that kind of class?

Curly shrinks back a little.

I usually just read without posting, but who can resist joining in good book and movie talk?

My favorite movies have mostly all been mentioned, though I would add SENSE AND SENSIBILITY which delightfully covers all the Jane Austen, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman trends mentioned here. (And add Hugh Grant, for what it’s worth.)

To David E at #78’s great list of screwball comedies, I want to add one I never see mentioned anywhere–BALL OF FIRE, starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, in which a group of gentle Columbia University professors triumph over vicious mobsters.

Namedropping alert here: Mommybrain at #116, I attended college (Sarah Lawrence) at the same time (the seventies) as Allan Gurganis, and even stamped the card on books he checked out of the library! I also studied with the same wonderful writer, human, and writing teacher he did–Grace Paley.

Just finished GILEAD by Marilynne Robinson (which won the Pulitzer Prize) and even as an unbeliever I found it incredibly beautiful, moving, and thought-provoking. And for any other former lit majors, very satisfyingly drenched in resonant symbols.

The weekend’s choices for me:
Mapp & Lucia just for escape
The Women – for catiness LOL
Swing Time and Top Hat – Astaire/Rogers – for the pleasure of watching and singing along

Dunnett wrote several mysteries as well; the characters are as smart-mouthed (I don’t know any other way to describe it) as those in the Lymond series.

Reading, more or less:
Kim Stanley Robinson’s Forty Days of Rain and Fifty Degrees Below – scientists taking over the government after global warming floods DC (and then freezes it solid for a couple of weeks, as an encore).

Bujold’s Chalion books – the five Gods as a religion make a certain kind of sense, although I don’t want to live in that period.

William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition is easier to get into than, say, Neuromancer.

Homer.
Austen.

With Branagh’s Shakespeare movies, one sees the law of diminishing returns in effect. Hnery V was magnificent. Much Ado was OK. However, by the time, we get to his version Of Love’s Labour’s Lost, with its characters breaking out into songs, we are witnessing an atrocity.

Ball of Fire is indeed wonderful. A reworking of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves its many highlights include Barbara Stanwyck doing “Rum Boogie” with Gene Krupa and his orchestra.

Mercury, last year Faber & Faber published Alexander Mackendrick on Film – a compendium of his CalArts lctures. He takes apart Ernest Lehman’s first draft of Sweet Smell and Odets reworking. Odets came onto the project when Lehman became ill and couldn’t cointinue. MacKendrick shows how a very good night club sacen written by Lehman was made into a great one by Odets.

It will blow your mind.

Literary Comfort Food — Anything by Laurie Colwin, including her two food memoirs. Also Barbara Pym, Georgette Heyer, and the grandmama of them all Austen.

For Perspective — Montaigne’s essays

For laughs — James Thurber and PG Wodehouse

For Flat-out great writing — Joseph Mitchell’s Up at the Old Hotel

Perfect travel books — HV Morton’s In Search of books on Italy and England

Mysteries — Christie of course and the late, great Josephine Tey

And because she is so great and starting to be neglected, the recently departed Muriel Spark. There are not better or more thought-provoking novels than The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Girls of Slender Means. She was far ahead of her time.

Patricia Finney’s wonderful spy trilogy set in Elizabethan England, as follows:

Firedrake’s Eye
Unicorn’s Blood
Gloriana’s Torch

My fav is the second, Unicorn’s Blood, but all three are brillant evocations of another world and time.

Patricia Finney writing as P.F. Chisholm also has a wonderful series of mysteries with the Elizabethan courtier and adventurer, Robert Carey, as the hero. The series starts with A Surfeit of Guns.

And I want to thank all you others who posted here. I was having a heck of a time finding good reads. It is amazing the amount of dreck you have to plow through, very well reviewed dreck too (Do critics ever really read the books they review?) before one stumbles across a really good involving read. What’s with that?

Dale in Alabama – MacDonald is next on my list. Thanks! *grin*

Peterr – Have you tried The Brave Little Toaster – if for nothing else the voice of Tony the Tiger as the vacuum cleaner. I’ll also second The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

For older kids, Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series is wonderful fun…

Okay, that was my second newbie post … back to Futbol!

Sorry I was out by the pool so couldn’t responde ot the Lion in Winter quotes, but also don’t forget “there’ll be pork in the treetops by morning” and, of course…
“I’d hang you from the nipples, but it would scare the children.”

And Lina, I kinda liked GC in the Showtime production (altho no Kate), but I thought Patrick Stewart was just AWFUL.

I really don’t know if anyone around can recreate the Hepburn/O’Toole chemistry, altho I am now beginnning to think that Meryl might just pull it off, if she had a good Henry. Only guy I can think of for that role right now would be Liam Neeson.

DKD – I’ve not enjoyed other Gurganis’ other writing as much as this one. I think my cousin was at Sarah Lawrence at around the same time you were. She entered a(and won) a writing contest whose prize was a 4 year scholarship. She currently works at The Sun.

AJ – Second your Georgette Heyer admiration.

Dratty, what about Alan Rickman? Oh, I just thought of another over-the-top Rickman performance I thoroughy enjoyed – The Sheriff of Nottingham in “Robin Hood: Men in Tights”.

Indy: Re: the voice of Tony the Tiger.

Best name ever: “Thurl Ravenscroft”

Sadly, he died last year.

Recently finished:

Watt – Samuel Beckett (Happy 100th, Sam!)

Someone named Tadhg McKenna just finished podcasting Watt on iTunes. Excellent.

Just started:

Last Days of Mankind, Karl Kraus’ monumental anti-war (WWI) drama.

Best Netflix movie seen recetly: Transamerica

Most overrated: Syriana

victoria2dc (living in Denver) My dog was named “Washington Post’s DC Dazzler” by the breeder! DC is always as close to me as he can get. He is a PBGV in case you like dogs! He loves to sleep on the papers I always file on the floor as I work. He also loves to get all tangled up in the computer wires, which is a big problem! He is very funny and really nice. I live in a building with several older people who sit around in chairs in the lobby. I make sure we say hi to them everyday when we’re on our way outside. They like him. He likes them. I do this because they need some love in their lives and we’re there to do that job.

About FDL: I love FDL. The feeling of community is real here. I saw those of you who were at YK on video or in pics. I loved the Plamegate panel… you were the stars! What I loved best about the panel was emptywheel’s opening statement that she never wanted to see another Iran Contra in her lifetime. That certainly let me know who she was. Thanks for connecting to her site and her work. I was at YK thanks to the $10 Air America special!

More about me: I am a very intuitive and I’d say “deep” thinker. What I mean by deep is not that I have a genius IQ, but I’m pretty serious about life and things! I am deeply spiritual. I don’t own a TV and am not interested too much in entertainment. Reading is another story. I had read most of the classics at least two times by the time I graduated from high school. I must admit that it didn’t do my academic life much good when I went away to college, but it introduced me to the love of reading, the love of words, and I developed the ability to learn about people through characters I met in literature. Aren’t we all just actors playing the part of this physical body and the mind that has accompanied it to this world? Aren’t we all here for a purpose? Aren’t we/shouldn’t we be allowed to express that, live it and love it without all of these distractions from the right wing to be like them? Don’t you just hate what they are doing to America? I do.

Like Steve, I’m waiting until after the 2008 elections to see what happens. Until then I’m doing everything I can to lighten and brighten up this very sick world we live in. I’m working to lighten, brighten, enlighten and rejuvenate myself so that I’m not part of the problem. I know it will work. What I don’t know is if the others of my fellow Americans realize that the outer changes take place according to the inner-changes that take place in the spiritual realm. I practice my spiritual practices daily. I live by my spiritual path, knowing that when I change that my environment (meaning the world around me) changes. *I AM* therefore change happens in me and in the people and world I live in as I get better and better at living daily life.

During the month of November 2008, I intend to know if my dog and I will stay in Colorado or go to Argentina to live. Hopefully we won’t have a repeat of 2000 and be stuck waiting for election results. However, I’m living in the present and working for change! My intent is to become a brighter light in the world and then I’ll be where I am supposed to be. Hope that makes some sense!

Favorite book: Do not laugh please – The Count of Monte Cristo (I told you so!)

Favorite movies: Toy Story with Robin Williams (it’s old, old, but did you see it?). I don’t like violence but love comedy. Therefore, I have to admit that Eddie Murphy and the Beverly Hills Cop series are also at the top of my list. I can watch Eddie Murphy in these stupid movies and laugh so easily, but I don’t have a TV and my VCR is in SC.

Favorite healthy foods: daily fresh fruit smoothies in the COLOR of the day. Right now red is the day’s color. Tomorrow is yellow. Blend with a very small amount of organic juice (juice flavors need to match your fruit color of the day) plain lowfat yogurt (NO sugar or sugar-coated candied stuff as some commercial smoothie makers use). Find some organic coconut chunks… blend them with your fruit of the day. Top your smoothie off with a sprinkle of freshly ground cinnamon (one of the earth’s spices we should top off everything we can with) because it’s nature’s healer.

Yumm… Christy, do try the pineapple. I don’t grill it. My version consists of making my own teriyaki sauce (plenty of garlic, fresh ginger, soy sauce and sugar marinade with a few drops of white rice vinegar). I refrigerate the concoction for a couple of hours and then put it in the wok with a little oil. When it’s almost finished I add the fresh pineapple chunks and then add it to my organic earth salad greens, topping it off with BRIANNAS Home Style Real French Vinaigrette dressing (the one with the artichoke on the label).

Don’t buy that teriyaki in a bottle. Make your own and you’ll be amazed. When the teriyaki sauce has browned the pineapple, take it off the stove. Let your meat/pineapple yummie stuff cool a bit and then add it to your salad greens (and reds) with cucumber, fresh avocado and you will love me forever for mentioning this on the first day of July 2006! Top if off with the proper Briannas, add some lightly iced green tea made from the NEW batch of tea fresh from the tea farm near the foot of Mt. Fuji. The new batch for the 2006 had just arrived when I got to the store last time. Organic green tea is expensive, but is so good for us that I ignore the expense. I brew the tea and then infuse it with lemon grass. You simply can’t have anything better to go with your pineapple-teriyaki salad!

Happy 4th… I know none of you needs a reminder to get the holiday feeling since that’s why we’re here.

Well, I gotta go with the classics as far as books are concerned. Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” is right up there. And, of course, there is “Moby Dick,” but that’s hardly long weekend reading.

As far as interesting movies, well I love “Memento,” and, of course, in addition to “Dog Show” and “Waiting for Guffman,” there is the incredibly likeable “Napolean Dynamite.”

And just for the record, the line “…every family has its ups and downs” is the one line I hate from “A Lion in Winter.” Such an incredible and obvious anachronism.

Jeez. I’ll have to retire and do nothing but watch movies to start to catch up with you all.

I’m just going to throw this out: Lars von Trier. I don’t always like how I feel at the end of some of his movies, but like a moth to a flame I cannot resist watching anything of his, so far.

My dear, departed and much-missed pal Jonathan Benair did the voice of the black and white television set in The Brave Little Toaster

Please forgive the length of that post. I promise NEVER to do it again! It’s DC’s fault. He messed with the wires and cords… then the thing just submitted before I edited! Not really, but it sounds fun.

Happy day to all…

Oh, on the Emma Thompson front, check out “Impromptu.” Emma plays a delicious though minor role as the unsuspecting aristocratic hostess to Judy Davis’ George Sand and Hugh Grant’s Chopin. The cast is filled out delightfully with Julian Sand, Mandy Pantikin and Bernadette Peters. A little known light historical romantic comedy gem.

Another vote for Impromptu — an absolute gem. Judy Davis’ George Sand pursing Hugh Grant’s ever-coughing Chopin is hilarious, as is Emma Thompson’s culture-vulture of a hostess who invites all these insane artists to her estate for the weekend and lives to regret it.

Chatted with uber-babe Julian Sands recently. He’s been loving in L.A. since the 80’s. I’m doing a big piece on the British in Los Angeles, past and present.

A few thoughts on Shakespeare’s “Richard III” –

No Hollywood production has captured the essence of Richard’s evil — but it is all there in the opening soliloquy.

Richard has veneer of civility and empathy, but within is a monster, whose heart is shriveled sack of poison, for ‘want of love’s majesty.’

George Bush is our own Richard III; who will be our Richmond?

Since this started with Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” I think the best Shakespearean play turned into a movie was, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (King Lear).

ck,

The best Richard III I ever seen was Al Pacino when he assayed the role in his “Looking for Richard.” The scene between him as Richard and Kevin Spacey as the Earl of Buckingham is one of the most chilling portrayals of the consequences of being sucked in by evil ever played. Unfortunately “Looking for Richard” is only out on VHS no DVD yet as far as I know.

Speaking of Austin, Persuasion (her last novel) has always been a favorite of mine.

Evelyn Waugh was fun before he ossified into a drunken tory twit (sort of the path Christopher Hitchens seems headed down). “Bright Young Things” directed by Stephen Fry was quite fun. My spouse wants to rent the new DVD of “The Loved One” asap from Netflix.

David E @234 — I got the UK edition last year as soon as I heard about it, and yes — the Odets/Mackendrick reworking of Lehman’s version is breathtaking — call me a geek, but it was thrillling to have him actually walk you through the changes. It’s the best stuff I’ve ever read on screenwriting, the clearest, smartest and most informative bar none. Mackendrick is simply brilliant. (if you haven’t read that “Solomon” exercise, that too is outstanding.)

I work at Dreamworks and was trying to get Paul Cronin to do a screening of the accompanying Mackendrick film but it’s been tied up in legal hell. And I curse myself for not knowing about him in the eighties, while he was still alive and teaching film at Cal Arts. i could’ve sat at the master’s feet.

Have you ever seen SAMMY GOES SOUTH/A BOY TEN FEET TALL?

I guess my favorite book ever was The Road Less Traveled by Scot Peck. It is pretty old now, but I still drag it out and re-read parts occasionaly. Other than what I call “head” books, normally I read SF and Fantasy. I have heard that it takes a certain kind of person, who is able to put themselves in a different reality, to enjoy SF/Fantasy.

Last week was a tough one. My hubby quickly developed wet macular degeneration – and has already had his first treatment with Avastin. Bad is that he has the wet kind, which is worse. Good is that the bleed was not in central vision, at least so far. His biggest problem is double vision at certain distances and a gray spot in the lower corner of his right eye. So I’m in the “learn all you can mode”. Not much in the way of treatment, but at least there is now something you can try… which was not the case even a year ago.

Ed*ard Teller 216, I love
Le Sacre du Printemps. When we were kids, we went to dress rehersals at the Santa Fe Opera. There was a special program, a piece of music directed by Igor Stravinsky. Don’t ask me what it was, I was 4 or 5 at the time, but Stravinsky I remember.
PS…I found it in Wikipedia. 1957, Rake’s Progress.

Yes I’ve seen Sammy Going South. It opened in the U.S. simultaneously with MacKendrick’s superb adaptation of A High Wind in Jamaica. After that he did Don’t Make Waves, a pleasant minor comedy with Tony Curtis, Sharon Tate and Claudia Cardinale. Then he retired to teach.

His great early British films include Whiskey Galore, The Man in the White Suit and the Beyond Sublime The Ladykillers.

I first heard Rake when I was 18 in 1959 — I thought it was all really really modern and hard to grasp. I’ve heard it many times since and nowadays I sing along to it — it’s fun and so tuneful !

Phew, finally catching up after trying to fend off the migraine overnightn (thanks for all the kind comments, FirePups)…sorry to miss this thread, quite juicy.

I would watch again and again The Fast Runner — mesmerizing in its simplicity and intensity. Makes me cry every time to watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a classic in unrequited love and beautiful in execution. Trois Hommes et un couffin is hands down unmatched by the American version, Three Men and a Baby; if you speak French, you know the actual dialogue is so much richer, funnier and wistful than the subtitling. Koyaanisqatsi should be viewed several times, and in several sittings, to capture its full effect.

Every year I watch the following at least once: The Razor’s Edge, with Bill Murray; Blade Runner, Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element (this one I think that Christy’s Peanut will enjoy when she’s a little older, my kids love it); The Professional, which shows the early promise of Natalie Portman and makes so very human the gruff Jean Reno.

I’ll stop there…don’t get me started on books. I have too many favorites to list.

But for beach reads, I recommend Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park and John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Not particularly portable but extremely enjoyable: The Essential Ellison, a massive compendium of Harlan Ellison’s works, like a box of dark and mysterious chocolates with unknown but vaguely unsettling fillings. Mmmm.

Comment #219

I am also finishing up Six Feet Under on Netflix. I’m begining the fifth (last) season and I’m already grieving it’s inevitable end. It’s soooooo good.

Yes, Six Feet Under was an amazingly good show. 63 hours and nary a bad one amongst them.

Be careful of those last 4-5 episodes of season 5, though. You’ll get wrung through the emotional ringer.

Leslie in CA @ 179

Absolutely the film of Equus was atrocious, but I also felt the same way about the film version of Cabaret, also a deep and complex story wrestling with big ideas that got ruined in the translation from stage to film. Something about the way material was moving from the stage to the screen in the early 1970’s just wasn’t clicking right.

As for my production of Equus, I remember it as being profound and epic, but then so was eating breakfast cereal or talking on the telephone at that age, as I recall. I love the power of live performance. If you are in NYC anytime soon, you should check out Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Lyceum Theater. It is extremely violent and really hard to watch (it involves torture – and there’s lots of blood and body parts) but the difference in power between film and stage is sharply drawn. Watching torture depicted on screen is distant (for instance “24″) and can even be clinical, oh they’re just acting. Watching it onstage is like watching it actually happening and that moves people. If everyone saw this play, red America wouldn’t be so gung-ho for the Deciderer-in-Chief’s secret torture prisons.

Mommybrain @ 180
I was born and grewup there. I’ve been in New York City for about a decade.

Geordie @ 225
I cannot express the depth of my love for the movie Master & Commander. I thought - Roger Ebert summed up my feelings on the movie perfectly:

“an exuberant sea adventure told with uncommon intelligence; we’re reminded of well-crafted classics before the soulless age of computerized action”

[M&C] is grand and glorious, and touching in its attention to its characters. Like the work of David Lean, it achieves the epic without losing sight of the human, and to see it is to be reminded of the way great action movies can rouse and exhilarate us, can affirm life instead of simply dramatizing its destruction”

Okay, I know I’m EPU’d, darn! But I have to say, I love Carolyn See’s new novel There Will Never Be Another You. It’s set in southern California in the near future and is about — well, I guess existential anxiety embodied in “terrorism fears.” There is an ongoing sense of impending doom throughout the book, and yet the story is really mundane, about infidelity, fidelity, screw-up daughters-in-law, grandkids you love and some you don’t really. About, as Carolyn See would say, making all the wrong decisions and still being able to see beauty in the world.

Wonderful book.

Since no one has mentioned it, I’ll point out Network, Paddy Cheyefsky’s 1976 satire of TV news. Anyone who remembers network news in the 70’s (or even CNN through the 80’s), compared to what we have today, will appreciate how prescient this movie was. Plus superb performances by Peter Finch, Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Beatrice Straight, Ned Beatty and others.

My personal top five:

Godfather I & II (Should be treated as one work, and I’m glad that the latest BFI ratings agree!)
Lawrence of Arabia
Dr. Strangelove, …
Network
Citizen Kane

Kenneth and Emma fans should certainly not miss “Dead Again” – it’s got romance, a murder mystery, reincarnation, and the dooziest plot twist I think I’ve ever seen.

Oh, and for you Alan Rickman fans (there are a LOT of us out there!), try “Something The Lord Made” – it was an HBO original and didn’t get a lot of attention, but EGGGScellent.

I’ve been watching lots of movies lately, and started a movie review webpage, Joyce’s Pix of the Flix.

http://www.writersrow.com/joyc…..fflix.html

3 GREAT movies with modern themes — all with powerful roles for women and the men who love them…my favorites seen this year:

Samantha Morton in Code 46

&

Cate Blanchett in Heaven

&

Nicole Kidman in The Interpreter

A little off the beaten path but both well worth seeing are two Italian films: THE BEST OF YOUTH ( LA MEGLIO GIOVENTU’) & THE LEOPARD (IL GATTOPARDO). The first covers 40 years (60’s to the present) in the life of two brothers. It is 6 hours long (originally made for broadcast as a mini-series on Italian TV), but worth every minute. You don’t have to know anything about Italy or Italian history to be touched & moved by this film. Like most DVD editions of foreign films you can choose a subtitled or dubbed version. Luchino Visconti’s THE LEOPARD is sometimes referred to as the “Italian Gone With The Wind.” It takes place in Sicily during the final battles for reunification. The cast, which includes Burt Lancaster (!) in the title role, Alain Delon, & Claudia Cardinale seems a bit of an international grab bag, but don’t let that put you off.

As for comedy, I have always been partial to the black comedy & satire of HEATHERS, the screwball comedy of TWENTIETH CENTURY with John Barrymore & Carole Lombard, and– one of my all-time favorites –the zany MIDNIGHT RUN with Robert De Niro & Charles Grodin

Late arriving, it’s a beautiful day here (finally), so had to get out early.

I love all things John Huston. The Dead is also one of my favorite short stories, I read it at least once a year – so exquisitely written and heartbreakingly beautiful. *s*

My kids are ten and are huge fans of the Marx Brothers, we have a collection that they watch and when I hear an erruption of giggles, I have to drop what I’m doing and hang with them for awhile. Absolute Silliness.

I have on my night table way too many magazines that I just can’t keep up with. The Nation, American Prospect, Harper’s, Z, Cook’s Illustrated, Natural Health.

I’m reading Acts of Faith by Philip Caputo. I know it’s going to be really really sad. I don’t know if I can take really really sad right now.

Can anyone suggest a light funny well written read?

Well into EPU territory, but for posterity’s sake I’ll recommend Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood. Macbeth in feudal Japan! Might as well been carved in granite, it is such a monument to genius.

drat, i forgot to include above at comment 265:

Kelly Macdonald in The Girl in the Cafe

mary jane @27 – The Uninvited – Have you read the book – a novella by Charlotte Armstrong? Unbelievably gripping, wild horses could not rip it from my hands.

lena @50 and dratty @ 46 – The Lion in Winter. Can you believe Peter O’Toole did not get an oscar for that? In fact, never got an oscar for anything? And a remake? Please. I hate when they redo movies that are perfect to start with.

Oh and lena again, Lonely Are the Brave. Oh, wonderful. Pass the box of kleenex, please.

Oooops ! Some cyber-glitch cut off this last bit:
But if you want a comedy with some tour-de-force acting supported by a great ensemble, then I highly recommend Peter O’Toole in THE RULING CLASS. This is actually more biting satire than knee-slapping comedy & turns quite dark at the end. O’Toole plays the heir to a title & estates who has been institutionalized for years because he thinks he’s Jesus. To succeed to the title he has to prove his sanity. It also has one of the greatest lines in cinema IMHO. A psychiatrist asks O’Toole’s character when he first realized he was God. His reply: One day while I was praying, I realized that I was talking to myself… ;-)

Kristtenjoy @96 – WIT. I loved that. Emma Thompson was a tour de force. Incredibly poignant and not for the faint of heart. (A woman’s oddysey in hospital after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer – not a pity fest, but rather her struggle to retain dignity in the face of growing depersonalization of her treatments.)

Other films I loved that deal with people trying to handle great adversity, specifically bodily injury or illness:

THE SEA INSIDE. Loved this film. It was actually billed as uplifting on the cover. NOT. Sad, sad, but a beautiful, powerful film.

MY LEFT FOOT. Daniel Day Lewis. Inspiring.

RORY O’SHEA WAS HERE. Same as above, very inspiring.

MURDERBALL. A moving powerful documentary about quadripeligic rugby players. The scene at the end in which they give a demonstration at Walter Reed Memorial Hospital to Iraq Vets who are multiple amputees, and the vets are KIDS, youngs kids who are just a handful of years older than my son, who look like they have no idea what happened to them made me cry for days.

For a light funny well-written read you can’t beat Paul Rudnick’s I’ll Take It, Joe Keenan’s My Blue Heaven, or anything by E.F. Benson.

The Dead is a perfect Christmas movie. I broke into uncontrollable sobs during the opening credits — knowing that this was the very last of John Huston. He wanted to make the film in in Ireland, of course, but the trip would have killed him, so he shot it in a warehouse in Orange County. Right after he finished editing, he expired. It’s his last will and testament.

Christy,

When my kids were three they loved us to read the Mary Poppins books by PL Travers to them.

We couldn’t figure it out,’cuz they’re pretty weird, lots of fantastical creatures and places. But we read them over and over and over. (I’m sure you know all about that).

Since they’ve been reading on their own, some of their favorites are The Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. I love these too! And Brian Jacques – he’s marvelous. Rich language, epic adventure, loyalty, friendship, and food – good food. My daughter wrote to him and begged him to write a cookbook.

It’d be nice to have him pull up a chair on Saturday mornings !

Okay, here are some of my personal faves of films:

IMMORTAL BELOVED – the fictionalized exploration of Beethoven’s posthumous letters to an unknown lover. Gary Oldman was wonderful in this role, the music is sublime, the story intriguing and very moving. I rewatch it every year or so.

Okay, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. Have loved this film since I was 12. Probably seen it 20 times. Again, no Oscar for Peter O’toole. Cast is outstanding – Omar Shariff, Anthony Quayle, Anthony Quinn, Claude Rains, etc. Got me started on a masssive reading campaing @ Lawrence. I read his tome SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM in my early 20’s, and actually have it bedside, in a to be reread pile.

THREE SEASONS. No one else has seen this film. An exquisite and painful portrayal of Vietnam, undergoing a second wave of American Occupation, this time American corporations. Harvey Keitel is the only American actor in it. Highy recommended.

TIL THE END OF THE WORLD. One of Wim Wender’s films. Again, beautiful, just a strange and interesting world – sort of futuristic, throw in some capering thievery, and Wender’s otherworldly take on things. Solveig DeMartin (sp?) and Sam Neill and the vastly underrated William Hurt. Again, one of these films that hardly anyone has seen, and I realize while writing this that I need to see it again.

Speaking of Underrated – THE ZERO EFFECT. Bill Pullman was great in this – an offbeat detective caper. Who would have thought?

Akira Kurosawa’s DREAMS and RAN. Visionary, fabulously rich and beautiful – a scene in DREAMS in which the character disappears into a VAN GOGH painting – worth it to see the film just for that.

My favorite Hitchcock – NOTORIOUS. Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, and Claude Rains. Really, how does it get any better?

Eli @ 184 – yes, I’ve seen TRUE STORIES. I’d love to find it again. I especially loved the dinner scene with Spaulding Gray. David Byrne at his weirdest.

I was going to recommend Ender’s Game to you since you said you liked SCI FI but I see you’ve already read it. How about ENDER’S SHADOW? The only book I’ve ever read which is the exact same story told again, from a different point of view. Fascinating.

Okay, favorite books. Jeez, so many, but here are a few recent picks. Someone mentioned SHIPPING NEWS, and yes the film was good, but the book knocked me flat. She just nailed that tucked back fishing coast life – and I know cuz I lived on the coast of Maine for some years in a rousing community of fishermen. Then I bought her next book – can’t think of the title, and couldn’t get past 50 pages. Hmmm…

And whoever said anything by Annie Dillard, I agree.

I read THREE JUNES by Julia Glass – it won the National Book Award a year or so ago. I seem to remember some controversy about it, but I loved it – a simple, poignant and rich story.

THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG, book much better than the film. PATRIMONY, the first Philip Roth I’ve read in years. Reminded me of why he has such staying power. ATONEMENT, by Ian McEwen (sp?) – gripping, sad, about the inescapablility of consequences.

And to dip into from time to time THE SOUL OF RUMI – wonderful poetry from 13th century I believe – esp. when edited by Coleman Barks.

And another poet I’ve come to like – Billy Collins. I’m reading THE TROUBLE WITH POETRY – I love the kind of thing that allows you to read a page and it just causes everything to pause for a bit.

Alright, so I’m talking to myself here. One more, recent film – MUNICH. I loved it, and loved for it’s representation of the world which is not divided into black and white, heroes and villians. And I loved it for its message that violence destroys the soul, no matter what the circumstances.

Carolyn, I’m pretty sure I read that one – I’ve read all or almost all of the follow-ups, although I think the best stuff is in the original series.

Susan,

Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin

I love Mary Oliver’s poetry. I love Laurie King mysteries and Henning Mankell mysteries (he’s Swedish and while I have never been there I now feel I have!). I admire and am deeply moved and troubled by the very thoughtful writings of Derrick Jensen — just finishing his new 2. vol. Endgame. And his prior Culture of Make Believe was remarkable.
Ishiguro – any of his. Remains of the Day is still my favorite, I think.
I love Charles Dickens! Me too re Annie Dillard. And I love Firedoglake, which seriously cuts into my reading time for other things! Thank you all for all you do.

Carolyn Urban — my partner’s father wrote Lonely Are the Brave and she thanks you so much for mentioning it. It was just shown at the Seattle Film Festival as the glass sculptor Dale chilhuly’s favorite movie.

If RH checks back here sometime:

A great kids movie is Castle in the Sky. Beautiful and inspiring. Miyazaki is a god among animators, the animator’s animator.

Carolyn U.#270, thanks for the book tip. Susan, My Family and Other Animals, by Gerald Durell, your kids may like it too. and three cheers for the “ale and quail club” and all things Preston Sturges!

Too late to be original!

Some Like it Hot
A Thousand Clowns
King of Hearts
Anything (thanks, RevDeb) with either Hepburn or Cary Grant
Singing in the Rain
Inn of the Sixth Happiness
The Trouble with Harry
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Fried Green Tomatoes
Steel Magnollias
Mystic Pizza
And of course, Casablanca

WOW!

rmpeditor@221 – I liked “Shakespeare”, but didn’t really love it. It was okay and I don’t remember the music at all. I am not particularily a “musical” person (much more visual), and I rarely notice soundtracks. During “Casanova”, I just sat in my seat after the first, slow, tune and just marveled, “I think I’ve died and gone to heaven with this music”. The reason I asked if you composed it was because I THOUGHT I had read that none of the music was “old” music and that it had all been composed directly for the film. How much, and what was, already written? (I really am dumb about music, though I know I love Baroque music).

WOW – RorcoRoss@226 – was there ever a funnier movie than “A New Leaf”? NO! The lines are just absolutely classic. “I’d like you to meet Dr and Mrs Daryl Hitler”. “Oh, are you related to the Boston Hitlers?” “No, we’re from Glen Cove”. And, yes, it should SO be reissued on DVD!

And, DKD@230, I adore Emma Thompson but I though she was a little old for the part in Sense/Sensiblity. It didn’t prevent me from enjoying the movie (and buying the book about the making of the film), but I wish, a little, at least, that she had written the movie but cast a younger actress as Elinor Dashwood.

Trumbo was really somethin’ else, rudy. Have you seen Johnny Got His Gun ?

Susan@281 – Happy All the Time is my favorite book of all time. It’s gotten me through some pretty sad times. I also loved all her other books, but HATT is the best. I was really sad when Laurie Colwin died.

Have you read any of Elinor Lipman. Writes a lot like Laurie Colwin. If you haven’t read her, start with “Lake Devine” and “The Dearly Departed”.

Wonderful author.

Occurs to me that I should have mentioned, in the context of current politics, that two older films are worth revisiting–Bertolucci’s “The Conformist,” and Vittorio de Sica’s “The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.”

I sometimes imagine Michael Ledeen thinking himself a player in such stories. He seems to have a bit too much fascination with Italian fascists.

T. Gray @ 236

Thanks so much I’m a big fan of Patricia Finney and had no idea

“Patricia Finney writing as P.F. Chisholm also has a wonderful series of mysteries with the Elizabethan courtier and adventurer, Robert Carey, as the hero. The series starts with A Surfeit of Guns.”

Thankya, thankya, thankya

phoebes @ 286 – The opening piece in “Casanova” was by a Swedish Baroque composer (and violinist) named Johann Heinrich Roman. (It’s called Assaggio No. 1 in g minor.) It was a lucky find in that the director of the film, Lasse Hallstrom, is also Swedish. One of the things I strived for was to use no Baroque pieces that were “warhorses.” That way no one brought previous feelings about the music to the film. The vast majority of the music was from the period – a lot of it from the French Baroque composer Jean-Phillipe Rameau. The trick was to edit the music so that it sounded like FILM music – ie., working with the picture – rather than just concert music unrolling behind the scenes. There’s a soundtrack album available which indicates the Baroque pieces and the original pieces.
The music for “Shakespeare In Love” was composed by the English film composer Steven Warbeck.
It’s funny to see other films I worked on popping up in these comments – such as “Dead Again” and “Caddyshack” (that goes WAY back!)

David, I remember you from the late, great days of Datalounge. I always wondered, were you “Blue Agave”?

Woodstock’s cats/phoebes

This will never be read by anyone, but I have to add my two cents. Most of the books and movies that I love are OLD.

Very little fiction: Sherlock Holmes is always worthwhile. Don Quixote is standard.

My nine year old loves Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. I’ve been reading it to him since he was about two years old.

Other children’s books: anything by Cynthia Rylant, esp. The Cookie Store Cat and the Mr. Putter and Tabby series.

Movies: The Gods Must Be Angry (an African Bushman’s contact with civilization); The Return of Martin Guerre (based on a real trial in France, 15th or 16th century I believe); That Was A Time (follows the reunion of The Weavers at Carnegie Hall).

Ok, one more that hasn’t been mentioned (I have a large list next to me of recommendations from this thread–thank you all).

The Man Who Came to Dinner. Monty Woolly at his finest. Great, funny movie with characters clearly modeled on Hollywood actors (Banjo is so cleary Harpo Marx).

I forgot to mention three Ingmar Bergman movies: Wild Strawberries (a scientist travels by car to get an award), Scenes from a Marriage (a marriage breaks up), and Autumn Sonata (a concert pianist is not close to her husband and daughter. Ingrid Bergman’s last film)

Don’t forget John Cassavetes. I think that his best movie was A Woman under the Influence.

BearCountry –

We love Cynthia Rylant too – dear Mr. Putter, he reminds me of my dad. And Arthur Howard’s illustrations are yummy.

My kids have culled and culled their book collection but at ten, Mr. Putter and Tabby remain.

Hunt down, if you can, the Katherine Hepburn movie, ‘The Madwoman of Chaillot’. It’s relevance to events in the world today is staggering…

Another hilarious film is Waking Ned Devine. This is pure joy. Anyone who has Irish relatives knows that the sentiment, humor, and notion are truly spot on. I loved this film and am going to Netflix now to queue it up!

Yikes, a lot of these are big time repeats. Here goes-
Books-
To Kill A Mockingbird- Harper Lee
Bridget Jones I and II, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination- Helen Fielding
Harry Potter Series- Jo Rowling
High Fidelity, About a Boy, Fever Pitch- Nick Hornby
A Chef’s Tour- Anthony Bourdain
Movies-
Some Like It Hot
Blazing Saddles
Sound of Music
Pirates of the Carribean
Love, Actually
24 Hour Party People
Sliding Doors
Happy Accident
Bend It Like Beckham

Could someone please say Hi because I am a little diffident at butting in here.

I live in a small country town two hours from Cape Town, SA.By myself, with cats.I know perhaps too much about US politix from FDL and associated sites daily.I ,however,seldom comment.

Movies? Most of my very faves have been listed already : Some like it hot; Shakespeare in Love;Local Hero.
For TV comedies, I think I like Yes,Minister best.
Light reading : Austen, Heyer,the Flashman series (especially if you’re a history buff),the Prizzi series by Richard Condon; Lilian Beckwith’s series on life on a remote Scottish island and I enjoy Susan Isaacs style.

Nope. I wasn’t Blue Agave.

And whatever happebed to that dude?

I’m guessing posts with numbers over 300 are like dark matter in space, but gotta recommend:

Book: Douglas Coupland’s “Hey Nostradamus!” – overwhelming take on a Columbine-like massacre.
Movie: “Die Nackte und der Satan” (AKA “The Head”) – riotous, ultra-effective late 1950s German horror film that appropriately gets under one’s skin.
TV: “Deadwood,” always “Deadwood.”
Music: Anything by Broken Social Scene, Canada’s antidite to stale US emo crap.

Enjoy it all. If you read this let me know (ha).

Hi, Suezboo (is that Sue-z-boo or Suez-boo?),

Welcome! You might be our only SA family member at this moment. Please continue to speak up. WE love new voices! I’m a susan Isaacs fan, too.

How many cats? Are you from SA originally? WHo do YOU think should run for Pres on the blue team in 08?

Ripley,

Except for Deadwood, you list is new to me. Thanks.

Hi Suezboo. Small town with cats- sounds nice. Me too. I have Max, a big love bunny with no cat skills, and Wolfie, a small feral cat who is the single smartest animal I’ve ever met. If he had thumbs, we’d have another contender for dictator. My cats are indoor felines, because of multiple predators: coyotes, fox, fischer cats and hawks.

By the way, if you are learning about American politics from FDL, you’re probably better informed than 90% of American citizens.

Thanks for the nice welcome, mommybrain and carolyn.

Two mad cats.I think the only US pol worth voting FOR, as opposed to the voting against the kleptocracy, is Al Gore. Hope he runs. I was born in England but emigrated when I was a tot.I am now a proud SAfrican.I hope, for all our sakes, the Dem party remembers who its base really is and puts womens issues, labour issues and working-class issues and minority issues at the top of their agenda.I dont know who this mythical ‘floating voter’ is that they are pandering to, but courting him/her is tossing their own people out of the lifeboat.Ned Lamont just proved you really don’t have to rely on corporations for support.

Sorry, rant over.This is just one foreigner’s opinion.

It’s Sue-zee-boo – an old childhood nickname. Nice to meet you.

Suezboo,

I grew up in a liberal household, reporter and political writer’s daughter, and I sometimes forget, having swum so long in the blue waters of intelligence, that there are so many tinybrains in our society. I sure wish there were more people like you here.

I despair sometimes at the low level our public discourse has sunk to in the last 20 years and wish the rapture would come NOW, so we can get on with doing what needs to be done for THE PEOPLE HERE ON EARTH, NOW. I don’t think God approves of evangelical politics.

I hope to see you around more.

Last week I was reading a mystery, The Floating Girl, by Sujata Massey, set in contemporary Japan. At one point our main character goes to a fast-food joint for lunch, noodles, what else. The place has long tables, with a channel running through the center, down the length, of each table. Ice-cold water rushes down the channel, filled with noodles. As the noodles speed by, one uses the non-eating end of one’s chopsticks to grab a bundle and bring it to one’s bowl. There are of course dipping sauces. In some such places, talking, conversation, is forbidden as it slows down the process. O god, I want one of these in my town!

suezboo 300,
Hi and please comment more!
Favorite books:
The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison, and the other books by him.
Ngaio Marsh mysteries.
Martha Grimes, Kathy Reichs.
Oh please….someone tell me they’ve read K.C. Constantine. “The Man Who Loved Slow Tomatoes.” Excellent writer, love him.
I notice Carolyn Urban mentioned Ender’s Game, etc., which I liked a lot.

Oh jeez, I’m never going to get dinner made.
One of my favorite books is Leo Rosten’s “The Joys of Yiddish” and “The New Joys of Yiddish.” I just laugh like crazy and try to learn all the Yiddish words I can, it’s so much fun.

To Eli: Has anyone seen True Stories, David Byrne’s fake documentary about a small town in Texas, with some juicy cameos by Spalding Gray and a then-unknown John Goodman?

Yes, LOVED IT. It’s a MUST See. Impossible to fine.

Also, Mommybrain, Loved Truly Madly Deeply, and I would contribute, Shirley Valentine to this festival as well.

Also, I could possibly leave out the moveie version of Michael Frayne’s play with John Ritter and Carol Burnett about the “sardines”, whose name escapes me at the moment, and also the gazpacho movie, Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown, my first intoductions to Antonio Banderas.

And then there’s this wonderful romantic movie called “Caramel”, that’s French with Daniel Auteil (be still my heart), who is a Yopliat executive who is accused (set up) of poisoning a batch of yogurt and under the cloud and suspision, and while he tries to clear his name, he lives with the woman who cleaned his executive office bathroom (who is black, , poor, with five children, who has more strength and dignity than he has in his dreams). It’s EXCELLENT. I can’t remember what the exact search title for it would be, but if you do the filmography of Daniel Auteil, you’ll find it. It’s some play on words of Romeo and Juliet. It’s excellent.

And let me mention again, Shirley Valentine. And for those that have seen it, the immortal line, “Boat is boat, and fuck is fuck.”

Ahhhh.

Mommybrain @ 304 (love that handle, btw):

Wow, thanks – a response to a high-mumber post! Coupland’s book is genuinely devastating, to use a word I use way too much. Made me weep; J.M. Coetzee’s “Disgrace” is the only other novel to do so. Ian McEwan’s “Atonement” came real close, too.
Anyways: much appreciation for your comment, attentiveness, and consistently on-target (and community-building) commentary on this blog.

I’m jumping in really late, but this thread was great reading on a lazy day and I have to comment on a few posts. Many movies mentioned are also favorites of mine — Local Hero, Grosse Point Blank, Some Like It Hot, Best in Show, Gods & Monsters.

To me, bookending all “great movie lists” are The Maltese Falcon and Chinatown. Loved that Gittes quote that appeared above (229)!

Another fave film is Lion In Winter. I saw a stage production in NYC that was great, too. Laurence Fishburne and Stockard Channing were tres royale. I second all good things said here about Henry V and the genius Emma. Awhile ago (a few days after the 1st Clinton election to be exact), I saw Kenneth and Emma on the street in London. They were a most charming couple. And as a last London comment, I, too, share the crush on Alan Rickman. Did you know his longtime companion is a liberal member of Parliament?

To add two movie recommendations that I didn’t already see here, I’ll go to Texas. Not my favorite place for obvious reasons, but the source of two great films: Paris, Texas, and Lone Star.

Wishing all you FDLakers a Happy Independence Day and a future where we can get Texas off our minds.

For more British Comedy try The Red Dwarf – was shown on PBS awhile ago.

Ripley,

Thanks, (blush) for the complement. I see from your list you go for strong emotional tones. Have you ever read ‘Killer on the Road’ by James Ellroy? Quite the writer, disturbing subject. I actually threw the book down the trash chute half way through and then went into the garage to retrieve it from the dumpster.

Oh, I’m so sorry I missed this thread. I’m a total Netflicks addict. I just saw Terrence Malick’s The New World yesterday and I thought it was stunning. Quiet, pensive, gorgeously filmed story with broad scope. Amazing art direction and sound, interesting and subtle acting with tremendous emotional impact. I’m going to see it again. The film was shot on location at the Chickahominy River near Jamestown, and I was astonished at how beautiful and breathtaking Virginia is – wow. In a way, the scene, along with the faithful reproductions of buildings and fields, are the main characters.

genosail, I too love Daniel Autiel. I saw Cache a couple of days ago and thought he was great in it. It’s a very elliptical, disturbing film with many, many unanswered questions.

Has anyone read Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go? Or McEwan’s Saturday? Those are the next two on my list.

If anyone’s still reading, I owe you a drink.

I’m bringing up the rear here, but I am so thrilled to see movies I love mentioned repeatedly (”Truly, Madly, Deeply”, the brilliant “Blue Planet”). I wish I could say that I indulge in intellectual fare daily, but some days, I just want something truly funny.

My five favorite movies:

“It’s A Wonderful Life”
“Bull Durham”
“High Fidelity”
“Monty Python and the Holy Grail”
“Slap Shot”

Honorable Mention:
“Get Shorty”
“Best Of Show”

My favorite novelist is Carl Hiaasen. I write as well. I could only hope to have characters that leap off the pages like his do.

I love FDL. I’ll be watching “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” this weekend and hoping for better days ahead.

-S

Hi Suzeboo, and welcome.

thanks to all who suggested reading for me.

Laurie Colwin is someone that Christy had suggested for cooking last week and Gerald Durell is now on my list.

This was fun, thanks Christy.

Strategerie,

I’ll take a patron silver margarita with cointreau.

:~)

meta at 318, Yes I’ve read Saturday by McEwan. I really liked it.

Strategerie, “My Cousin Vinnie” is one of my favorite funny movies.

Asking about favorite movies or books for me is like a snap shot of my psychy/interest at a certain moment.

Right now I am thinking about The Sheltering Sky. More the Paul Powles book, but the movie as well (in which Bowles makes a cameo).

There is this haunting tale/image from the book about three Englishmen who go to have tea in the desert. It is the perfect metaphore for the Iraq/Middle East mess, but deeper than a complaint — sort of a weary realization of the vast differences between cultures that often swallow the western thinker.

imman, I also like The Sheltering Sky. Strange mood, a sense of foreboding and sadness. Interesting light and color.

Oh, and any film with Javier Bardem. I could watch him for days.

a sense of foreboding and sadness

like I said, a rorschach question.

Has anyone ever seen the Cassavetes film, “Too Late Blues” with Bobby Darin? Also weird and moody, in a singing not singing sorta way.

rmpeditor above – I LOVE the music for Shakespeare in Love – it’s the sound of the Thames to me, running through the whole movie. For me, that movie never gets old.

Neither does Sense and Sensibility, another nearly perfect film – and produced by Lindsay Doran who I used to know in London. I remember watching the Golden Globes when she came up on stage to accept Best Picture and I nearly spat out my beer when I recognized her!

And Armadillo Joe, thanks for that wonderful quote about Master and Commander – I can watch it over and over again, and not just for Crowe. I don’t understand people who found it ‘boring’ – guess they were expect Pirates of the British Navy or something. Now POTC – that I found boring.

Mommybrain (315): Ellroy is one of my (twin) brother’s favorites; thanks for the rec. I’ll definitely seek it out (and yes to the “strong emotional tones” – well said).
Immanentize (326): Paul Bowles, yup. Black Sparrow Press re-published his “Let It Come Down” a few years back; decidedly worth taking on. Kind of the drenching follow-up to “Sheltering Sky.”
This blog not only rocks, it rolls. Thanks.

Scarlet Empress.

After her Shirley Temple imitation, La Dietrich is on fire, and her co-star still reminds me of an erection in a fur coat, he’s just that sexxxy.

And, a bonus, every other character is insane or sex-crazed, which is nice for 1934….

I cannot recommend highly enough the LYMOND and NICCOLO series of historical novels by Dorothy Dunnett, or her retelling of Macbeth, KING HEREAFTER. Absolutely exquisite writing, deeply intertwined story lines, and a cannonball plunge into Europe of the 16th, 15th and 11th centuries, respectively.

phoebes@286 said

“was there ever a funnier movie than ‘A New Leaf’? NO! The lines are just absolutely classic. “I’d like you to meet Dr and Mrs Daryl Hitler”. “Oh, are you related to the Boston Hitlers?” “No, we’re from Glen Cove.” And, yes, it should SO be reissued on DVD!”

I just went to TCM.com, did a search to see if it was playing soon. It isn’t, however, there is an option to vote for its release on DVD.

I guess there are more important tasks for the great liberal blogosphere however…

Right. Being 3xx on the list is the penalty for taking a day off! Here are my movies in two categories. First, “Already mentioned but can’t be mentioned enough.”

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People. Impossible to believe that Le Carre could be made into a movie as well as these were done. Must See.

The Dead, A New Leaf, Master & Commander: this is why there should be no Oscars for Best Picture. Each of these is so superb and yet so different. You’ll cry, you’ll laugh, you’ll cheer.

Now for the movies that Nobody Mentioned Yet (!)

Little Big Man – my first exposure to our tortured past as Americans, and a cracking good story.

Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper without all the words, the way God intended. Daniel Day Lewis, Madeline Stowe, blood, heroism, victory, defeat, love, death, all set in impossibly beautiful scenery. The ultimate frontier American story.

The Big Sleep – how could nobody have mentioned this before? Bogart, Bacall, directed by Hawks, novel by Chandler, screenplay by Faulkner (!) and Leigh Brackett (and Jules Furthman). This is what Hollywood used to do best.

Le Grand Blond avec un chaussure noire – the French do farce best, and this is one of the best. You’ll blow cafe au lait out your nose. Eschew the pallid American remake with Tom Hanks. Unfortunately, only on VHS. (And the sequel is almost as good.)

Thanks to everyone for increasing my Netflix queue!

Saturday was an eon ago as far as FDL is concerned, but here goes–

I agree with Argonaut: “Little Big Man” is worth a couple hours of your time. It’s based on Thomas Berger’s novel of the same name, also worth spending your time on.

Other favorite films of mine (and some have been mentioned already!) are:

The Lion In Winter
Like Water for Chocolate
Dangerous Liaisons
Casablanca (on everyone’s list, naturally!)
All About Eve

At Christmastime, there’s two de rigueur DVDs to view: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and the original “Miracle on 34th Street.”

Books: too many to list, but a few are:
To Kill A Mockingbird, which seems to be on everyone’s list as well; I never tire of re-reading it and find a new interpretation as I age and I view the book from the vantage point of my experiences.

I, Claudius by Robert Graves– great historical fiction about the drama that was early Imperial Rome and the soap opera that was the Julio-Claudian dynasty. The BBC miniseries was great too, and worth renting/checking out. A great opportunity to see a young Patrick Stewart.

Addie Pray by Joe David Brown. The movie “Paper Moon” was based on the first half of the book, but the book has so much more.

Time and Again by Jack Finney. A fantastic time-travel tome about a man who travels back to 1880s NYC as part of a government experiment.