In the most recent issue of The New Yorker there's a profile of Marlon Brando which mentions in passing that the actor flunked kindergarden. Wow. I didn't even know that was possible.

(And to make this post a little more substantial, I was very taken with a new-to-me bit where Stella Adler was asked if Brando was a great actor and she responded, " ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago during the Republican convention Jon Stewart had a bit on The Daily Show where he compared Senators Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman to, respectively, Foghorn Leghorn and Droopy Dog. The latter's an old trope with Stewart, but I believe the former was a new association, and it turns out it's more accurate than Stewart's writers ( Read more... )

Went to a 10:25 Saturday night showing, where I was one of only two people in the audience. (Guess everybody was watching some other movie or something. Huh.)

This was the first flick I've seen in a theatre this year, and luckily it turned out to be excellent - I would rank it as the very best Pixar. Could have done without the Hello, Dolly! bits ( Read more... )

Just watched this. It isn't really worth much comment, but I had so many conversations about it with people before it came out I suppose I should record my impressions here. (This won't take long.)

Put simply, this movie's a mess. A big, soulless piece of crap, full of meaningless spectacle. Generally I'm not a fan of CGI, and this movie did ( Read more... )

I was going to post that this was the first time all four Academy awards for acting went to non-Americans, but I nosed about on the Internets a bit first and discovered this hat-trick also occurred back in '65 (Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Peter Ustinov and Lila Kedrova).

Also, this was the first year I didn't see any of it - not even clips on the ( Read more... )

' . . . Perhaps most disturbing, however, are the statements that come directly from Dr. Jones's mouth. Several faculty members maintain that Dr. Jones informed them on multiple occasions of having discovered the Ark of the Covenant, magic diamond rocks, and the Holy Grail! When asked to provide evidence for such claims, he purportedly replied that ( Read more... )

del Toro to direct Hobbit movies.

Not sure The Hobbit really needs to be a movie, and definitely sure there shouldn't be two movies, but there it is. People who like this sort of thing will like this sort of thing.

(Hey, it's still not midnight here for another half an hour or so!)

As I posted yesterday, I wasn't too pleased with the overall quantity and quality of what I read last year. (I was even less pleased with my movie-viewing progress; hence no post at all on that.)

Therefore my [public, lj] resolution for the new year is to try to read more and more ( Read more... )

Michelangelo Antonioni dead the day after Ingmar Bergman. Now, who'll make it three?

After years of talk, apparently Jodie Foster is finally going to be playing the notorious fascist filmmaker.