In case anyone is still reading this, I've pretty much abandoned this journal, with the bulk of its duties now being taken over by Facebook and my new movie blog, which you can find here:

http://blurtforreel.blogspot.com/

Life is weird and complicated and scary and amazing, and Grey's Anatomy gets that better than anything. Every episode has its own theme, and each one is like a self-help book, but taken together it's like an epic 100+-hour movie that's better than any therapy you can ever get. I don't know what it's like to watch it over the course of years, but ( Read more... )

Remember last spring when I bemoaned about how depressingly lame the summer movie season looked?  Well, this summer is the exact opposite of that.  On paper, it's just ridiculously awesome.

Okay, first of all, I just now discovered that Miranda July has a new movie coming out, finally.  And it's about a cat who somehow alters the space-time ( Read more... )

When I was in kindergarten, our teacher, Mrs. Landreth, created a class phonebook for us.  It listed every kid in the class along with their phone numbers, and every kid got a copy.  Well, this was very exciting.  Now, we could call each other!  The room erupted with the sounds of "I'll call you!" and "No, I'll call you!"  Everybody was making ( Read more... )

I just spent a week in New York, thanks to my generous mother, who paid for everything.  We saw six Broadway shows in five days, which I thought would be exhausting, but it wasn't.  In fact, being in a Broadway theater in New York is so much better than being in New York and not being in a Broadway theater.  I still have a love-hate relationship ( Read more... )

Best Picture - True Grit
Give me a moment, I'm not used to my favorite movie of the year getting a Best Picture Oscar nomination.  This hasn't happened since 1998, with Saving Private Ryan (and my favorite film of the year hasn't won since Amadeus, way back in 1984).  This is the strongest this category has been in a very long time.  They actually ( Read more... )

There are some commonly used quotes that people need to just stop using.  I'm not talking about movie lines that everybody quotes because they think they're funny or cool.  I'm talking about quotations that didn't make much sense to begin with and are so over-used that they have become irritating cliches, and any relevance they might have had has ( Read more... )

10. Last Train Home
At first, I resisted this documentary and its apparent intent to edify for us just how good we've got it by depicting the plight of a pair of migrant Chinese factory workers who can only afford to go home to see their children once a year.  But once I started viewing the film as simply an anthropological remake of March of the ( Read more... )

People keep saying that The Office should end when Steve Carell leaves.  Nonsense.  Personally, I can't wait for him to leave.  Oh, sure, a few years ago I would have thought they'd be crazy to have a Michael-less Office.  But if there's one thing that the past few seasons (especially the current one) have demonstrated, it's this: they don't need ( Read more... )

This year's AFI Fest was better than last year, as they seemed to be more selective in their selection process, and they grouped the screenings closer together, so I didn't have any long waits between films like I did last year.  On the other hand, I only really liked one movie I saw, just like last year (and, just like last year, the one movie I  ( Read more... )