...to steal an old David Letterman punchline. ("How can we offer such great rates on our comedy book reviews ( Read more... )

...and it's called Eastern Promises.

Set in London, Eastern Promises is the dark and dour story of how a midwife's (Naomi Watts) attempts to find the family of an orphaned baby whose barely pubescent mother has died during delivery draw the increasing attention of the Russian mob, chiefly in the person of an Armani-armored driver-cum-enforcer, ( Read more... )

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Just got the April 2007 issue (No. 560) of Vanity Fair in the mail last Wednesday or Thursday (21 March or 22 March) -- literally the day after I'd read everything I'm going to read in the March issue (No. 559: VF's annual "Hollywood Issue," which this year features those pillars of Hollywood [errr?!]: Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Chris Rock and Jack ( Read more... )

A thought just struck me -- belatedly, but better belated than never, right?

The life and death of Vito Spatafore on Season 6 of The Sopranos would've come off better if, instead of having Vito listening to and singing along with Sinatra's "My Way" as he's boozin' and a cruisin' and drinkin' and a drivin' along back to Jersey from his New ( Read more... )

Managed to catch up with first part (12 episodes) of the sixth and final season of the multiple award-winning HBO series The Sopranos on DVD over the Thanksgiving break; apparently there will be 8 more episodes airing in January 2007, and then no more.

As one might expect, these eps very much felt like a valedictory lap; much as I love The ( Read more... )

In honor of the fifth movie I've seen in a theatre this year (the others being The Inside Man, District B13, A Scanner Darkly, and Miami Vice), I thought I'd give some disjointed thoughts on/reactions to it, behind the cut.

Ladies and gentlemen, let us now pause for a moment to consider --- The Departed.

( The Departed is like Like a Virgin how..? )

Just finished watching -- finally -- Season 5 of The Sopranos on DVD. At this rate, I should be able to catch the sixth and final season some time in the summer of 2008 ( Read more... )

Last Friday, 5 August, I saw a midnight showing of Ichi the Killer (2001), one of the more infamous offerings of a notorious director, Takashi Miike. Oddly enough, I saw it at a free screening: though this particular branch (if that's the correct term) of a Loews Theatre had advertised a $5.00 admission for its "midnight cult movies," when I ( Read more... )

Finally got the July issue (No. 539) of Vanity Fair in the mail yesterday, a mere two weeks after the U.S. media fell all over themselves with the intelligence that VF had stolen a march on the Washington Post and revealed the identity of the anonymous source who wound up named after a seminal (hey, sue me) porno movie who steered the Post's then ( Read more... )