Three Years Ago: Chronicles: Legendary Costume Designer Asks: Are You a Poet?

Today, on Three Years Ago, our legendary series where we repost a post from exactly three years ago, I've dug up a rare "biographical" blog entrée. Thank heavens this is an unusual occurrence:

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Last week, I was rejected from a graduate school program I had applied to, so I vowed to go on a 48-hour Steve Zissou-style bender, wake up next week, draft a new plan for the next few years of my life, then set out to find the shark that ate my friend & destroy it. Friday Night began with several pitchers of Piña Coladas with my friend Heather from Interlochen. The basic recipe for our concoction is as follows:

Mix in blender:
-Half of a delicious fresh organic pneapple
-Half a handle of clear rum
-The meat of a fine mango
-Pineapple-coconut juice (I used the R.W. Knudsen brand, which conveniently sells this mix)
-About five strawberries
-Ice

Saturday, Heather, who was singing in the pit orchestra for the San Francisco Ballet's piece Eden/Eden, with music from Steve Reich's Three Tales (the one about Dolly the Sheep, robots, & cloning), was able to get three free tickets to the ballet. As a tangent, did you know that Dolly the Sheep was named after Dolly Parton because the gene from which they cloned her was from the host's mammary? As Parton said, "I hope people realize that there is a brain underneath the hair & a heart underneath the boobs." There's interesting moments in Reich's score, but the ballet orchestra lacked the intense drive to keep the motion forward-propulsing for a full half hour. However, the original video opera was pretty mediocre, & rescuing the music & replacing the imagery with some amazing dancing & choreography is a great service.

Coincidentally, our friend Mr Golden was working next door at the Veteran's building repairing a model buffalo for an exhibition of ballet costumes designed by Willa Kim. After the ballet & some St Patrick's day beer, we crashed the art opening (as "volunteers", which we indeed ended up being.) One of my friends was free-wine-inspired to get herself a sugar-daddy in the guise of an rich older SF ballet alum. We missed the lecture, but when nonagenarian Willa Kim was being escorted out, the volunteers stopped her to tell her they had enjoyed working on her costumes. After some flattery, she turned to me & said:

Willa Kim: You look like you must be a poet!
Your hero: Well, uh, yes, I am.
Sycophantic escort: My, Ms. Kim, how prescient you are!
Willa Kim: He looks like a poet!
Your hero: It's all nonsense, tho. I mean, my poetry is nonsense.
Mr Golden: We're working on an epic with illuminations.
Willa Kim: Well, best of luck to you, &c.....

According to the imdb, Willa Kim is known by the nickname "Willa Killa". We then hit some schwanky downtown bars, & escorted my sloshy friend to the BART. The night ended by Mr Golden cleaning my clock at put-put golf at his Ingleside apartment.

Sunday Morning, I had arranged (despite a dead mobile phone) to meet a blind date at a famous Mimosa Bar in the Castro, The Lime. As a co-founder of the dogmatic evangelical religious cult, The Mimosa's Witnesses, I was morally bound to investigate this mecca of Mimosa transubstantiation, which has bottomless flutes for $7 at Sunday Brunch. The place is ridiculous & perfectly over-the-top, with a bright-green nightclub decor, thumping music, packed with revelers at 11 A.M. Many of our fellow witnesses looked far more L.A. than S.F., with plastic breasts, &c. We should tithe them.

Waiter: Hello, I haven't seen you here for awhile!
Your hero: I've never been here before. This is my first time.
Waiter: Really!? You look just like one of our regulars.
Your hero: No, perhaps I have a Doppelgänger? Or perhaps you're mistaking me for Ralf from Kraftwerk.

As for my blind date, she had enormous false eyelashes & drove an orange Mustang sports car! Anyway, we must plan an official service with the regular Mimosa's Witnesses at this bizarre Castro day-club. As I explained to my date, just like there are hippie Christians & conservative Christians, these fake-boobed coked-up proselytes were worshipping under the same, broad tent as the Tahoe Mimosa's Witnesses & the Berkeley Mimosa's Witnesses.

My day proceeded by sobering up at Philz Coffee in the Mission & having my clock cleaned at chess with Mr Golden. The San Francisco semi-regular Sacred Harp singing was at an episcopal church on Fair Oaks (one of the cutest streets in that neighborhood), & was well attended, including two members of the awesome group Anonymous 4 (who, with their background in St Hildegaard, now have two excellent albums of American harmony, & are working on continuing that project. Listen to them!) Singing exultantly, mission accomplished, & I'm now accepting suggestions for what to do next with my life.

For Your Consideration: Kanye West's Runaway

Hello. Sorry I haven't been adding my biting cultural commentary amongst Grainne's lovely fashion illustrations, but it's been a wild last month. Meanwhile, Mr Kanye West put his entire short film Runaway on YouTube, and it's worth a watch. He seems to realize he's not a great actor, and keeps his dialog & lip-sinking to a minimum. Advantages: the art direction is beautiful, and it dwells on the modern ballet dance for a good 50% of the movie, and of course the music from his album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" is pretty damn good. Disadvantages: Hmm, this could be discussed in the comments, I don't want to be too hasty with criticism. The plot is reminiscent of Shakespeare's ambiguous poem "The Phoenix & the Turtle," about the love of a mortal with a phoenix - - perhaps Shakespeare's strange text could serve as commentary on Kanye's allegorical music video, or visa versa:

Property was thus appall'd,
That the self was not the same;
Single nature's double name
Neither two nor one was call'd.

Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together;
To themselves yet either-neither,
Simple were so well compounded.

Three Years Ago: Music Review: Dr Ralph Stanley in Berkeley on his Eightieth Birthday

Continuing with our celebration of this blog's old age, the series Three Years Ago (started on the blog's three year anniversary, more than a year ago), which re-posts from the history exactly-to-the-minute three years later, will continue on thru this year, digging up from the pivotal year 2007. Now a classic music review:

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Last night, the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley hosted Dr Ralph Stanley & the Clinch Mountain Boys at St. John's Presbyterian Church. The opening act was Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands, from round here, & they were great. Then, when the headliner & the eight men he plays with made their way to the stage, Laurie ran up & announced that it was 9pm here, so therefore midnight “Clinch Mountain Time”, Ralph Stanley's 80^th birthday. In lieu of Mayor Bates, the mayor's senior aide read a proclamation, hilariously & formally worded, that because of his eminent career in the arts, & because he has played in Berkeley so many times for the past five decades, February 25^th would therefore henceforth be Ralph Stanley Day in Berkeley. (I wish I could quote the proclamation here, but other bloggers have also had no luck finding it.) There was a cake, too.

The evening after that was fairly short, it seemed like he only sang three or four of the dozen songs. He let each member of the band do something from one of their solo projects, & introduced each one with an old-fashion Grand Ole Opry MC style, dumb jokes & all. His son & grandson tour with him. His grandson loves Jesus, & also bling, & sang a mediocre gospel tune in three-four about how Jesus is “more brighter” than the stars. Dr. Ralph sang “O Death” from O Brother Where Art Thou, for which he once won a Grammy. It sounded pretty much the same. The music was great, mostly, but there was a bizarre self-congratulatory tone to the whole evening, with Nathan Stanley reading out a long list of awards & honors his grandfather had won, & James Shelton spending fifteen minutes explaining in great detail everything you could buy in the back (including two of the instruments on stage). My favorite musician was Jack Cooke, the “bass fiddle” player, who's been with Stanley for thirty-seven years, & sings upper harmony. He sang a beautiful song with Laurie Lewis about how the cookie crumbles. I smiled at him as he walked up the aisle, & he put his hand on my shoulder as he passed.

You can hear them play "Angel Band", also from the O Brother soundtrack, on the Prairie Home Companion website, here.

The Cover of Jonathan Safran Foer's book "Eating Animals"

I accidentally bought a new hardcover copy of this book while attempting to Christmas shop for other people. It's a beautifully written book about vegetarianism, but sadly, I have to report, I don't think he's doing a very good job of including non-vegetarians within its ideal audience. Still, he's one lovely author, & it's lovely just to be curling up in the sun beneath my Christmas tree reading his words (Jonathan Safran Foer hasn't published anything since 2005's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, one of my favorite books.) And isn't the cover art kind of Christmasy?

Book Review: The Invention of Hugo Cabret (2007) by Brian Selznick

I love this children's book that my nieces were reading, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It's 500 pages, hundreds of which are luscious black & white pencil drawings, meant to imitate the feel of early silent film. Many of the drawings are very abstract - there's some which are just curtains, or just a movie projector light, or just blackness. It has a sophisticated premise with dark themes, intricate metaphors, European angst, ennui & frustration. But it always flows with intrigue & wonder appropriate for its age-group: my eight-year-old nieces were already re-reading it for the second time, having read ahead of their class. And their uncle snatched it away & spent most of Thanksgiving weekend reading it antisocially in the corner.

Here's an interview with the author where you can see some of the illustrations, & an explanation of the premise:

(I un-embedded that video, because it played automatically, but it's here: http://www.expandedbooks.com/video/view/150 -spoiler alert.)

Also, the book's website, with more links, is here: www.theinventionofhugocabret.com

Movie Review: Woody Allen's "Celebrity" (1998)

The story behind this movie is that, about ten years ago, I wrote the name down on a list of films, at my parent's house on one of my dad's pieces of scratch paper. (He cuts used computer paper into perfect quarters & leaves them in stacks around the house.) Half a decade later, when my parents joined NetFlix, they had that forgotten piece of scratch paper & added the names of the films to their new queue. I had never gotten around to seeing the movie Celebrity. But for years now, it's become a code word for, whenever I try to recommend anything to my parents, they're like, oh god, remember when we watched that one film you liked, it was so unbearably horrible, we can't trust any of your recommendations. This went on for years & years.

So I had low expectations, & a weird relationship with an unwatched movie. I had assumed it was as mediocre as some of Woody Allen's other toss-off flicks of the past few decades. And I have a high tolerance for Mr Allen's worst movies, verily, verily, I say unto you, I love most of them. (Did anyone else even make it to the end of Happy Ending? Don't even attempt it.)

With a free afternoon, a hookah packed with banana & pomegranate-flavored shisha, a few creamy Boont summer solstice ales, I watched it on a whim. I think it was my favorite movie I've seen all year. I used to think the only movie Kenneth Branagh was good in was Harry Potter II, but I couldn't get enough of him in this. His Woody Allen impersonation isn't perfect enough to be a knock-off, but it's own organic Allen-esque character. And the two vignettes with him & Charlize Theron (as a bizarre supermodel) & with Leonardo DiCaprio (as an abusive celebrity) are terrific. And this has one of Woody Allen's cooler casts, with Bebe Neuwirth as a prostitute sex-instructor who chokes on her instructional banana, & strange cameos by Hank Azaria, Donald Trump, & Jeffrey Wright, & Melanie Griffith, & I'm not cool enough to recognize everybody. And the relationship between Judy Davis' character & Joe Mantegna's character is extremely moving & lovingly crafted. And I love when Woody lets the plot get longer & more convoluted, with characters coming in & out & everything playing off of the theme & development.

So, Mom & Dad, I will now recommend this film to you.

Future Movie Reviews: The Boat That Rocked (2009)

Today premiering a new segment, Future Movie Reviews, where we review movies that haven't come out yet. The problem with reviewing movies on this website, is I don't tend to see them until months after everyone else has. So to get the jump on the blogosphere, we now review movies months before they're released.

THE BOAT THAT ROCKED (August 2009)

It's rare that a movie explodes off the screen with not only flames, but heart & heat. Of course, today, with the latest slickest 3D technology, anything is possible. And it is brave & commendable that director Richard Curtis chose, as the newest venture into 3D filmmaking, not a swashbuckling space-pirate CGI travesty or animated inside-jokathon, but a more intimate drama of lost ambition & repressed desire. There are no aliens or superheros, altho there is still plenty coming off of the screen into the IMAX hall & scaring the bejesus out of the most Jaws III-weathered 3D fans.

The Boat That Rocked, which will be the first movie about gays in Iowa since their supreme court ruling in favor of legalized same-sex marriage, this movie seems oddly timely. However, it has been years in the making, suffering rewrite after rewrite & finally landing on the desk of Hollywood outsider Richard Curtis. It marks a marked departure from his only other film, Love Actually (2003), which wound together many different love stories with wit & Christmas miraculousness. The characters in The Boat That Rocked have difficulty exposing their emotions at first, love as a concept seen on television & heard on classic rock stations, but never visiting the small Fire Station in Annis, Iowa.

Like Brokeback Mountain, this movie's predecessor in many ways, The Boat That Rocked scrapes away at the surface of the latent homosexuality in a classic American archetype: the patriotic firefighter drama. With 3D glasses at select IMAX cinemas, I can say it more than scrapes the surface. Having mastered & redefined difficult roles like Hamlet, Benedict & Harry Potter's Professor Gilderoy Lockhard, one would think Kenneth Branagh would put his career into cruise control & milk his successes. But his decision to keep taking controversial challenging roles like Fireman Dormandy in The Boat That Rocked shows he's still got it. Is there anything this veteran actor cannot do? Dormandy's repressed urges are written all across Branagh's chiseled firefighter face, the ways his eyes linger on the asses of his coworkers as they shower together at the Annis Fire Station. The authenticity of Branagh's weird little facial ticks & impeccable Iowan accent make us momentarily forget that this is a huge 3D fiction. Branagh is known as one of history's most intense method actors; he spent years walking around pretending to be Prince Hal & Hamlet. Due to this movie's delayed schedule & setbacks, many real small towns in Iowa have gotten to know too well Fireman Dormandy, actually rescuing cats from trees & casting homoerotic glances at policemen.

After a slow first hour, where we get to know the different bachelors in the Fire Station & their lovable dalmatian Santorum,-- (Philip Seymore Hoffman is notable as Fire Chief Count, adding imperceptible variation on the same roll he plays in every movie) -- the plot shifts into high gear when the Annis City Hall is struck by a freakish lightning storm. You might want to bring your Ray Bans to put over your 3D-glasses for the realistic & terrifying fire at City Hall. (It is rumored this scene alone went a million dollars over budget.) Fireman Dormandy & his partner Fireman Twatt (played by Jack Davenport, last seen as Norrington in the Pirates of the Carribean franchise) are trapped together in the mayor's office with the inferno raging at every exit. The smoke that would normally asphyxiate them now acts as a cloak of protection allowing them to utter what they never before could. But words are inadequate after decades of repression, & with death inevitable, what follows is the hugest flaming fuckfest ever seen in cinema. The last few minutes of Dormandy & Twatt's lives, in this movie, are blown out into the last thirty-five minutes of the film. The Greatful Dead's "Dark Star" fills our auricular sensations. Branagh & Davenport's bodies become each other & then become the fire in a 3D light show which makes the end of 2001: A Space Oddysey look like Alf: Season Two. "Sit down, you're rocking the boat!" yells Fireman Dormandy at the titular moment. "Sit down... on me!"

The Boat That Rocked is Rated R for obscenities, adult content, & one of the longest hottest gay sex scenes ever imaginable. Opens August 28th, 2009, in theaters everywhere.

Movie Review: Star Trek

I feel like I don't have the clearance to write about Star Trek, like you have to actually know something or everything about the history of the franchise to evaluate the new version. But as an uninitiated, I have a few complaints. I should start by saying that this movie seemed to have real soul, a soul of its own, which is rare for the re-hashing of an old brand. But what was with turning James Kirk into James Dean? All of his recklessness always being rewarded & vindicated was irritating. But also an out-of-date dumb American trope which didn't work in this context. Is that what we want the morals of our movies to be, that if you're destined to be the captain of the Enterprise, you can swagger, cheat, & punch your way to the top deck, then absolve yourself by saving the day? Won't somebody think of the children!

So if Kirk seemed like a Bush-ian frat boy, it was unfair to put the whiny young Spok next to old Leonard Nimoy's gravitas. Nimoy, these days, is also a photographer specializing in large women (pictured to the left.) And my third & final complaint is that I wish, even when action sequences are completely artificial, that they could at least hold the camera still for a few seconds to get some grounding. Like when Kirk & Sulu are fighting off those goons &
Sulu is doing some nifty sword-play, the camera was shaking all over & the editor chopped it up into a complete mess. Even in the new Star Wars they let us see some light saber duels with some actual correography. Here ends my rant. It's a pretty good movie & the visuals are often beautiful. I even got the feeling they could make some pretty good sequels.

Here's the classic William Shatner recording of "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds":

	William Shatner - Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds

And "Star Trekkin'" by The Firm:

	Firm - Star Trekkin

Teabagging Review

The Huffington Post had a slideshow of the most offensive Teabagging signs, here are three:

And Hendrik Hertzberg linked to this MSNBC talking head, who packed more teabagging puns onto cable television than I thought was allowed:

Dan Lafferty's Theology: The Asshole Earth

I'm still totally haunted by the book I read last week, Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven. I don't want to give too much away, because this might be a book that every American should read. The central narrative is about the Lafferty brothers, all of whom started out as fairly normal Mormon boys who drifted into fundamentalism, culminating in some truly gruesome murders. The book does a nice job weaving in all the scandalous & rich history of the Mormon church with much of the other scandalous & rich contemporary Mormon history. So, there's a precedent in Mormonism (and, what, every other religion) to have certain murders & "removals" prophesied by God.

Krakauer has at the climax of the book a seriers of monologues by the murderer Dan Lafferty (again, without giving too much away, but the man sliced the head off of his infant neice!) In prison, Laffery has come to believe that he is Elijah, & here is some of his theology in his own words. "At a certain point Christ gathered all His Children around Him & announced:

"I want to have a party that's gonna last for a thousand years. You interested? You want to party with Me on this earth for a thousand years?"

And we said, "Hell, yeah!"

Se He said, "Okay, that's the good part. Here's the bad part: you can't have something for nothing. ... For six thousand years I'm gonna let the earth become hell before I turn it into heaven. And hell, by definition, is where the devil & his children are running shit. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna let the devil populate the earth with all of his assholes, & then I'm gonna sprinkle you, My children, on the earth a few at a time. And every hour you spend on this hell-on-earth with the assholes, you're going to be building up credits for the Big Party. It's gonna take about six thousand years, but by then we'll have all the credits we'll need fo our party. And then I'll come, & we'll harvest the earth - basically, we'll remove all the assholes - & clear the dance floor for our one thousand-year party."

Christ told His Children, "I know life is fucking crazy, but I'm here to tell you there's a purpose behind it. We're working for the Kingdom of God. And the way we do that is we put in our time here. And every hour you put in here is building up credit for the Big Party. That's the promise. That's the covenant. It's going to be crazy down there for a while, but in the end, thru Elijah, I will come."

Since we're all here in hell-on-earth, where the devil & his children run everything that is organized, it makes sense that the children of the devil would trick us into worshipping their asshole god. But before the God of love makes the scene, it will be important somehow to help His children - the children of love - have their eyes opened to who this cool fucker is who will be coming to befriend them on the day known in the Bible as the "Great & Dreadful Day of the Lord" (great for His children; dreadful for the assholes) - which is also known in the parable of the wheat & tares as "the harvest".

It is prophesied that the "Great & Dreadful Day" will be when Christ sends His angels like reapers to gather out of His kingdom all those who are not His & kill them; & that's in part what I was foreshadowing when I took the lives of Brenda & Erica [Lafferty]. I know that might sounds a little gory or something, but it feels like the right interpretation to me. I don't think the angels in this prophecy are beings with wings that fly down from heaven, but more like what Joseph [Smith, Jr.] & Brigham [Young] called "avenging angels": men already living here on earth who will just be taking care of their Fathers' business like I was, once they learn who their Father is & have been properly instructed.

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More shameless advertisement:
My illuminated nonsense rhyming poetry book - only $2.15 on scribd.com:

S. Sandrigon - Prophecy and Doggerel 2009

Music Review: Bold Twotturgies

A short track, mixing two piano pieces by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou with part of the old Gershwin recording of Rhapsody in Blue, was given to a dj at KALX 90.7 & played last Sunday night. (Listen to it below) This prompted Mr Mary to twatt boldly about the supremacy of Guebrou's pianoing. Now I am all but against extreme assertions, especially across the tweetosphere, but with enough qualifiers, anyone is the world's best something. The folloing tweetologue followed:

OlafMary
TSEGUE-MARYAM GUEBROU IS THE BEST PIANO PLAYER EVER TO LIVE AND PLAY THE PIANO.
about 20 hours ago from TwitterGadget

SSandrigon
@olafmary Who is the best never-to-have-lived Ethiopian piano player to have never played the piano?
about 20 hours ago from txt

SSandrigon
I've been reading about Joseph Smith all day- - charismatic prophet & naughty naughty boy.
about 20 hours ago from txt

SSandrigon
& sitting on the Berkeley campus, how young everyone looks: these girls are 6 yrs older than when polygs prefer them!!
about 20 hours ago from txt

OlafMary
@SSandrigon I am.
about 20 hours ago from TwitterGadget
in reply to SSandrigon

SSandrigon
@olafmary As one living non-ETHIOPIAN piano player to another, I am highly suspicious of that claim & you will have to prove it.
about 20 hours ago from txt

OlafMary
@SSandrigon I accept.
about 20 hours ago from TwitterGadget
in reply to SSandrigon


We await both proofs. Now, who is this Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou? Several images of her I found seem to show her with a blue face. Here is the brief track played on KALX, bookended by her peculiar compositions.

Are they the finest piano pieces ever composed? She is in a crowded competition. Earlier on this WEBLOG, we heard one Father Basil Frison sing The Prayer of St Francis & play guitar. WFMU's Andrew Lander had earlier discovered him as another self-taught piano composer.

	Rev. Basil Frison - A Gondola In Venice
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Stay tuned at itwaslost.org while we listen to other iconoclast pianists in the pianosphere to evaluated Mr Mary's claim of Tsegue-Maryam's superiority.

Music Review: Versions of Paranoid Android

Of course, there are many ways to listen to Radiohead's music without having to hear them perform it. (I'm referring to the British band, not to be confused with the late-John-Lennon-song cover band we had in college.) I woke up this morning to discover someone had put this entire song into a program called Mario Paint Composer. I'm not sure which came first, if the version off the album OK Computer is a painstaking re-creation of this one or visa versa:


There are several solo piano arrangements, from different universes. The NPR host Christopher O'Riley has arranged dozens of Radiohead songs for classical piano. My friend Mr Holt tells me that whole project is a bit sloppy, & also that O'Riley's performances of these arrangements are unsatisfying.

Now, Brad Mehldau's jazz versions are a whole different kicking squeeling gucci little piggy. Here's the version from the album Largo. I'll never get tired of hearing the prepared piano in the beginning:

	Brad Mehldau - Paranoid Android
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

And if you're into nerdily comparing dozens of different live jazz solos, Mehldau has no shortage to dig thru. There's a couple other covers of just this song released, & there's a few more on bootlegs, like this one in Perugia 1999, only about fifteen wanky minutes total:



The reggae band Easy Star All-Stars has covered the entire OK Cupid album, a bit of a hit-or-miss project. My favorite part about it is the newfound ability to understand the lyrics. About two minutes into Paranoid Android, the brass part is great. If there's anything Radiohead can learn from the Easy Star All-Star covers & Mehlau's Largo version, is that they should have much more trombones in their productions.

	Easy Star All-Stars - Paranoid Android
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Movie Review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

We walked 4.4 miles to get to this movie, from South Berkeley to the El Cerrito speakeasy, north of Berkeley, much of that walk, once you get to the Ohlone Greenway, is along parks, fields, playgrounds, dog walks, bikers & joggers, & it's bustling at rush hour. Then, the 2-for-1 price showing of Benjamin Button was sold out! So we killed time at the strip mall for three hours waiting for the 9:15 show. I was happy to discover, while at Barnes & Noble reading More Information than You Require by John Hodgman, that on his quotes page by the frontispiece, he references Pierre Menard as the author for his Don Quixote quote. (The non-Borges Pierre Menard, no relation, is pictured in both images. Menard was a fur trader & beardless Illinois politician, not to be confused with Jorge Luis Borges' Pierre Menard, who was the author of Don Quixote.)

Benjamin Button, despite the oscar shark frenzy, is not one of the best movies. It's definitely a good movie, but I thought it fell short in bunches of ways. Like, when Benjamin Button is a middle-aged man in a teenage body, he sort of takes off around India with a bandanna. It would have been more interesting if he, like, kept dressing conservatively & was confused by the hippy culture developing around him. In that way & others, I felt they didn't really delve deep enough into the potential the premise allowed. Glean what afflicts him. Then, there's the Forrest Gump Dilemma. Was this movie too Forrest Gump-y or not Forrest Gump-y enough? By strattling this chasm it chose mediocrity over trodden paths, cliches, or originality. Next, there's the Big Fish hook: does anyone ever enjoy the scenes in the hospital where the history is being read to the infirmed elder? It worked in The Princess Bride, but most things that work in the Princess Bride don't work elsewhere. I call that the Princess Bride Conundrum. Lastly, there's the Brad Pitt Paradox. I'm taking suggestions for what the Brad Pitt Paradox might entail, but I reckon it has something to do with his simultaneously being a fine, subtle & intelligent actor & also whatever else he is - in short, tho, this wasn't his best role.

Thirteen Short Run-on Movie Reviews

I haven't been fulfilling my obligations as blog movie critic, so here goes, each in one run-on sentence or less:

Tootsie: I love hanging out with Dustin Hoffman & Bill Murray, a great script & some retro feminism, unsatisfactory ending.

God Grew Tired of Us: The Lost Boys of the Sudan come to America, these kids are charming heroes, I only watched the second half.

Being There: A middle aged Peter Sellers is a cloistered retard let loose in scary Washington D.C., nothing about this movie works, cringy enough to turn it off.

John Hughes: This man directed only eight movies, from 1984 to 1991 - Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird Science, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Planes Trains & Automobiles, She's Having a Baby, Uncle Buck, & Curly Sue; as well as the screenplays for Pretty in Pink & Some Kind of Wonderful - Every one of those a hit or worthy in its own right. What happened to him? Since then, it seems like he's done nothing but write the screenplays for the Beethoven & Home Alone sequels. I propose a retrospective of his work to resolve this mystery.

Once Upon the Time in the West: Still breathtaking on its fifth or sixth viewing, I'm always awed at the most slow-paced movies, like this & Kubrik's, which are always gripping & stay fun for three hours.

Enchanted: If we can put our 21st Century confusion about the Disney Princess Movie on hold, this movie works as a successful lampoon of itself, held together by the charismatic heroine Amy Adams. I especially love the Central Park big song-&-dance number.

A Star Is Born (1976): Worth watching just for Barbara Streisand's outfits, but I think she made Kris Kristofferson's character too kind & sweet, it would have been more dramatic if he was crueler. Streisand is such a weird leading lady.

The Jazz Singer (1980): Neil Diamond is so great on camera, he should have done more of these flicks, the best highlight is the non-sequitorial wandering around America bit in Act Three; plus, it took me ninety minutes to recognize Laurence Olivier as Diamond's disproving Rabbi father.

Leatherheads: George Clooney's attempt to make a Coen Brothers Comedy, it's a bit forgettable but the slapstick humor is first rate, & I appreciate the glimpse into Football's shaggy beginnings.

The Visitor: Thomas McCarthy's first movie was "The Station Agent", made excellent by the superb midget actor Peter Dinklage (who recently got to date Tina Fey in 30 Rock); don't accidentally rent The Visitor, it's one long politically-correct suck-fest.

Tropic Thunder: I was pretty drunk when I watched this movie, & my friend was attacking her lover, I would definitely watch it again, wait, shit, I forgot I already reviewed this movie.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: It got mediocre reviews when it came out & There Will Be Blood got great press; but I declare quite uncontroversially that TWBB was overhyped melodramatic flubber & The Assassination was cool & powerful.

Iron Man: Satisfying as a hollywood movie but unsatisfying as a superhero flick, the sequel will need better car chases.

The Hallelujah Trail: My favorite epic cowboy comedy.