December 2011
10 posts
6 tags
“You can’t make a great movie by accident. It just does not happen. There...”
– Matt Damon telling The Business’ Kim Masters why he agreed to star in Cameron Crowe’s We Bought a Zoo. I’m fascinated by how much controversy the Auteur Theory generates in academia and how little pause it gives those who actually work in the industry. In any case, when you write...
3 tags
“It is the people’s drink. It doesn’t get more American than whiskey.”
– Fred Sarkis, a bartender at the Sable Kitchen and Bar in Chicago, as quoted in Mickey Meece’s 12/24/11 New York Times piece about the current boom in American bourbon. Merry Christmas, indeed. Just remember it’s not okay to buy anyone you really care about “flavored...
3 tags
“I had a sh***y run on a bunch of shows, but you know, I’ve always said you...”
– Louis C.K. discussing his multiple previous TV failures in the first installment of his two-part podcast interview with Bill Simmons on the BS Report. This might be the best interview I’ve ever heard about the contemporary TV industry. He is brutally honest in analyzing both his own work and...
3 tags
Mr. Hitchens and Me
Many years ago Christopher Hitchens gave a lecture at Bedford Falls U. The Politics Department brought him to campus for our annual Scoop Jackson Lecture, for which he gave a presentation based on what he argued were the war crimes of Henry Kissinger. After his talk, which was amazing, he took Q & A, and he was as forthcoming a speaker as I’ve ever seen. The...
3 tags
America's sweetheart my a**
The following is a verbatim transcript of a conversation between myself and my cousin Little E, who recently broke up with her boyfriend of two years.
Me: Why’d you guys break up?
Little E: Well, there are a ton of reasons, but one of the biggest is he likes Sandra Bullock movies. Can you believe that sh*t? He’s a grown man, for chrissakes. We watched The Blind Side and almost as...
8 tags
Tower Heist: An Exercise in Contempt
I have no problem suspending my disbelief when I go to the movie theatre. I suspend it in the parking lot. I suspend it the day before. Sometimes, when I read about a movie that sounds good to me going into production, I’ll suspend it from that point on. Time travel, super heroes, dead baseball players emerging from corn fields, Justin Timberlake as a viable romantic lead, Ryan Gosling...
2 tags
5 tags
“As Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris reminds us…nostalgia for values...”
– Mark Harris, in the latest installment of Oscarmetrics on Grantland. While I agree with his point about Midnight, I’m nevertheless uncomfortable with the way so many critics, academic and otherwise, consider “sentimentality” pejoratively. To whit: I once had a professor tell me...
5 tags
“Am I drinking? As soon as I’m done.”
– Bob Harris (Bill Murray), said in response to a photo director during a print ad shoot for Suntory Whisky in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. This is the last film I’m teaching this semester and it’s easily one of my three or four all time faves—so dreamy and wistful and...
5 tags
“You don’t have to worry about what foreigners think about you,...”
– Shirley (Yvette Nicole Brown) to Jeff (Joel McHale) on “Foosball and Nocturnal Vigilantism,” the 12/1/11 episode of Community. Community has lost a lot this year and it’s no surprise it’s being put on a network mandated “hiatus,” but it’s still got its...