Glitz devours substance in irksome “Sex and the City 2″

“Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” ~~Henry David Thoreau In 2008, “Sex and the City” was a nice surprise to fans who were expecting a rehash of a TV show that ended exquisitely. The outrageous fashions were there, but they played understudy to the authentic problems of four women (OK, three) approaching their 40s: struggling marriages, [...]

Review: “Iron Man” (2008)

Truth likes to hide in triteness; great responsibility does trail on the heels of great power. Along the way, people tried to tell billionaire weapons inventor Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) that. With all that ice clinking in his lowball of Scotch, he had trouble hearing them — and that’s not counting the times Tony was [...]

Pony ‘em up

Corporate types want you to think that good ideas come from brainstorming, diligent note-taking, focus groups and strategic meetings. In the real world, they come from alcohol. OK, maybe that’s not always true. (I seem to remember shaving off my arm hair once after too many Jägerbombs.) But take this little blog, cooked up by Unrulytravllr [...]

No. 40: “GoodFellas” (1990)

“Fuck you, pay me.” ~~Henry Hill People who rail about the evils of power are people who don’t have any. Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) learned that honest from his father, a working-class schnook made furious by his own powerlessness. The fix for that problem appeared right outside the window of Henry’s Brooklyn bedroom: the Lucchese crime family. These gangsters, with their [...]

My thought on today

Best Post Blog-a-thon

Almost four days late and a blog post short — it’s the story of my life, people. My sincerest apologies for forgetting to click “schedule” on this post, supposed to go out Saturday in accordance with He Shot Cyrus’ Best Post Blog-a-thon. Mea culpa or mea dodoheaded-a? These days, it’s hard to tell. So mosey [...]

I coulda been a contende– no, wait, I am one!

The truth is I had to restrain — I’m talking duct-tape-on-the-lips, strapped-to-a-chair levels of restraint — the urge to let slip that time-honored ode to Sally Fields’ Oscar speech. But since I imagine roughly 81,236 people have used this already or thought about it, I went with “On the Waterfront.” Because one simply can’t go wrong [...]

Movie That Made Going to the Movies Suck No. 7: “Halloween”

This review of John Carpenter’s horror classic “Halloween” is one in a list of 27 Great Movies That Made Going to the Movies Suck, a concept thunk up by Mike at You Talking to Me?. Visit his blog (click the link or the header) for the complete rundown of films. “Halloween” (1978) The Boogeyman is a [...]

TTC: “Spacehunter” (1983)

“You have a very enviable life force, a life force you’re going to share with me.” ~~Overdog Jeff Foxworthy, that sapient nutsheller of things classless, once remarked that “redneck” could be defined as “a glorious absence of sophistication.” While no evidence exists that he was talking about “Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone,” I have my suspicions. Because that [...]

No. 39: “4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile” (2007)

“Here’s what we’re going to do, OK? We’ll never speak of this again.” ~~Otilia Communist Romania was not a good place to be a woman. Under the decades-long tyrannical rule of Nicolae Ceauşescu, women were valued chiefly for their ability to produce offspring. The more children a woman produced, the more benefits she reaped; women [...]