tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-61354652011-09-01T11:48:16.970-04:00In which a boy who loves pop culture discovers he can write whatever he wants about it and no one will really care one way or the other.Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.comBlogger1401100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1108780920410020912005-02-18T21:38:00.000-05:002005-02-18T21:42:00.413-05:00

Last night Trump had what I'd call his first true impulse firing. Whereas in previous weeks he went for the obvious (and proper) choice, kicking out the losing team's project leader, this time he axed a non-leader. Granted, it was the lazy, irritating Michael, who two weeks ago used his immunity badge to blatantly slack off, and who last night did little but whine about feeling uncomfortable

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1108760912754870022005-02-18T16:10:00.000-05:002005-02-18T16:08:32.756-05:00

Certain things will always happen in movies like Constantine: It will rain, ominously and pointedly. The hero will see dead people. He will sidestep plot holes. He will watch his sidekicks die. The girl he tells to wait in the car won't wait in the car. The girl to whom he gives a protective amulet will forget to wear the protective amulet. Understand that this is just that kind of movie, and

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1108754273109935822005-02-18T14:17:00.000-05:002005-02-18T14:17:53.120-05:00

[To read Part I of this book club, go here.]John's response:It took my a good long time to get through The Plague as well. The first half went down easily enough, but as the story got bogged down in the pervasive ennui and resignation of months-long quarantine, it stalled. Reading became an uphill slog; procrastinating any return to the plight of Oran became the order of the day for me. Even

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1108176997875879222005-02-11T21:56:00.000-05:002005-02-11T21:56:37.876-05:00

Like a lot of American high-school students, my introduction to drama came from Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman -- a play that's sturdy and classic, but subversive in its own way, breaking down its rigid plotting with mildly fantastic, even postmodern elements. It's part of the canon now, meaning if we remember it at all now it's to take it for granted. But I thought of Death of a Salesman

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1108175552416683222005-02-11T21:30:00.000-05:002005-02-11T21:32:32.416-05:00

Missed last week's episode, but it turns out Verna quit (for real this time, making good on her threat from the week before) and Trump fired wacky Danny. This week, it was even more fun, as both teams, invited to film a 30-second commercial for a new body wash, flamed out -- Book Smarts with a queasy bit that managed to be homoerotic and homophobic, and Street Smarts with a leaden joke that

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1108173426305605332005-02-11T20:56:00.000-05:002005-02-12T14:42:37.180-05:00

Late Wednesday night I got an e-mail from the Nationals, inviting me to buy a partial season-ticket plan before they went on sale to the general public on Monday. So yesterday afternoon I did just that. My brother-in-law Josh and I are splitting Plan A, which seems to be a good 20-game cross-section of the Nationals's inaugural season in DC. We'll be in Section 445, way out in left field. Decent

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1107958337406372142005-02-09T09:13:00.000-05:002005-02-09T09:12:17.406-05:00

My younger brother has also weighed in on the Super Bowl that was (and might have been). Like my older brother, he brings actual knowledge of, you know, football to his post-game analysis -- which, like me, he uses as a springboard to ruminate on bigger things vis-a-vis Philadelphia and professional sports. And, if you're at all interested in the NHL, the younger brother has also been posting

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1107914118199945382005-02-08T20:54:00.000-05:002005-02-08T20:55:18.200-05:00

During a chat on Washingtonpost.com this afternoon, a reader called Jonathan Lethem on the "forced" and "unnecessary" second half of The Fortress of Solitude. Lethem's reply: I always sympathize with people who have trouble with the second section. The material is so troubling, and Dylan is so much less pleasant a character to spend time with... it's like the whole book has suffered a loss after

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1107831883763370342005-02-07T22:02:00.000-05:002005-02-07T22:04:43.763-05:00

The best movies are about a lot of different things, and Sideways, a very good one indeed, is hard to pin down. It's a road trip, a buddy movie, a mid-life crisis, a romantic comedy, a dreamy travelogue, and, if you want it, a philosophical meditation on the limitations of being a connoisseur. It's also -- there's no getting around this -- a male fantasy, turning on the idea that Miles (a

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1107828009260508192005-02-07T20:54:00.000-05:002005-02-09T08:57:14.610-05:00

Today I'm one box of Tastykakes poorer because Tom Brady's (and my brother-in-law Dave's) Patriots are flat-out better than Donovan McNabb's (and my) Eagles. Dave is from New England, I'm from South Jersey, and this year's Super Bowl lent itself quite nicely to an intrafamilial bet -- the aforementioned Tastykakes vs. a bottle of Vermont maple syrup. My brother already wrote up the game with more

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106968446371267672005-01-28T22:10:00.000-05:002005-01-28T22:14:06.370-05:00

Last night AMC was showing The Towering Inferno, and I watched the first half-hour or so, looking carefully for signs of my lost youth. None were to be found, which is odd, because this -- the greatest of all the disaster epics of the 1970s -- is the first movie I have a conscious memory of seeing in the theater. (And I'm pretty sure it is in fact the first movie I saw in the theater.) I expected

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106938131503542642005-01-28T13:46:00.000-05:002005-01-28T13:48:51.503-05:00

Donald Trump fires the right person for the second time in a row! Last week he booted Todd, the terminally hands-off project manager who led Magna (sorry -- "Book Smarts") to defeat, and this week he heaved Brian, the project manager for Net Worth (aka "Street Smarts"), whose raging Napoleon complex led to a unilateral executive decision to squander $14,000 of his team's $20,000 budget on 14

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106861718655110082005-01-27T16:33:00.000-05:002005-01-27T16:35:58.086-05:00

Curious about Donald Trump's latest wedding? Wonder no more: There seems to have been a ruthless excision from the guest list of all the canape swipers and celebrity hangers-on you usually see on Manhattan nights when fashion and commerce collide. Except for a few anomalies, like some strategic press and the guy who whitens Donald's teeth, the definition was you had to be Big -- literally, as in

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106795233197664422005-01-26T22:07:00.000-05:002005-01-26T22:07:13.196-05:00

Wednesday, January 26, 7:15 p.m. The escalator at Dupont Circle is out, meaning a controlled tumble down the slotted metal steps and into the concrete maw of the station. On the platform the train is waiting, six new cars, bright as summer, confident in their relaxed tension. This is the Red Line, busy, always busy, and tonight like all nights people swarm around its open doors, drained and

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106793219621176702005-01-26T21:30:00.000-05:002005-01-26T21:33:39.623-05:00

Andrew O'Heir reviews Sharon Waxman's new book, Rebels on the Backlot, in today's Salon. Despite the corny title and hackneyed subtitle (Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System), the book sounds interesting, examining the indie-film origins of Quentin Tarantino, Spike Jonze, David O. Russell, Paul Thomas Anderson, Steven Soderbergh, and David Fincher, and their

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106750126460524962005-01-26T09:31:00.000-05:002005-01-26T09:35:26.460-05:00

Two weeks ago I wrote about my friends Layla and Keith's ongoing mission to watch every movie on the American Film Institute's Top 100 list. Recently Layla left an update in the comments section of that post. Apparently they're still committed to the project but are taking a break; however, Layla shared some funny insights on the movies they've seen so far, so make sure you check out her writeup.

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106362688185051392005-01-21T21:57:00.000-05:002005-01-22T09:10:29.720-05:00

Thursday, January 20, 5:20 p.m. The Blue Line is heading north through the cold, bleached dusk. The cars are more crowded than usual, the islands of space that typically exist between the tired, poker-faced commuters now inhabited by people who are perceptibly more happy. They wear tuxedos and shiny dresses and footwear -- shiny, slick black-patent shoes, or shiny, strappy sandals -- that will be

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106361040503494702005-01-21T21:29:00.000-05:002005-01-22T09:11:49.473-05:00

Maybe the best moment on last night's episode of The Apprentice, which is kicking off its third season, came when the winning team -- the ones with so-called "street smarts" -- was dining with Donald Trump at the 21 Club. After the requisite champagne toast, a pugnacious fireplug of a candidate named Brian, who naturally comes from Philadelphia, asked Trump if it was true that, as the rumor goes,

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106358691678224732005-01-21T20:50:00.000-05:002005-01-21T22:00:25.400-05:00

If you're not my friend John, with whom I just read Albert Camus's The Plague for the purposes of discussing it, you might want to skip to another post. Unless French existential literature is what keeps you warm at night. (For an explanation of my book club, go here.) My introductory remarks: I can't tell you why it took me so long to get through The Plague. I picked it up and put it down over

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106247128994308592005-01-20T13:47:00.000-05:002005-01-20T13:52:08.993-05:00

Pursuant to yesterday's entry on the future of network news anchors, the Post's Tom Shales today reacts to the possibility of Katie Couric taking over from Dan Rather with typical Shales-ness: Rather had long planned to retire later this year, but the date was moved up to March after controversy arose over the "60 Minutes Wednesday" report, for which Rather, busy with other news duties, basically

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106161262601913542005-01-19T13:59:00.000-05:002005-01-19T14:02:29.143-05:00

From Tom Carson's review of The Fourth Network: How Fox Broke the Rules and Reinvented Television, by Daniel M. Kimmel, in the current issue of The Atlantic: For another, no matter how much they enjoy getting their world views buttressed right up to the fundament, Fox News viewers don't have bad taste in show biz. Especially when [Bill] O'Reilly is on, they're responding to brilliant TV, and if

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106143763610790102005-01-19T09:09:00.000-05:002005-01-19T09:09:50.953-05:00

I should have posted this last week, when it actually happened, but what's passed is past (past is passed? past is past?), and here we are now: Kudos to my brother, who recently had a sharp little item published in (on? by?) the Black Table's Black List (scroll down to "GIVING AWAY A HALL OF FAME PLAYER"). Predictably, it's about his beloved, beleaguered Phillies.

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106104442232262132005-01-18T22:13:00.000-05:002005-01-18T22:14:02.233-05:00

Howard Hughes was many things -- heir to an oil fortune, moviemaker, romancer of starlets, pilot, aeronautical engineer, germophobe, recluse -- and Martin Scorsese's buoyant The Aviator addresses all of them to varying degrees. But there's a reason the movie isn't called The Oil Tycoon or The Ladies' Man. Scorsese is most concerned with Hughes as a man of the skies, a winged visionary brought to

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106101348152311482005-01-18T21:20:00.000-05:002005-01-20T22:30:38.393-05:00

Last Friday night my wife and I drove to Charlottesville, Virginia, to watch our friend Louisa sing at a local club. I remember seeing Louisa perform with a bar band or two during college, more than a few years ago, but this was altogether different and delightful. She has a beautiful, relaxed voice, and she deployed it on 45 minutes of well-chosen covers -- the best and most surprising being "

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1106099737142024632005-01-18T20:55:00.000-05:002005-01-18T20:55:37.143-05:00

I'm not one for trampling on freedom of expression, but if Congress were to pass and the President were to sign a law prohibiting anyone, anywhere, from ever again mentioning Blue America and Red America, or the inherent dichotomy of their existences, or the sneering metrosexual atheists who live in the one and the burly gay-bashing Bible-thumpers who live in the other, I would not be entirely

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1105717935908211152005-01-14T10:50:00.000-05:002005-01-14T10:53:30.870-05:00

Last week the (relatively) big guns had their say in Slate's annual Movie Club, which early on got hijacked by a chip-on-the-shoulder discussion of the nature and plight of modern film criticism, and never really recovered. Now it's the amateurs' turn: Check out a passionate, easily distracted, many-headed take on the year in movies at The Conversation. (Link via About Last Night's Our Girl in

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1105624852869748782005-01-13T08:58:00.000-05:002005-01-17T17:11:24.840-05:00

Months and months ago, when this blog was on extreme hiatus, my friend Layla was nice enough not only to keep checking back but also, at the height of the drought, to send me an e-mail she hoped would inspire a post or two. And it didn't. Until now! As Ringo Starr once said: "P.S.: Forgive the lateness of my reply." Take it away, Layla: Keith and I, along with our friends Jon and Becky, have

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1105588783869586702005-01-12T22:23:00.000-05:002005-01-12T23:03:04.360-05:00

Wes Anderson's latest is even more of a grab bag than his last two. But whereas his eclectic, hermetically sealed visions usually flit around for a while before suddenly realizing an astonishingly precise emotional payoff (think Max dancing with Miss Cross at the end of Rushmore, or Chas's choked "I've had a rough year, Dad" toward the end of The Royal Tenenbaums), The Life Aquatic flits, then

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com49tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1095521542376995132004-09-18T11:25:00.000-04:002004-09-18T11:33:31.986-04:00

Just about six months to the day since my last substantive post (which turns out to have been weirdly prescient). I thought I was about done with Boats Against the Current, because toward the end there it was really starting to feel like an obligation. But recent conversations with my wife and Shawn are making me reconsider that. Next week I'm off to Belgium and Germany for two weeks. After that

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1087611740749364722004-06-18T22:20:00.000-04:002004-06-18T22:22:20.750-04:00

More later.

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079721028158561192004-03-19T14:16:00.000-05:002004-03-19T14:21:10.326-05:00

With the media hive still working its worry beads over Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, USA Today goes big today with a massive investigation into its own serial fabricator, Jack Kelley. The paper's damning conclusion (from an article written by my friend Blake): But an extensive examination of about 100 of the 720 stories uncovered evidence that found Kelley's journalistic sins were sweeping and

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079668138696809482004-03-18T22:24:00.000-05:002004-03-18T22:55:31.576-05:00

It was going to be great. Finally, the godfather of modern reality shows, and still my favorite in the TV genre I'll call "creative nonfiction," The Real World, was coming to Philadelphia. What better way to showcase the ongoing revival and dawning hipness of my often-maligned hometown (or, more accurately, the great city about 20 minutes from my hometown)? And can you imagine the material? Amber

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079666598663497172004-03-18T22:13:00.000-05:002004-03-18T22:27:26.700-05:00

The other day my friend Julia questioned an obituary writer's characterization of Spalding Gray as being obsessed with death and his own suicide. A good point, I thought, especially when I remembered the obits I wrote during my few years as a newspaper reporter, and the temptation I always felt to wring something epic and poetic from the life of someone I had never even met. But then my friend

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079665965814437142004-03-18T22:06:00.000-05:002004-03-18T22:16:05.920-05:00

St. Joe's got its groove back this afternoon with an 82-63 win over Liberty. Next up is Bobby Knight's Texas Tech Red Raiders on Saturday, and, man, would it be nice to knock them off, if only to watch Mr. Knight weigh the pros and cons of taking a swing at Phil Martelli. Go, Hawks!

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079452169146888812004-03-16T12:06:00.000-05:002004-03-16T12:07:36.060-05:00

So the Hawks have fallen to fifth in the rankings, but on the strength of their magnificent performance during the regular season they still clinched a No. 1 seed. Good. I don't want to get dragged into the debate over whether St. Joe's is overrated or the beneficiary of a soft schedule -- not because I think they're the greatest team in the country, but because this is a special time for the

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079450693473440052004-03-16T10:24:00.000-05:002004-03-16T10:31:01.326-05:00

Spalding Gray had been missing for two months when, early last week, it was announced that a body pulled from New York's East River was his. I know (or knew) Gray from his performances in movies like King of the Hill and The Paper but have never seen the work for which he was most lauded: his long, introspective, apparently funny monologues, a few of which were captured on film, in movies like

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079231704461888082004-03-13T21:04:00.000-05:002004-03-13T21:50:24.576-05:00

Once or twice now I think I've mentioned that I tend to like critics whose love of the medium they write about shines through even the gloomiest of their reviews. That's not a quality you find often in, for example, the Washington City Paper, whose pages generally smolder with the grim anger of the betrayed and disappointed hipster (not to mention a sometimes laughably omnipresent hostility

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079143233143041882004-03-12T21:00:00.000-05:002004-03-12T21:18:58.640-05:00

Slate's usually dead-on Jack Shafer swings and misses with a critique of Gawker and Wonkette. His rationale is a bit confusing, but I think his problem is that these two highly addictive gossip sites are too ironic and/or mean-spirited and don't work hard enough to develop or sustain ideas. After several paragraphs of throat-clearing and disclaiming in which he admits he likes Gawker and Wonkette

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079140969100975902004-03-12T20:38:00.000-05:002004-03-12T21:09:33.810-05:00

Well. That was ugly. I had an uneasy feeling going into the game, what with the perfect regular-season record and, more mind-blowingly, the No. 1 ranking, but the last thing I expected was for the Hawks to get their doors blown off by 20 points and return home after the first round of the A10 tournament. What do you say now? How about, Xavier is the exact type of team you'd have expected to beat

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079106925702611062004-03-12T10:55:00.000-05:002004-03-12T11:01:45.873-05:00

One of my pet peeves is those surveys that bemoan the ignorance of American high-school students. The implications are always that kids today are a bunch of MTV-addled slackers and troglodytes and that previous generations were composed entirely of serious young people who did nothing but study and go to church. I've always thought that the reality is somewhat more complicated -- that there are

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079102308928471862004-03-12T09:41:00.000-05:002004-03-12T10:46:06.123-05:00

One of my pet peeves is those surveys that regularly bemoan how much American high-school students don't know. The implications are always that kids today are a bunch MTV-addled slackers and troglodytes and that previous generations were composed entirely of quiet, purposeful scholars who did nothing but study and go to church. But I've always thought the reality is somewhere in between -- that

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079101146140052212004-03-12T09:19:00.000-05:002004-03-12T09:24:59.793-05:00

One more post about The Passion, and then I think we'll move on. The spirit moved my friend Lisa to weigh in thusly on Keith's doomstruck thoughts vis-a-vis the cultural implications of the Gibson movie: So...Keith's whole beef with the movie is that people will *think* the suffering of Christ has been made real for them, when in fact it hasn't? I'm not sure I understand what's wrong with people

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1079100493267462102004-03-12T09:08:00.000-05:002004-03-12T09:11:24.500-05:00

You might have noticed that, in the last month, my posts have trailed off quite a bit. I wish I could attribute that to something glamorous like The Great American Novel I'm working on or the round-the-world cruise on which I just whisked my wife away, but in fact the usual suspects are to blame. Work has been crushingly busy, we've been away from home for a few weekends, and my daughter, who is

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1078516729380355252004-03-05T14:58:00.000-05:002004-03-05T15:03:12.030-05:00

Good news: I've beaten Glenn into submission on Mystic River. Now, he's responding to my geek confessional: Fine, I give up on Mystic River. I will not defend it any longer. But what's this I read about Smallville, comic books and such? I am a devoted watcher of the show, though it gets a bit too WB for me at times. The most interesting stat of the show to me is that they cannot go one single

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1078514741832216992004-03-05T14:25:00.000-05:002004-03-05T14:29:21.200-05:00

So, I've gone and gotten myself hooked on The Apprentice, and two things have jumped out at me: (1) This is about the worst advertisements imaginable for business professionals. Of course, you never how a reality show's editing distorts or deforms the characters and situations it alleges to be chronicling, but, still, if The Apprentice is offering a portayal of its contestants that's even

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1078003642002684132004-03-03T16:03:00.000-05:002004-03-03T16:23:47.200-05:00

Keith had this to say about last Tuesday's post on The Passion of the Christ: So, I read your info on Gibson's PotC (perhaps giving this movie an acronym that reads as "Potsy" is not the best thing...) and further read Ebert's review. I understand his point of the film 'making it real' for him, in essence, and I assume that this is/will be the case for a large number of viewers. However, it is my

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1077646770501953292004-02-24T13:19:00.000-05:002004-02-24T13:23:40.140-05:00

The other day Glenn took me to task for pouring cold water on Tim Robbins' performance in Mystic River. As luck would have it, Entertainment Weekly's two film critics, Owen Gleiberman and Lisa Schwarzbaum, have been discussing this year's Oscar nominees, and Gleiberman has this to say about Mystic River and Mr. Robbins: I'd argue that the trio of ''Mystic River'' acting nominations sprung, in

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1077635974051192202004-02-24T10:19:00.000-05:002004-02-24T10:22:21.903-05:00

Roger Ebert has an early review of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which opens nationwide tomorrow. Ebert gives it four stars, calling it "the most violent movie I have ever seen" and praising it for "provid[ing] for me, for the first time in my life,...a visceral idea of what the Passion consisted of." It's a lengthier review than usual, and, typical of Ebert, it reads more like a

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1077633891111192162004-02-24T09:44:00.000-05:002004-02-24T09:49:56.920-05:00

A Philadelphia cop who loves lacrosse and hockey isn't the first person you'd expect to geek out, but, sure enough, there's my friend Shawn getting all Comic Book Guy on us, gushing about The WB's Smallville and the cult-classic movie They Live. Bring on the 20-sided die, my man. I admire Shawn's openness about this. As a lifelong comic-book reader, Star Trek fan, and friend of sci-fi

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1077551480294859492004-02-23T10:51:00.000-05:002004-02-23T11:01:05.140-05:00

I finally got to see St. Joe's play in person on Saturday afternoon, and it wasn't just any game. It was a Big Five game at the Palestra against Temple, which through the years has probably been Philadelphia's highest-profile, most consistently successful college-basketball team. But this year the Owls are struggling, and in the end the Hawks didn't have too much trouble with them. Final score:

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1077500776844904972004-02-23T10:20:00.000-05:002004-02-23T10:23:16.483-05:00

[To read Part I of this book club, click here; to read Part II, click here.] John's follow-up remarks: Nice follow-up re: Red Gold. As far as "Homage to Catalonia" is concerned, it's one more reason I think you'll really appreciate Furst's "best" book, "Night Soldiers," which deals with the real inner workings of the big-C Communist movement (as you call it): NKVD agents playing both Spanish

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1077500260033223862004-02-22T20:18:00.001-05:002004-02-24T13:24:58.200-05:00

Against all odds, I still get reader mail. Like this bit from Glenn: I must take exception sir to your views on Mystic River in your Oscar opinion piece. While I do not think Sean Penn gave the greatest performance in the last 50 years as the New York Times critic said (A.O. Scott I think) I do think Tim Robbins was fantastic.  Rather than over the top he seemed to sink down into the role

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1077161925445703962004-02-18T22:41:00.000-05:002004-02-18T22:41:25.450-05:00

I've been telling myself the Hawks' perfect record doesn't really mean anything, but clearly I'm a liar, because when I logged on to ESPN.com a few minutes ago to check the score from tonight's game, I found myself holding my breath. And they were only playing Fordham, for God's sake. In any event, the streak is alive and well, as St. Joe's pasted the Rams, 72-54. The Hawks' next game is this

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1077117295792375802004-02-18T22:08:00.000-05:002004-02-18T22:15:39.390-05:00

Last night at the Kennedy Center I saw the American debut of France's Opera Comique, which was performing La Vie Parisienne, the classic operetta by Jacques Offenbach. In theory, I shouldn't have liked it very much because of (1) its large doses of the broad French humor of which I'm not a fan; (2) the positioning of the supertitles high above the stage, meaning I had to split my time between

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1077117345826620422004-02-18T21:28:00.000-05:002004-02-18T21:31:02.700-05:00

My favorite moment in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind comes toward the beginning of the movie. The "hero," Chuck Barris, is telling some story about his life in voiceover narration, and on the screen you see him sitting in a bar. The action cuts away from the bar and focuses on something else, with the voiceover narration continuing, and then it comes back to the bar, and now the narration is

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1077117203432466002004-02-18T10:13:00.000-05:002004-02-18T10:16:03.110-05:00

[To read Part I of this book club, click here; to read Part II, click here.] Donna's follow-up remarks: You mentioned the possibility that the book is not explicitly about race, despite the title. I found this interesting, because I think the wish the title alludes to could be one of any awkward, self-conscious young girl. I certainly felt the poignancy of the choice of blue eyes -- about as far

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1076988214264687732004-02-16T22:11:00.000-05:002004-02-16T22:26:11.793-05:00

Can you believe it's been a month since my last post on Return of the King? I thought I had moved on, but I found I couldn't contain my happiness today when I read the always astute James Lileks' thoughts on King (scroll down to "Saw Lord of the Rings, finally"): Right away I realized Jackson’s peril: we know the characters by now, so the joy of discovery is gone. Our plucky Hobbit hero Frodo is

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1076985508035942252004-02-16T22:10:00.000-05:002004-02-16T22:12:28.250-05:00

So, this St. Joe's thing. The last time I blogged about the Hawks, they had just won their 18th straight game. Since then, they've won four more -- against two tough Atlantic 10 teams and two Big Five rivals -- and landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated and, most bizarre of all, climbed to No. 2 in the rankings. I don't think I've had this much fun following a team since the 1993 Phillies. I

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1076034211535931952004-02-05T21:26:00.000-05:002004-02-05T21:28:43.450-05:00

[To read Part I of this book club, click here.] J-- I should try to explain what I meant when I said (before our "official" discussion started) that Red Gold wasn't that memorable. I was talking about the specifics of the plot, which are slight -- admirably so, in my mind, but more on that later -- and which went down easily and then were gone. But what stuck with me throughout my reading, and

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075951078116267872004-02-04T22:55:00.000-05:002004-02-04T22:57:36.466-05:00

...for making sure that 80 percent of its Best Picture nominations were movies I've seen. Of the five, I only missed Seabiscuit. As I said a month ago, I didn't get to the theater very often last year, so I can't definitively say what should win in each category. Instead, I'll offer my ridiculously skewed, uninformed, incomplete opinions about the big six. Actor: I didn't see House of Sand and

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075514343579168762004-02-04T21:53:00.000-05:002004-02-04T21:56:48.700-05:00

I'm still playing catch-up after a few weeks of fitful blog-reading. For example, I should have linked to this Guardian article by Claire Messud when it first appeared a few weeks ago. In it, Messud talks about re-reading Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady 20 years after she first read it: To revisit the novel 20 years later was, for me, to read a different story entirely. The memorable scenes

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075694603485447432004-02-01T22:45:00.000-05:002004-02-01T23:05:40.543-05:00

The hits keep on coming, as the Hawks beat Temple yesterday to extend their streak to 18. It was a nice warm-up for tomorrow night's game against Villanova, St. Joe's most hated Big Five rival and the source of all evil in the known universe. Happily, that one will be on national TV, meaning I can finally see the Hawks in action -- which should really whet my appetite for the game (against Temple

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075512286816700732004-01-30T20:01:00.000-05:002004-01-30T20:29:30.840-05:00

My little ditty on '70s soft rock refuses to die. Here's the latest bit of feedback (music, feedback -- get it?!), from my brother Tommy: As long as you're still discussing weeks-old posts -- and when you think about it, '70s soft rock is, like, decades old, so who cares -- I feel compelled to offer a shout out to 10cc. I dare anyone to hear "The Things We Do for Love" on a car radio and not sing

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075500654166962672004-01-30T17:10:00.000-05:002004-01-30T17:14:07.530-05:00

Earlier this week The Minor Fall, The Major Lift started a great discussion about cliched TV plots: Two of the recurring scenaria we seem to remember from our early days of television viewing (and it was a looong time ago; those of you who were in grade school when Nevermind came out should probably skip this item entirely) were a) the cop who, pulling over a speeder, discovers that there’s a

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075497467335437602004-01-30T16:17:00.000-05:002004-01-30T16:20:33.466-05:00

Things are blogging out all over. The latest eruption is "Middie Back!," a blog my friend Shawn seems to have started yesterday. In his ongoing efforts to disguise how smart he really is, Shawn is spinning "Middie Back!" as "Some rants and ravings from the dumbest guy in his college clique." In fact, I can think of a few people in our college clique who were much dumber than Shawn. And, anyway,

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075480255760919452004-01-30T11:30:00.000-05:002004-01-30T11:36:57.170-05:00

In giving some attention to The Atlantic's state of the union special report last week, I probably shortchanged the rest of the issue. In addition to the usual assortment of thought-provoking book reviews (including Terry Castle on the new translation of Don Quixote and Christopher Hitchens on Proust's Swann's Way), there's a depressing article by James Fallows that debunks some conventional

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075478228109520222004-01-30T10:57:00.000-05:002004-01-30T10:59:50.373-05:00

Teresa Heinz Kerry, Judith Steinberg Dean, Elizabeth Edwards, Gert Clark -- they're post-Hillarys aiming to be post-Lauras. They're none of them cupcakes, but they don't pretend to bake cupcakes either. Tina Brown, ladies and gentlemen. For a more thorough evisceration, see Wonkette.

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075175993492560702004-01-26T23:37:00.000-05:002004-01-27T17:28:28.670-05:00

My readership is taking off -- it must be more than a half-dozen at this point -- and I have the e-mails to prove it. The problem is, some of them go back a week or two, but for whatever stupid reason I didn't post or reply to them at the time, which, now that I think about it, probably means I've driven off those readers. We'll go in chronological order. First up is my sister-in-law Jen (also

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075173177256259572004-01-26T22:46:00.000-05:002004-01-26T22:50:02.796-05:00

Last spring, as part of my book club, my friend John and I read The World at Night, a World War II thriller by Alan Furst. The book is set in Paris during the Nazi occupation, and its protagonist is Jean Casson, a film producer whose weary, cynical romanticism suggests the Humphrey Bogart of Casablanca; indeed, much like Rick Blaine, Casson does what he can to coexist with the Nazis while also

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075149674456267022004-01-26T15:57:00.000-05:002004-01-26T15:57:11.686-05:00

Cursed with a humorless City Paper and an impotent "Reliable Source," Washington has long needed an outlet for quality snark. Something like Gawker, but in DC. And now we have it. It's called Wonkette, and it is, in fact, Gawker but in DC. And, best of all, it's edited by snarkmistress Ana Marie Cox, late of Boats Against the Current fave The Antic Muse, who says: Wonkette provides an

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1075145731573066342004-01-26T15:07:00.000-05:002004-01-26T16:16:15.860-05:00

St. Joe's remains unjinxed -- or, at least, unbeaten. Victory No. 17 came with the 114-63 flattening of St. Bonaventure on Saturday night. And now I'm getting nervous. Since I'm not what you'd call a "serious" (or "particularly smart") sports fan, my interest in this is fueled mostly by bandwagon enthusiasm, sentimental hometown boosterism, and superstition. So I'm wondering if it wouldn't be

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074826730101471382004-01-24T15:40:00.000-05:002004-01-24T16:09:26.796-05:00

The more I read this novel by Lionel Shriver, the less I could shake the feeling that it was the result of a conversation between stoned dorm mates. You know the type: If a tree fell in the forest and no one was around, would it make a sound? Could God make a rock so heavy he couldn't lift it? Could Superman outrun the Flash? And, in a variation on the irresistible-force-vs.-immovable-object

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074893616346400082004-01-23T16:33:00.000-05:002004-01-23T16:37:50.250-05:00

My younger brother has drunk the Kool-Aid. Last night he stepped up to the plate -- or, as is more appropriate for him, onto the ice -- and launched a blog called There It Is. He promises "mostly unedited rambles on sports, pop culture and -- a little -- politics," but if you're interested in getting an immediate sense of his worldview, you'll find everything you need in his first substantive

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074823675660714392004-01-22T21:08:00.000-05:002004-01-23T09:35:31.966-05:00

The latest issue of Green Arrow gets four silver bullets (!) from Glenn, who writes: Sanity is restored with the return of Judd Winick as well as Hester and Parks for the start of a new storyline. And we immediately see why Winick is one of the best Green Arrow writers ever. The story opens narrated by Black Canary. One of the strengths of Winick is that he covers the entire GA extended family so

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074821634671991092004-01-22T20:34:00.000-05:002004-01-22T20:39:12.936-05:00

Now you know why I rarely write about politics. Instead of inflicting last night's whiny, useless post on the State of the Union address on my reader(s), I should have just flogged the January/February issue of The Atlantic, in which the magazine publishes its own "state of the union" special report. As with most of The Atlantic's political writing, the special report isn't so much bipartisan or

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074744339956709442004-01-21T23:06:00.000-05:002004-01-21T23:08:32.090-05:00

Apparently I didn't jinx St. Joe's by writing about them yesterday, as tonight the Hawks beat UMass, and not by a little. If you're counting, that's 16-0. If you're not counting, it's still 16-0.

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074697175867859292004-01-21T22:46:00.000-05:002004-01-21T22:48:54.340-05:00

The excellent 1996 documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills explored the dubious convictions of three teenagers for the gruesome murders of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Granted seemingly limitless access to the victims' families, to the defendants and their families, to prosecutors, defense attorneys, and police, and to the court proceedings themselves,

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074739258994265442004-01-21T21:41:00.000-05:002004-01-21T21:43:00.496-05:00

It's a bit late in the day to comment on last night's State of the Union address, but what the hell. I don't think I'll do any worse than the clowns who are actually paid to talk about this stuff and who completely blew the Iowa caucuses two days ago. Mostly, Bush's speech made me tired -- tired of gross partisanship, tired of cheap rhetoric, and, above all, tired of the presidential campaign

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074628296637635432004-01-20T15:36:00.000-05:002004-01-20T15:41:06.606-05:00

If you remember, last week I ended my review of Lamb with this random comment: "If only my teachers had been that candid about it -- and about Jesus who was called Joshua -- in CCD all those years ago." That drew this response from my mother, the woman who paid for me to attend CCD: Could be because they didn't have a clue? Yowza. What do you really think, Mom? Not that she's wrong. I attended

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-107452611987601002004-01-20T13:55:00.000-05:002004-01-20T14:57:42.873-05:00

It might finally be safe to write about my alma mater. The men's basketball team, the Hawks, is 15-0 and ranked third in the country -- a pretty big deal for a private liberal-arts college with an undergraduate student population of 3,500 or so. Not wanting to jinx the Hawks' best season in decades, I've been holding off on writing about them, waiting for them to lose their first game. But when

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074621939662866992004-01-20T13:05:00.000-05:002004-01-20T15:52:13.170-05:00

Terry Teachout helps me feel better about my penchant for reviewing outdated books: Could it be that the interaction of book-oriented blogs and on-line bookstores is starting to have an unforeseen effect on literary criticism? Might the dynamics of what we now think of as "book reviewing" be in the process of evolving away from the books-as-news paradigm that drives the book-review sections of

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074272980144133342004-01-16T16:28:00.000-05:002004-01-16T16:31:21.090-05:00

Matt Welch comes out of the closet and confesses to a love that dare not speak its name: mid-1970s soft rock. His comments were prompted by the death of one of the genre's greats: Randy Vanwarmer, the wussy-throated troubadour who made it to No. 4 with the 1978 moaner "Just When I Needed You Most," died of complications from leukemia Monday night in Seattle. He was 48. Details, discography and

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074198889789953932004-01-15T15:34:00.000-05:002004-01-15T16:12:57.076-05:00

When it comes to historical events, you can usually count on Hollywood to get everything exactly wrong. But could it be that an insignificant but entertaining Western released 14 years ago inadvertently got it right? We go to Silver City, New Mexico, where the Associated Press reports there will be a hearing in two weeks on a petition to exhume the remains of Billy the Kid's mother, Catherine

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074136923526362232004-01-14T23:10:00.000-05:002004-01-16T16:50:10.950-05:00

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, by Christopher Moore, is a very funny novel, but maybe the funniest thing about it is that it is exactly what its subtitle says it is: an account of Jesus Christ's life as told by his best friend, Levi, whom everyone calls Biff. (The often-uttered moniker "Levi who is called Biff" never failed to make me laugh when I was reading.) The

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074135340611016572004-01-14T21:56:00.000-05:002004-01-16T16:47:24.233-05:00

There are those people who think Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 movie Solaris is a masterpiece, a hypnotic meditation on memory, consciousness, and human nature. Then there are the rest of us, who think Solaris is a flabby, somnambulant bore that might have been based on a stoned college freshman's journal entries rather than Stanislaw Lem's classic science-fiction novel (which, repeat after me, I

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074117800853804262004-01-14T20:49:00.000-05:002004-01-16T12:09:39.186-05:00

For a few weeks now, I've been harvesting e-mail from family and friends and threshing them into blog posts. Now it's my turn to be harvested and threshed, as Shallow Center publishes an e-mail I sent him and our younger brother. It was about The West Wing, and how one of the characters was drinking a Yuengling beer, which in Philadelphia is -- oh, hell, just read it yourself. That reminds me,

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074111840729822242004-01-14T15:24:00.000-05:002004-01-14T15:34:11.560-05:00

A few weeks back, my friend Keith and I were talking about movies, criticism, and awards, and Keith said that, all these years later, he still couldn't believe Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for Best Picture at the 1977 Academy Awards. I managed to stifle the raging 7-year-old inside me that wanted to shout, "Hell, yeah!," and instead said that, while I love Star Wars, I thought Annie Hall was

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074050100687215662004-01-13T23:09:00.000-05:002004-01-13T23:24:00.186-05:00

When The Silence of the Lambs, by Thomas Harris, was published in 1988, I was working at a bookstore, and I was still there three years later when the movie came out, and then a year after that, when the movie swept the Oscars. During that four-year period, I watched America's naughty little love affair with Hannibal Lecter grow and grow, to the point where old ladies with Atlantic City

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074029388755420852004-01-13T16:45:00.000-05:002004-01-13T16:49:59.310-05:00

This Return of the King discussion is growing out of control. My brother-in-law Dave, who like my previous correspondents knows his way around the Shire, if you get my meaning, pulls no punches: What are you talking about? That bit with Legolas flipping onto the horse is the only truly horrible scene in the entire trilogy (at least, the only one I can think of). It's unnecessary, it's impossible

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1074004932096973802004-01-13T09:42:00.000-05:002004-01-13T16:51:13.483-05:00

My friend Amy checks in from Ohio with this fallacious salvo: If you're not careful you will lose one of your ten readers. Please, let's have no more dissing of "Sister Christian" or the incomparable Nic Cage. Amy and I used to work together, and, sadly, this hysterical rumormongering is par for the course with her. Where to start? First, I can hardly be said to have 10 readers. Seven is

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1073701496446156872004-01-10T16:17:00.000-05:002004-01-10T16:24:40.380-05:00

[To read Part I of this book club, click here.] Donna-- I also mostly liked The Bluest Eye. For such a slight book -- 206 pages, not including Toni Morrison's afterword -- it covers a lot of ground: childhood, family, poverty, incest, and, in a more oblique way than you'd imagine, racism. I was struck by your comment about the centrality of the "illicit, cataclysmic event" in Southern

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1073599537459808722004-01-09T11:02:00.000-05:002004-01-13T16:51:42.403-05:00

Verily, like a plague of orcs, these usurpers of my critical throne vex me still. A few days ago, Glenn responded to my Return of the King review. Now I've heard from another friend, Keith, who might be an even bigger Tolkienite than Glenn. Okay, to be honest, I invited Keith to send me his thoughts -- but that makes them no less vexing and orc-like. Forsooth, Keith doth say: First, I'll say

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1073598778279623882004-01-08T16:52:00.000-05:002004-01-08T16:55:39.223-05:00

Fast Company isn't the first place you turn for anti-capitalist rabble-rousing, but the December issue has an article on Wal-Mart that's positively communist. Okay, not really. But by the standards of Fast Company -- which never met an innovation, a mission statement, a bottom line, or a tough-talking CEO it didn't like -- it's almost heretical. Writer Charles Fishman digs into Wal-Mart's

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1073571343134210662004-01-08T09:15:00.000-05:002004-01-08T09:19:31.480-05:00

Adam Begley of the New York Observer weighs in with the first review I've seen of American Sucker, by David Denby. Begley gives Denby props for his sketches of the high-flying investors he befriended during New York's recent gilded age: The best parts of American Sucker are the vivid portraits of Messrs. Blodget and Waksal. As Mr. Denby gets to know them, so does the reader. They develop complex

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1073505876769754592004-01-07T15:33:00.000-05:002004-01-07T15:36:10.983-05:00

My plea for treating books and movies as equal but separate entities -- advanced in my review of Return of the King -- has been echoed by The New Yorker's Anthony Lane, who writes: As I watched this film, an eager victim of its boundless will to astound, I found my loyal memories of the book beginning to fade. It may be time to halt the endless comparisons between page and screen, and to confess

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1073504842846537972004-01-07T14:47:00.000-05:002004-01-07T15:40:54.103-05:00

My friend John has made a truly amazing discovery: I received the Indy DVD trilogy for Christmas, and popped in the "Raiders" disc to give it a spin. I guess I've been sleeping for 23 years, because it took a fresh look at the credits and teaser sequence to realize that Satipo ("throw me the idol, I throw you the whip") is none other than Alfred "Doc Ock"/"Sister Christian" Molina. Was I the

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1073443734889214412004-01-06T23:06:00.000-05:002004-01-06T23:07:25.993-05:00

When I saw the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl last spring, I thought it was the end of my Trust Johnny Depp Policy, according to which I automatically plan on seeing any movie starring Johnny Depp. I mean, did anyone ever think that the pouty-faced kid on 21 Jump Street would go on to have the career he has? Sean Penn is often called the best actor of his

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1073441940535514212004-01-06T21:20:00.000-05:002004-01-07T16:00:54.386-05:00

It turns out I have twice as many readers as I said I did yesterday. In addition to my brother, my wife and my mother regularly peruse these pages. And both of them e-mailed me to complain about being left out of a little post I like to (and in fact did) call "O Brothers, Where Art Thou?" First, there was Mom: What am I, chopped liver? I seem to remember a Christmas gift that you received which

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1073426185468856552004-01-06T20:48:00.000-05:002004-01-06T20:54:39.126-05:00

When my daughter was born 14 months ago, I was worried that I'd be so pressed for free time, I'd gradually fall out of the habit of reading books. So I came up with a mechanism I hoped would motivate me to keep reading: the personal book club. It was pretty simple. A friend and I would read the same novel at the same time, then discuss it via e-mail. In addition to keeping a fire lighted under me

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6135465.post-1073438471545726262004-01-06T20:22:00.000-05:002004-01-06T20:21:30.996-05:00

The latest comic review from my friend Glenn is online at Silver Bullet. This time Glenn tackles JLA #91, which he calls "decent, if unexceptional." It was written by DC god Dennis O'Neil, whom Glenn isn't afraid to accuse (in his good-naturedly indignant style) of not doing his homework: Appearing before many [United Nations] officials who have called Superman to answer to various charges

Chrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17097568000209814265noreply@blogger.com0