BRIEF POSTING BEFORE THE WORK WEEK EATS ME WHOLE...

TELEVISION COMMENTARY OF THE DAY:

Tremendous night of television. Like TV for smart people with taste. Must’ve been some kind of counter-programming to the closing ceremonies of the Olympics. Shame it only happens once every 4 years. Anyhow, the offerings included: Punch Drunk Love, A portrait of the Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith (one of my faves), The Grizzly Man and The Shawshank Redemption. Speaking of the Shawshank Redemption: If I ever see another movie where Morgan Freeman plays a benign honey-voiced black man sacrificed for the white man's narrative, I'll kill myself. I mean, the fact that he has had so much success and can presumably call some of his own shots at this point and still (see Million Dollar Baby), serves this narrative function is really inexcusable. I want to see a movie where Morgan Freeman plays the baddest badass ever and sticks it to the man. I wanna see Morgan Freeman in "Kill Whitey."

Also, there's something a little bit annoyingly simperingly sentimentally infantile about Adam Sandler-even in this unsettlingly “serious” movie. A mumbling boodgie-woodginess and suggestion of the mollycoddled that never fully disappears-even in his fits of supposedly psychotic rage. But enough hyper-critical misanthropy for one Sunday night.

They're both, in their own way, very good movies. In a different mood, I'd be blubbering at the end of both of them, in a way that would make Adam Sandler even at his most baby-like seem like John Wayne.

COMMENT A PROPOS OF THE TITLE OF THIS POSTING:

I was reminded, upon watching some of the Grizzly Man again, how Werner Hertzog’s attitude towards the protagonist shifts appreciably over the course of the film. In the early part of the movie, the director’s narrative voiceover seems to suggest a certain admiration for and identification with this peculiar self-appointed guardian of the Grizzlies. Towards the end of the film, he seems almost contemptuously dismissive—regarding Treadwell as a deluded narcissist, projecting from the depths of his wounded psyche a dangerously sentimentalized view of the natural world.

REAL EXCHANGE OF THE DAY:

So, I’m talking to a guy from work:

ME: Maybe it’s the fact that I’m getting older, but periods of time that used to seem meaninglessly huge, are starting to feel approachably relevant. For example, my grandfather died a few years ago at the age of 99. And it struck me, that the Civil War was only grandpa’s lifetime and a half ago. And the birth of Jesus was only 20 grandpa’s lifetimes ago. And I just read that the island of Manhattan was under 100 feet of ice 20,000 years ago…which is only 200 grandpa’s lifetimes ago.

HIM: Wow…it was probably really cold then.

PROPOSED BAND NAME OF THE DAY:

Animal Husbandry

RANDOM SINGLE SENTENCE PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:

He was detail oriented, in a general kind of way.

BOOK THAT DOESN'T NEED TO BE WRITTEN:

A Guy's Guide To Vegas.

Right up there with "The Dummy's Guide to Being A Dummy."

HEADLINE I'D LIKE TO READ:

God, claiming he is sick of being spoken for, kills Pat Robertson.

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Posted on 2/27/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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