Category : Entertainment

AFI Top 100 Movies Update

Posted on: 10 February 2008 /
Categories: Movies

I’ve seen a few more of them. I should just let this go. Oh well. 3. Casablanca — Some great one-liners, but the plot’s unclear. Is Rick the main character? What’s he trying to achieve? Should I be happy at how it ends? Or, like, care? I probably would have liked it better if I

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Comments Cormac McCarthy Would Have Received If He Would Have Workshopped The Road

Posted on: 6 January 2008 /
Categories: Reading, Writing

(Assuming he submitted it as an unpublished writer of course.) How did the planet get like this? How long have they been walking? How old is the boy? How old is the man? Where are they exactly? Why is it always cold? How did they survive whatever happened? What are the bloodcults? (*They* sound interesting

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Book Report on Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle

Posted on: 30 December 2007 /
Categories: Reading

(Finished reading it during the holidays. Already posted this as a review on Amazon, but heck, it’s an easy way to keep the blog looking up-to-date.) Slaughterhouse Five is one of my five favorite books ever. I keep trying to find something else from Vonnegut that exudes the same energy and necessity of that book.

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BKD Top 11 Movies

Posted on: 3 November 2007 /
Categories: Movies

I’d never get up to 100. Eleven seems reasonable enough. 1. Unforgiven 2. Apocalypse Now 3. O Brother Where Art Thou? 4. Black Hawk Down 5. The Incredibles 6. Shawshank Redemption 7. United 93 8. L.A. Confidential 9. Bridge on the River Kwai 10. High Noon 11. Das Leben der Anderen (Lives of Others) I

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The Bourne Ultra-Tedium

Posted on: 5 August 2007 /
Categories: Movies

No, I didn’t really think it was *that* bad — I just like hyperbole in headlines. I liked the last half hour or so of the movie, once it was clear what The Problem was and the frame rate seemed to slow almost enough to see how Matt Damon was taking care of it. Still:

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AFI Top 100 Movies: Mostly Harmless

Posted on: 22 June 2007 /
Categories: Movies

So, the American Film Institute put out a revision to it’s 100 Greatest Movies list. They’re wrong about everything of course… Nah, actually, I’m surprised to agree with them as often as I do. They place way more emphasis than they “should” on things like cinematography, groundbreaking technique, and cultural impact. I mean — why

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Go ’Eaters!

Posted on: 11 June 2007 /
Categories: Sports

Fine, I’ve never been to one of their games, but still. I was there when they re-started the program after it had gotten Title IXed out of existence, so I’m stoked that UC-Irvine’s baseball team is heading to the College World Series five years later. Too bad I don’t have a TV, otherwise I could

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The Padres Have Horrible Announcers

Posted on: 9 June 2007 /
Categories: Sports

Watched the last couple of Seattle-San Diego games on MLB.tv. Am unfortunately stuck with the Padres’ broadcasters. The two clowns they got think they’re drive-time disk jockeys. The only thing they love more than the Padres is the sound of their own voices. Absolutely embarrassing. I’ve also never heard announcers more ready to complain about

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Letters from Iwo Jima, Blog Thoughts from Me

Posted on: 26 May 2007 /
Categories: Movies

Finally saw this movie. It reminded me of a lot of the stories I get submitted to Trabuco Road. Nice writing, but way too thin. And that’s about all I can say about it without outing myself as an America-first cultural bigot. Which may be how the following paragraph is interpreted. It was hard to

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I Finished (Reading) a(nother) Book

Posted on: 26 April 2007 /
Categories: Reading

With The Old Breed (at Peleliu and Okinawa) by Eugene B. Sledge. Brilliantly unaffected, crushing, wrenching, proud, true-ringing first-person account of a USMC mortarman involved in the 1st Marine Division’s last two (and bloodiest two) campaigns of WWII. I’ve now read enough war writing that it doesn’t take much for me to get teary-eyed about

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