Books
My pick for authors who get lifetime passes would be Martin Amis. Yellow Dog was terrible, and he seems to have lost his mind post-9/11 - see his comments on racial profiling in a 2004 interview, and his book of piss-poor essays "The Second Plane". Still, he wrote Money and London Fields, and nothing will change…

Michael Cera gets a lifetime pass for Clark & Michael. In fact, that also extends to Clark Duke being in crap like Greek and Sex Drive.

Caine's recent comments about doing a Phil Collins (I have to pay taxes! Waaaah!) have come dangerously close to breaking the lifetime pass for me. They probably would have done if I hadn't seen Get Carter so recently.

I can't wait for John Travolta's version: "Man-animals". (Hail Xenu!)

Well said, Mbs. Less romcoms = a better world, in my opinion. Cusack is just so wholesome-looking, I enjoy seeing him commit crimes and murder people, even more so if he gets away at the end.

Janet: not a Japanese film, but your comment made me think of Al Pacino's Looking For Richard. It's a mixture between documentary footage of him and other actors rehearsing for a production of Richard III and talking about the characters, and filmed scenes from the play. It's not really a Brechtian…

Mbs: I remember Pushing Tin. Not great, but good fun to watch through once. Also, the aforementioned Angelina assets (fun fact: her character shared a name with notorious child-murderer Mary Bell. This may or may not have affected its chances at the box-office).

Indeed. I'm glad I watched this last night (bought the DVD for cheap when I saw it coming up on the NCC). It's a brilliant demonstration of what animation can do, and I don't think it could have worked in any format. Excellent review, Scott - I'll have to watch the film again with a few of your insights in mind.

"a lot of the traits I just mentioned above could be applied to people on this board"

I did like the description of a small town all pulling for its famous son, and I can identify with that feeling where even if you don't usually have much in common with your neighbours, you can still get caught up in the emotion.

Walton Goggins is probably the best RR I've read. He comes across as such a nice guy - really humble, genial and grateful for all his experiences. I read it just now, and it put a big smile on my face.

A political thriller with Kate Beckinsale in prison?
So they're going for the All The President's Men/Caged Heat fan crossover market?

This isn't the first time I've had to replace Barry Zuckercorn. Plus, I skew younger … with juries and such.

Mickey Rourke
HW: Mickey Rourke came in with a transistor radio tied with twine around his neck and auditioned…
AVC: Why did he have a transistor radio around his neck? Is that part of the film?
HW: No. It is not. I don't know why Mickey Rourke did that. That was his vision of the character at the time.

He did extremely well off that part - not only did he avoid typecasting, he got lots of work courtesy of his friend Ron Howard. If you could be a huge pop culture star in one era and parlay that into a decent career afterwards, I imagine you'd be proud of it too.

Does this wax museum always have the heating on full blast? Or are all their exhibits placed next to radiators?

Good to have CTotD back. I will most likely never see this film, let alone watch the commentary, so thanks for bringing us the full experience of Frank Miller's craziness.

Hotel for Plague Dogs?

What I found even funnier was his assertion that only non-lunatic women can read stuff in a mirror. Did he once date a vampire, and get that mixed up with "crazy girl"?

Unless you're having a buzz cut, which renders it kind of superfluous.