Closet Land
A Pure Formality
What Happened Was…

You should read Lydon's first book, Rotten. It's a terrific read, and also smarter and more introspective than you would think.

Does this mean dandelions are off-limits again?

"He's sweating."
"I'm sweating."

Irish-American, but I've always liked that word.

Wow, I feel quite chuffed to be recognized like this. You're welcome.

Aside from this and The Set-Up (great movie too, btw), other films of note to play at Cannes that year:

In the novel, the "fiancee" she breaks up with to be with Frank Sinatra's character works with the FBI, and he's the one who helps Sinatra uncover the whole plot. They dropped that for the film.

Haven't seen La Ceremonie (there's an awful lot of Chabrol I need to catch up on), but I think Pickup on South Street is a better film than Steel Helmet. I would say the best anti-Communist films are The Lives of Others and Costa-Gavras' The Confession (Children of the Revolution is good as well, but it's hampered by…

My problem with this movie is it can't decide whether it wants to be a Capra movie or a Preston Sturges movie, and the tone is all over the place. It's too bad, because the premise is good, and because of the talent involved both in front of and behind the camera.

Have you seen The Hit?

He was also great in The Howling.

As uneven as that movie is, thanks to executive meddling, I have to admit I still find it watchable because of the premise and because of Sadler's performance, especially when you find out his character is a lot smarter than he looks. He even pulls off the corniness of shouting out "Hey, teacher! Leave those kids…

I remember Harney from Law & Order; he's in the three-part episode that was like their take on O.J. Simpson, playing the detective who hides evidence (if memory serves, the victim had been beaten up before by the killer, and he decided to handle it by himself instead of reporting it). That whole arc was, for the most…

Been reading a bunch of books about politics and movies, though none have been very memorable, except for the re-reading of Hollywood's Last Golden Age, about the films of the late 60's to mid 70's, and a collection of interviews Cineaste magazine did.

Wish you had found time for Presumed Innocent, not just because it's a great movie, but we could have had some Harrison Ford stories (also, John Spencer happened to be in that movie as well, though he and Whitford don't share any scenes together).

Fun fact; a couple of scenes from the novel inspire scenes in The Wire (the "And you must be the lovely Mrs. Herc!" scene, and the one where Kima and her son are doing their own version of Goodnight, Moon).

That's such a great scene. It's well written in the novel, but in the movie, even though I knew the outcome from reading the novel, I really thought David's character was going to kill Strike, as he was that intense and scary.

Counterpoint; while the movie does deserve credit for being more character-based than most serial killer tales, the movie has the same irritating clinical tone as those movies tend to have, it indulges in the same cliches (you just know Weaver's gay friend is going to be one of the victims just because), and you never…

Mine is that Lee and Peter Cushing, in between takes of whatever they were working on, would amuse themselves by doing impressions of Looney Tunes characters, since they were both fans. There *has* to be a recording of that somewhere; doesn't there?