"I jest, I jive!"

Yet another petty grievance with IMDb's redesign: instead of showing you the quote that contains the keyword for which you have searched, you only get the matching titles. Then you have to go dig the quote out yourself. From hundreds of returns. Like that's useful. No one does a search to make their lives more complicated. Eff, that is stupid.

Not what we're here to talk about though. Two things: 1) check out my latest Culture article, "The January Movie," in which I set out the find the best of the traditionally terrible movies that come out this month. 2) This here blog is seven (7!) today. While the number of posts have been on a steady decline over the years, in part because recapping tv shows over on Culture's blog is pretty dang time consuming, and it would be narcissistic and not terribly accurate to say that my writing has improved, I can say that I'm still going to see way more movies than someone who isn't getting paid to should and that I'm still writing about them. I can say that. If you've been sticking with me regardless of where I pop up, thank you.

Now I'm off to buy bloggy something made out of wood or copper or a desk set. A wood and copper desk set?

"In five years we'll either be working for him or dead at his hand."

Happy birthday to you, little blog. You're five years old today. While we've been annoyed, horrified, bored, disgusted, and confused many times over, we've also unearthed a plethora of gems together. We've loved the years 2000, 2004, and 2007. We've mourned the dearth of good roles for adult actress. We've had crushes, broken up with movie boyfriends, and reviewed hundreds of movies in the process. All in all, we've been through a lot. One thing that remains undiminished is our love for movies (obviously). Another thing? Our love of Schoolhouse Rock!

Pop Culture Round Up: August 9 - 15

Sorry about the lack of posts this week, kids. I think I'll be back on track soon. In the meantime, holla me, as the 9th up there was my birthday. I have moved into a new age bracket and had to get a new prescription for my glasses, hence am feeling old.

I wonder if they could have chosen a worse photo for this story.

"Do you suffer from blockbuster fatigue?" Possibly, although I considered that to be related to the lack of good movies this year rather than an overabundance of blockbusters.

Actually, I've noticed this as well inasmuch as there are ridiculously few new shows that I am anticipating for fall. And by few I mean . . . one, sort of.

"It won't sell, they think, unless they put some naughty bits in - even if they have to invent the naughty bits." What, I can't take a sentence out of context for my own amusement? Of course I can!

I must say that I agree with the first one (No. 1o) on this list mostly because they annoy me in this about to happen/just happened/is happening way.

Gak! It's just like when the Globe shrank, and now it sits there, pushed to one side in its over sized boxes on street corners, a hollow shell of what it used to be.

"But as Warners goes through the arduous process of absorbing two dozen or so New Line films into its distribution system, the studio simply has too many movies to release, so it's starting to pick out the weak calves from the herd." Ooo, a slaughter! Much like the above, this kind of news makes me a little sad. You toil to get a picture greenlit, actually finish it, and then it might never see the light of day. Sigh.

Already? It occurs to me that the show as it will exist on air will never live up to the behind the scenes drama I imagine is going on. I want to watch that show.

Isn't Jerry Maguire a little too much for a simple date movie?

Apparently Allan Kozinn over at the Times has a beef with French horns, which is sad but funny. They are one of those instruments that are really beautiful when played well but don't get really get enough play for players to get really good at them, you know? No? Okay.

Another beef that cracks me up. Pretty much any beef reported in "Beef" cracks me up, though. Remember when Spike Lee accused Clint Eastwood of racism earlier this summer? Somehow the Vulture made that funny, too.

Again, why are people still reporting this like it's news? Well, new news, which it was, about three years ago. Holla 2005!

Oddly, this does help redeem Sorkin in my eyes. That and occasional memories of what a brilliant show The West Wing was.

Now, if I linked to every good post on Go Fug Yourself, I'd be linking to GFY all the live long day, but this post in particular is fantastic. Maybe it's for a role?

Hurray! I've been missing Green since he stepped out as Oz to go hang with monks. Okay, Oz went to hang out with monks, and Green went to finish a movie, but still. We're missing Green, right?

While I think this is probably true, I also think that it is a slow, trickle down effect that will prevent us from realizing the dire situation for another few years. Most of us haven't had the time to get around to the all the fantastic releases to realize that there aren't enough coming out anymore.

"Julia Child's spy career revealed." That headline says it all.

I'm beginning to think that the web peeps over at CBC revel in choosing strange photos.

"But it was his cover of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” that spread through the Internet and drew new listeners to his site." Which I love. It's almost as good as "Tom Cruise Crazy."

"Kaleem Aftab is outraged at the way marketing is taking over." Outraged!

I'm so excited that Primer is back (I don't think I've seen one since May) that I think I probably would have linked to it regardless of the subject matter. Getting to know one of America's most influential filmmakers is a good idea, though.

Top 10 of 2007

I made a list. Then I whittled it down to a second list. Now I'm presenting you the third. It was tough. It was a spectacular year for movies, and I only saw and reviewed 50 of 'em in the last year. A whopping 22 received grades in the A range (surely I sign that I am going soft?). Here's the cream of that crop:

1. Once
2. No Country for Old Men
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Zodiac
5. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
   
6. Gone Baby Gone
7. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
   
8. This is England
9. Hot Fuzz
10. Grindhouse (theatre version only, which is why . . . )
    
11. Tie: Persepolis and Ratatouille

Okay, so that's technically 13 movies. I've got Grindhouse on there as a whole that is greater than any one of its parts (not that those parts aren't awesome), but I had to go to 11 because Grindhouse, as I knew it, has ceased to exist. You are really missing out, by the way, if you have picked up either feature on DVD on its own on if only because you'll never know what I'm talking about when I menacingly intone, "He's saving up his nickles and dimes . . .". As for the double count for 11, I reviewed the two together, and I don't want to pick between them. So I didn't. Ten's a nice round number that everyone can count to, but it's not always the best number to go with.

As for the rest of it, what a romantic, depressing, funny, crazy, beautiful year. Oh, and a little happy birthday shout out to Feria Films, who turned four last month. It's going to start asking 4000 questions a day, I just know it.

Three is a Magic Number

Feria Films is turned three yesterday. Today is the anniversary of my first review. We've had some highs and some lows, but nothing's really changed, has it? I just keep seeing movies and telling you about them. I'm no more qualified than I was when I started, but I show up. I show up at the theatre, and I sit back down here. I suppose that's all the qualification I need.

Last summer, a lovely young man asked me for a Feria Films Top 10. It took me a while to figure out what that would mean (within a genre? within a given time period? ever?). I settled on "personally." Below is an excerpt from that list:

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset (Collective grade: A)
I know that they are two movies, but I can hardly think of one without the other, much less talk about them separately. Despite all the romances I write about and see, it is these two that best represent both the ecstasy of falling in love and the exquisite pain of losing that love.

Rushmore (Grade: A+)
The more I see this movie, the more I get out of it. Wes Anderson has such a great talent for creating little worlds that are just a slight horizontal shift from our own, for suspending our disbelief with grace and wit, and for attention to detail.

The Yards (Grade: A -)
You must have guessed that I would put at least one Joaquin Phoenix movie on the list. It was a tough call, and my joy over the commercials for Gladiator or my purchases of Inventing the Abbotts , Walk the Line, or Quills doesn't exactly suggest it's the right one. Still, despite the talent he is surrounded by, he owns this movie start to finish, and that final sequence, sitting alone in his car, patiently waiting . . . that's what great cinema's about.

Sin City (Grade: A+)
I love this movie. I love it to the point where I watch it, I watch it again, and then I get up the next day to watch it some more.

Brokeback Mountain (Grade: A+)
Again, tough choice: this time it was choosing an Ang Lee picture. It's not even the only one I own, but I think it's his best work to date. He treats the physical relationship between Ennis and Jack almost reverentially, and that's part of the appeal. Lee is telling a powerful love story, and he brings more humanity to it than any other director could ever dream of doing.