As my handful of readers can attest, in my last post I effectively folded up the CFS tent to begin my new life as the inheritor of $28,324,275.00 from the paralyzed philanthropic German widow in Burkina Faso, Mrs. Renate Magdalena Settnik.
As of today, however, the funds have yet to release into my Citibank account.
This is my 100th blogpost. Assuming I averaged maybe 1,250 words/blog, that’s 125,000 words. Just typing that number makes my carpal tunnel flare. Anyway, to celebrate this historic(ally non-momentous) occasion, let me return to my favorite guy, the one who’s still having trouble letting go. Sorry but I just can’t help myself. It’s like clubbing to death baby harp seals as they climb out of the ocean. Easy pickins!
Being such a visual medium, it often surprises me how rare it is to come across a movie scene that dispenses with dialogue and instead leans on visuals (and soundtrack) to tell the story, often with more impact than any amount of character blabbing could ever achieve.
When you think of a perfect film what comes to mind?
Citizen Kane, perhaps? Hitchcock’s Vertigo? The Godfather? The Rules of the Game? Chinatown? Some other auteur-helmed flick listed in Sight & Sound magazine’s once-a-decade “Greatest Films of All Time” list?
Revisiting this virtuosic scene recently, it occurred to me that someone working for the American Council of the Blind (ACB) had to describe the action, presumably with a straight face, for its Audio Description Project, which, as I’m sure you know, provides the visually impaired with “high-quality audio description in television, movies, performing arts…and other venues where the presentation of visual media is critical to the understanding and appreciation of the content.”
No, this post isn’t about weed. Or that Claire Denis sci-fi film starring Cedric Diggory. Rather, it’s about beer commercials. Which, edited within an inch of their lives, full of overwrought reaction shots by actors of middling talent (or anthropomorphized animals) and, of course, heavy on the jiggle factor, generally suck. (Unless, of course, you fall into the male 12-34 years demo.)
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
Today, I signed legislation to hold China accountable for its oppressive actions against the people of Hong Kong. It’s the first time anybody’s ever done anything like that. I did this myself, for the most part.
I don’t know about you, but the byproducts of COVID-19 isolation—soul-crushing ennui, crippling depression, nightmares in which Mike Pence calls me “mother” before sneezing in my face—has made the thought of writing a movie blogpost about as appealing as a nasopharyngeal swab.
Wrapping up our series on biological disaster flicks, we officially plow into the side of a mountain with a movie so bad, it’s good.
Full disclosure: this film was “Made for TV” (ABC-TV as it happens). And while a certain demographic may shrug at the news (after all, Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad were “Made for TV”!), those of us old enough to have survived
The Andromeda Strain (1971; Dir. Robert Wise)Quick Synopsis—A U.S. satellite crashes the desert outside a small town in New Mexico. When a recovery team sent to retrieve the device abruptly stops transmitting, concerned government officials activate “Wildfire,”