Books an' Movies

Movie Clip Wednesday is here(click)



Well into summer-- 97 today.

I tended monster pumpkin vine an' tomatoes early in the day.

Intelligent folks behave opposite mad dawgs an' Englishmen.


They stand at the sink drinkin' iced tea an lookin' out at the shimmery heat.

They read. They see movies. Rock on the porch an discuss movies an' books. (well pollyticks too, but is thar' anything new to say on that ? Sure--see BACKporch tomorrow.)

At the Nighttime Bookclub last night we feasted on homemade guacamole, homemade vichyssoise, smoked salmon an' caviar, an' strawberry panna cotta. A step up from our usual olives and nuts. I'se real real sorry y'all could not be thar'. It was sublime (hearin' this La DivaC?) We doan do it this grand every month--we's celebratin' our longevity despite havin' a diversity of political/ philosophical positions that we cling to like barnacles on a ship.

The movie to see next is the Herzog documentary on Cave Art--a 3 D movie too--an' the word is this cavern in France is the oldest known cave art--30,000 BC. but the BIG deal is that it depicts lions and hyenas an' rhinos--thangs that doan live in France no more, thas' fer sure.

Of course we got into a big yak over the pollyticks of closing the cave off--nobody can go in. French say it will degrade the paintings to let in people. They plan to seal it and prohibit entry so seein' this documentary is the last look humans is gonna git---well, regular humans. The select 10-12 people on earth whose archeology creds is god-like will be allowed in to study the cave art. The human mung (you an' me) have "breath that destroys" the paintings due to our CO2 exhales. So we ain't never gonna see inside, but, Frenchmen, do not despair! Y'all git pay fer keepin' it locked away cause yore tax euros will see to that. See? now youse part of the Cave Preservation Society. The Cave. Preserved. So preserved no one will ever see it. But it will be there. Not seen, but, you know, "there." For what? Why to be "there" unharmed and preserved.


This book club doan read no trash.

The DayTime Bookclub reads some "current" books. Some good, some trash. (what do yore bookclubs read??)


Any of y'all read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake?

Not spoilin' thangs none by tellin' that the story line is girl who cain't eat much food cause she can taste the emotions (anger, despair) of whoever made the food. An exploration of the hidden emotional life of the people in our orbit. Aimee Bender's book is "magic realism". Oh.


They also discussed The Help author bein' sued by the help. I doan know the whys an' wherefores of the lawsuit, but the discussion moved on to how Andrew Wyeth "owed" some of his moola to Christina, too--like the help is demandin' of The Help author--Why?




because she was the one who "made" him (Christina's World above) by providin' inspiration for one of his famous paintings.

Well mah gracious. If an artist/ writer/ musician/ comedian makes money when they produce a book/ song/ painting/ routine from some event or person, they now owe a kickback to the subject? Not by mah accountin' --the subject din't do nothin' to turn the everyday self or event into a zillion seller artistic expression. Christina din't paint, she jes' went about her day, Wyeth memorialized it. Is she "due" some of his success?

What say ye?



Mah new read is Doc. A "faction" account of Doc Holliday's life:

"... dusty myths back to life in a deeply sympathetic, aggressively researched and wonderfully entertaining story. (More here)


I'se stealin' a few hours in the worst of the heat to sit an' read--lookin' out on the cool hued hydrangea bed. How does y'all beat the heat?

Summer Question fer all Ya'll

We's in summertime. Ya'll may have a few days of cool left, not round heah.

So I'se wonderin' iffin' ya'll can hep me lay up the right stuff fer Summer Loafin.'

I got too much to do, so natcherly I'se gonna slough all that off an' see how much fun I can git on the sly...heh.

I needs yore suggestion fer:

Best new music CD fer BBQ wif' friends
Best new music fer quiet time

Two works of fiction
One book of history


Best non-electronic game (right now, we's into Balderdash)

Movies (Cain't get through movies wiif' R-rating fer steamy scenes and crude language, ya'll. Will take R-rated fer some violence [war, police])

one comedy
one romance
one spy/ thriller
one mystery
one adventure

Your favorite summer menu. (recipes optional)

Thanky to all fer hepin' me figger out how to loaf well this summer!

Didn't Nobody go to the Movies Last Weekend??

Dern, Ya'll....I'se hopin' to git a good jaw outa some of ya on the movie
No Country fer Old Men---din't anybody go???

From the Reviews:

Misguided souls will tell you that No Country for Old Men is out for blood, focused on vengeance and unconcerned with the larger world outside a standard-issue suspense plot. Those people, of course, are deaf, dumb and blind to anything that isn't spelled out between commercials on dying TV networks. Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's 2005 novel is an indisputably great movie, at this point the year's very best.

-----------Rolling Stone


"On the most basic level the movie is about hunters and the hunted, order and chaos, the fragility of civilization, and the nature of this world and us in it. There are four main characters: a world weary sheriff, a cowboy welder who makes a bad decision, an insanely competent killer with a memorable physical presence, and a landscape of big sky, deserts, thunderstorms, trailer parks, seedy hotels, dead mexicans and dusty jacked up trucks. The landscape is as critical to the intensity of this movie as the "overlook" was in "the shining".
-----

-----------------------THE FAMOUS CANINE REVIEWER: SHE
http://sparringk9.blogspot.com/





An intense, nihilistic thriller as well as a model of implacable storytelling, this is a film you can't stop watching even though you very much wish you could.

-\--------------------Los Angeles Times


Cormac McCarthy's marvelous, throat-gripping, best-selling 2005 novel of the same name describes a contemporary American West (the action is set in 1980) where drug trafficking dirties the parched, wide-open landscape that was once home to cattle rustling. Here, where the value of honor has steadily declined, an average chump named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out doing a bit of unsuccessful hunting when he happens upon a huge cash haul at the scrubby site of a drug deal gone bad. And it's here that Moss makes his first wrong wager: He thinks he can take the money and run.

-------------Entertainment Weekly

O'course, some din't rave--the Veddy Veddy Affected New Yawker strikes an immune-to-nihilism -via -the- violent-film pose.

Lemme know what ya think.

Laughin' ain't what it used ter be

Q. What do you get when you cross an insomniac with a dyslexic agnostic?
A. Someone who lies awake wondering if there really is a Dog.

Mah friend sent that ter me fer fun.

An' I did laugh.

Really.

She noted how ya' couldn't make no fun any more of injuns, polacks, crackers (well, I doan mind akshully) dagos, darkies, fat folks, skinny folks or short folks. Comedy routines is on hard times.

Wait! There is God---ya' can still make fun o' God.

An' thas' the last laugh I had yesterday.

Cause next, another lady comes ter book club wif nervous twittery laugh an' a clippin' from a a northeast newspaper what ran a review of a movie called Zoo...er, a ducmentary "the culture of zoophiles, people with an erotic attraction to animals." Time magazine coos, "it is more atmospheric than graphic, more romantic than journalistic." An' the director "avoids judging the men in his film, depicting them as regular guys who hold down regular jobs and attend regular parties."

"Is this a joke do ya' think?" she asked?

None of us were laughin'. We's in stunned mute horror.

Whar' is PETA when ya need 'em? Whar's their outrage?

This duckumentary was based on the real life story of some demented fella in Washington state who died despite his buddies rushin' him to the hospital after somehtin' "atmospheric and romantic" happened wif' a horse and the man's colon was perforated. The horror here ain't the demented man, but Time and other media bigwigs whose shameless prostitution for a buck means they'd smirk over such a movie and describe it as "romantic."






When the Wahabbi's bomb Sundance I'se gonna cheer.









An if ya' ain't had yore fill of gruesome insanity,
and yore belly ain't full of somethin' unpleasant to upchuck,
then rent Last King of Scotland...see Forest Whitaker play a masterful Idi Amin..the butcher of Uganda. See what a real dictator does..jes' by way of knowin' truth from hyperbole in the American press.


Well...as I say, laughin' ain't what it used to be.