I dunno. I think I’ve already seen that one.

Catchphrase. Laugh laugh laugh laugh.

Poor, stupid, little boy.

The tragedy isn’t so much that he ended up dead of a drug overdose (accidental or otherwise), but that he represents a wasted life. He couldn’t grow up enough to take responsibility for his life, he couldn’t be strong enough to stop abusing drugs, and that he threw away the friendship and opportunities that he had in his too short life.

To be honest--although not without a point--the world didn’t lose a hugely talented actor. Neither of the Coreys were great actors, they were great, fun personalities. Where Corey Feldman seems to have grown up and moved on with life, Haim just got stuck. The value of a life isn’t in how good an actor a person is, but in what they do with the years that are given them; the world didn’t lose a great actor, it just saw another person who failed to find a way to give his years any meaning.

I’m sad for the people who cared for him, but I wonder how many of them are actually surprised? I watched a part of the A&E show The Two Corey’s and knew that sooner or later he would end up dead or in jail because no matter how many chances he had, no matter who reached out to him, he had an amazing drive to self-destruction.

Poor, stupid, little boy.

The funniest news of the morning comes to us from AdFreak:

This is awesome. The New York Post reports that Lindsay Lohan is suing E*Trade for $100 million, claiming that the boyfriend-stealing “milkaholic” named Lindsay in the company’s Super Bowl commercial...from Grey Advertising was clearly modeled after her. “Many celebrities are known by one name only, and E*Trade is using that knowledge to profit,” Lohan’s lawyer says. “They’re using her name as a parody of her life. Why didn’t they use the name Susan? This is a subliminal message. Everybody’s talking about it and saying it’s Lindsay Lohan.”

I had been wondering where the insane little starlet had gone; it’s good to know that she hasn’t lost all her crazy.

(Okay, no, I wasn’t really wondering where the insane little starlet had gone. It just fit the flow of the narrative.)

...And Tyler Perry shows up to present an award. He had this to say: “They just said my name at the Oscars. I’d better enjoy it because it’ll probably never happen again.”

Yeah, that’s probably true. Thing about Tyler Perry is that, firstly, he seems like a nice enough guy, secondly, his heart seems to be in the right place in his films, and, thirdly, he doesn’t come close to deserving an award. Of course, many of the movies don’t deserve their awards, but his tend to be phenomenally bad. Not only does he scrape up every racial stereotype possible, but the scripts, the direction, and the acting are usually atrocious.

The same kinds of people who will tell you that Tyler Perry movies are good in any kind of an artistic sense are the same kinds of people who would tell you that the Left Behind books are artistically satisfying, that The Gamers: Dorkness Rising had good art direction, and that contemporary Christian pop music is something other than uninspiring pablum.

Okay, there may be a few exceptions to that last part, but the point still stands.

Those people so strongly believe in the subject matter that they entirely ignore the artistic flaws. There is a difference between artistic merit and personal preference; the Oscars may not always find the artistic merit, but it should always be their goal. Tyler Perry doesn’t deserve that kind of recognition, regardless of how nice of a guy he is and how much he tries to make moral movies.

The Oscars this year were a bit of a fumble, though, weren’t they? A few funny bits here and there, a fun intro with the resurgent Doogie, a great dance number, and some worthy winners were nice. It was also (up to the point where I am writing this, at least) pleasantly politics-free.  On the other hand, the camera cuts were horrendous (especially noticeable at the beginning of the memorial section), the Baldwin-Martin team was uneven (although not horrendous), and a goodly number of the presenters proved themselves incompetent without a script and without good editing (Cameron Diaz, you’d be number one on that list).

Cheers to Jeff Bridges (goofy, strange acceptance speech aside) and all the other winners on the night, though. Whatever lack the show might have, it is always an honor to be recognized by your peers.

On a more important note, now that I know that Morena Baccarin is in it, I might have to watch V.

Update: Forest Whitaker’s introduction of Sandra Bullock for the Best Actress nominations was top notch. Some of the others, for both Best Actor and Best Actress, were nice, too, but Whitaker’s was pitch-perfect.

Update to the Update: The previous note was convenient since Sandra Bullock won and gave a touching and funny speech of her own. Love her.

That said, leave it up to Barbra Streisand to point out that we could have the first female or black director winning an Oscar this year. It turned out to be the first woman (Kathryn Bigelow for Hurt Locker) and a well-deserved win on merits.

But did it really need to be about that? Couldn’t it just be about the movie or even just about her talent?

Tom Hanks just noted that Casablanca was the winner the last time there were 10 films up for consideration. I watch it somewhat regularly and, though it’s a little old-fashioned, it has maintained its relevance artistically, culturally, and even politically through the decades. A wonderful movie.

Will any of the movies nominated this year wear as well? A few of them might, but I doubt that any of them will be as well-remembered as Casablanca. Which isn’t to say that it was a horrible class of movies (I liked Up, Hurt Locker, and Inglorious Basterds. I’m still pondering A Serious Man. Both District 9 and Blind Side were surprisingly good.

Casablanca is tough to live up to, though, in the same way that Lawrence of Arabia would be hard to live up to.

All that prologue aside, Hanks’ announcement of Hurt Locker winning Best Picture was a bit anti-climactic, wasn’t it?

My wife, the lovely woman that she is, has no appreciation for the classics. For example, after fifteen minutes watching Caveman streaming from my Netflix account, she stated flatly: “This might be the dumbest movie ever.”

Crazy talk. Ringo Starr has never been better (well, never been better as an actor, anyway) and neither has Shelley Long. Dennis Quaid, on the other hand, did go on to bigger and better things.

Maybe I’ll make her watch the Dudley Moore anti-classic, Wholly Moses later…

Watching Sweden’s and Finland’s Olympic hockey teams beating up on each other, I was just informed that the “Titans will clash!”

Brilliant bit of marketing, that. I hear that when the movie is released, all of the new material will be re-branded. “Titans are clashing at a theater near you!”

(Warning: That is one slow loading site.)

Global warming!

When do we want it?

Now!

Well, global warming and more muay thai on ESPN 8, the Ocho.

Thanks to Steve for sharing the good stuff.

I just episode one of Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

Well, what to say about that?

It makes 300 look subtle. It makes The Passion of the Christ look bloodless. And it has more boobs than you can count count. That last bit may not be strictly true. You probably could count the breasts on display, but it would take a sharp eye and strict attention to the task, which sort of takes the fun out of it.

That’s not all. You also get ridiculously bad acting, over-the-top writing, uproariously strange sex scenes, and some full frontal male nudity for the women. What you don’t get is compelling story-telling, interesting characters, or a moment’s respite from the overly stylized presentation.

I enjoyed 300,, but this takes the same ingredients and, somehow, screws up the recipe. I would say that the urge to oversell the comic book aspects of the violence, with explosions of blood consuming the screens, limbs flying willy-nilly, and even the smallest moments of violence given slow-motion treatment and imposing music. The sex scenes, well-short of the graphic nature of pornography but exhibiting the same skewed sense of fantasy sensuality, is just as off-putting as the stylized violence.

I suppose that’s a long winded way of saying that I thought that 300 stepped over the line of good story-telling and good taste in some of the same ways as Spartacus, but I still found something worth enjoying. This new Spartacus, on the other hand, left that line so far behind that all I could find was the urge to point and laugh when our hero’s wife fairly exploded into a wash of blood during the climax of one particularly strange dream sequence. I’m sure there’s something good about the show outside of its admirable commitment to gratuitous nudity; but, then, it fails even at that titillation when you realize that the writhing girls and simulated orgasms are an insult to anything remotely resembling real intimacy.

Don’t even get me started on the mismatched accents…

While I don’t think that the US has fallen into a second Great Depression, I do think that we can look back and enjoy some music.

And when I go home tonight, I think I’ll torture my wife by making he watch Cinderella Man. Just to keep the mood going.

With the war between Conan O’Brien and Jay Leno--ably flamed on by Jimmy Kimmel (Seriously, did you see him on the Leno show tonight? The audience was getting uncomfortable by the end of that 10@10 piece.), and commented on by the wonderful Craig Ferguson--I have to admit to watching shows I wouldn’t normally watch. Normally, I’d avoid Leno’s crap prime time show, I’d skip right over Conan’s awkward humor, and I’d spend my time working. So, late night wars and NBC’s wholly inept handling of a bad situation have given me a little bit of a break from my usual rut.

Which is nice for me.

But it doesn’t change the fact that it grows harder and harder for me to enjoy Lethal Weapon as the years go by. Not just because Mel Gibson’s mullet is so outdated, but because Gibson is a boozy anti-Semite and Danny Glover is a dictator loving loon of Pat Robertson-esque proportions (the loon part, that is, not the dictator part).

Damnit, I used to love that movie.

Which brings me to the point. Drinking. Drinking is precisely the thing that helps us cope in times like these. In times where late night hosts are locked in cycles of anger and aggression, where Gibson can’t be trusted in polite company, and where Glover poops on pretty much everything that gave him a better life than I’ll ever know (at least in a material sense--whenever he opens his mouth, I feel significantly blessed on the intellectual side of things).

What was I saying?

Oh, yes, drinking.

In the Rockies? Blogger or blogging groupie or unreformed alcoholic? Or any combination of the above (which are beside and not actually above, but that’s beside the point). Well, good, because the Bill with too many LLLLL’s is calling out to all of us to come drink at the Rocky Mountain Blogger Fest.

Check it out here to, RSVP, and vote for a date. I’m planning to be there whatever date is chosen and I’m looking forward to drinking the memory of my own mullet into the trash bin of history. 

I feel a little for Amanda Simpson because she’s right.

For Amanda Simpson, believed to be America’s first openly transgender presidential appointee, the job she starts Tuesday in the U.S. Commerce Department is an honor and the culmination of a career dedicated to understanding military technology.

But what gnaws at her, she says, is the fear of being labeled a token who was hired because of her sexual identity rather than on her merits.

When the focus of a person’s career trajectory is on their status as a member of a protected class, then the automatic question becomes one of competence. Did she get the job because she’s a sop to the gay and lesbian community or did she get the job because she’s actually competent to do the job? I rather hope it’s the latter and I’ll happily give her the benefit of the doubt. It doesn’t help much that this is an appointment (senior technical adviser in the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security) that would normally draw very little attention; the attention has come because of the novelty of the moment.

I’ll be happier when we can move beyond focusing on the novelty and appreciating the professional qualities that drive a person--regardless of skin color, religion, or current disposition of dangly bits--to succeed in some very tough jobs. Give me the best person for the job, not the best demographic mix for the moment.

Good luck to her, though, in her new position; now don’t let us down.

And if you have no idea where that title came from, you’re poorer for the lack. Here’s a clip from the wonderful Joe vs. the Volcano, one of my favorite movies of the 90’s.

And for those of you who do remember the movie, here’s a moment for you: after seeing the movie with my friend, Jerry, some time after my divorce, he looked at me and said, “I have some baggage, but, damn, you have Joe vs. the Volcano baggage.”

Which, yeah.

What the hell was Neil Diamond thinking with “Cherry Cherry Christmas?” That, in all its self-referential glory, may well be the worst, the cheesiest, and the most painful of all contrived Christmas pop songs.

I’d much rather listen to Bill Nighy (as the hilarious aging rock star, Billy Mack in the movie Love Actually) singing his “festering turd of a record.” For those who haven’t seen it, in a desperate attempt to make a little more money and get his name back in the headlines, Billy Mack records a version of “Love is All Around” that is written specially for Christmas. Even Mack can’t like it, but his refreshing honesty strikes a chord with listeners and he ends up being the number one Christmas album of the season. Fun stuff.

But I doubt that Neil will have the guts to tell us that his own stunt-record to look to the camera and say, “This is shit, isn’t it?”

Yes, yes, Mr. Nighy, it is shit. But it’s still better than “Cherry Cherry Christmas.”

The polite view--and, I’m really trying to be polite here--of the singing of the Avatar theme song (I’m not sure if that’s the actual name of the song* or not, but roll with me)--is that:

A- The songwriter was having an off however the hell long it took for him or her to write the song.

B- The singer was had a cold and it made her sound like a sniffly walrus.

C- The seamstress was a blind charity case with substance abuse issues.

Because, to be honest, that dress was the best part of the worst performance of a hideous song that I’ve seen on national TV since William Hung had his too many minutes of entirely unearned fame.

* And, since I can’t help myself, that would be Leona Lewis singing “I See You.” Which does nothing to change my opinion of the song or the performance. I sounded like someone wanted to almost re-write that painfully irritating Celine Dion song from Titanic,** but both song and singer were lesser talents.

** “My Heart Will Go On.” And, yes, I had to look that up, too. God, I’m pathetic. I even listened to the thing to make sure it was the song I was thinking of. People, I torture myself for your enlightenment. And I’m not talking any wussy waterboarding, here, I’m talking listening to freakin’ Celine Dion. Thank yous in the form of cash are entirely acceptable.

Update: Why does Adam Lambert have a giant poopy on his shoulder? His song, aside from being less nauseating than “I See You,” was so blandly pedestrian as to make me wish for more boy-on-boy smooching and assorted, simulated naughtiness. At least he was interesting when he was being offensive.

In particular, bless these Clash of the Titans lovin’, mythology debatin’ geeks and this mildly gnawed child.

And then play and old Carpenters song just to make the whole musical pun really come to life.

For the record, the remake of Clash of the Titans is certain to best the original in dramatic tension, violence, and special effects, but it will have none of the pure, shining fun of the original. Great movies don’t revolve around seamless CGI and glowering protagonists. Story and sense of wonder are important, too, which fact is well illustrated by movies like The Princess Bride and Harvey. Movie makers these days don’t have much of a grasp of that fact which is why Pixar really shines to me. Of course, Pixar also has groundbreakingly awesome animation…

It’s time for a Jimmy Stewart night at the Zomby household. I’ve admired the man since I was just a boy and my appreciation for him--both as a man and as an actor--has only grown as the years have passed.

So, here’s the thing, which movies should be in the Jimmy Stewart night? Harvey is almost certainly on the list, but there are a few others that I love nearly as much. What are your favorite Jimmy Stewart movies?

By the by, the reason that this is coming up is because of this post by Shawn Macomber (and be sure to click through and watch the clip at the site he’s referencing--wonderful stuff).

Happily I sang out, “ East bound and down, loaded up and truckin’, we gonna do what they say can’t be done. We got a long way to go and a short time to get there. I’m east bound, just watch ol’ Bandit run.”

Darling girl looked at me like I was a fool.

“Sing along,” I said, smiling, “you know the words!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she answered. She then shuffled off and finished putting the groceries away.

My wife doesn’t know “East Bound and Down?” My wife doesn’t feel happy, warm thoughts when Smokey and the Bandit speeds, screaming chicken proudly displayed, through the nostalgic corner of her mind? Who the hell did I marry? I might have to trade in for a better model.

None of which changes the fact that Dede Scozzafava is doing what she can to provide help and safe harbor to a liberal Democrat in an important election for Republicans. The good sense of everyone who bucked the GOP party line and supported Hoffman, the independent (and conservative) challenger. I realize that lots of folks are upset with Newt Gingrich for pronouncing support for Scozzafava in this race, but he is utterly right about one part of this: this is a fight that should have taken place in a primary and not after the establishment simply pronounced Scozzafava as the candidate of choice. The person who wrote what I’ve quoted below should never have been the Republican candidate for the district.

I want to thank you for your support and friendship. Over the past 24 hours, I have had encouraging words sent to my family and me. Many of you have asked me whom you should support on Tuesday.

Since announcing the suspension of my campaign, I have thought long and hard about what is best for the people of this District, and how to answer your questions. This is not a decision that I have made lightly.

You know me, and throughout my career, I have been always been an independent voice for the people I represent. I have stood for our honest principles, and a truthful discussion of the issues, even when it cost me personally and politically. Since beginning my campaign, I have told you that this election is not about me; it’s about the people of this District.

It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same.

At the end of the day, Scozzafava has shown that she has truly earned the title of Republican in Name Only and that voters were right to be suspicious of her. If she truly cared, as she has stated, about smaller government and government restraint then she would never have endorsed Bill Owens, the Democrat in the race. If she made the choice as a matter of conscience, then she is no true Republican; if she made it as a matter of pique, then she’s more concerned about her own hurt feelings than she is about her supposed values. Either way, a horrible showing on her part and a loud message to the Republican party as we continue to head toward the bigger fights in 2010.

1. If anyone but Seth Rogan had played the role of Ronnie, a seriously unhinged security guard, it might have been a horrible movie. His likability is the only thing that redeems the violent, delusional loser.
2. And beware: there are things in here that will make you wince. Not least of which is the occasional bit of male, full-frontal nudity (and not in a way that many folks are bound to find aesthetically pleasing).
3. More, though, it’s the darkness of the humor and the savagely cruel life of Ronnie that will set the viewer on edge.
4. Yeah, it’s funny, but it’s mean, too. Sometimes, really mean.
5. There’s a scene in which a police officer announces, “I thought it was going to be funny. It’s just kind of sad.” Well, it really is a funny movie in places, but that line is one of the more memorable moments because its not far off how the audience is starting to feel. Laughing at the lovable loser (see Paul Blart, Mall Cop for an example) can be awfully fun. This just feels little too honest to be full-on funny, though.
6. It’s the difference, pardon the cliché, between laughing with someone and laughing at someone. Only someone truly cruel likes laughing at someone like Ronnie, who isn’t a horrible soul but most certainly is a failure as a human being by almost any standard.
7. Beautifully shot.
8. The occasional violence has a nasty, vicious feel. That’s not a complaint. The cruel edge helps to maintain the dark, broken tone of the whole thing. That is, it maintains that tone except for where it dives fully into insane bouts of silliness (as in the big mall fight scene wherein we learn that Ronnie wields one mean Maglite).
9. Supporting characters vary wildly between poorly rendered cardboard cut-outs and ridiculously effective counterpoints to Ronnie.
10. By the end--maybe an overly positive end--I was pulling for Ronnie. I wouldn’t invite the guy out for drinks, but I wanted him to wake up, wise up, and start getting better.

Angry angels are gonna kick your butt.*

* None of which seems very biblical, but does look to have a creepy sort of charm. And Paul Bettany is a wonderful (and underrated) actor. None of which counts against my official preview word count, in case you were curious.

Tonight, as I ponder impending joblessness, I am watching Jim Jarmusch’s strange masterpiece, Dead Man.

Awkward, strange, unsettling, and (self-consciously) odd, Roger Ebert famously said “Jim Jarmusch is trying to get at something here, and I don’t have a clue what it is.” I found it fascinating, funny, and entrancing. It has a Neil Young, electric guitars soundtrack over dusty, black-and-white, cowboys-and-indians story with a roaming cast of famous faces and Scarlet Letter-esque foreshadowings of doom. It is a little bit ridiculous; Ebert had a point.

Which isn’t to dismiss this story of a man named William Blake, an Indian named Nobody, and big heapings of cinematic loneliness. The whole thing heads to an end that is defined early in the film when William Blake, an accountant from Cleveland, is shot. He will die and there is nothing to stop it. In that respect, the movie lets us worry over a fate that we should know that we share--we are all headed (slowly, we hope) toward our own death and it didn’t take a gun to set us on the course. Once that is established, we can settle in to see the story of a man with a poet’s name and precious little poetry in his life. The portrait of Blake is so bleak, in fact, that I found myself simply hoping that he would find some measure of grace before the end.

It’s not the easiest story, its pacing is uneven, and the script can be distracting, but that may be because the story seems to have an almost literary ambition behind its cinematic self-indulgence. Move past those rough bits and open yourself to the varied experiences of William Blake’s last days, and you might find a story worth loving, though. Or, at least, a story worth watching.

1. As bad as Darren Aronfsky’s The Fountain was--filled with forced emotion, ridiculous sentiment, and half-baked philosophy--The Wrestler is its opposite. A wrenching look at a has-been who can’t pull his life together and who faces his own twilight with something too resigned to be nihilism but too broken to be redemption.
2. It’s also the visual opposite of The Fountain. Whereas the former was a staggering vision (especially on the big screen), The Wrestler is grit and blood and an overwhelming sense of age. Not just in the cast, but in the run-down civic centers, the old cars and homes, every scene is as weathered as Mickey Rourke’s body. It isn’t pretty, but the extension of that decrepitude in threads throughout the film is just as much of an artistic achievement serving to support the mood and tone.
3. The exception to this is Marisa Tomei whose, even looking a bit aged, is still rather pretty.
4. It also proves that blood and violence, properly presented, can still manage to shock. Some of the scenes had me wincing in sympathetic pain.
5. Good script. Not great but a good frame for Aronfsky’s direction and Mickey Rourke’s best ever role.
6. You’ve heard it a million times since last year, but Rourke’s acting really is that good. It’s an engrossing and honest performance well worth the Oscar nomination.
7. Marisa Tomei is wonderful in a much smaller role as an aging stripper.
8. Darling girl refused to see this in the theater because of Rourke’s face--she finds it both terrifying and distracting. Which is fair: it is both terrifying and distracting. The young man who looked like this simply doesn’t exist anymore.  And while I won’t say that’s a good thing, it does give his performance a sense of gravitas that it wouldn’t have if he were still pretty. You believe he’s this screwed up old guy because he is this screwed up old guy.
9. Washed up wrestlers aren’t a natural point of sympathy to me: it’s a strange career choice with a piss-poor retirement plan. Tomei, Aronfsky, a strong supporting cast, and, of course, Rourke give us an affecting view on these folks’ lives that is much more than I would have expected when I first heard about the project. But don’t expect any happy endings.
10. None of which makes me believe that Aronfsky is a good choice to direct a remake of RoboCop. (which, admittedly, seems an entirely unnecessary venture even before Aronfsky’s name gets tossed into that particular pot).