stoutfellow

There is talk of a film version of "The Greatest American Hero"... with Nathan Filion in the title role.

(I guess it's safe to resurrect the name "Hinckley" now.)

On a list of various people's favorite Christmas movies, someone nominated "The Lion in Winter".

Well? It's one of my favorite movies, and it is set at Christmastime....

There just might be a Veronica Mars movie.

If ever there was a series that deserved a better resolution, VM is one.

Here's hoping.

An exchange today with p_o_u_n_c_e_r on the LMB list leaves me with a great desire to rewatch The Maltese Falcon. Sam Spade I can take or leave, but Joel Cairo just cracks me up. (I love the scene in Spade's office, when Cairo confronts him with a gun, and also. later, Cairo's reaction when Guttman scrapes the enamel off the statue and realizes what's underneath. Priceless!)

Encore is running a James Bond marathon today, and several of the films they're showing are on my to-get list. So far today I've added "Dr. No" and "Diamonds Are Forever" to my collection, and "Goldfinger" and "From Russia With Love" are coming up.

There's often a considerable gap between the time I acquire a movie and the time I actually get around to watching it, but I think I'm going to watch "Dr. No" pretty soon. One of the storylines on Irregular Webcomic is a parody of that movie, and I suspect I'll enjoy it more once I've seen the film.

Christopher Frayling's Mad, Bad and Dangerous?: The Scientist and the Cinema is an exploration of the presentation of scientists in the movies; it's fairly interesting, if for no other reason than the categorization of types and the connections between them. More under the cut.

( Mwahaha! )

Shakespeare's Sister has a post up on the topic of "favorite romantic comedies". Some of the nominees are unknown to me; some are good, some bad, and some bizarre (Casablanca?). (All IMO, of course.) Inspired by this, I thought I'd use my own private soapbox to expound on the subject. Under the cut, then, are some of my favorites.

( My Favorite Romantic Comedies )

So, what are your picks?

Saturday. Saturday morning, Dad, D[1] and I went to see "Cars". Not a bad movie, of the "city slicker goes to the country and learns valuable lesson" type; some of the characters - notably the Judge - approached two-dimensionality. jeriendhal has a pretty good review here; I do have to point out that the protagonist's name was Lightning (not Speed) McQueen.

After the movie, I told the others to go ahead home; I had some shopping to do. (The theater is only a mile or so from Dad's place.) First stop was a visit to Barnes & Noble. I decided against buying books, for various reasons, but I did want to pick up a few CDs; details under the cut.

( Music )

I was hoping to find an album by the late Desmond Decker Dekker ("Israelites"), but no such luck; I'll have to hunt for it online.

(Oh, yeah. Second stop was a visit to a nearby restaurant for a gift certificate for Dad's birthday.)

[1] This is my brother D, not my ex-classmate D!

As a final note on the "101 Movies" list, I thought I'd identify the listed movies that I don't have recordings of. They are: "Dirty Harry", "It's a Gift", "Scarface", "Tokyo Story", and "Trouble in Paradise", all of which were already on my wish list, and "Blade Runner", "Blue Velvet", "Carrie", "Un Chien Andalou", "Do the Right Thing", "Fight Club", "Halloween", "Pink Flamingos", "The Scarlet Empress", and "Taxi Driver", which were/are not. So I have 86 of the 101, which I'd say is a respectable percentage.

As you may know, I have a bit of a mania for collecting recordings of movies. I subscribe to several of the premium channels, and keep an eye out for showings of films on my (absurdly long) wish-list. Now, back when I was on C-band, I subscribed to "Satellite TV Week", which allowed me to plan ahead, a week or even a month at a time. With the withering of the C-band market, though, that magazine went under a few years ago, and soon afterward I switched to Dish Network. Unfortunately, Dish's on-air guide only goes about 24 hours into the future, and sometimes I wind up getting caught flat-footed¹.

A few days ago, TCM ran a Laurel & Hardy marathon, and I took the opportunity to add Sons of the Desert and Way Out West to my collection. The next night, I saw that TCM was showing The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. That's one that's been on my list for a long time, and I don't recall them ever showing it before; not knowing when if ever they'd show it again, I eagerly programmed the satellite box and recorder, only to discover that, not only was I out of blank discs - I'd used the last one for the Laurel & Hardy - but I didn't have any more blank tapes either. Fortunately, I found a spare copy of North Dallas Forty (which I'd accidentally taped twice), and I rededicated it to this higher purpose.

Anyway, today I ran over to Target to avoid a recurrence, and picked up a ten-pack of blank discs and an eight-pack of T160 tapes. I also bought a couple of DVDs - I went for silly stuff, Bubba Ho-Tep and Corpse Bride - and two CDs, the "Sergeant Pepper" album and "The Essential Journey". I'm not that familiar with Journey; the only song I definitely recognized on the album was "Faithfully", but I like that one a good deal and decided to take the chance. Bubba Ho-Tep got mixed reviews, but the idea of it is outlandishly appealing: an old man who thinks he's Elvis joins forces with an old man who thinks he's JFK (despite being black...) to stop a 3000-year-old mummy that's prowling the halls of their retirement home.

It looks like a pretty good haul, and I'm ready now - at least for a while - for anything TCM and its peers can throw at me.

1 I suppose I should bookmark the websites of the channels themselves and use those, but I haven't gotten around to doing that.