godthedog

my guess is that this lakers team furiously blows itself up for not winning the finals, like they did in 2004. and that it takes another 3 years before kobe gets to the finals again. also: wasn't lakers-pistons game 5 the last game doc rivers called play-by-play on before he started coaching the celtics? or am i remembering that wrong?

you would fuck them dogs up. the few dogs left would be screaming like those little cartoon cockroaches in the old raid commercials.

nice choice.

'a night at the opera' is really funny, but that love story is just sickeningly bad. every time they're on the screen i want to throw shit at them. it also builds up to what's supposed to be this big climactic event (the titular opera), but it's just not as satisfying as the rest of the movie tries to make it. i can't really put my finger on why, but when it was over i was left going "wait...that's it?" 'duck soup' is like the perfect marx brothers movie because they're distilled to their most pure form and there's nothing to clutter up the screen time. it's funny shit, and that's all it is. and "but i can't see the stove" is also my favorite groucho line.

Duck Soup fuck yeah. this shit is funny.

did you just use the expression "elected dog catcher" in a sentence? how old are you? what time is matlock on?

great movie. his and my lists are probably going to end up looking more-or-less the same. i was hoping to sneak that in at a later round, but it's probably for the best. i don't generally like robert altman, so it's not very representative of my taste. this one, on the other hand... Jules and Jim was the first foreign movie that i ever really loved. francois truffaut was a god damn genius, even after his movies got all sentimental and mediocre. it's got a looseness and giddiness that's similar to 'pierrot le fou' (the freeze frames that capture jeanne moreau's laughing face are particularly awesome, especially if you don't know they're coming), but way more under control. this is just about a perfect balance of great storytelling and experimenting with form. i'm also a sucker for jeanne moreau in all her european incarnations, and this is easily her best work.

i got dragged to this yesterday, and some of it was indeed very funny. if anything, i think it suffered from not really knowing how seriously it wanted to take itself--it alternated pretty violently between typical shyamalan "let's insert lots of ingmar bergman pregnant pauses into a heavy family drama into horror/mystery formulas" mode and "we're just going to have some fun with how ridiculous this is" mode. it seems like shyamalan sort of knew that the premise doesn't really hold up, and the violence escalating through encountering weirder-and-weirder characters was sort of promising. two parts in particular i was dying at: but when you put those next to stupid family drama crap (especially the climactic moment, which is so fucking overblown and stupid i don't even know how to begin describing it), you don't have a cohesive movie.

Does Superjerk not know that the Congress passed the Fair Minimum Wage Act last year which hiked min. wage last July and will go up again next month and the July after that to $7.25 an hour. Does Superjerk know that teenage unemployment went up 3% to 18% in May which was a huge factor in the .5% jump in overall unemployment? Could that 3% rise possibly be because companies eliminated low skill/min wage jobs now before they would have to pay them more next month? How much do you want to bet unemployement goes up again this month? Just a few things to think about. that seems like a reasonable explanation to me, but it leaves open the question of when exactly is the right time to raise the minimum wage? you can't just let it sit there at $5.65 or whatever it was forever. should we have waited another 2 years to raise it? another 5, 10 years? the larger problem isn't that it was raised, the problem was that it stagnated for ten years. when you have to catch up for ten years of cost-of-living increases all at once, there's going to be some severe growing pains. the "but it'll hurt the economy" argument can be made at absolutely any time the minimum wage needs to be increased.

'hip-hop is dead' is a concept album?

i predict that in the coming years, diablo cody's career will have the same pattern as m. night shyamalan. she has that same sort of vibe about her. explain how that twist doesn't make the aliens into just the dumbest possible sentient beings in the history of anything. not a fair comparison, because the criticism of shyamalan isn't that some of his movies are bad; it's that he only knows how to make one kind of movie. all of the directors you mentioned have tried different styles, different narratives, not writing the same kind of ending over and over again, etc. you can knock scorsese for making 'new york, new york'; but you can't say "it was exactly the same as 'taxi driver' only not as good."

^winner. i almost guffawed aloud in the library at this.

^i'm quickly starting to consider that as nirvana's best album. definitely the one that's most friendly to listen to 10+ years later.

i'm glad i'm not also in this draft, but if i were playing, i would've picked these by now: 1. homicide 2. the office (UK) 3. batman: the animated series 4. sifl and olly

and amusingly, it has exactly the same amount of influence as someone writing in his own name or mickey mouse's name for shits and giggles. exactly the same.

i'm surprised people didn't start swiping up kurosawa sooner, once 'rashomon' had been picked.

son of a bitch. i didn't think anybody else would pick that one. great movie, and the one where i finally got what godard was all about. it's got some pacing problems, but that's to be expected when you're making a different movie every ten minutes. the musical sequence is my favorite thing about any godard movie (except maybe the end of 'weekend'), with them just running around in the woods all goofy. "ma line de chanCEEE!" the reinactment of the vietnam war is up there too. and anna karina is so cute i can't stand it. god dammit.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington so many reasons to pick this one. that final scene (pictured above), with unshaven jimmy stewart ranting and raving against stark silence is just awesome. i used to have it memorized. nobody can make you buy into the cheesiness at the same time as you laugh at yourself for buying into the cheesiness like frank capra. evil graft-mongers pushing kids over on their bikes!!! darn those bad men in dark suits!!! probably the exact opposite of godard, cause its just so fucking sincere you can't not buy into the formula. i love this movie so very much. also, just a warning, be prepared for a lot more french movies in the coming rounds. with their ambiguous endings and their blank, vaguely meaningful stares.

godard in general is a pretty weirdly acquired taste. i HATED 'breathless' the first time i saw it, it was my least favorite movie ever for about a year.

Breathless this one is just too much fun to pass up. it peters off a little in the second half, but i unabashedly love the first 45 minutes--the jump cuts, the cute jokes, the endless conversations, the cycles of romantic posturing jean-paul belmondo goes through...everything about it is totally insincere, but it still has a youthful, giddy momentum. the first in a string of great godard anti-couples.

that reads way too much like "caligula."

^ditto. just amazingly well-paced. the timing on that trying-to-capitalize-on-other-guy-trapped-in-the-ropes-but-too-late bump is great. i like that the match doesn't seem to have that burden of greatness the latter ones did, that they were more concerned with having an under-the-radar really good match.

i had no idea 'the seventh seal' had so many fans. i always figured that 'persona' was the go-to bergman favorite.

i feel more and more secure about my future picks.

dammit. i've been had. confusing seeing your "defense" after marney's real defense. the "democrats like marney" thing should've tipped me off, i assumed it was some kind of slip-up. oops.