This single .zip file
includes four .avi clips of Candy Clark
in the Bob Mitchum remake of The Big Sleep. I like Mitchum, and I
like the book, and I have to admit that in some ways this movie
was more faithful to the book than the Bogart version, but I never
have figured out why it was located in England with a 60 year old
man playing Marlowe. (Movie
House Review)
"What did it matter where you lay once you
were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a
high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you
were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the
same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not
caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.
Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it
than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He
could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands
folded on the sheet, waiting ...
... and in a little while he too, like
Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep."
STV releases:
Roadhouse 2 really has none
of the loopy fun of the original, although the script does refer
to its predecessor several times. Dalton is dead, and his son
(Jonathan Schaech) works for the DEA. That's mighty convenient
because Dalton's brother (Will Patton), who owns a bar in the
Louisiana bayou country, is being strong-armed by some drug
dealers.
Boring!
There is some nudity, and it's not
so bad, but it all comes from anonymous women.
These zipped .wmv files are of
excellent quality and include:
Edison Force is rated R,
but has no nudity. This film stars Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey,
Piper Perabo, John Heard, Cary Elwes, and LL Cool J. It also
represents the screen debut of Justin Timberlake, who isn't
completely awful in the movie, but probably shouldn't quit his day
job. I think you can guess that a film with so much high powered
talent (two Oscar winners!) and a $37 million budget would not be
going straight to video if it were any good. It's about a
fictional city with a corrupt S.W.A.T. team. Timberlake plays an
aspiring reporter who hopes to expose the group. LL Cool J is the
real star, a bad cop who regrets his past decisions and wants to
make things right. The baddie is Dylan McDermott as Cool J's
partner, a one-dimensional bad cop who loves being bad.
Both of these movies would be low
C minuses on our scale: barely watchable movies that I made it
through with neither enthusiasm nor disgust.
Hosted by the diminutive dictator himself, the televised talent showcase has been heating up the Nielsens ever since it debuted, with approximately 100% of all North Korean TV viewers watching it. "It helps that the marketing campaign has been so strong," says Davis Logsdon, who studies North Korean television trends at the University of Minnesota. "Also that Kim Jong-Il has forced all North Koreans to watch it under penalty of death."
He thinks that Lady in the Water will be just popular enough to edge out Pirates for the #1 spot.
The field will be crowded this week, with four new releases.
If his analysis is correct, the box office will be about 20% ahead of last year. That makes sense. Last year also had four new releases, but none of them took in more than $13 million.
Yellow asterisk: funny (maybe). White asterisk: expanded format.
Blue asterisk: not mine. No asterisk: it probably sucks.
Carnivale Season 2 (2005) - Part 1
This is the final season of this stylish HBO
series. Despite the cancellation, it has a huge fan base, which of course
morphed from fan club to cult following automatically as soon as HBO announced
the cancellation. The story picks up exactly where it stopped last season, with
the aftermath of a trailer fire that killed Sophie's mother, and Lodz dies. For
those who don't recall season one, you can find the
official episode summaries here. The series contains basically three story
lines interwoven. The first is the day to day operation of a carnival in the
depression, featuring the lives of all the freaks and workers. The second is the rise
to religious power of Brother Justin Crowe and his sister Iris. The third
follows ex-con Ben Hawkins, who is hiding out in the carnival while he
discovers that he has a destiny, which we all know will pit him against Justin
Crowe in a final battle of good vs. evil. Once that happened, of course, the
series would have been over, so progress towards that ending was slight in each
episode.
In episodes 1 through 4:
Sophie decides to give up card reading, and
is trying to work her way into Jonsie's all- male crew, but is meeting serious
resistance from the other workers.
Management reveals more of himself to Ben
Hawkins.
Stumpy is in financial trouble, and is pushing Rita Sue and Libby very
hard in the cootch show.
Justin Crowe finds the spot to build his radio
ministry, and molest a female volunteer played by Eliza Pryor Nagel
As usual,
Iris covers up Justin's mess, while he is off in Chinatown getting a huge tattoo
from Saemi Nakamura.
The appeal of this series for me has nothing to do with the main story, the
ultimate battle between good and evil. The biggest star of the show is the
visual style, including set decoration and photography. The secondary attraction
is the
curious depression setting and an inside look at carny life. So far, I am not
finding season 2 as compelling as season one.
