Issue 137

News/Reviews: 2008 in film.
2008 was nowhere near the year for good movies that 2007 was. However, there were still a lot of good movies.
*THere Will Be Blood. I listed this in last year's entry as a film I had wanted to see but didn't. Fortunately, I waited a year to get this on DVD, and I must say that it was worth it, especially for the voices. A lot of movies from the 1920s to 1950s era had voices that had a distinctive quality to them that had become rare in films since, and this quality is especially missed in movies that take place in this period of time. Fortunately, Daniel Day Lewis seems to have done this very well. For this alone I highly recommend this movie, but the plot is also highly interesting as well, with the struggle for oil rights and the portrayal of religion are quite compelling in this day and age.
*Shine a Light. Well, Scorsese showed the Stones still going strong, covering some familiar territory, and many obscure gems I had never known before. By this point, that's all that needs to be said.
*Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I was never a big fan of big adventure stories and Indiana Jones' stories were not real exceptions to this rule. However, I still liked this movie. Of course, this was probably because of my ambivalence to the trilogy that I liked the trilogy, especially with the South Park episode about it in mind.
*WALL-E. I only watched this movie after I got the DVD, as with There Will Be Blood. However, especially keeping the other Pixar movies I remember, I am somewhat ambivalent, and I can assume that much of this was with the more serious tone than I had known with previous Pixar movies.
*Dark Knight. With this movie, I can finally take out the image of Heath Ledger as Patrick Verona in an ill-concieved teen version of Taming of the Shrew, and finally replace it with an image of him as the Joker. If not for his performance, I would have more or less not have cared for it at all, as with the other Burton-on Batman films.
*Hamlet II. Yes, the long-awaited sequel to William Shakespeare's hit play succeeds beyond our wildest expectations, especially my mother's.
Some I wish I had seen:
*Cassandra's Dream.
*Expelled. (I planned on refuting the arguments in this movie, but I didn't want to support Ben Stein, and my usual channels failed me. Of course, from what I heard, there's not much worth refuting)
*Vicky Christina Barcelona.
*Disaster Movie (if only to find out exactly why a drag queen would have to fight off the cast of Juno.)
*Religulous.
*Frost/Nixon
*Valkyrie.

Band Name of the Day: Bastards From Baskets. I've probably said too much.

Film Idea of the Day: Nothing now.

Quote of the Day: "It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."
______________Lord Russell.

Link of the Day: A very unusual comic about a girl who used to be a boy, a Harvard student missing 2 years of his life, and the angel responsible for both.

Issue 136

News: Thoughts on The Republic Sit-in.
As I'm sure you know, the economy has been going into such a huge nosedive that even Free-Market guru Allan Greenspan has been admitting that there was something wrong with his free-market ideology all along. One big thing that's been going on related to this that interests me both as a Chicagoan and a Left-winger was the sit-in at the Republic Window and Door Company. The company, as it turned out, was going to go under as a result of the financial crisis, and they were going to go under a week ago. However, after being abruptly fired without any sort of pay to tide them over until they got a new job, which is illegal on several levels. Instead of taking this treatment lying down, many of these workers actually decided to stage a sit-in until they get paid for their loss. So far, there has not been any progress, but I can only say that I hope that they get their demands, and that the workers actually get something for their hard work in the long run, instead of simply getting the boot, and if their sit-in ends up working and they can actually get compensated, I hope that businesses will end up working to ensure that this sort of thing doesn't happen again.

Band Name of the Day: Death to the Monster. From Jack Chick's "Fairy Tales."

Film Idea of the Day: I'm sure that Rod Blagojevich's recent scandal would make an amazing movie, and I'm sure that as soon as everything's resolved, somebody will make a movie of it whol will be more interested in political thrillers than I am.

Film Review of the Day: Roman Holiday. I have recently watched this movie, and I have to say that it was pretty good, and I think that it would probably work well if combined (in the most bizarre way possible) with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and I know that until I bring it into a polished vision, I may be the only person who will be able to see exactly how the two would work.

Quote of the Day: "There never is a real difference between ancient history and current events. There are only variations; The theme is always the same."
__________________Hubert Selby Jr.

Link of the Day: Johnathan (sic) Christian Webster III. That is All.

Yup, I've been swamped in paperwork for three weeks, and This is the best I can come up with.