We’re considerably more than halfway through the #june100 challenge, and I’m barely off-pace to finish in good shape. Here’s this week’s list. I’ve got a lot of work to do, here, people. 34. Spanglish: Had absolutely no desire to see this movie. I'm a big supporter of James L Brooks' early career. Broadcast News is among my favorite films of all time and Terms of Endearment isn't far behind. He's a force be ...

You know the drill: 100 movies I haven’t seen in just 30 days. I’m way behind, here, people. Let’s get to it. 7. Morvern Callar: This is where I left off last week. No effects, no violence, just the soft pretension of low-budget indie film-making. I can’t express how complimentary I intend that last statement to be. This is a terrific movie. Director Lynne Ramsay (she also wrote it with Liana Dognini, based ...

#June100 is off and running. I'm two-plus days in and have only 6 movies under my belt, with the seventh chosen. I've got a more-or-less normal week, with Tuesday full of podcast things, Wednesday devoted to class, and the rest pretty open. I think I can make up some ground here. I can usually get in a family movie night over the weekend, but this time was all about family basketball, s'mores on sticks and ...

100 movies in 30 days. That's gonna hurt. I received a friendly, polite, mostly off-hand Twitter request to join @grogg in a challenge to watch 100 Movies in June. And I jumped on it. Because I'm kind of a moron. I have my days free, which will help, but I have family stuff and a crippling sense of non-accomplishment as it is--how will an average of nearly 10 hours a day watching movies combat that? I imagi ...

"Okay, I wanna see what happens, next week. Go 'La La La', please." Then this happens while I sing the last minute of this with my eyes closed, fingers in ears. It's a little ritual that keeps our family running smoothly. A similar tradition (in tone if not practice) happens at movie theaters. After the Jodeci retreads have played and we've answered the trivia cards, the lights come down, the green rating s ...

  I don't want to do it. The idea is ludicrous; the title is stupid; the whole premise is moronic and hilarious in equal parts. I avoid every situation where I might have to sit through two hours of torturous over-reach by steel-tipped egos and power-mad moguls determined to lower Hollywood's already disturbingly low future film aspirations. Enough of these terrible movies and we'll be working with a n ...

Just a quick couple of Netflix recommendations today. Our passions and our professions are to a huge extent what define us. When they're one and the same, however, the overlap can drive us nuts. Artists, politicians, athletes, moguls, yogis. A certain level of passionate obsession isn't healthy in combination with some personality types. As such, so very many chefs are insane or brilliant or a combination o ...

Everyone knows Citizen Kane. There's a healthy population of the world that would consider it the finest movie ever made. This is a difficult thing to quantify, but I certainly grok the argument. I imagine these people feel  "this movie is so good, was so influential, the story behind its making so compelling that there is no other film that can match it for sheer awesome balls." I might go with any number ...

We haven't seen Zero Dark Thirty or Drive. We missed Life of Pi in the theater and probably won't be seeing RIPD when it comes out. Our nights spent in dark rooms with light shining on the big wall and sound coming at us like a tide of rhinos while popcorn and Sour Patch Kids flow freely are limited to PG-13 extravaganzas with some amount of family appeal. Animated movies loom large for us, as do comic book ...

FX is having a grand old time with its original programming. Basic Cable in general is in a golden age of sorts. With Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Hell on Wheels and The Killing, AMC is the current monarch of Basic-Cable Awesome. TNT/USA's approach is stubbornly scattershot: green-light everything and throw it out there, who the hell knows what will work? This has given us greatness in The Close ...

I swear I'm not in love with the 80s. I'm not hypnotized by them or pining for their return. They were politically untenable and socially awkward. Don't get me wrong, they were awesome. The Royals were mostly pretty good. The Yankees mostly weren't. Everyone's ankles were cozy-warm, our churches were metal and there was a new Friday the 13th every single year. I've written more about this decade than its me ...

Today, Jane Alice Peters is my favorite actor. I’m a little obsessed with Hollywood name-changers. Archibald Leach, Marion Morrison, Norma Jeane Mortenson and Bernie Schwarz are classic examples of stars who probably wouldn’t have been. Michael Douglas, James Stewart and Albert Einstein were all forced to change their names for even more obvious reasons. To be honest, Jane Alice Peters is a perfectly servic ...

Just a simple series of recommendations, today. Let’s look back at some of the best Boston movies. I find that I can only take so much media speculation at times like these, so it’s useful to take a step back and just breathe until there is more factual information for journalists and news readers to impart. In the meantime, I watch movies. There are ton to choose from, here, since Boston perhaps only trail ...

Think of a movie. This is your favorite movie or the best movie. A classic. It’s a movie you could watch every week for the rest of your life or one you make it a point to watch once a year. Maybe it’s a movie you saw just the one time twenty years ago and it’s stuck with you ever since, like this picture of Gary Busey. You can’t just unsee that; it’s there in your head forever. This movie I’m talking about ...

“I hate actors.” On the written page, that’s a fun little line. It’s the dying expression of a black-hat villain in a forgettable 80s comedy in the style of The Prince and the Pauper. The movie was kind of terrible. It was non-remade into Dave a few years later. That wasn’t a great movie, either, but it was clearly better than Moon Over Parador. Dave at least had Kevin Kline (NSFW) while he was still funny. ...

I was all set to write a column about remakes and the foolish/justified/entertaining way we prejudge them. I will keep my research and write it when another high-profile remake is set to premiere (shouldn’t have to wait long). But I can’t let the events of this afternoon (Thursday) pass without typing whatever feelings want to escape tonight (also Thursday), as I drink a bit of bourbon and think about the p ...

It’s opening day in Royals Land and optimism couldn’t be higher, which means that I am personally pessimistic. That’s just how I roll. I’m a Royals fan, and kind of live by the motto “Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 27 times….” Which is not to say that I’m down on my team, I love all of the players, coaches, fans, Hudlers, even the umpires. I believe that Alex Gordon will get MVP votes. I know that Sal ...

Twenty-two episodes used to be industry standard. A production company (a network, really) would order a pilot to be produced. On the strength of that one hour (or one half-hour), seven episodes would be ordered. Or maybe thirteen. If the pilot showed real promise, maybe a full season would be contracted. Twenty-two episodes and the show would be off and running. Of course, there were exceptions. Cheers reg ...

“I design your eyes.” This line from Blade Runner has floored me for 3 decades. A unique bit of dialogue, that. Difficult to imagine that sentence in any other circumstance. It’s not exactly “show me the money” or even “back off, man, I’m a scientist”. You’ll never see it on a T-shirt, is my point. It’s even possible that the line that follows it is more memorable (certainly more remembered). But it’s those ...

Among other accomplishments of dubious merit, I was once a pretty okay Latin speaker. Good enough to use only that crazy-dead language for an hour or so every day. Catholic School Latin, that is. Of course I was not a very good Catholic Schoolboy. Not a very good Catholic at all, really. To the point where I was once caught cheating on a quiz in Freshman Theology. Why waste time studying for what I didn’t t ...