I saw “Man of Steel” last night. It was an OK movie by regular standards. By “holy shit they mention Kansas like 13 times” standards, it was spectacular. As many people have noted since Friday, Clark Kent watches a Kansas football game on TV during the movie, and it no doubt has taken super powers beyond those endowed to regular mortals to watch KU football the last three years.
But what game was Clark actually watching? Continue reading
It’s been a while since our last Diary of a Bad Movie. Blame it on my lack of cable in State College. In Dallas, I could choose, on demand, from a list of nauseating mediocrity. I’m not so lucky in the east.
Thankfully being home for the holidays has allowed me to catch up with a true stinkbomb of a film, New Year’s Eve, on New Year’s Eve nonetheless.
Going into the movie, other than knowing it will not be any good, I know Seth Meyers is in it. All I know about Seth Meyers, as my dad reminds me, is that he is not even enough of a screen presence to be featured in Saturday Night Live skits. And he is in this movie. This movie.
This movie, of course, contains a jumble of characters, like the regrettable Valentine’s Day, whose plots and thus lives are somehow intertwined and interrelated. Yes just like the world. In the same way the actions of a rice farmer in Japan extends to sales of wheat futures in the United States or something, the pain of Ashton Kutcher being a hipster will lead to Jessica Biel giving birth to a baby faster. Yes this math does compute in the mind of a studio exec.
Selecting from On Demand: It turns out this movie is one hour and 58 minutes long. A test of endurance. I’ll see if I can get through. Here we go… Continue reading
Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday by far, makes us engage in behavior that under normal circumstances would appear crazy. This sociologically-documented phenomenon stretches all the way back to the first Thanksgiving on Plymouth Rock. Instead of serving Pocahontas’ and Squanto’s tribes a small pox cocktail like they usually did, John Smith, Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan shared a meal of turkey, fried green bean casserole and Stove Top stuffing with them, piling all of the food into a giant cornucopia. No muskets were even brought to this feast. Isn’t America great?
In modern times, these behavioral transformations are more subtle Continue reading
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Book: Brian Porto’s The Supreme Court and The NCAA
Let’s get this out of the way first: The Supreme Court and The NCAA is a “law” book. It is not a leisurely, let me sip a Miami Vice on this barcalounger while listening to New Edition, summer-time read. But summer is over. At least up here in Pennsylvania. It was sixty degrees this morning.
And as the temperatures get cooler, serious non-fiction becomes more appealing. I began reading this book as background for work but wanted to finish it because the author Brian Porto presents detailed portrayals of two landmark decisions that changed big-time college athletics, as well as what I consider the best argument for fixing the industry it has become.
Every Monday morning. Music so good… it must be shared.
This week: “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” — Arcade Fire, covering Cyndi Lauper
(And when you’re done with the video, stay for the entire, ridiculous playlist, including some scenes (!!!) from the 80s movie starring Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt, Jonathan Silverman and Shannen Doherty.)
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Colin Farrell has starred in some terrible and forgettable movies. We know his role. He plays the fast-talking punk who’s really not a punk because we KNOW he has a soft side. He endears himself to us because he’s Irish, and women think his body totally rocks. And there is a law, written in permanent ink on a massive steno pad somewhere in Hollywood (I’ve seen it), that posits anyone with a body deemed to totally rock cannot be a punk.
Back in 2008, Farrell actually proved why he deserves the attention and the dollar bills that follow when he starred in a movie most of us never heard about, and if we did, we probably shrugged our shoulders and then forgot. He starred in a movie called “In Bruges.” The name sounds art house. And despite featuring heavy gunfire, it kind of is. The best way to explain the movie is how I explained it in a text to a friend: “It’s a dark comedy/crime thriller set in Bruges. Somehow it worked.”
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Album: Katy B – “On A Mission”
Mark’s post about the beauty of dancing got me thinking about which albums are the most danceable, start to finish. Daft Punk, Hot Chip, and LCD Soundsystem have each crafted outrageously dance-y records in the past few years, but I think Robyn’s “Body Talk” wins, followed by Katy B’s debut full-length, “On A Mission.”
There’s nothing wrong with Ryan Gosling.
Gosling is a household name, face, and body. Fashion-forward straight men love him for his style and everyone else loves him for his everything else. From The Notebook to Half Nelson to Blue Valentine to Drive, the blue-eyed Canuck has dabbled in quite a few corners of the movie — and music — business and done a damn good job of it.
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Grammy Performance: Taylor Swift
Am I endorsing Taylor Swift? Well, sort of. Is this a tepid recommendation of someone who already gets way too much pub? Probably. Did I still enjoy Taylor’s live rendition of her hit song “Mean” at the Grammys? Well, yes. I couldn’t help it. And my Twitter feed seemed to agree.
Because sometimes you just want friends to tell you about cool things… the Brew House team offers up its weekly mix of author-supported goodness.
Film: “The Pruitt-Igoe Myth: An Urban History”
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