Three Little Words

The 3-word way to ensure I won't be reading your spam:

Beloved in Christ:

And to ensure I won't be reading your newspaper article about election politicking:

...the race card...

The Post Express continues to amuse with its utter awfulness. This morning, in a review of the new Mummy franchise entry, was a reference to Brendan Fraser "seeding" screen time to a younger actor—even though the same paragraph later cited Harrison Ford's having refused to "cede" such to his progeny.

Oh, and a photo from the new Brideshead Revisited was captioned with the names: "Sebastian Flyte and Matthew Goode".

Ye fucking gods, I don't expect everyone to have read Waugh (actually, I do, but I realize how silly that is); but you could AT LEAST proof your captions to make sure you're not mixing character names with actor names! Criminy.

Porn news: Cole Ryder dead of staph

Yesterday wongo-hot porn star Cole Ryder died of a staph infection. AVN article here.

Waah.

Folkfest Carnage

As some others in Camp Smegma have reported, the hellacious squall that nearly sent the big top flying up to Halifax did not kill my cell phone or my camera, both of which spent far too much time in the pocketses of my shorts while those shorts were getting drenched in the pouring, wind-whipped rain. (At the first lull in the wind I stashed both in a nearby Ziploc bag; I'm amazed they survived as much wet as they did, though.)

However, there was one casualty of that storm. This morning I pulled the entire contents of my wallet, then took it out and shot it. It was the most humane thing to do, really.

Target, here I come.

As to the contents, the plastics are of course fine; my health insurance card is nasty; and the photo of my dad that eloquentwthrage made for me is toast. (EWR, can you make me another? Or send me the image?)

My two $10 Canadian bills didn't disintegrate, but they did drop slightly in value.

Pauline Kael was an asshole.

Given my commenting earlier today about Star Wars and, out of sheer coincidence, run across the fact that Pauline Kael said that movie was "like a Cracker Jack box that's all prizes," I found a site of capsule reviews by Kael. Now, I've read a whole bookful of full reviews by Kael, but it didn't strike me until just now what an asshole she was. Well, she did say Prizzi's Honor was "like The Godfather acted out by The Munsters"; and she adored Pennies from Heaven (1981). So she wasn't all bad. But still:

The Stepford Wives
US (1975): Thriller/Drama
115 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette

The first women's-lib gothic—hardly the landmark the world had been waiting for. Besides, it's so tastefully tame that there's no suspense. Taken from an Ira Levin novel that might have been written by a computer [WTF?!] it's about the encroaching horror of suburban blandness; in this account, the responsibility for suburban women's becoming overgroomed deadheads... is placed totally on the men... Written by William Goldman and directed by Bryan Forbes, the picture is literal in a way that seems a wasting disease.

The Princess Bride
US (1987): Comedy/Children's/Adventure
98 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

The director Rob Reiner doesn't have the craft to bring off the kinetic daredeviltry he tries for, and the movie is ungainly--you can almost see the chalk marks it's not hitting...It's shtick softened by childlike infatuation.

Lifeboat
US (1944): War/Drama
96 min, No rating, Black & White, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

Ham-handed, wartime Hitchcock...

The Producers
US (1968): Comedy
88 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

...Mel Brooks, who wrote and directed (both for the first time), doesn't get the timing right and good gags fall apart or become gross or just don't develop. The sequence consisting of tryouts for the role of Hitler in the play, which is called 'Springtime for Hitler,' is potentially so great that what he does with it lets you down. Still, terrible as this picture is, [OMGWTFDIEDIEDIE] a lot of it is very enjoyable.

The Lion in Winter
UK (1968): Historical/Drama
135 min, No rating, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

Imitation wit and imitation poetry at the 12th-century court of the Plantagenets... On the Broadway stage this play seemed to be an entertaining melodrama about the Plantagenets as a family of monsters playing Freudian games of sex and power, but... the [screen] point of view is too limited and anachronistic to justify all this howling and sobbing and carrying on... Goldman's dialogue can't bear the weight of the film's aspirations to grandeur, and, as Eleanor of Aquitaine, Katharine Hepburn does a gallant-ravaged-great-lady number. She draws upon our feelings for her, not for the character she's playing, and the self-exploitation is hard to take.

Yeah. So's a bowling ball to the face.