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Shawn Stone
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I'm confused: Is the young Miss Smith in favor of, or opposed to, death panels?
Commented Oct 26, 2010 on Do Not Trust (Or Pay Any Attention Whatsoever To) Anyone Under 30 at Whiskey Fire
Do Not Trust (Or Pay Any Attention Whatsoever To) Anyone Under 30
I'm not much of a theater fan (If it can't be served on a screen & speakers in the media &-everything-else room, it probably isn't worth cultural consumption. Or the agoraphobia.) & even less an enthusiast of the musical theater. (Or cabaret, which is what, I s'pose, the event was.) So an item c...
God, I miss Kirsty MacColl.
Commented May 22, 2010 on Floogarooh? Funagafel! at Whiskey Fire
Floogarooh? Funagafel!
Hello, Katheryn Lopez. When Sarah Palin speaks, liberal feminists go wild. The woman is like a stilettoed catalyst for backlash from the professional political sisterhood. Yes, that is exactly what Sarah Palin is like, a shoe provoked chemical reaction enabler for a politically enraged non-ama...
"Where are you even trying to go if you "fly over" Syracuse?"
Oswego?
Commented Apr 2, 2010 on We Are in for a Mocking, Lads, Best Give It Up Whilst We Have a Chance at Whiskey Fire
We Are in for a Mocking, Lads, Best Give It Up Whilst We Have a Chance
Oh dear. Here comes the... sarcasm. We're done for. I couldn’t believe what happened in the People’s House. It was like getting socked in the gut, all the wind was knocked right out of me. We tried everything to get the Congress to hear to us: letters, emails, faxes, and phone calls, and they ju...
"Cheezburger-class technology"
This is what makes us the most powerful nation on EARTH.
Commented Mar 31, 2010 on The Hall of Fantastically Fine Things at Whiskey Fire
The Hall of Fantastically Fine Things
At the Corner, one John J. Jingleheimer Miller is thoroughly biscuit-steamed at Eugene Ronbinson's suggestion that "The danger of political violence in this country comes overwhelmingly from one direction — the right, not the left." Miller is not having it! He. Is. Not. Having. It. For it is the...
The Friedman Unit of yesterday has been replaced by the Fuck-Unit of today. Progress!
Douthat's sex-phobia remains the snickering embarassment of the NYT ed page.
Commented Jan 19, 2010 on Fucking and Idiocy in the American Novel at Whiskey Fire
Fucking and Idiocy in the American Novel
The pundit-function "Ross Douthat" has, I have learned, been pondering the question of fucking and its role in the modern American novel. Douthat's thoughts on this issue were inspired by "a long essay in last Sunday’s Book Review" by Katie Roiphe. Maybe Douthat gets Roiphe wrong. (This would n...
George Fenneman! The ideal TV announcer.
Those Shout!Factory YOU BET YOUR LIFE sets are terrific, I'm sorry they only stopped at two.
Commented Nov 9, 2009 on Manny Farber's best films of 1951, #4: 'The Thing From Another World," directed (it is said) by Christian Nyby at Some Came Running
Manny Farber's best films of 1951, #4: 'The Thing From Another World," directed (it is said) by Christian Nyby
Previous installments here, here, and here. Farber: "Howard Hawks's science-fiction quickie directed by Christian Nyby; fast, crisp and cheap, without any progressive-minded gospel-reading about neighborliness in the atomic age; good airplane take-offs and landings; wonderful shock effects (t...
The chitlins sequence will need to be presented in glorious (inglourious?) Smell-O-Vision. And the audience will react with more horror than William Castle ever provoked.
Commented Oct 19, 2009 on Saturday brunch, and my latest get rich quick scheme at Some Came Running
Saturday brunch, and my latest get rich quick scheme
Behold the glory of "clams hashed with eggs," as the recipe calls it. While you can't see the clams, rest assured I shucked 14 of them this morning, and they're in there. You do see the peppers, the sliced potatoes, the paprika, the Niman Ranch bacon. I always say, if you're gonna be a fat fu...
Nobody worked a blackboard like Fulton J. Sheen, though Dr. Gene Scott came close. Beck is evidence of the decline of American Crazy. Not to mention that Glenn lacks the sartorial splendor of Sheen (dramatic, queenly capes) or Scott (cowboy hat, powder blue leisure suits).
Commented Oct 16, 2009 on Hang Up the Phone, Move on at Whiskey Fire
Hang Up the Phone, Move on
One of the problems that Modern Conservatives have going forward is that many of their most deeply felt grievances are completely inexplicable. The Limbaugh football thing, for instance. The complaint that omigosh, the NFL isn't morally consistent! is absurd, on account of, well, who didn't know...
A Banana Splits movie would be excellent. Richard Donner could, again, direct. But keep Dave Eggers from pouring his feelings all over the story, pleez. (Written as a charter member, age 5, 1968, of The Banana Splits Fan Club.)
Commented Oct 16, 2009 on Recall of the "Wild" (Updated) at Some Came Running
Recall of the "Wild" (Updated)
I emerged from a screening of Spike Jonze's Where The Wild Things are last night in a thoroughly schizoid state. I had a great deal of admiration for the filmmaking, for the craft and the aesthetic choices that resulted in a fantasy film shot in a near-documentary style. Make that, rather, a ...
"Everyone involved with the composition, editing, and publication of these three sentences should be shot."
But first, they must be hauled before a Death Panel. THEN they'll be shot!
Commented Oct 11, 2009 on SCIENCE! at Whiskey Fire
SCIENCE!
Rule: never, ever trust the Scientifical Informationality in a news article that contains a sentence like, say, this: One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up. The article's sciencetifical dreadfulabi...
"Since the most popular film in the US this weekend was about zombies, though, clearly, the American People's Most Cherished Beliefs involve zombies."
This is factually true.
Whenever a wingnut spews the usual gibberish (like "noun, verb, ACORN," as per Wonkette commenters), they remind most Americans of the Return of the Living Dead zombies screaming for "BRAINS."
Commented Oct 4, 2009 on They Cling to the Cinema and They Can't find Security at Whiskey Fire
They Cling to the Cinema and They Can't find Security
Oh no it seems Americans only like Jesus and America and think everything else sucks and they hate hate hate Hollyweird. Tough times for leftie Hollywood. Nothing’s gone right this week. None of this is their fault, of course. In order to understand that it might not be a good idea to rally aro...
I remember feeling horrified by TEMPLE OF DOOM when it came out, as I had loved the first Indy and was appalled by DOOM. (Where was Karen Allen, I wondered.) Those clips reminded me WHY I hated it.
Loved GREMLINS, though. And GREMLINS 2, with Tony Randall as the voice of William F. Gremlin (so to speak), is genius--but that's for another day.
Commented Aug 29, 2009 on "Risky Business," so much to answer for... at Some Came Running
"Risky Business," so much to answer for...
My estimable friends and confreres Aaron Aradillas and Matt Zoller Seitz are concocting something very special and interesting over at L Magazine: a series of video essays on "The Evolution of the Modern Blockbuster," taking off from the summer of '84. The summer of '84. Oh boy. Check it out. Yo...
A couple decades ago, they used to show HOLIDAY INN every Christmas on WNEW-TV NYC (Channel 5, before it was Rupertized) and I never knew there was a blackface scene--they cut the whole sequence, probably right out of their print. I still prefer it to WHITE CHRISTMAS, which, while it isn't quite as ugly to look at as other Paramount color musicals of the early 50s, is still pretty horrid-looking in spots.
I have to say I love WONDER BAR, except, of course, for "Mule." It's so sleazy, even for the period.
Commented Aug 29, 2009 on Tales From the Warner Archives #3: "Wonder Bar" (Bacon, 1934) (UPDATED) at Some Came Running
Tales From the Warner Archives #3: "Wonder Bar" (Bacon, 1934) (UPDATED)
I don't think I've ever gone into my weird Al Jolson thing on this blog, or on my prior one for that matter, even when I was pondering Warner's controversial DVD release of The Jazz Singer a couple years back. I alluded to it here, but never really explained, say, just how I acquired it (whic...
There's something deeply amusing about KLo calling Podhoretz "JPod."
Commented Aug 11, 2009 on Welcome to the fight, Kathryn Jean Lopez... at Some Came Running
Welcome to the fight, Kathryn Jean Lopez...
...this time I know our side will win. UPDATE: Apparently on a tear, Ms. Lopez moves on to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, the second Ford/Wayne film she's ever seen (her explanation: "I grew up in Chelsea, Manhattan; cut me a break!"; the mind literally reels...) and opts for one of the most ...
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