Procrastinating on my important scholarly duties last night, I happened to flip by C-SPAN and discovered a somewhat spirited debate in the House on the subject of withdrawing the troops from Iraq. A long line of republican veterans came out to list silly, illogical reasons why ending the war would hurt the feelings of the troops. They kept aiming their arguments at Murta, the 37 year marine veteran democrat hawk who has recently turned against the war and drawn up a plan for a six month withdrawal. I missed the part where a republican rookie read a letter calling Murta a coward and got shouted down, but I still got the distinct impression that British parliamenterians were sending our congress some tips. I mean this was rowdy.
But all this talk about Murta and the screen was telling me it was a republican resolution that was being debated. I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on.
The resolution was “non-binding” and only stated that the House felt the troop deployment should be “terminated immediately.” Sounded kind of pointless but I was surprised it was actually being debated, even if only 2 democrats and 1 republican ended up voting for it. (read the rest of this shit…)
This is one of those movies that on the cover should have a big quote from Roger Ebert or somebody saying “Seriously, not that bad!” I’m not gonna try to convince anybody that ROLL BOUNCE is great but it is actually very well made and watchable for a movie about kids rollerskating. You can face that fact or not, I don’t give a fuck, but there it is. ROLL BOUNCE is kind of good.
CANDYMAN in: FAREWELL TO THE FLESH and CANDYMAN in: DAY OF THE DEAD
THE SQUID AND THE WHALE meets THE WEATHER MAN
Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with my man Vern and his opinion of the newest cheesefest from Mr. Steven Seagal. If you know Vern, you know you’re in for a treat. If you don’t, then shame on you, but you’ve still got a chance to redeem yourself! Read below brother! Vern’s got the gospel for ya’!
This movie surprised me. Everything about it is classier than I expected. From his reputation you’d think this Candyman guy is just a B-list Jason or Freddy type. But it turns out he’s more a classic movie monster like Dracula or the Phantom of the Opera. And his movie has more subtext than all of Freddy and Jason’s pictures put together, including JASON X. Hell, throw in a couple Child’s Plays too. And one or two Halloweens. And one Silent Night Deadly Night. No Texas Chainsaws though, that would tip the scale.
Well as you know I am always searching for straight to video movies that don’t suck. And even I sometimes forget why that is my mission, so let me put it down in writing here as a reminder. See, in the old days you had b-movies, you had exploitation movies, etc. And the idea of these movies was low budget, lowbrow, easy investment quickie moneymaker. Like squeezing out sausages. And there was alot of disposable garbage made, because that was the whole point. But within that world there were people like Roger Corman, William Castle, Jack Hill etc. who sometimes made movies that transcended just being a product, movies that some people still watch and hold dear today. Lots of directors like John Sayles, John Demme and maybe one or two other guys got their start working on cheapo Roger Corman movies about women in prison or giant alligators. Also unfortunately Ron Howard but that doesn’t count. And people like George Romero and Sam Raimi started with low budget independent movies made for the drive-ins, movies that nobody would expect to still be considered great all these years later. 
In the type of acting tour de la force that everybody loves unless they’re some kind of a dick, Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Truman Capote, the famous writer and weirdo. Although the use of only his last name as the movie’s title seems to imply that it will tell the entire story of his life and maybe even the entire story of the life of everybody with the last name Capote, this is actually not a full on biography. The story is narrowed down to the 4 or 5 years when he was working on his famous book IN COLD BLOOD, starring Robert Blake.
SPOILER ALERT !!
