choke

i just saw the movie "choke," and it was very funny and insightful. sam rockwell, in the lead role, was fantastic. this movie is very sexually-explicit. do not go see it if you (or others who might go with you) are easily bothered by such material, but the sex is used primarily as humor and is not disgusting in any pornographic way. do not believe rotten tomatoes, which only has this movie at a 56% approval rating, or roger ebert, who only gave it 2.5 stars out of 4. these two often-reliable sources have it wrong when it comes to this movie. the characters are believable, and the psychological puzzle is intricate.

THE BASIC PLOT: Victor Mancini is a medical-school dropout who has devised an ingenious scam to pay elder care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted mother: he pretends to choke on pieces of food while dining in upscale restaurants. He then allows himself to be "saved" by fellow patrons who, feeling responsible for Victor's life, go on to send checks to support him. When he's not pulling this stunt, Victor cruises sexual addiction recovery workshops for action, visits his addled mom, and spends his days working at a colonial theme park.

THE TRAILER:


do yourself a favor and go see this movie.

fleet foxes

i really like fleet foxes' debut self-titled album. they remind me of a folksier, more orchestral, and slower version of my morning jacket. check them out ASAP.

my greatest skill

there are very few things that i do very well in life, but there is one thing that i think i excel at: city-walking.

as a matter of fact, i'm probably in the top 10 in the entire world. i did my apprenticeship in europe as a young lad; mastered the trade in manhattan; and became a world class figure in the industry in DC.

i truly believe that this skill of mine is far too often undervalued, underappreciated, and sometimes even flat-out ignored. my girlfriend has attempted to ignore my city-walking skills from day one of our relationship, but i have not let her negativity affect the truth: that i have a special skill. i have never met anybody who combines the following skills with more consistency than i do:

a) avoiding cars/buses/trams while not being afraid to walk/run in front of cars/buses/trams when the time calls for it;
b) crossing the street in anticipation of avoiding waits at pedestrian walkways;
c) overall sense of direction; and
d) sheer efficiency in getting from point a to point b.

that is all.

vicky christina barcelona

woody allen still has it. the writing in "vicky christina barcelona" was crisp and funny, the plot was logical, and the characters were well-developed. i liked this movie even more than "match point," which i also really liked, mainly because the characters were more believable. javier bardem was on top of his game, penelope cruz exceeded my expectations, and scarlett johansson was beautiful as always. go see this movie, and let me know what you think.

i hate mockingbirds

i have developed a hatred for the mockingbird, and i now understand why harper lee chose the title of her famous novel.

here is why: i went over to a friend's house yesterday for a few drinks after work, and we sat outside on her front porch the entire time. i was floored to see the interaction between a healthy, young cat and two annoying mockingbirds.

i've never seen anything like it, but this cat just sat in the yard the entire time i was there and let two mockingbirds hover over and attack him for a couple of hours. the cat just sat there, seemingly uninterested in two loud, annoying birds who just flew back and forth, over the cat, and actually bumping into the cat's body time and time and time again.

LET ME REPEAT MYSELF: THE BIRDS LITERALLY FLEW INTO THE CAT AND HIT THE CAT WITH THEIR WINGS AND FEET. AND THE CAT DID NOTHING. HE JUST LET IT HAPPEN.

my thoughts:

1) i am no hunter nor do i take any pleasure in killing animals, but i want to kill these birds. they are loud, obnoxious, and mean.

2) why does this cat not attack these small birds????? granted, the cat has been de-clawed, but he easily could have bitten these tiny birds and eaten them whole.

3) why are the birds not scared of the cat??????

4) my mind was baffled by this display of counter-intuitive and seemingly unnatural behavior by these animals!!!

2 great acting performances: richard jenkins in 'the visitor' and heath ledger in 'the dark knight'

1) the visitor: this is the second movie by writer/director tom mccarthy. i was a big fan of his directorial debut in 'the station agent' in 2003, which was one of the most underappreciated movies of the past five years. like 'the station agent,' don't expect a complicated plot from mccarthy or much real action at all. mccarthy's brilliance shows up in his portrayal of the daily grind of our every-day activities in a way that is both artistic and psychologically-insightful. he also does an amazing job of getting the most out of his actors. richard jenkins (the dead father from 'six feet under') was phenomenal in the lead role as an aging, widowed economics professor who walks into his rarely used manhattan apartment one day only to find two illegal immigrants living there. on its surface, the movie is clearly an attack on america's post-9/11 immigration system, but it is so much more than that. it really is just a story about friendship and jenkins' evolution from a bored, boring, and melancholic old man to a man who rediscovers that his life is worth living.

2) the dark knight: believe the hype! it is not an overstatement to say that heath ledger outdid jack nicholson's 'joker' performance in the original batman. this movie exceeded my already-high expectations. this is probably my favorite superhero movie of all time. go see it on the big screen! ledger stole the show with his scary, funny, smart, and believable portrayal. his death is a loss to us all. it will not merely be a publicity stunt if ledger wins a posthumous oscar for this role. christian bale was slightly disappointing, but his character was very well scripted and even more complex than it was in 'batman begins,' which was also a very good movie.

the most talented french rapper on the east coast?

the spanish mime was a brilliant touch, don't you think?

my brother is an only child

i saw this italian movie this past weekend. if you do not mind subtitles, you will surely enjoy this funny and intense movie about two brothers who grow up quite differently.

in addition to a great cast, screenplay, and direction, this movie sheds light on some of the grandest themes of recent european history, politics, and culture:

nature vs. nurture.
socialism vs. fascism.
sibling rivalry for affection.
adultery.
murder.
individual vs. society.

i have a huge crush on diane fleri, who plays the role of francesca.

let me know if you have seen it and want to discuss. . .

another great mixed CD

georgie is always looking for new music! please email me at dayofthefight@gmail.com with any music recommendations. thank you to my friend j.k. for the CD below:

Song Artist
Gemini (Birthday Song) - Why?
Mansard Roof - Vampire Weekend
Ski Jumper - Hafdis Huld
The Opposite of Hallelujah - Jens Lekman
I Wish I Had An Evil Twin - The Magnetic Fields
Seventeen Years - Ratatat
Consoler of the Lonely - The Raconteurs
Everything is Exactly What It Seems - Michael Flynn
Seventeen Dirty Magazines - Modern Skirts
Going to a Town - Rufus Wainwright
100 Days, 100 Nights - Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
Soft - Kings of Leon
Paris is Burning - St. Vincent
your ex-lover is dead - Stars
Swimming Pools - Thao Nguyen & the Get Down Stay Down
The Reasons - The Weakerthans
The Jeopardy of Contentment - What Made Milwaukee Famous

the savages

i went to see the savages last night and thoroughly enjoyed it. phillip seymour hoffman and laura linney were amazing as usual, and i'm glad i knew NOTHING about this movie before i went to see it because i probably would not have gone had i known the primary subject matter of the movie. the movie is almost exclusively about a brother and sister dealing with their father who is suffering from dementia and who is incapable of living on his own. the decision as to whether to place the man in a retirement home and how to interact with a person who is often in another world is so morose, but despite this subject matter, this movie was actually very, very funny. if you have seen it, please let me know, and we can further discuss.

an injustice of epic proportions

i exaggerate, of course, with the title of this post, but i really am still in shock with an event i personally witnessed this past friday night.

for the video, go to:

http://videos.thestate.com/vmix_hosted_ ... id=1746217

then click on the summerville vs. spartanburg 4A highlights for a 3mn video of my high school team (spartanburg high) in the 4A state championship basketball game against summerville (with a.j. green, a very highly recruited wide receiver who's going to georgia - by the way, georgia fans, if green is better in football than he is in basketball, the SEC better watch out. he's an unbelievable athlete. dam$it, why didn't you stay in state and come play for Spurrier?!?!?!).

back to the injustice at hand - i was at the game. 5th row seats at midcourt at the colonial center in columbia, sc. it was a great game which my team should have won. and we did win it had the refs not screwed us over. on the very last shot (65 foot shot buzzer beater when we were down by 2 pts) i heard the horn go off as the ball was in the air. granted, the judgment call was much closer on this video than i remembered it, but it still looks to me as if it was out of his hands before the red light went off. regardless, wouldn't you think that when the refs had to spend about 2 or 3 minutes making a decision as to whether the shot was on time or not, that the tie would go to the shooter????? i think it should.

there were at least 6 or 7 video monitors at the game that i saw. i can understand not mandating video review at the high school level (probably too expensive to justify), but when it's for the state championship, and you're playing at the colonial center, video replay should have been used. it wasn't. and there were 4 senior starters on the spartanburg vikings who will never forget the injustice that was done to them b/c of a moronic devotion to the letter of the law (not allowing video review), when the spirit of the law (finding out if the shot was released on time) should have prevailed.

i realize it was just a high school game, but man, i think my team was robbed. . .

monster jam 2008

if you have never been to a monster jam, your life is incomplete. i think these pictures tell it all:

there will be blood

i don't think i've been this pumped to see a movie since "the royal tenenbaums."

i've been a subscriber to the new yorker for about 8 years now, and although i love the magazine, i usually don't pay too much attention to their movie reviews. they're usually way too snobby/arrogant, and i often disagree with their assessments, both with the movies they say are good, and the ones they tear to pieces.

but when it comes to "there will be blood," adapted and directed by the one and only, paul thomas anderson (of "boogie nights," "punch-drunk love," and "magnolia" deserved fame), i'm willing to bet i will be in complete agreement with the immense praise upon which this film was bestowed. although i'll have to wait and see, because, unless i'm mistaken, it hasn't made it past new york and l.a., even though it was released about 3 weeks ago. . .

the text of the review is pasted below, and the full article is here:

Early in “There Will Be Blood,” an enthralling and powerfully eccentric American epic (opening on December 26th), Daniel Plainview climbs down a ladder at his small silver mine. A rung breaks, and Daniel (Daniel Day-Lewis) falls to the base of the shaft and smashes his leg. He’s filthy, miserable, gasping for breath and life. The year is 1898. Two and a half hours later (and more than thirty years later in the time span of the film), he’s on the floor again, this time sitting on a polished bowling lane in the basement of an enormous mansion that he has built on the Pacific Coast. Having abandoned silver mining for oil, Daniel has become one of the wealthiest tycoons in Southern California. Yet he’s still filthy, with dirty hands and a face that glistens from too much oil raining down on him—it looks as if oil were seeping from his pores. The experience chronicled between these two moments is as astounding in its emotional force and as haunting and mysterious as anything seen in American movies in recent years. I’m not quite sure how it happened, but after making “Magnolia” (1999) and “Punch-Drunk Love” (2002)—skillful but whimsical movies, with many whims that went nowhere—the young writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has now done work that bears comparison to the greatest achievements of Griffith and Ford. The movie is a loose adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!,” but Anderson has taken Sinclair’s bluff, genial oilman and turned him into a demonic character who bears more than a passing resemblance to Melville’s Ahab. Stumping around on that bad leg, which was never properly set, Daniel Plainview—obsessed, brilliant, both warm-hearted and vicious—has Ahab’s egotism and command. As for Daniel Day-Lewis, his performance makes one think of Laurence Olivier at his most physically and spiritually audacious.

At the start, Daniel and a small group of workers, wildcatting for oil, give themselves entirely to their perilous labor. There isn’t a word of dialogue. Again and again, Anderson creates raptly muscular passages—men lifting, hauling, pounding, dragging, working silently in the muck and viscous slime. Yet this film is hardly the kind of glory-of-industry documentary that bored us in school. “There Will Be Blood” is about the driving force of capitalism as it both creates and destroys the future, and the film’s tone is at once elated and sickened. A dissonant, ominous electronic wail, written by the Radiohead guitarist and composer Jonny Greenwood, warns us of trouble ahead. Once the derricks are up, Greenwood imitates the rhythmic thud of the drill bits and pumps with bustling passages of plucked strings and pounding sticks. “Blood” has the pulse of the future in its rhythms. Like the most elegiac Western, this movie is about the vanishing American frontier. The thrown-together buildings look scraggly and unkempt, the homesteaders are modest, stubborn, and reticent, but, in their undreamed-of future, Wal-Mart is on the way. Anderson, working with the cinematographer Robert Elswit, has become a master of the long tracking shot across still, empty landscapes. The movie, which cost a relatively cheap twenty-five million dollars to make, has gravity and weight without pomp; it’s austerely magnificent, and, when violence comes—an exploding oil well, a fight—it’s staged cleanly, in open space, and not as a tumult of digital effects or a tempest in an editing room.

One of the workers holds and kisses a baby, then dies in an accident, and Daniel raises the child, whom he calls H.W. (Dillon Freasier), as his son and partner. The movie skips to 1911, when Daniel and H.W. are travelling around California in a tin lizzie, buying up land leases, at bargain rates, from ranchers and farmers who are sitting on underground oceans of gold. Daniel takes advantage of their ignorance to pay them less than they deserve, and, as he addresses a group of them, Day-Lewis’s performance comes into focus. He lowers his chin slightly, and his dark eyes dance with merriment as he speaks in coarse yet rounded tones, the syllables precisely articulated but with a lengthening of the vowels and final consonants that gives the talk a singing, almost caressing quality. It is the voice of dominating commercial logic—an American force of nature. Day-Lewis, at fifty, is lean and fit, and his scythe-like body cuts into the air as he works or stalks, head thrust out, across a field. Much of the time, he projects a wonderful gaiety, but his Daniel never strays from business. He ignores questions, reveals nothing, and masters every encounter with either charm or a threat. He has no wife, no friends, and no interests except for oil, his son, and booze. He drinks heavily, which exacerbates his natural distrust and competitiveness. Even when he’s swimming in the Pacific, he looks dangerous. In his later years, however, Daniel disintegrates, and the iconic associations shift from Ahab to Charles Foster Kane.

Upton Sinclair was a longtime socialist, yet he understood that nothing in American life was more exhilarating than entrepreneurial energy and ruthlessness. The movie retains the novel’s exuberance, but turns much darker in tone. H.W. becomes a victim of the oil rush, and Anderson drops Sinclair’s moral hero, a Communist who organizes the oil workers. Sinclair was a reformer who wanted to ameliorate the harsh effects of capitalism, but Anderson apparently reasoned that social radicalism did not—and could not—stop men like Daniel Plainview. Sinclair, the garrulous, fact-bound literalist, has been superseded by a film poet with a pessimistic, even apocalyptic, streak.

But Anderson does retain Sinclair’s portrait of an unctuous young man who thinks he has the word of God within him: Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), who creates, in the oil fields, the revivalist Church of the Third Revelation. Dano, who was the silent, philosophy-reading boy in “Little Miss Sunshine,” has a tiny mouth and dead eyes. He looks like a mushroom on a long stem, and he talks with a humble piety that gives way, in church, to a strangled cry of ecstatic fervor. He’s repulsive yet electrifying. Anderson has set up a kind of allegory of American development in which two overwhelming forces—entrepreneurial capitalism and evangelism—both operate on the border of fraudulence; together, they will build Southern California, though the two men representing them are so belligerent that they fall into combat. The movie becomes an increasingly violent (and comical) struggle in which each man humiliates the other, leading to the murderous final scene, which gushes as far over the top as one of Daniel’s wells. The scene is a mistake, but I think I know why it happened. Anderson started out as an independent filmmaker, with “Hard Eight” (1996) and “Boogie Nights” (1997). In “Blood,” he has taken on central American themes and established a style of prodigious grandeur. Yet some part of him must have rebelled against canonization. The last scene is a blast of defiance—or perhaps of despair. But, like almost everything else in the movie, it’s astonishing.

for whom does urban meyer work?

last i checked, urban meyer was the head football coach of the university of florida gators? why, then, was he also a commentator for fox at the b.c.s. national championship game last night? he didn't just do an interview or two during the lsu-ohio state non-game in which the s.e.c. once again showed its preeminent status in college football. rather, he was a part of the pre-game, halftime, and post-game shows. i would not want my college coach focused on such a job, but maybe that's just me. . .

best music of 2007

there are so many lists out there (good and bad) about the best music of the year, but i don't think i've run across any better ones (and by "better," i mean closer to my own musical tastes) than the 2 great cds that were recently mailed to me by a friend of mine who is now in his sixth year of taking this task of musical compilation very seriously. and i'm very thankful for people like him! please email georgie with your favorite musical discoveries!

best of 2007:

night windows - the weakerthans
slow show - the national
is there a ghost - band of horses
either way - wilco
kreuzberg - bloc party
what would jay-z do? - ben lee
your parents living room - shout out louds
our life is not a movie or maybe - okkervil river
say it to me now - various artists
underwater (you and me) - clap your hands say yeah
closeness - wheat
cheaper than therapy - rogue wave
poetaster - miracle fortress
all my friends - lcd soundsystem
sweetly undone - sam baker
apartment story - the national
missed the boat - modest mouse
virtute the cats explains her departure - the weakerthans

newly discovered 2007:

harmonium - rogue wave
left and leaving - the weakerthans
girls in their summer clothes - bruce springsteen
long live the future - only son
crumble - dinosaur jr.
new york this morning - roman candle
it froze me - the mountain goats
there goes my outfit - the dears
setting forth - eddie vedder
ode to lrc - band of horses
breakfast in bed - dntel
just apathy - tally hall
a wooden horse - british sea power
one hundred resolutions - sundowner
impossible - shout out louds
talking in code - margot and the nuclear so and so's
jane, i still feel the same (demo) - matthew ryan
all the wine - the national
life's a song - patrick park

and here is the best of 2006 according to this same friend of mine:

"Cars and History" - Strays Don't Sleep
"The Crane Wife 3" - The Decemberists
"10 Minutes" - Human Television
"City vs. Country" - Mobius Band
"You Come and I Go" - Hotel Lights
"The First Song" - Band of Horses
"Before" - Richard Buckner
"Hindsight" - The Long Winters
"Woodland Hunter (Pt. 2)" - The Appleseed Cast
"Enough to Get Away" - Joseph Arthur
"Insomnia" - electric president
"Woke Up New" - The Mountain Goats
"Bleary Eyed" - Annuals
"Neverending Math Equation" - Sun Kill Moon
"Light Pollution" - Dirty on Purpose
"Saturday" - Built to Spill
"Chill Out Tent" - The Hold Steady
"With You" - Stars of Track and Field
"Never Ever" - The Hold Steady
"Strange Lands" - Hudson Bell
"I Will Be Grateful For this Day" - Bright Eyes

before the devil knows you're dead

what an intense movie!

i finally got around to seeing before the devil knows you're dead today, and i was not at all let down. of course, phillip seymour hoffman was amazing as always (for further discussion of my favorite actor, read here), but i would have to say that the man who plays his father, albert finney, stole the show.

finney succeeded at portraying an old man in grief to perfection. the honesty that is expressed when he subtly apologizes to his older son (psh) for how differently he raised him and his younger son (hawke) is one of my favorite scenes of the movie. hawke was good as well, but, surprisingly, despite looking unbelievably hot, marisa tomei was unspectacular in the role of psh's wife who is cheating on him with hawke.

the direction by sidney lumet (the man who directed the classic 12 angry men in 1957) was superb. lumet brilliantly used a technique i first saw in gus van sant's elephant where the audience sees the same series of events from multiple points of view and at different times throughout the movie, without going overboard and boring us with overly technical cinematography.

this movie is not for the faint of heart. the movie opens with a very graphic sex scene, and there is a lot of violence. this is also one of the saddest movies i have ever seen. but not in a predictable fashion. yea, people die, but it's the completely empty state of this one family that has gone through a series of self-inflicted wounds that is just almost too hard to take. do NOT go see this movie if you're in a bad mood. . .

the first campaign

the caucus results from iowa yesterday were a pretty historical event, and i would like to take this opportunity to suggest a great new book written by a close friend of mine, garrett graff, that is very a-propos to the success of barack obama (and to a lesser extent ron paul as well).

obama has seized the moment of this first election in the information age in order to increase fundraising and awareness of his own campaign to a much greater extent than any other of the politicians in this year's field.

here is an amazon.com link to this very reasonably priced book, 'the first campaign.' in case you want to learn more about my buddy garrett, here is a link to an hour-long interview he had yesterday on the diane rehm show.

NOTE: georgie's admiration for obama's realization of the importance of the internet does not necessarily mean that georgie supports obama to be the next president of the united states. . .

best movie (that i saw) of 2007

no country for old men. i'd say it's the second best coen brothers' movie that i've seen, behind the big lebowski. i really want to see charlie wilson's war, once, there will be blood, and before the devil knows you're dead, all of 2007 as well, but as of today, NCFOM was hands down the best movie of the year.

funny as hell. thrilling and suspenseful. great acting (although tommy lee jones was nowhere near as good as javier bardem). great plot. meaningful. i cannot come up with enough praiseworthy adjectives for this movie.

georgie's 2008 presidential predictions

democratic nominee - hillary clinton
republican nominee - mitt romney
mike bloomberg prediction - he WILL enter into the race and spend close to $1 billion and will fare better than most political prognosticators now think.

NOTE: these predictions do NOT necessarily represent georgie's desires to lead this nation, merely an attempt to predict the future political landscape. . .

2K8 resolutions

i have never been big on new year's resolutions. in fact, i have often mocked others for making ridiculous ones of their own. losing 30 lbs in a month; giving up smoking without taking any substantive measures to really prepare oneself for the physical and mental difficulties involved in giving up the nasty habit; no longer drinking diet cokes even though you previously drank 8 or more a day; no longer eating fast food after you happened to watch 'super size me' in the month of december. et cetera, et cetera. . .

and despite all this, i am now attempting some bold changes in my gastronomical intake because i would like to shed a few pounds and not get winded when i walk up to the 3rd floor of a building. my birthday is in early april, and until that date, here are the following things i would like to avoid:

1) all meat and fish (i will attempt to avoid meat products as well, but if i happen to eat some green beans that have been cooked in a little pork fat, i'm not going to be too worried about it)

2) beer (this shouldn't be too difficult. i can easily drink wine or liquor over beer, although i do love that first lager on a saturday afternoon)

3) french fries (going to be quite difficult)

4) chips (going to be quite difficult as well, especially dorrito's)

this blog offers me the opportunity to make my goals public so as to add a little bit of peer pressure fear so as not to humiliate myself by giving up on these alleged changes over the next week or two.

be prepared for an update on april fool's day. . .