The Late Shift

"Letterman likened Higgins' portrayal to a 'psychotic chimp.'"

I grew up watching David Letterman and it felt very comfortable to me. Letterman has such enormous self-hatred that he is really talking about himself.

Marcella Valladolid

http://www.foodnetwork.com/marcela-valladolid/bio/index.html

link


http://www.chefmarcela.com/

Chef Marcella Valladolid changing minds about Mexican cuisine

Die Hard on AMC

Believe it or not, Die Hard is a love story first ... an action thriller second ...

Little peripheral things that you notice ... (the camera acting as an omniscient guide ... pointing out things to the viewer that even the characters may not notice) ... the significane of the tower ... the camera is very observational ...

Little things during the set-up to familiarize us with the setting ... the weird, kind of off-key sound of the elevator chime, the lobby and first floor, the way we all survey it all, with John McClane ...

Shigeta:
His eye contact is a little weird during that initial dialogue with John MCClane ... I wonder if that was intentional ...

That truck looks pretty ominous ...

Alan Rickman was cool in this long, LONG before he was cool in Harry Potter.

The way Hans surveys the outside xxxxxxxxx, like a cat ...

<<commercial break>>

When the action breaks, all rationale goes out the window ... literally, in terms of the writing.

It seemed a little counter-intuitive to kill Takagi ... they could've used him for something else ...

"Why didn't you stop him, John? because then you'd be dead too asshole ..."

This thought made no sense.
Actually, he'd have the element of surprise ... no other civilians ... he could've taken three three of them out right then and there ...

he's simply thinking as the protagonist, with the self-preservation mechanism turned on ... it's designed to get the audience in the survival mindset with John ...

<<>>

The fighting between JOhn and the guy with glasses could've been done a *little* better ... but for 1988, this was awesome ...

Little inexplicable things John looks at, or smiles at ... as Steven Spielberg says, 'what i miss most in movies is showing people thinking ...'

'Now I have a machine gun ho ho ho' - John McClain is now terrorizing the terrorists ... turns the tables on the simple protagonist vs. the bad guys ... in a very subtle way, this is brilliant / clever ...

"What do you think?" "Something's wrong ..." this is where the movie gets interesting ...

Hapa sighting

I think that guitarist in _Lemonade Mouth_ (the one with the short hair) is hapa ...

Wyatt Earp & Tombstone ... and others

Wyatt Earp:

AMC lists this as a classic.

But pit this against Tombstone, and which one comes out ahead?

Tombstone ... it was a more entertaining movie.

(Quick and the Dead was another one from this era, that was very entertaining.)

And Kurt Russell looks great, with that mustache and long black coat.

Bill Paxton is doing some of that Hudson freak-out eye-movement behavior ...


What was it about the studios in the 80's spying on each other and rushing ideas to market before the other one could? Leviathan - The Abyss - Deepstar Six ... it's like this was the kind of cutthroat competitiveness that existed before the tech industry came out ... I don't really see movies doing this anymore ... because movies are no longer the primary form of entertainment. (Long ago, movies were the *it* thing ... people would go to movies because they could experience things there that they could not anywhere else. Movies were the ultimate form of entertainment that blew away anything else out there.)

Now it's rare that a movie still captivates, gets people talking, gets people actually going to the theatre. Movies need something, continue to need something, that one can't get anywhere else. The combination of big screen, a big presence (or big cast), memorable scenes, the visceral experience ... again, something that can't be experienced anywhere else.

Nothing has really changed. It's just that there's this extra layer of noise on top of it (of movies), that vie and compete for your attention: tv, videogames, the Internet. But what made movies powerful continue to make movies powerful. I may be getting old, but I will continue to see a fun movie, or an entertaining movie, or a captivating movie, in the theater, for the simple reason, for starters, that it has a screen that cannot be rivaled anywhere else. Combine that with enough elements to make a great, entertaining experience, and I'll go.

Nightclub Story

Nightclub Story:

Nice sound effect when you pop the top on a bottle. 

Brides Maids

Brides Maids

Another trailer with absolutely nothing funny in it.