So Much To Blog, So Little Time. . .

Been real busy with my fast-paced and exciting life here. Still seething from the New Orleans debacle, and even more, from the apparent willingness of so many people to ignore the obvious about the federal government's reaction to it. argh.


Been listening to more Bach. The Brandenburg Concertos, Toccata and Fugue and now the St. Matthew Passion. It took forever to pick a version of the Passion to buy. I finally settled on the (old, loud) Otto Klemperer one over the (modern, period authentic instruments) John Eliot Gardiner. I've already got a Klemperer version of Beethoven's Eroica that I like. Apparently he's wacky and crazy as far as classical conductors go, not that I can tell the difference or anything. I dig it so far.



In movie news, I still haven't been able to see The Constant Gardner or The 40 Year Old Virgin, though both have gotten great reviews. I've been reading John LeCarré novels off and on for the last couple of years. But I've been going in order so I haven't gotten to this one yet, nor am I likely to anytime in the foreseeable future. So I guess I'm just going to have to watch the movie first. Ah well. It's by the director of City of God, which I loved (like everyone else who's seen it, apparently).


Looks like lots of good movies are starting to finally come out. Scorsese's Dylan documentary played the Toronto Film Festival to rave reviews. The Johnny Cash bio-pic Walk The Line looks real good. Ang Lee's made a movie about gay cowboys. Atom Egoyan's got a new movie that failed to get an R rating. Polanski's done Oliver Twist. David Cronenberg's A History of Violence is supposed to be his best movie, and from the trailer, looks really good. Spielberg's got a movie on the terrorism at the Munich Olympics (lends credibility to the "War of the Worlds as 9/11 allegory" theory, I think), a feature length Wallace and Grommit movie. Peter Jackson's remade) King Kong (surprisingly the trailer looked really cool, not a Lange in sight). New movies from Curtis Hanson and Cameron Crowe. And, finally, the one I'm most excited to see, a new Terrence Malick movie, The New World, about Pocahontas, John Smith and Jamestown. The trailer looks amazing.


I have managed to watch a couple of David Mamet movies:

Oleanna is an old one, based on one of his earliest plays. William H. Macy plays a professor who doesn't really do anything wrong, but gets royally screwed over anyway by a truly evil and insidious character: a militantly politically-correct moron. Amazingly prescient, it's still worth seeing and arguing about. He does not, unfortunately, have this awesome mustache.

Spartan is a run of the mill spy movie with Val Kilmer playing, essentially, Jack Bauer. Only without the whole clock-ticking thing. It's entertaining enough, very well-done and professional, but there isn't really anything interesting here. William H. Macy is also in this movie, also without this awesome mustache.


In TV news, we watched the first episode of Rome, the new HBO series, but haven't gotten around to the second one yet. It's gotta be better than the dreadful Empire that ABC spat out earlier this summer. The second season of Entourage just ended. It wasn't as good as the first season, but still a terrific show. All the cool kids are watching it, doncha know? Oh, and the season premiere of the OC was tonight. Maybe I'll get to watch it sometime this weekend. . . .


Anyway, that's it for the update. I'm gonna get back to the Movies Of The Year lists fairly soon. I know there are countless clamoring masses waiting to see just where Blade Runner ends up. . .