and R's movies..

here it goes....


1. Year of Living Dangerously (love, love this movie)
2. LA Confidential (duh)
3. A Room with a View (watched this movie a hundred times)
4. Pride and Prejudice (2005 version)
5. Gallipoli (cry every time...)
6. Scrooge (albert finney version of a christmas carol - i know every word to every song)
7. Dragon Slayer (fucking awesome)
8. Persuasion (1995 version)
9. Same Time Next Year (still like alan alda)
10. Butch Cassidy and thes Sundance Kid (katherine ross was one of the prettiest woman i had ever seen... and there is a burt bacharach song)
11. Fight club

12. Lawrence of Arabia (beautiful)

14. Long Hot Summer (paul newman.. oh my god!!)
15. Blade Runner (duh!!!)
16. Indiana jones
17. Sin City
18. The name of the Rose (so good)
19. Clue (guilty pleasure.. cracks me up every time)
20. Laputa
21. Witness (i love this movie and don't even own it, i should buy it)
22. Princess Monanoke
23. Victor Victoria (perfect cast and so funny... leslie ann warren is a stitch)
24. Meatballs (so cute!!!!!)
25. Boondock Saints (scene where he jumps out window handcuffed to toliet... )
26. Bugsy Malone (jodie foster was already amazing and the soundtrack is fantastic)
27. Peter Pan (disney version)
28. Close Encounters of the Third Kind (love richard dreyfus)
29. Bull Durham (cute)
30. The Big Easy (sexy)
31. Strictly Ballroom (baz lurhman rocks)
32. The Natural (shot beautifully)
33. Moulin Rouge (he rocks again)
34. Romeo and Juliet (and again)
35. ET (still wonderful)
36. Star Trek (2013)
37. The Bounty (1984 - wonderful cast and score)
38. Moonrise Kingdom (new fav)
39. Hot Fuzz
40. The Pink Panther/Return of The Pink Panther (peter sellers!!!)
41. Young Frankenstein
42. Every Harry Potter film (i am a potterfile!!!)
43. The Secretary (finally bought it)
44. Midnight Express (perfect!)

This is awesome - and true!

a real-life super hero...from gohan!  (a true geek would say "costumed adventurer" or "crimefighter," since he doesn't actually have super-powers)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoenix_Jones

busy summer!

yep, i still have these!

movies! (a friend asked)

1. road warrior (life-changing)
2. master and commander (revelatory)
3. castle of cagliostro (ditto)
4. maltese falcon (ditto)
5. star trek 2 (khaaaaaaaaan!)
6. big sleep (lauren bacall!)
7. seven samurai (kurosawa-wow!)
8. dark knight (do i look like a guy with a plan?(thanks!!))
9. aliens (in-fucking tense)
10. the killing (kubrick's best movie?)
11. yojimbo ((minfune-yowza!)
12. dredd
13. empire strikes back (greatest reveal of all time!)
14. usual suspects (actually, this may be the greatest...a really great reveal is one you love even when you have seen it already!)
15. romeo+juliet (shakepeare and radiohead...yeah!)
16. avengers (joss whedon, robert downey jr. and SJ in leather in 3-D?!?!?!)
17. superman shorts (fleischer brothers!)
18. laputa (miyazaki does the 'sense of wonder' like no-one else)
19. raiders of the lost ark!!!
20. tombstone (val kilmer&kurt russell do the buddy movie)
21. the thing (special effects still hold up!)
22. midnight run (deniro does comedy!)
23. LA confidential (do you even know who directed this?  pearce, crowe, spacey!!!)
24. rocknrolla (guy richie+gerard butler+tom hardy+idris elba=awesome!)
25. deep cover (larry fishburne-intense!)
26. grosse pointe blank (wouldnt have worked with anyone except john cusack)
27. the great escape (they don't make em like this anymore...and that cast!!!)
28. a few good men (a long, talky courtroom drama...that's riveting!  saw it twice in the theater on the same day!)
29. true grit (either version)
30. the good, the bad, the weird (did you see this?  aidan will love it!)
31. apocalypse now (a movie that will leave a 13 year-old in tears...)
32. loved every godzilla movie when i was a kid
33. chibi maruko chan: my favorite song (always made me cry-i wish i could find a video of this)
34. T2 (totally holds up!)
35. memento (sweating by the end...intense!)
36. back to the future (just fun...smith and jones diaries!)
37. reservoir dogs (oh, that tarantino dialogue!)
38. roger rabbit

Mazinger Gundam Cross-Build

from rob:  a little obscure but fucking awesome!!!!!  Mazingundam!!!!!

http://gundamguy.blogspot.com/2013/02/mazinger-z-x-gundam-custom-build.html

 

lincoln...

....was, contrary to box-office, but in line with word-of-mouth, slow, talky, overly dramatic and overly focused on the 13th amendment...spielberg is much older now, i guess, and all of that wunderkind sparkle is gone.  it was really well acted, though.  especially david strathairn as seward-just spot fucking on.  daniel day-lewis was really good, too, but there were definitely moments where you were like, yeah, this is DDL playing lincoln.  he just had too much screen time not to notice.  speilberg over-relied on him like james cameron relies on CG...
  on the whole, a bust.  read the book instead.  (it's a long read, for sure, but very much worth it...when you find yourself able to explain the civil war to people, you know that's a well-written book!)
  why lincoln didn't smile:  depression?  well, he was pretty stressed-out, if you can imagine!  but he was known for his sense of humor and great storytelling!  so what's the deal???
  early cameras had very long exposure times (i think they exposed the plates by hand)  so if you moved, it got all blurry.  so a lot of looking away from the camera, leaning on things, hands on pockets or stuck in jackets, napoleon-style! 
  

iconic!

...so one of the things dad always does is give me books that i don't wind up reading...math and science books that are WAY over my head, sci-fi books that are reeeeeeeeeeealy dull  ("fantastic logic,") books of pedantic puzzles that require a knowledge of british coinage and cricket rules, children's books that are totally contrary to aashna's taste ("the berenstain bears eat too much junk food.")
   ...BUT the last book he gave me was "dictionary of word origins," with that "return to  AM Soosaipillai" stamp on every side.  and DAMN, it's fascinating!!!  here goes:
  the words "icon" and "iconoclast."  from context (thelonious monk, for example, is often referred to as "iconoclastic"), i always thought "iconoclast" meant something like "kinda weird" which it can, but the two words, are, in fact, related!
    icon comes from greek eikon meaning "be like," thus likeness or  similarity.
    iconoclast adds the verb klan, "to break," thus "breaker of icons."  from the book:
The original iconoclasts were members of the Eastern Orthodox church in the 8th and 9th centuries who were oppoesed to the use or worship of religious images.  In more extreme cases their opposition took the form of smashimg icons...The term subsequently came to be applied to extreme Protestants in England in the 16th ad 17th centuries who expressed their disapproval of graven images (and popish practices in general) in similar ways.  Its general use of "attacker of orthodoxy" dates from the early 19th century.
  The later iconoclasts will be familiar to readers of "Neal Stephenson's" Baroque Trilogy.  We would call them "Puritans," but another term was "Nonconformists," another word which had a meaning of a specific religious group which, like "iconoclast," is now a general term.