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Little Man meets Forrest Gump?

My favorite quote of 2009, so far, from this review of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (via David):

With his head digitally placed on various bodies, Pitt displays less character than did Marlon Wayans' CGI tour-de-force in Little Man--which hilariously said more about man's stages of life.

Look: I've seen Little Man, and calling anything about it a tour-de-force is absolutely ridiculous, because that's one of the stupidest, creepiest movies I've ever seen.

AND YET, I totally agree with this quote.

Call it

I'm watching No Country for Old Men for the third or fourth time tonight, and damn is it an incredible movie. And this scene, well:

Brando

I loved this quote from the recent New Yorker article about Marlon Brando (sadly, not online), about Brando's attempts to reconnect with himself/his family in the 80s (emphasis mine):

At home in Beverly Hills, he saw a psychiatrist several times a week, slowly learning to "be the child I never had a chance to be." At the same time, divorced again and the father of nine (by his own count; the actual number is uncertain), he was trying "to get to know my children better." The efforts involved in these two ventures--becoming a child, becoming a father--were rarely compatible.

The many uses of carrots

"Shoot 'em Up" may be the best movie I've seen this year (yes, the movie's from 2007, but I only watched it tonight)!

From Ebert, who gave it 3 and 1/2 stars:

I don't need a lot of research to be confident in stating that never before have I seen a movie open with the hero delivering a baby during a gun battle, severing the umbilical cord with a gunshot, and then killing a villain by penetrating his brain with a raw carrot.

Totally ridiculous, and yet utterly wonderful.

"a creature of such ghastly life..."

I loved "The Dark Knight", and this quote from the NY Times review of the film sums it up perfectly, for me:

No matter how cynical you feel about Hollywood, it is hard not to fall for a film that makes room for a shot of the Joker leaning out the window of a stolen police car and laughing into the wind, the city’s colored lights gleaming behind him like jewels. He’s just a clown in black velvet, but he’s also some kind of masterpiece.

I want my giant furry coat!

So I was watching XXX: State of the Union tonight, and Mena came downstairs:

Ben: I think they killed Gibbons!
Mena: Oh, really?
Ben: Yeah, and they killed Xander Cage, too!
Mena: ...
Ben: And do you know where? In Bora Bora! It's so sad! He was just on vacation, & so happy!
Mena: ...
Ben: I'm really, really sad about this.
Mena: I'm sensing a post.

I was somewhat disappointed with XXX: State of the Union. I really do love Ice Cube, & there are a fair number of clever references both to the first movie & to other movies, but really: there's no replacing Vin Diesel, is there?

That giant fur coat, that lovable irreverence, that snowboarding down the avalanche scene, &c. So good!

"They look like good strong hands, don't they?"

Oh, sigh, The NeverEnding Story always makes me so sad.

This was my favorite movie in the whole world when I was younger.

"Ladies, let me tell you about myself..."

I was looking at my last.fm weekly charts today [1], and it struck me that one of the things I love most about last.fm is that, by recording what I'm listening to, it's essentially a recorder of my moods. Like a lot of people (I assume?), I tend to listen to music that reinforces my moods, so my list of recently played tracks on last.fm tends to be very indicative of how I'm feeling. [2]

& so I'm reminded of this quote from High Fidelity:

I like being able to see how I got from Deep Purple to Howlin' Wolf in twenty-five moves ... If I want to play, say, Blue by Joni Mitchell [3], I have to remember that I bought it for someone in the autumn of 1983, and thought better of giving it to her, for reasons I don't really want to go into. Well, you don't know any of that, so you're knackered, really, aren't you? You'd have to ask me to dig it out for you, and for some reason I find this enormously comforting.

From Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, p. 55.

And, yes, so: I could tell you how I got from ABBA: Gold & Pet Sounds—two of the saddest pop albums ever—to the bitter & confessional nastiness of The Afghan Whigs' Gentlemen, to the Dusty-esque resignedness of Cat Power's The Greatest. In four days!

But I don't really need to, because my last.fm profile says it all.

[1] As I am wont to do, periodically.

[2] And of course, it strikes me that my blog can do much the same thing, on a less granular scale—which is, of course, one of the things I love most about it. To whit: this post and this post, both from this week.

[3] Though, I have to say, I prefer the example in the movie, which was Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide."

Nick Hornby does seem to have some sort of weird Joni Mitchell thing, doesn't he? (c.f. also About a Boy, which has loads of Joni Mitchell references.)

"She asked me if we could be friends..."

So, I recorded Sign o' the Times on our TiVo this past weekend, and ever since I've been trying to figure out how to get it off of the TiVo. As in, off of the TiVo, and onto a DVD or my (Mac) laptop.

But so BTW, before I delve into the tech stuff, a brief aside that's worthy of the main post, as opposed to a footnote: Sign o' the Times is so fucking awesome. And it's not really easily available on DVD, which is just totally lame.

Favorite things about Sign o' the Times:

• When, during "Hot Thing," Prince slides across the stage under Cat Glover's legs, and rips off her skirt with his teeth. (Or, I guess, almost—he actually appears to grab it with his hand, then transfer it to between his teeth. Yes, I've now watched this part too many times in the writing of this post.) But still: how awesome is Prince!


• This movie is just so brilliantly directed. The cuts & closeups are as good as a music video, which is pretty incredible with what appears to be concert footage. [1]


• This is a really great mini-review of the movie. Of course, it would be, as the author wrote a book on the subject.
  


• "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man". Best. Song. EVAR.

So, all of that said: We only have Macs around the house (around 6 of them now that we've amassed, but quantity doesn't help, in this case), so we can't use TiVoToGo. And really, what I most want is just to be able to burn this to a DVD, so I can watch it over & over again. It seems so simple: it's a file, made of bits, on a hard drive on (what is basically) a Linux box, that is on our fucking network. Why can't I just mount the box and copy the file to my laptop, then play it? [2]

So finally, from a comment on this post, I figured out part of the answer:

Open up a web browser and go to https://(the ip address of your tivo)/nowplaying/index.html and login as tivo with a password of your media access code (from the Tivo view settings screen) It will let you access a website where you can download the *.tivo files of your shows.

Yay! Now I have the .tivo file, though I can't actually do anything with it without a PC with TiVo ToGo.

And yet somehow, just the idea of having this file on my own hard drive makes me feel so much more secure!

Prince: you're safe now.

[1] Of course, it's not actually concert footage, which is the reason it looks so good. It turns out it's a lot easier when you reshoot the entire movie at your own studio!

[2] This is a rhetorical question.

Oh shit! It's a recursive footnote explosion.

You know what I hate about Spanglish? [1]

Everything, except for [2].

[1] There's only one thing that I like about Spanglish. [2]

[2] Paz Vega, c.f. [1].