Thursday, January 29, 2009

This Just In...

The Illinois state legislature has voted unanimously to remove Rod Blagojevich from office. So it's like I told you. He wouldn't have done any worse dressed as Ethel Merman.

• Posted at 3:56 PM · LINK

Spare the Rod

I just watched Rod Blagojevich address the Illinois state legislature, which is about to vote on his fate. Mr. Blagojevich is the governor of Illinois at the moment but that may not be the case by nightfall. For weeks now, this man has been saying he was dying to refute the many allegations of wrongdoing against him. He just spent an hour trying to knock down a few of them. Apparently, he couldn't address the biggies because he doesn't want to lock himself into one version of events before he goes to trial. This is not a good position to be in when you're trying to prove your innocence.

Before the speech, I was trying to think what the man should do. I decided he should dress up as Ethel Merman and then come out and sing all the hits from Gypsy. It wouldn't have made his removal from office any less likely and he might have launched a new career for when he gets out of prison.

What he did say was rambling and repetitive and far removed from reality. He would have done just as well with "Rose's Turn." It might have even helped him with the insanity defense which is looking more and more like his only option.

• Posted at 10:35 AM · LINK

Non-Spoiler Alert

Well, I came back from a great evening to find that my Internet connection is now working properly so I'm going to let you in on where I was. Carolyn and I went to an industry screening/party for the new movie, Coraline, based on the book by our pal Neil Gaiman.

Coraline is the story of a young girl who runs away (actually, crawls away) from home, entering a mysterious little door that she finds in her house. Inside it, she discovers...

No, I'm not going to tell you. Instead, I'm going to suggest you go see this movie as soon as you can and put a paper bag over your head until you can. It opens February 6 and you'll do yourself an enormous favor by not seeing the trailer, not watching excerpts, not reading reviews, not listening to others who have seen it tell you what happens in it. Let me put this in all caps: THE LESS YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS MOVIE GOING IN, THE MORE YOU WILL ENJOY IT. The film keeps your off balance throughout — every time you're sure it's about to turn left, it hangs a right — and the most refreshing thing about it is that you never know quite where it's headed or how it's going to get there.

So if friends are discussing it in your presence, clamp your hands over your ears and go "La la la" real loud so you can't hear them. I'm sick of going to movies that I've already seen half of, but some suffer more than others for advance familiarity. This is one that will suffer.

Coraline is a brilliant, wicked, stunning fantasy, filled with images you will carry home in your veins. It's done with stop-motion animation and the sets and props alone are reason enough to see it. They could have been done with computer graphics but not like this. Not with this credibility and believability. What the artisans and animators have constructed is impossible to believe, let alone describe. So see this one in a theater because it'll also suffer on the small screen.

But you might not want to see it in 3-D, which is how we viewed it and how it's being shown in some venues. 3-D puts me to sleep. One of the world's most famous hypnotists once tried to put me under and concluded I was "unhypnotizable." That's probably so but I've drifted off at some point in every 3-D movie I've ever seen and not out of boredom. I missed about ten minutes of Coraline and would have missed more except I kept mentally yelling at myself, "Wake up! You're missing this great movie!" I regret every moment through which I slept.

That's the only negative I have to report here. When it was over, Carolyn turned to me and said, "If we just sit here, will they show it again?" The answer turned out to be no so we filed out, which was good because Neil introduced us to the film's writer-director Henry Selick. We told him, like he didn't know it, that he'd created an amazing thing that spans the gamut of possible reactions. It's funny, it's chilling, it's sad, it's horrifying, it's reassuring.

I know I haven't told you a lot about the content of this movie but that's the point. If you really want that stuff, there are many websites that offer clips and trailers and plot summaries. If you know what's good for you, you'll stay the hell away from them. And go see Coraline at the early show on 2/6/09.

• Posted at 1:01 AM · LINK

January 30, 2009 • Current • January 28, 2009