08-06-2005

591) Shalako. Connery shouldn't make westerns or Hitchcock pictures. Cause this was good, other than him. Your the man now, dogg, indeed.

592) Oh! Susanna. Yeah, no one was named Susanna (or Suzanne or Sue or whatever), they were nowhere near Alabama or Louisiana, there wasn't a banjo to be seen, and no one was on a trip to see their true love. The only reason I can come up with for the title is that the indians in this were Sioux. Still, a western is a western.

593) Follow Me Boys. Ah, the good old days. When you could name a fat kid "Beefy" and get away with it.

593 down, 407 to go.

Big plans, ruined by life. After Shalako was over the day held such bright promise of laying in bed all day and watching western after western after western until I remembered that I was out of Coke and the basic rudiments of food so I had to get up and showered and to the grocery store, at which point I remembered that I had promised to pick up Ol' Dirty Robin at the airport at 6 and then I hit a total funk and just went back to sleep for four hours and then goofed off the rest of the day, squeezing Oh! Susanna in before I left to pick up ODR. I went to Sarah's after I dropped her off and watched Follow Me Boys since she's been dying for me to see it. Apparently it's a big Jolley family favorite, and it was, in fact, very cute. So there is that.

12 more days til surgery. One for each disciple.

27 more days til Bama (and UAB) football. One for each year of life before the baptism of Christ.

35 more shopping days til my birthday. One for each proton in the nucleus of an atom of Bromine.

HOT FOOTBALL BETTING TIP ALERT

The Alabama football program launched a secret operation during the offseason to raid the graves of history's greatest coaches in order to transform Mike Shula into Coach Serpentor. Furthermore, Phil Fulmer ate his entire starting offensive line after the all you can eat chinese buffet reneged on it's promise, Norm Chow will in fact be calling the plays for the Trojans as his defection to the pros was only a ruse to catch USC's opponents off guard, and Charlie Weis wears little frilly girly panties on game day. Take these as fact and bet accordingly, or Big Fat Paulie will break your knee caps.

08-05-2005

588) Decision at Sundown. Did I tell you that I got Encore Westerns? Because I did. And I love it.

589) Flaming Star. Encore Westerns? You bet! Even though Elvis squeezes one song in at the beginning this was a serious western. That indian raid? Right after the laughy happy fun time scene? Man.

590) Broken Arrow. Has Encore Westerns struck again? Indeed it has! How have I gone so long without this channel?

590 down, 410 to go.

13 more days til surgery. The pain? Steadily worse.

28 more days til Bama (and UAB) football. The giddiness? Like a schoolgirl.

36 more shopping days til my birthday. The gift options? Plentiful.

08-04-2005

585) Marnie. One of Hitchcock's most underrated and underappreciated films my ass. There's a reason you never hear "Marnie" and "Hitchcock's best" in the same sentence. This was simply a loose hodgepodge of Hitchcockian themes: obsession (Vertigo, Rear Window), repressed memory (Spellbound), and psychological motivations for criminal action, especially from childhood trauma (Psycho). All of those had been explored more thoroughly and far better and there was really no reason for this. It probably wouldn't have been so bad if Hedren had only chewed the scenery instead of dumping a whole bottle of Texas Pete on and devouring it, and if Connery's character were even remotely sympathetic (he went from lifeless to creepy to sleazy to rapist and then back to lifeless) but she did and he wasn't so there you go. Serious misstep on Hitchcock's part. Dreadful.

586) Shattered Glass. Besides the obvious political reasons, I wouldn't want to hang out with the staff of The New Republic just cause those guys are dorks.

587) The United States of Leland. Drop the Leland and this might have been good. For real, all of the philosophical voice over nonsense was totally destracting and incredibly stupid. You could literally remove all of his scenes and use the spare time to focus more on the grief surrounding the families and made this twice the movie it is. Whatever.

587 down, 413 to go.

14 more days til surgery.

29 more days til Bama (and UAB) football.

37 more shopping days til my birthday.

I am so sexy.

08-03-2005

583) The Rookie. What if you changed the name of this to "The Wookie" and cast Chewbacca in the lead role, but left everything else the same? You know that would be awesome. Why aren't the Hollywood studios beating down my door?

584) A Very Long Engagement. Wow. I can't get over this guy's cinematography. Amelie was a little precious at times but it was such a joy to watch, and now this one. And the story was both sad and yet hopeful, like it was the French answer to The Notebook or something. Excellent.

584 down, 416 to go.

On the one hand I kind of want it...

Check it out. Now I can order the entire season on DVD! This is quite possibly the best AND worst idea ever. It's like gambling, really, but losing is far worse. You bet $323 and if you win you get a bunch of DVDs to relive the highs over and over again. But if you lose you not only lose your money but you are stuck with a bunch of DVDs of Shula and Co. trotting out to the 50 yard line, pulling their pants down, and laying another giant steaming pile right before your very eyes! The irresponsible gambling junkie inside of me is screaming that this purchase must be made, but the sensible adult that has managed to slap duct tape over the mouth of the irresponsible impulse purchaser and put him in a full nelson is telling me that even if we go undefeated I'll never actually watch the games again anyway. And yet, it's still an intriguing investment. By ordering the set it's like I'm re-affirming my faith in the Tide and their inevitable return to prominence, not just in the SEC, but nationally. It's as if I'm saying "I know we've had the hard times, but I'm not worried about this season and I'm putting up $323 to prove it." Ultimately, I think I'll have to pass. $323 is a steep price for 12 DVDs that will do nothing but gather dust. I think I'll save that money and spend it on Asian bootleg copies of The X-files instead.

Only 38 More Shopping Days 'til My Birthday Update

I'm as giddy as a schoolgirl about the re-release of Once and Again Season 1 and the release of Once and Again Season 2 on August 23rd. HINT HINT. Furthermore, The Upside of Anger and Million Dollar Baby are now available on DVD. HINT HINT.

In other news, only 30 more days til the start of Alabama (and UAB) football. The UAB/Tennessee game will be shown by Jefferson Pilot so I'm looking forward to watching Hackney light up the UT secondary and thoroughly embarass any linebackers foolish enough to come within an arm's length. I don't imagine any networks will be jumping all over the chance to broadcast Bama's inevitable thrashing of the mighty Blue Raiders, but luckily Eli and the Snake will be in the booth to bring me the play by play. Again, giddy as a school girl.

08-02-2005

581) Crime and Punishment. I'm going to guess that this is a shallow adaptation of the book cause otherwise Literary Classic my ass. I had plans to read all the great works that I never bothered with in high school after I finished UAB and would actually have some time to read, but four years later I'm still only 100 pages into Great Expectations so Dostoevsky is still low on the list. I do want to read it now though, since this made it seem like it would probably be good.

582) Crime and Punishment in Suburbia. It was right next to Crime and Punishment on the shelf at Blockbuster (duh) and it had a hot chick on the cover. What else was I supposed to do, not rent it?

582 down, 418 to go.

08-01-2005

579) Twilight on the Rio Grande. Guess what I got when I moved? ENCORE WESTERNS. That's right. 24 hours of westerns. All day, every day. My old man is so jealous. I might just finish out the 1000 with Gene Autry pictures. And there's not a thing you can do about it!

580) Charlotte Gray. Blanchett is now officially my new favorite actress.

580 down, 420 (heh) to go.

Had a bit of a scare this morning. I was doing the "invisible chair" exercise to build up my quads before the surgery (I feel like a total douche for saying "quads"), and when I was raising back up my knee popped and went out and when it did I had to step forward and plant it to keep from falling and it hit at an awkward angle and pain like you can't imagine (unless you're a member of the Alabama football team) shot from my knee up to my hip and I really thought I was going to be cripple for the rest of my life. So I called dad to get him to come and drive me to the emergency room and I hopped into the kitchen to get an ice pack while I waited. Meanwhile, he called mom to have her call Dr. Bramlett's office to see if they could schedule me in for another appointment today but after five minutes of having ice on my knee it started feeling better so I called and said don't worry about the emergency room, I think it's going to be okay, blah blah blah blah. So long story short, I don't have to do that stupid exercise anymore (which, sweet, cause that one hurt like a mother and I dreaded doing it), but now the pain, she is worse. I think having to print probably helped that part since we had all kinds of orders to get out so naturally half of printing didn't bother to show up today. The bitches.

07-31-2005

574) The Hurricane. Good biopic and Denzel's performance was excellent.

575) Honey. Jessica Alba, I'd like to welcome you into the illustrious company of Todd's Great Celebrity Loves.

576) Spellbound. The weirdest Hitchcock so far. Psycho was, well, psycho, but this one was just flat out surreal. There were a ton of "dreamy" sequences and the Dali sequence was absolutely nuts. Excellent, but weird.

577) Masked and Anonymous. I get the whole allegory of his personal life thing, but that's being too simplistic. It works better if taken as a Dylan song, like there are plenty of things you can think he's saying but there's no way to tell if you are right. It's all a pretty big mess though. I got the feeling that all the big names just wanted to hang out with Bob no matter how weird and silly the script was. The music was good and it wasn't that bad I guess. Two random notes: First, Penelope Cruz is so adorable but the Cruise taint is just too much. I want to love you, but I just can't. Second, I am totally hot for Jessica Lange and I don't know why. She's not that good of an actress, she seems like a total idiot/bitch in interviews, and she really hasn't even aged all that well, yet I'm strangely attracted to her. I'm so dirty.

578) The Corruptor. It has Chow Yun Fat so that makes it worth at least one watch. Otherwise it was a pretty unambitious cop drama.

578 down, 422 to go.

Special Belated Happy Birthday To Leslie Update:
Happy Birthday Leslie.

Special Early Happy Birthday Before I Forget To Krista Update:
Happy Birthday Krista.