Monthly Archives: October 2004

Oct112004

Christoper Reeve

They say that celebrity deaths always come in clusters of three. I have no idea why this would be so, but it certainly does seem that way if you follow the Hollywood obituaries. A former girlfriend once called me morbid because I follow them. All I could tell her by way of explanation was that the deaths of people who’ve done work I care about matter to me. True, I may not know these people on any kind of genuine personal level, but I feel like I do know at least an aspect of them through their work, and I mourn the fact that there will be no new work from them once they are gone.

Few celebrity deaths, however, matter more to me than the one I learned about late this evening: Christopher Reeve, the man who was Superman for the children of my generation, died Sunday of heart failure, following a cardiac arrest and resulting coma the previous day. This one really hurts, kids…

Oct082004

Movie Review: Shaun of the Dead

[Ed. note: I’ve been pretty lax about the movie reviews lately, so I’m going to try and make up for lost time over the next few entries. FYI, I’ll be talking about films I’ve seen over the course of the last month. I mention this only because I don’t want you to think I’ve spent the last three days sitting in a darkened theater. Not that that’s a bad way to spend one’s time, of course…]

I must be honest before beginning this review: prior to Shaun of the Dead, I’d only seen one other zombie movie in my whole life, namely the seminal Night of the Living Dead. I suppose you could count Sam Raimi’s delirious Evil Dead trilogy, which has certain similarities to “traditional” zombie flicks, but if you’re rigidly defining the genre as “armies of shuffling corpses moaning for ‘braaaaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnnsssssssss’ and getting shot in the head,” well, then, there’s only ever been the one. Nevertheless, I feel quite secure in proclaiming Shaun to be, as The Simpsons‘ Comic Book Guy would say, the best zombie movie… EVER! Certainly it’s the funniest film I’ve seen in a good long time. And, in an odd way, it’s the most touching, too.

Oct082004

Scalzi and John Kerry’s Shoes

Blogs are like ice cream — sometimes you’re in the mood for one flavor, sometimes not. The one blog I never miss, however, is John Scalzi’s Whatever. It is quite simply the summit that all of us other bloggers should be striving for — always well-written, diverse subject matter, strong opinions, glimpses of the author’s personal life that manage to be cute without getting too cloying, and a sharp, laugh-out-loud wit that cuts through the crap to say exactly what needs to be said. Take, for example, today’s entry, in which Scalzi begins by saying that, “if John Kerry cannot beat George W. Bush in this election, he should be taken out and beaten to death with his own shoes.” Lest you think this is just another standard-issue Bush-bashing, let me point out that Scalzi spends most of the entry excoriating the Democrats for not seizing the opportunity this campaign represents. It’s an interesting read, and I think he hits the nail on the head. There is no reason why this election should be as close as it is, except that Kerry and his people haven’t played the game as well as they should have. I won’t say any more, because I think Scalzi says it better than I can. Take a look…

Oct062004

Beyond SpaceShipOne

The excellent website Space.com has an article today about what’s going to happen next following SpaceShipOne’s victory in the race for the X-Prize. If you’re at all interested in manned civilian spaceflight, give it a look — it’s pretty exciting stuff.

Oct062004

Rodney Dangerfield

So far, all of the tributes I’ve seen for Rodney Dangerfield, who died yesterday at the age of 82, have made use of his famous “I get no respect” line to paint Rodney’s comic persona as an everyman loser, a guy who was constantly putting himself down. The words “self-deprecating” have occurred in so many of these pieces that I’m starting to think there’s some kind of contractual obligation involved with their usage.

However, I would argue that “self-deprecating loser” isn’t how most people of my generation experienced Rodney Dangerfield. Maybe that description was true of his stand-up act, but We who came of age in the ’80s first encountered his bug-eyed visage in the movies, specifically in two movies: Caddyshack and Back to School. He played a similar character in both, a fun-loving but unbelievably obnoxious guy with money to burn.

Oct052004

Sir Sean Retiring?

One of my all-time favorite actors is Sir Sean Connery. He appeared in four films that I never get tired of watching — Highlander, The Hunt for Red October, The Untouchables, and, of course, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade — and as far as I’m concerned he is not only the original but The One True James Bond. He’s made a lot of crap movies over the years, but I’ve always said that his mere presence in a film is enough to make it watchable. (At least, I used to say that, before I saw The Avengers. That fetid lump of parrot droppings is one the extremely tiny handful of movies so bad that even I have been tempted to walk out of them. Unfortunately, Sean also appeared in one of the other crapfests on that list, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. But surely his turn as Indiana Jones’ dad makes up for those two, right? Right?)

Oct042004

Janet Leigh

Another icon of the silver screen has taken her final bow. This time, it’s Janet Leigh, a fine actress who will forever be remembered for a single scene in one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best-remembered films, Psycho. Leigh died on Sunday after a year-long illness, age 77.

Oct042004

Success!

SpaceShipOne has won the X-Prize following a successful — and apparently flawless — second flight this morning. I don’t have much else to say on this subject that I haven’t said already. Oddly enough, this news is something of a let-down for me because it all happened so according-to-plan. Not that I wanted to see the vehicle explode or anything, but it just seemed to be so… easy. Even a little ho-hum, as if this privately funded civilian spacecraft thing has already become old hat. But then that’s the way we want it to be, isn’t it? Nice and easy, nothing remarkable. Easy enough for an ordinary person to book a flight to the orbiting Hilton for the weekend. The future is coming, my friends…

Oct032004

Return of the Girlfriend

Just in case you were wondering, Anne and her folks got back from their big Church history tour last night. I was waiting at the airport to collect them, marvelling at the colossal lack of style shown by most of the people around me. I’m not exactly George Clooney in the sartorial department, but most people these days seem to travel in their gym clothes — sweatpants, sweatshirts, hoodies, t-shirts, wifebeaters, and ball caps. Everything loose-fitting, untucked, often several sizes too big. The look was so common last night that the occasional pair of jeans was remarkable, and the lone gentlemen in a sport coat and tie was downright startling. (He was an older man, of course, old enough to remember when t-shirts were considered to be undergarments only.) Most of the athletic outfits were nondescript and without obvious logos, but then there was the family of gang-banger wannabes that was dressed head-to-toe in Oakland Raiders-wear. An entire family — late-twentysomething mom and dad, a tall boy about ten or twelve and a younger boy, maybe seven or eight years old — garbed in officially-licensed, Raider-branded black-and-gray. Dad wore an expensive-looking leather team jacket; mom had a slightly-less pricey fleece version. And all of them wore those ubiquitous nylon workout pants with the snaps down the sides of the legs. They must’ve spent a small fortune at Fanzz to acquire all that stuff.

Monthly Archives: October 2004

Christoper Reeve

Movie Review: Shaun of the Dead

Scalzi and John Kerry’s Shoes

Beyond SpaceShipOne

Rodney Dangerfield

Recommended Reading

Sir Sean Retiring?

Janet Leigh

Success!

Return of the Girlfriend

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