I just wrote a long post about the upcoming fall movie season, and my browser quit when I visited the website for “Rendition,” a film about the CIA secret prison program starring well-known Arab-Americans Reese Witherspoon, Peter Sarsgaard, Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep and Alan Arkin. Reese plays the wife of a man named Ali or Ahmet or something, played by Some Swarthy Guy.
When the browser quit, I lost the whole thing. And now I really don’t want to see it.
There was also a capsule review of “Last Kiss.” I’ll give you the capsule-capsule review: It sucked.
And now I’ve eaten up my designated blogging time, and have to go rewrite a stupid memo.
Have I mentioned it rained torrentially overnight and it’s supposed to be 90 degrees today?
Not my day, not so far. Play amongst yourselves. I’ll see what I can do post-memo.
brian stouder said on August 23, 2007 at 9:30 am
Hah! We just watched “Last Kiss” two nights ago. After the first 5 minutes, Pam and I knew everything that was going to happen; one could make a party game out of listing the various movie cliche’s that cascade from the screen…..
and still we watched to the end. The thing pretty much DOES skid over the edge and become a self parody in the middle third, but it has a great cast, and I confess I ended up liking it, dammit!!
Except that as we got to the end of the movie, when the inevitable happy ending was upon us, and the dvd froze. Several tries at re-racking (including on another dvd machine) didn’t stop it from failing right at the same point…but even that was OK. We knew exactly what we were missing, plus the video store credited that movie, plus one more – so a good thing all around!
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LA mary said on August 23, 2007 at 9:45 am
How did Alan Arkin get into that cast? He doesn’t have any double vowels in his name. Two guys have double a names. Wow. Outside of Scandinavia or the Netherlands, that’s really rare.
Speaking of stupid comments, I made the mistake of watching the local news this morning for about five minutes. There was a story about the new Cirque du Soleil show, which is called “Corteo.” The reporter said corteo means, in Italian, “a grand parade dreamed by a dead clown.” Those Italians have a word for everything, don’t they?
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MichaelG said on August 23, 2007 at 9:46 am
Go to Ken Levine’s wonderful website for the fall movie capsules. He just posted them yesterday and today.
http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/
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Connie said on August 23, 2007 at 9:50 am
The CIA has probably hacked the Rendition web site in order to shut down all browsers that try to access it.
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Danny said on August 23, 2007 at 9:51 am
Those Italians have a word for everything, don’t they?
Only for things that are important or commonplace. Like things dreamed by clowns.
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brian stouder said on August 23, 2007 at 9:54 am
The CIA has probably hacked the Rendition web site in order to shut down all browsers that try to access it.
Which means now they know what Madame Telling Tales is wearing today, and they can track her bounce rates
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nancy said on August 23, 2007 at 9:55 am
One of the better comments on “The Sopranos” that I read was on one of the TVWoP boards, where someone parsed finnoch’, the New Jersey Italian-mob slang for homosexual. The writer said it’s basically a shorter version of the word for “fennel,” which is a vegetable that shares traits with a fruit. In other words, it goes either way. A very expressive language.
Please excuse my no-doubt-atrocious stab at Italian spelling. All my Eye-tye comes from cookbooks.
On edit: Fennel, in Italian, is finocchio. So I’m close, but doubled the wrong letter.
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LA mary said on August 23, 2007 at 10:02 am
My sons get a kick out of the names of pasta shapes. A fave is anellini, which means little anuses. Yum. Lingue di passeri is lark’s tongue.
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basset said on August 23, 2007 at 10:24 am
lingue de passeri. hmmm. can you serve those in aspic?
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alex said on August 23, 2007 at 10:36 am
My fave Italian word is “Tarzanello.” Any guesses?
Hint: They cling and swing.
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MichaelG said on August 23, 2007 at 11:29 am
Used to be a club in San Francisco called Finocchio’s. It featured all the old tranny entertainers like Charles Pierce. I hadn’t thought of it in years. I only went there a couple of times.
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Cathy D. said on August 23, 2007 at 11:47 am
I’ve taken to writing posts outside the browser…finding my links…then putting it all together in Blogger.
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Dorothy said on August 23, 2007 at 11:48 am
Anellini is a new one to me. I’m afraid to ask what the shapes look like. The long tubular ones already have a name – ziti. Which reminds me of one of my favorite Soprano lines spoken by A.J. in Season 1: “What? No fuckin’ ziti?!”
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LA mary said on August 23, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Anellini are little rings about 3/4 of an inch in diameter.
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basset said on August 23, 2007 at 9:55 pm
OK, nobody picked up on “lingue de passeri” and aspic. I am now officially too old and unhip to post here.
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ashley said on August 24, 2007 at 12:32 am
I got it Basset, but I faced away from the computer while composing my response to show my disdain for the audience.
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LA mary said on August 24, 2007 at 12:47 pm
You mean from Monty Python or am I misremembering?
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