Bill Clinton Would Make a Great First Lady

Funny Games

"Funny Games" is one of the few movies I have watched twice in a row. The only others I can remember off the top of my head were "Rosemary's Baby," "The Ice Storm" and "Children of Men."

The film's director, Austrian Michael Haneke, has made a shot-for-shot remake of the film, this time in English (the original film was in German, and his other great film, "Cache," was in French).

I'm not sure how I feel about this remake. It seems to be a purely commercial move, especially considering Tim Roth and Naomi Watts are in the new film.

At the same time, though, I really hope this movie will vault him into Americans' consciousness, as he is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today.

In anticipation of the new film, the New York Times has run a profile of him in the Sunday magazine. In the following paragraphs, it gives a decent overview of the man and his films.

Making waves...is what Haneke has become famous for. Over the last two decades, the director has developed a reputation for stark, often brutal films that place the viewer — sometimes subtly, sometimes explicitly — in the uncomfortable role of accomplice to the crimes playing out on-screen. This approach has made Haneke one of contemporary cinema’s most reviled and revered figures, earning him everything from accusations of obscenity to a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art next month. “Funny Games,” the movie Haneke was shooting in New York and Long Island, is the American remake of a highly controversial film by the same name that he directed in 1997. It was from its beginnings targeted at the American moviegoing public — and no other word but “targeted” will do. “Funny Games” is a direct assault on the conventions of cinematic violence in the United States, and the new version of the film, with its English-speaking cast and unmistakably American production design, makes this excruciatingly clear. More surprising still, Haneke remade this attack on the Hollywood thriller for a major Hollywood studio, Warner Independent Pictures, and refused to alter the original film’s story in the slightest. Read the article here.

I must see the remake--it's set for release in 2008.

Here is the trailer for the new version:


And here's the trailer for the old one:


I like the old one better. A lot better.

A Great Day

I'm so lucky.

After my seven-year-old went to a friend's house this morning to play, my ten-year-old wanted to watch a movie before the Seahawks game. I gave her a few choices, but she said she wanted something with a lot of snappy dialogue like "His Girl Friday." So we chose the Preston Sturges classic "The Palm Beach Story."

We watched half of the movie (it's not as funny as his best movie, "Sullivan's Travels," but we enjoyed it), then watched the Seahawks game together. That's right--my daughter and I watched not only a 1940s black and white comedy, but we watched a whole football game together, too. I must be in heaven.

Then we went outside and played catch with the football. She has such a good arm, she overthrew me, hit a neighbor's car and set off the alarm. Oops.

I repeat, I'm a lucky guy.

Radiohead

This may be the best live version of a song I have ever seen.

I had erroneously assumed that a song of such power and complexity had to have been the product of studio mastery. But when I saw this clip, I realized that Radiohead might be the best live band of all time.

This really blew my mind.

Bill Maher for President

Crazy people who still think the government brought down the Twin Towers in a controlled explosion have to stop pretending that I'm the one who's being naive.

How big a lunatic do you have to be to watch two giant airliners packed with jet fuel slam into buildings on live TV, igniting a massive inferno that burned for two hours, and then think 'Well, if you believe that was the cause...'

Stop asking me to raise this ridiculous topic on the show and start asking your doctor if Paxil is right for you.

See the video here.

But Can the Democrats Grow Up?

As everyone knows, the Republican Party has spiraled into disrepute. A whopping 20 percent of Americans have swung from positive to negative on the GOP in just three years, leaving pretty much only hard-core partisans in the clubhouse/bunker. It’s Iraq, of course—but not just Iraq. The GOP’s remarkable success at presidential politics the past 40 years has been a function of its “daddy party” image—happy to exercise military power abroad, unaccommodating of misbehavior and hard-luck stories at home, penny-pinching, can-do— in contrast to the Democrats’ “mommy party” M.O. of naïveté, mollycoddling, and profligacy. And the Republicans’ only shot at electing a president next year really does depend on pushing that old trope. Ken Duberstein, the Reagan chief of staff turned lobbyist and board whore (Boeing, Fannie Mae, etc.), insisted the other day that “the Republican Party continues to be the ‘daddy party.’ ”

But that is beginning to sound wishful. In fact, if the Democrats don’t blow it, 2008 could be the election that finishes off the pro-GOP salience of the tough-daddy-soft-mommy paradigm. Because the Republicans are being rapidly rebranded as a party of men who exemplify the least attractive, most pathetic aspects of the gender—they are the stubborn, arrogant, lazy, incompetent (Iraq, Katrina), hypocritical, crude, nasty fathers, Homer Simpson crossed with Tony Soprano, the kind of men who snarl and posture as old-fashioned patresfamilias but don’t come through when and where it counts. The GOP is becoming the deadbeat-daddy party.

Theirs is also the party of moral righteousness in which the Reverend Ted Haggard, Congressman Mark Foley, and Senators David Vitter and Larry Craig were all, only a year ago, leading lights. And consider the personal backgrounds of the top Republican presidential contenders, who seem more mack daddy than Father Knows Best. Rudy Giuliani contrived to annul his fourteen-year-long first marriage to his cousin, then publicly cheated on his second wife, and now, having married his mistress, has alienated both his children. Notoriously alley-catting Fred Thompson impregnated the mother of his children in high school and then married a babelicious, 24-years-younger second wife—and, lacking much (manly, paternal) taste for hard work, has by all accounts let the wives push him along in politics. It’s ironic, and a bit awkward, that the only GOP candidate who’s had just one wife, Mitt Romney, is the Mormon great-grandson of polygamists.

Read the rest here.

Photo

This picture made me laugh like a seventh grader.

One of the Few Funny Forwarded Jokes I Have Ever Received

A guy goes to the supermarket and notices a beautiful blond woman wave at him and say hello. He's rather taken aback, because he can't place where he knows her from. So he says, "Do you know me?"

To which she replies, "I think you're the father of one of my kids."

Now his mind travels back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife and says, "My God, are you the stripper from my bachelor party that I made love to on the pool table with all my buddies watching, while your partner whipped my butt with wet celery???"

She looks into his eyes and calmly says, "No, I'm your son's math teacher."

The Original Misanthrope

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.
-Mark Twain, author and humorist (1835-1910)

Why not Spokane?

I have noticed that on MySpace/Facebook sites, people will list their hometown of Spokane as "Spovegas" or "Spokompton." While not denigrating the cleverness of such portmanteaus, I thought that maybe people could begin coming up with more clever names combining Spokane with other cites. To wit:

Spomaha

Sporange County

Sportland

Spokanogan

Sporofino

Sporlando

Spakron

Splos Angeles

Spritzville

Spenver

Spokansas City

The Best News I Have Seen In A Long Time

The old advertising slogan "Guinness is Good for You" may be true after all, according to researchers.

A pint of the black stuff a day may work as well as an aspirin to prevent heart clots that raise the risk of heart attacks.

Drinking lager does not yield the same benefits, experts from University of Wisconsin told a conference in the US.

Guinness were told to stop using the slogan decades ago - and the firm still makes no health claims for the drink.
...

The researchers told a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida, that the most benefit they saw was from 24 fluid ounces of Guinness - just over a pint - taken at mealtimes.

Read the entire article here.

And The Winner Of the Emmy For Greatest Actor Of All Time Is...

David Caruso