Her

Joaquin Phoenix turned 40 today and I just watched his film Her by Spike Jonze. It was really good and has some great actresses and actors in it: Chris Pratt, Rooney Mara, Scarlett Johansson, Olivia Wilde, Amy Adams and Matt Letscher.*

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* Letscher was the father in the Carrie Diaries with Annasophia Robb who in turn was in the saddest movie ever. He also plays the fascist Joe Kennedy on Boardwalk Empire.

Veronica Mars

Okay, Kristen Bell has gone way up in my book. I saw the Veronica Mars movie on HBO and since then have been watching the TV show. My future dream project is a steampunk The Knick-Outlander mashup about Ada Lovelance, but instead of being exactly like the Outlander heroine she'd be more like the witty, melancholic class warrior of Veronica, a teenage outlook in an adult body. But with computer smarts so a combo Veronica-Cindy "Mac" Macenzie. I'll have to check if that squares with the historical Lovelace.

schadenfreude, The Armstrong Lie & I'm the Worst

The Armstrong Lie

Yeah, I'm the worst.

Negative Outlook?

anchored perceived inflation

I asked in comments for DeLong to add Waldmann's post on "anchored perceived inflation" and he did.

Menzie Chinn has a related post.

And here's DeLong's post on Chris House and Krugman from a week ago.

Phillips curves with anchored expectations by Robert Waldmann (from July 1st)

Intertubes

My comments are being eaten in the blogosphere. Perhaps I'm being blocked but I don't think so. Anyhow I'll save/copy my mental regurgitations here so they don't simply vanish into the aether.

commenter Darryl FKA Ron:

[The return to capital tax incentives created by a dividends tax credit equal to the lesser of the issuers taxes paid on the dividends amount or the full amount of ordinary income taxes owed on the dividends by its recipient was an old idea going back to 1913 until the Republicans rescinded it in 1954. During the New Deal era this incentive to hold rather than trade speculatively or sell out to the first good proffer that beat the market was enhanced temporarily by higher capital gains tax rates and longer holding term requirements for discounting. 

First two LBOs happened in 1955, the year after the dividends tax credit was permanently (had been done 1936-1939, before Congress understood why it was instituted with the income tax in 1913) rescinded.]

Legend of the Seeker

therealtabrettbethell via Bridget Regan's twitter

My post on Cara back in 2009

New Girl

AV Club reviews "Nerd" from New Girl

Eva Amurri on New Girl is awesome.

(This Succubus wears no underwear!)

AV Club reviews season 3 finale of Lost Girl

I have a TV crush on TV character Tamsin the Valkyrie played by Rachel Skarsten. Lame I know....

Syfy channel says the show will be back in 2014.

Okay, Grace Van Pelt on "The Mentalist" is the most attractive woman on basic or non-basic cable. That is all.

I think I'm going to copy Jessica on "New Girl" and set the Pointer Sisters' "I'm So Excited" as my new ringtone.

Lucky/smart actors: Giovanni Ribisi in Sofia Copolla's "Lost in Translation" shared scenes with Scarlett Johansson and Anna Faris. Paul Rudd and Adam Scott got to work with Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel,  and Rashida Jones in "Our Idiot Brother."

Leverage Goes Out on a High by June Thomas

Five seasons is a good run. I was surprised by the ending of the show and series in the finale the other night. And I was bummed out! (I had a bubble with "WTF?!?!" over my head as the last show ended and Nate proposed to Sophie, then Parker took over the remaining crew of three.) Shows how lame and old I'm getting. It also demonstrates how good basic cable shows can be and how the good ones can challenge you and make you think. What I really liked about "Leverage" was the combination of actors and the characters the show created for these actors. They were fun and clever.

We're getting spoiled with shows like "The Wire," True Blood" and "Game of Thrones" and then basic cable with "The Shield," "Battlestar Galactica," "Justified," and "The Walking Dead" among others.

The best TV series of 2012: The ballots (Onion writers make their picks) The overall results:

The Best TV of 2012 

To vote, 30 of our writers allocated 200 points among 15 to 20 shows, with no writer allowed to give more than 15 points to any one show. (You can see those ballots here.) What resulted was a mix of familiar faces, brand-new shows, and long-running favorites that finally cracked our list of TV’s best.

Never got into the top 2, "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad." Nor "Girls." I did watch "The Walking Dead," "Justified," "New Girl," "30 Rock," "Game of Thrones," "Parks and Recreation," "Homeland," and "Louie." I'm sort of a Sci-Fi dork so I loved "Alphas" and "Lost Girl." Good escapism!

(Update: I forgot "Always Sunny In Philadelphia" and "Spartacus.")

Bloggy, too-much-info post.

Okay, something I'm putting in my book queue is Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, a real-life female Richard Castle.

I read the latest Entertainment Weekly and they were slightly, sort of promoting Flynn who once was a TV critic for the magazine. The noire mystery is a best seller and is being made into a movie by Reese Witherspoon who loves the book.

I'm irrationally jingoistic about my generation and hometown and Flynn is about my age and lives in Chicago with her lawyer husband. In EW she writes that she thought Jonah Hill and "21 Jump Street" were hilarious and it was one of the funniest movies of recent memory. On her website, she says as a critic her favorite series was "The Wire" and is currently a "Game of Thrones" junkie. So I'm looking forward to checking out her book(s).

Why So Serious?

The Walking Dead just set a basic-cable record with being the number one show among the 18-49 demographic. NBC's popular show Revolution sort of has the same theme of society being a step away from systemic collapse, the rule of militias, YOYO morality (You're-On-Your-Own), and the rise of Fascism.

On a ligher note, I also like Castle which is being rerun on basic cable pretty regularly. It stars Nathan Fillion from Firefly (I came late to that show also) and Stana (sounds like Madonna) Katic one of the most beautiful women in the history of the planet.*(!) Katic's parents are Serbian Croatian and she grew up in Canada and Aurora, Illinois. In one re-runned episode her somewhat dour/serious character detective Kate Beckett, lightens up and blurts out "Shut the Front Door!" with a smile. I could feel the emotions of a hopeless schoolboy crush overcoming my defenseless brain. It's one of those things that's simultaneously a rush and depressingly embarrassing. The show has some good writing (like one episode was about zombies) and cameos by cool actors, but what gives it that extra something is the implausibility of there being such a gorgeously beautiful and distractingly attractive police detective in existence. (No wonder mystery thriller writer Richard Castle wanted to work with her.) You have to suspend your disbelief just as you have to do with shows about the existence of zombies. Good to see Fillion land another good show and we wish Katic the best.

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*That's centuries of beautiful women all over the globe.

Confessed 4 Life

Bridget Regan tweets "Almost 30,000 followers what!"

Like Firefly, Legend of the Seeker was one of those highly entertaining shows which was underrated at the time.

I resorted my arbitrary list of tweeters by number of followers.

At this time the - rounded - count is

Wilde      631.5k
Regan       30k
Leonhardt       21.5k
Franke-Ruta     14.5k
Kliff      13k
Appelbaum      9k
Davies       2.5 k

This past episode (21) of New Girl titled "Kids" had Zooey Deschanel mentioning Bridge to Terabithia* and for some reason she reminded me of the lovely actress Debra Winger with her kind blue eyes, raspy voice, and mischievious smile. (Maybe Winger could play her mother. Or Deschanel could make a remake of Legal Eagles.)

I recently saw 21 Jump Street which was created in part by DeLong's cousin Phil Lord. Jake Johnson from New Girl was in it, as was Nick Offerman. It was pretty funny. Offerman also had a bit part in the very funny Will Ferrell movie Casa di mi Padre.



For some reason Blogger force me to redesign the blog. The links on the right are messed-up and will be fixed.

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* Deschanel's character Jess said it was movie that made children cry. As an adult I thought it was pretty sad. Deschanel had a supporting role playing a teacher, just as Jess is a teacher.

Confessed 4 Life

Bridget Regan replies to Seeker costar Craig Horner: "Sad I can't be there with you!"

Horner: "Seeker Fans, I will be visiting WonderCon in Anaheim California March 17th and 18th from 12pm till 3:30pm..."

Confessed 4 Life


Bridget Regan on TNT mystery movie next Sunday.

You become vapid and bland when your heart is broken.

Enough Quirkiness! Why I Can’t Stand Zooey Deschanel. by Seyward Darby

Sorry this is wrong. Her new show is a hit. Darby:

With regard to Deschanel, I would argue that her persona not only wears thin very quickly, but her contentedness to present herself as so funky and thus harmless makes the actress herself seem vapid and bland. I suspect that she is neither, so I am troubled by the idea that she would be comfortable having her sharpness blunted—as both a woman and an artist. With regard to “New Girl,” it’s worth comparing Jess to Tina Fey’s character on the show “30 Rock.” Fey’s Liz Lemon is another quirky oddball, but she’s defined by much more than eccentricities—by her smarts, her career, and her relationships, for instance. With Jess, in contrast, we know little about her life outside of her breakup, apartment, roommates (all of which are new) and, most importantly, her kooky behavior. It doesn’t much matter why she loves being a teacher (her job, we’re told, which involves bringing home lots of popsicle sticks), or what she thinks about things other than, say, bubbles and unicorns (she loves them, of course). And heaven forbid we learn what she really hates—perhaps cheating boyfriends, although it’s not clear she thinks her ex is really such a bad guy.

I see her character Jess as being in a bit of daze because she was dumped. She's so heartbroken she's become sort of goofy. I love Fey too and would be reduced to a stuttering wreck if I met either her or Deschanel in person.

Deschanel's Jess has an intelligence and kindness behind her quirkiness and dorkiness which makes her compelling. She's why the show is a hit. The characters she plays in film and TV - see Mumford, Almost Famous, The Good Girl, Elf, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Go-Getter, Bridge to Terabithia*, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Tin Man, Gigantic, (500) Days of Summer - are all intelligent if not as out-going as Fey's characters. What's attractive about the two besides their looks is their mix of humor, smarts and confidence. Granted sometimes their characters aren't so confident - which is creating drama - but it seems realistic in their loss of confidence if that makes any sense. And of course their humor is about being likable and accessable to the audience which is why they are popular. They're not raging bitches.

I see what Darby is getting at but ultimately disagree. "Adorkable" may not be the most appealing or compelling trait - compared to a wise-cracking Fey or a manically goofy Poehler - but it seems more realistic than what is usually on offer. Many people are good-natured dorks and can identify with Jess which probably partly why the show is popular. And what if she's been "dorkified" because she's in mourning over being dumped. She could recover.

New Girl is okay as a sitcom - for me anything with Deschanel is good by definition - but what's interesting is that the roommate she's sort of connecting with because he was recently dumped too is played by Jake Johnson. Johnson was in Paper Heart a very clear-eyed, realistic mockumentary about comedian Charlyne Yi as a cynic who doesn't believe in love and goes around the country interviewing strangers about love, but in the end she falls in love with Michael Cera and has her heart broken. Maybe Deschanel and/or the creators of the New Girl liked that movie and wanted to bring it's realism and cynicism to a sitcom?
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*one of my favorite movies of all time.

Team Debbie

Not wonkish, but too-much-information-ish ... I ran across a bad-ass ex-girlfriend at the local Starbucks this morning. Hadn't seen her in years. She sort of reminds me of Debbie Pelt and vicey versey. Since we broke up, she had gone to rehab and hooked up with one of her bad-ass ex-boyfriends that she used to date before we had met. He's her age whereas I'm 8 years older.

On True Blood, Alcide seems more interested in Sookie and helping other people like Sam, than in Debbie. With me, I'm too interested in the things I blog about, like True Blood, politics and economics, things which didn't interest my ex. Plus she ran with the pack who work bars and restaurants and stay out all night, while I had a 9-5 office job.