Big Trouble remake

Dwayne Johnson wants John Carpenter for his Big Trouble In Little China remake

N.W.A. movie

Aldis Hodge as MC Ren!

Kevin Kline in Dave calls for full employment

Philomena

Philomena

Golden Globes

Best Drama: Imitation Game, Selma, Boyhood

Actress Drama: Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl)

Actor Drama: Cumberbatch (Imitation Game), Oyelowo (Selma)

Best Comedy: Grand Budapest Hotel

Actress Comedy: Amy Adams (Big Eyes), Emily Blunt (Into the Woods)

Actor Comedy: Michael Keaton (Birdman), Joaquin Phoenix (Inherent Vice)

Director: David Fincher (Gone Girl), Richard Linklater (Boyhood), Ava DuVernay (Selma)

Screenplay: Anderson (Grand Budapest Hotel), Flynn (Gone Girl), Linklater (Boyhood), Moore (Imitation Game)

TV Drama: Game of Thrones

Drama Actress: Viola Davis

Drama Actor: Clive Owen

TV Comedy: Silicon Valley

TV Comedy Actress: Juliet Lous-Dreyfus

Mini-series: The Normal Heart

Mini series actor: Mark Ruffalo

Mini series supporting: Matt Boemer

Mini series actress; Maggie Gyllenhal (An Honorable Woman), Frances McDormand (Olive Kitteridge)

Stefan Zweig

I saw Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel last night. It was inspired by the "writings of Stefan Zweig.* Then later I saw a movie on cable, A Promise, with Rebecca Hall, Alan Rickman and Richard Madden which was based on a novel by Zweig.

*see the "adaptations" section.

recognition

Golden Globe nominations include Rosamund Pike for Gone Girl; Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game; Fincher for Gone Girl; Linklater for Boyhood; Clive Owen for the Knick; Silicon Valley; The Normal Heart; Juila Louis-Dreyfus for Veep; Louis CK. Game of Thrones. True Detective and Fargo were good too if dark.

Time magazine recognized Game of Thrones, The Americans, Broad City, Louis CK, True Detective, Fargo, and Last Week with John Oliver.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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.

Carrie Coon

Carrie Coon got started in Chicago at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company and was in The Leftovers and Gone Girl.

Gone Girl and Garry Webb

What “Gone Girl” Is Really About by Joshua Rothman

Jeremy Renner chases leads in the overly familiar Kill The Messenger

Thunderheart

Great movie.







"He wants to know if you ever watched Mr. Magoo. He says he's not to be trusted. He's crazy. He says Magoo needs to go up on the mountain and get himself focused."

Gone Girl

Gone Girl is one of the best movies ever made about marriage by Todd VanDerWerff

Affleck leans into his inner lunk to make Nick a bit of a doofus who only realizes how everybody else in the world sees him far too late. He's good here, as good as he's been on screen. But it's Pike whom audiences will be talking about and arguing about and discussing long after they've screened the film. She seizes hold of Flynn's conception of a woman slowly losing control over her own narrative with gusto, and Fincher reacts splendidly. There's a sequence around the midpoint — a monologue where Amy lays out everything that Nick has made her become over the course of their marriage — that might be the best thing the director has ever done. It's exhilarating and terrifying and nauseating, the roller coaster of that big fight at 3 a.m. that nearly ended everything, then somehow ended back in safe harbor, encapsulated in one woman's words.

....
"What have we done to each other?" Nick asks as the film begins, and at its heart, Gone Girl knows that for all of the blood shed and all of the horrors uncovered, the worst thing Nick and Amy ever did was assume the other would allow them to be the protagonist in the story of their lives. And as the whirlpool opened, each found, to their horror, the other swimming not to support them but for the opposite side of the drain.

Nicholas Nickleby

Nicholas Nickleby

With Charlie Hunnam who's in Sons of Anarchy and was in Pacific Rim. And Jamie Bell who is in TURN. And Jim Broadbent, Christopher Plummer, Romola Garai, Anne Hathaway, Nathan Lane and Alan Cumming.

Jupiter Ascending

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.

12 Years a Slave

Spoiler Alert.

Finally, I saw 12 Years a Slave last night and it was really good. The kidnapped Solomon Northrop finally escapes slavery as he is rescued after getting a letter back to the North describing what happened to him. Then he becomes active in the abolitionist movement. Damn hippy activists.

Whit Stillman

Stillman has a new show on Amazon called The Cosmopolitans. He was on Charlie Rose last night and I share his sensibility very much. Metropolitan is about how not all of the one percent are assholes. Barcelona was a plea for foreigner to treat Americans in their countries better. Not all Americans are assholes. His father worked for Kennedy and FDR Jr.  He's a romantic but like Salinger and Woody Allen brings some humor to the romanticism.

The Cosmopolitans is set in Paris and about bringing romanticism and nostalgia to the present day, very much like Midnight in Paris. By the way, Corey Stoll who played Hemingway in that is on The Strain.

AV Club gives it a B+.

the cultural vogue for zombie apocalypse

Zombies and Congressional Dysfunction: What’s the Connection? by Jared Bernstein

The Walking Dead on AMC has been a huge hit. This summer on his HBO Show, Bill Maher ticked off Republican "Zombie lies" like trickle-down economics. I thought of Quiggin's book. Maybe Maher and his writers got it via Krugman. Right now the FX channel has the alien vampire zombies of The Strain. (Patient zero is "The Master," a squid-like vampire alien.) In September, the Syfy channel will have a series titled "Z Nation" about a zombie apocalypse.

Since I pay attention, the 2008 financial crisis was scary as was the recent debt ceiling clown show. I've become less worried and a little inured to it since Obama faced the Republicans down and the Fed has resolution authority, bit if we hit the next recession while at the Zero Lower Bound - and given the hatred for bailouts - we could enter Mad Max territory:



Fortunately Yellen seems to get it and understands the danger of raising rates too quickly. Also the debt-to-GDP ratio is low again, not that it ever was seriously a problem. There will be less fiscal drag going forward.

Also the movie Pacific Rim, with its Jaegers versus Kaiju. The Japanese are making a push with Abenomics. Germany and Europe are struggling. (Although Germany is riding a bit high after winning the World Cup. But then again Ukraine.)

I'd add that shows like Masters of Sex and The Knick are more hopeful from a progressive perspective. They suggest a hope in science and empiricism like we've seen in the Obama stimulus, QE, and Obamacare. And progress on the social front like gay marriage, a black two-term President and marjuana decriminalization. There's a lot of shows about hospitals, like House.

metal in the science oven

Or broken windows

American Hustle was pretty good. I liked how they started it off with Steely Dan's "Dirty Work."



It has the broken windows idea from economics.

Jeremy Renner's mayor just wanted a fiscal stimulus for his community and Christian Bale's con man felt really, really bad about entrapping him. They had become good friends during the operation. The movie was based the true Abscam scandal.