A movie no one should have to see


I always appreciate the New York Times' roundup of summer movies, where we learn that once again Batman, the Hulk and Adam Sandler will be headlining at the Hell Dodecaplex until Labor Day. How much more warning does one need not to get within eight miles of a theater this summer?

Except I'll probably have to, at some point. I admit I'm kind of excited about seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Solid Gold Sequel. Also, and I'm not proud of this, I made a vague promise to the wife that I'd go see some future movie of her choosing if she didn't get too restive during The Bourne Ultimatum last year. She upheld her end of the bargain; now I must pay the dreadful price.

Yes, Sex and the City. This is what comes of not thinking things through. If there were ever a movie that is not The Bourne Ultimatum, this is it. If there were ever a movie I'd rather be waterboarded than see, ditto. But a promise is a promise. Unless I can think of some way out of it.

The Times devotes about 4,000 inches to Sex and the City -- about the same space Manohla Dargis uses in the same section to resurrect the tired case that you never see women in movies these days. Uh, right. But maybe the aging tarts of Sex and the City do not count as real women, having been caricatures of gay men for lo these many years.

Anyway, I'll be there. Spoiler alert: In the Times story, director Michael Patrick King appears to rule out killing one or all of the main characters. Sigh. I'll just have to make the best of it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine
Read more

That ship has sunk

Image
After a long career in journalism, I'm back in the job market. For a limited time only. All I require are a company car, a five-figure signing bonus and a six-figure salary. If somebody could swing by and clean the house once a week, that would be great too. Until then, guess who's going to be blogging like there's no tomorrow. I've worked at various newspapers for the better part of three decades. I've been a reporter and an editor and there was a time in the mid '90s when I thought I was being very clever by learning HTML. I was thinking: Job security, baby; every newspaper will be on the Internet in a few years. I was right about the last part. But it turns out most people eventually questioned the wisdom of paying for what they could get free. Who knew? Then circulation and ad revenue headed south, and corporate boards figured they could maintain profits by shrinking the product and letting people go. Now circulation and ad revenue are Thelma and Louise: st
Read more

Back to the keyboard -- but it's a new one

Image
After a writing hiatus of quite a few months longer than I intended, I'm back to work on what I will refer to as "the book." I knocked out another 500 words yesterday, and expect to make that the standard day's output. But since I've had these productive impulses before, and since they tend to expire after about a week, I'm employing a few other strategies. First: A new computer! Yep, I have decided that there are too many games on my desktop machine, it's too noisy, and it confines me to one room of the house. So I ordered a new notebook computer from Dell. It's their new 1420 model. Should be here in a couple more weeks -- although you never know with Dell -- and then the only files I'll transfer from my old computer to the new one are my in-progress writing projects. I know what you're thinking: Basically, I'm offering myself a cheap bribe to a commit to a project that will probably take a year -- long after the shiny new computer cease
Read more