Beltmann

Of course it is. It's a fairy tale, after all.

Besides better exercise and nutrition, I'm resolved to acquire fewer books and movies--and aggressively purge the home library. The collection is embarrassingly large, and I'm running out of space. To start, I'm making a trip to a resale shop this morning, and I'm taking with me about 200 DVDs and 200 books.

I liked it, too. Despite all the bleakness, it's still a movie that rejects realism--it's a strange balance that pays off, I think.

Chungking Express is one of my all-time favorite flicks. Are you going to catch the new cut of Ashes of Time? I'm very curious to see it, as the only version I've seen was a muddy VHS. That was years ago, and all I really remember is that the subtitles were off by a line or two the whole way through. I still liked it, though.

Missed this yesterday... HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Edie!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Trafic (1970) is not the best Hulot comedy, perhaps because Jacques Tati's main proposal--that automobiles are a convenience not worth the hassle and social cost--comes off as facile and out of date. There are brilliant bits, but I much prefer Playtime and M. Hulot's Holiday.

Brewers Owner Suggests Salary Cap After Yankees Spree

I've been avoiding that one, on the grounds that "enjoying" something on a purely ironic level--so bad it's good!--usually isn't all that enjoyable for me... but then again, for every ten lousy Surf Nazis Must Die!s, there's one blissful Plan 9 from Outer Space. Should I give in to The Room?

Dong (2006) is Jia Zhang-Ke's brief documentary about Chinese painter Liu Xiao-Dong.

The short film, produced by Coppola. I saw this 15 years ago and never forgot it.

I thought very highly of Milk--but it did not kick me in the gut the way The Times of Harvey Milk did all those years ago.

Awesome.

Sometimes these things are black-and-white, sometimes there's wiggle room. If there's any gray area--and there certainly is in the case of Bon Iver--then there's no such thing as "correct correct." For you, his record was part of your 2007 listening experience. For most people, his record was part of their 2008 listening experience, and there's no reason why that reality shouldn't be reflected in their year-end choices. Of course, this is not the same as arguing that I should get to include, say, Abbey Road because I first heard it this year. There were legitimate, extenuating reasons fo

We ditched greeting cards years ago, but mostly because it was just too time-consuming at the precise time of year when time is the most scarce. We also ditched gift bows, but mostly because bows make it too hard to stack up the presents! This year, we banned candy. The daughter was becoming ornery about her fix, so we cut her off cold turkey--at least until Christmas Day.

That's how I felt, too. Plenty of virtues, but overall a disappointment.

It doesn't, unless pedantry is your thing. Bon Iver will appear on my 2008 list.

I loved The Edge of Heaven, too. Have you seen Head-On or In July? As far as I'm concerned, Fatih Akin is one of the most exciting filmmakers currently making movies.

Beautiful and sometimes moving, but like many Jia films, often opaque and impenetrable--too often I feel like an outsider looking in. Which I suppose I am. Still, I liked this one much more than Unknown Pleasures or The World.

Just revisited The American President. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy that movie.

If time permits, tonight I'm going to watch Park Chan-Wook's I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK. GtrPlyr, I've been trying to see White Dog for years; now that it's on DVD it's in Netflix queue. I'm curious to see how race is handled in comparison to some of Fuller's other works, such as Shock Corridor.

In an effort to clarify that I wasn't starting from a place of zealotry, I just wanted to acknowledge that reality isn't always as neat and tidy as ideology, but in my haste I failed to indicate that those "certain circumstances" were more theoretical than anything else. We're in complete agreement.

Andrew Sullivan, a few weeks ago: I agree with Sullivan. This is a major issue for me. At the same time, I have to concede that I, like bleedorange, might be willing to look the other way in certain situations. The trouble is, most of the people tortured at Abu Ghraib weren't known to be guilty and known to possess necessary information; they were tortured to establish guilt. That is indefensible--especially since the majority of the accusations were flimsy in the first place.

Our neighbor is an elderly, widowed veteran. If I have time, I always snow blow his driveway, too. (Tonight he actually tried to give me $10 for my trouble!)