Beltmann

I agree. While the audience energy was more subdued than usual, the sound quality more than made up for it.

I was high school acquaintances with this guy--we played baseball on the same team--and my wife knew him all through elementary school and up. Lost touch after high school (in 1992), but his mom is a secretary at the school where I teach, so occasionally I'd hear news about how he was doing. Wow... just wow. Police: Man who fell to death wanted in molesting case

Ditto on all the above. Unfortunately, Westerns, and their inherent mythic qualities, have become passe, to the point that new ones are routinely mocked for being old-fashioned--as if old fashions are invalid merely for being old. Still, as with the slasher genre, I think there's more going on under the image in Westerns than simply good-versus-evil parables. The genre lends itself to elemental formulas, but also uniquely American meditations on landscape, architecture, human destiny (some movies unfortunately confuse this with Manifest Destiny), modernity, existentialism (aren't most great W

If you're around the festival, you'll definitely see me... I'm the guy with the backpack, always taking notes, snapping pictures, and munching granola bars for survival.

Watcha see today? For me, the Milwaukee festival is always a highlight of my year. It's coming up at the end of September, and right now I'm scheduled to see at least 26 movies. I'm most excited about these: Bamako; Our Daily Bread; Taxi to the Dark Side; A Battle of Wits; Control; Killer of Sheep; The Banquet; The Unforeseen; The Paper Will Be Blue; For the Bible Tells Me So; Tell No One; In the Shadow of the Moon; The Signal; Avida; King Corn; Lady Chatterley; In Search of a Midnight Kiss; and the usual smattering of shorts programs.

Since college, I've read a new Shakespeare play every summer... I'm a little behind this year, but finally got around to it this week.

I occasionally bump into Mark Borchardt--several times in movie theaters, once in a Target.

Anybody else catch Rilo Kiley on Kimmel last night? They played "Dreamworld," and it was, unfortunately, a very boring performance of a very boring song. End credits played over the start of "The Moneymaker," which would have been a much, much better choice, I think.

Well, I once made a sanitized version of Independence Day for a family kid. I replaced all the strip club scenes with flying-saucer shots from Plan 9 from Outer Space.

If I had known, I could've bootlegged a copy while at the theater. I totally would've done that for you--but I probably would have trimmed a few minutes here and there, tightened things up in places...

GG Allin got nuthin' on Bob Flanagan.

It's not on DVD yet, is it? I caught it at our downtown theatre. EDIT: Just checked; it's due for DVD release on September 25th.

Here are 10 off the top of my head:

Not many people know this, but one of my hidden talents is that I can poop in cursive.

Black Book, which concerns a Jewish singer asked by the Dutch Resistance to seduce an SS officer, has the usual Verhoeven showmanship--a fast pace, a curdled sense of melodrama, an unapologetic cocktail of sex and violence--but it also has a bewildering moral complexity. I think it

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Johnny!

And welcome to you, too, fellow Wisconsinite!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Tracy!

Even better.

Same here... I'm also keen to catch his new one, Interview. Have you seen it yet? If so, I'd be interested in your take.

Stacy and I have tickets, and are about 80% sure we'll be there--and if we are, you better be there!

Here's why it's ridiculous: Unless there is a radical departure in human behavior--a departure unprecedented in the entire history of humanity--and unless all Americans willingly view a developing fetus as a person with inviolable rights, it is impossible to draft such a law. In other words, we will never be forced to answer your question in reality. (You might as well ask me whether, if all the steel in the world spontaneously turned to cake, would I eat a bridge?) If we're going to play around in a message-board world of ludicrous hypotheticals, then yes, I would vote for such a law, and

Welcome! This is a great place.

Tonight: