Are you ready for some hip action?

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Since I have the 10:30 pm to 1:30 am shift with the new baby, I’ve taken some time to catch up on movies that I’ve been meaning to watch.  I finally got around to watching Hero and House of Flying Daggers.  I really liked Hero once I got past the first half-hour.  Flying Daggers was good, but not great.  Why?  Seeing the two movies on consecutive nights made comparisons inevitable.  The two movies operate on different scales — Hero careens wildly between epic and intimate, while Flying Daggers contents itself with the scope of a soap opera narrative.  Hero employs trained martial artists, which opens up the fight scenes somewhat.

The main difference to me was the presence of Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in Hero.  The love story told between their characters of Broken Sword and Flying Snow is beautiful, tragic, hopeless and hopeful.  I left the movie wanting more.

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Last night I was walking down St. Nicholas Ave.  at twilight, on my way to a hometeaching appointment.

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I love music trivia. One of my favorite MTV/VH1 shows is Storytellers, where artists perform live and tell the stories behind their songs. I saw Stevie Nicks on Storytellers, and she told the story of how she came up with the song "Stand Back." I don’t have it, or I’d have posted it on the radio.blog. (Anyone got it?)

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The preliminary rounds are over and the field has been narrowed to twelve.  The Van Cliburn International Piano Competition takes place every four years and this time you can listen live on streaming audio.

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…well, not exactly 40 years ago today. But it was 40 years ago, in 1965, that the world of pop music changed–you might say, turned a corner, or came into its own.

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This critique of romance novel covers is the most entertaining thing I’ve read in months.

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"The list is life."

Haha, Steve gave me permission to reprint my list in its own thread.

So I can edit it to my heart’s delight, I guess.

The idea for my list is that it is nearly impossible to come up with a good list of 100 "best" films, so instead, I’ve got a list of directors with a single representative film. If the director has two films with distinctly different personalities, I’ve listed two films for them.

There are only 91 films here, so I’d love your suggestions (and be sure to defend them) for filling out the list, or perhaps changing the films listed here. I’ve already made some changes according to your suggestions and spelling corrections.

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In a SHOCKER, Jet’s "Look What You’ve Done" won week 2 of Playlist Thunderdome, getting 31 of 64 votes.  Wow!!  Elliot Smith and Oasis tremble!

On to week three — no easy choices this time, folks.

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Time Magazine just released their list of the top 100 movies of all time.  Of course I can’t resist trashing it.

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I heard Lou Reed’s “Walk On the Wild Side” on the radio the other day and remembered my favorite part of that song – the killer bari sax solo at the end.  Of course the radio station cut the solo short (as usual) even though it is the coolest part of the song.  (Man that is annoying!)  Anyway, my topic for today is the bari sax.

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I just got out of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

It’s great.

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"Allison" by Elvis Costello and the Attractions won last week’s Thunderdome, crushing the competition with  42 of 76 votes.  The Bowie fans, while outspoken, were simply not strong enough to be victorious.

So on to week two!

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Discussion of Elvis Costello on Steve’s new weekly poll has gotten me thinking about older rock musicians who are still pretty cool (and relevant).  E.C. has released some pretty solid albums in the last few years.  When I was Cruel and last year’s The Delivery Man proved that Elvis can still turn a phrase and deliver a hook.  For its year, in fact, When I was Cruel was in my personal top ten (not that my personal top ten really matters).  I even liked his Bacharach collaboration Painted from Memory.

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I rented the Mulan Special Edition DVD for my girls this week.  You know Mulan — it’s the one with Donny Osmond singing "I’ll Make a Man Out of You."

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One of the phoniest cliches in the movies and television is when people whistle or yell out “Taxi!” when trying to hail a cab. I’ve lived in New York for two and a half years now and I’ve never heard anyone ever yell or whistle to a cab (as if the driver could hear someone anyway). This is completely bogus. Why do writers include that stuff? Do they think the viewers wouldn’t understand why a cab would stop when someone only puts up their hand? Or was this a prevalent practice in New York City before I got here and now everyone suddenly stopped doing it?

What are some other cliches that don’t deserve cliche status?

So you’re stuck on a desert island.  Or it’s a post-apocalyptic world.  Pick your desperation scenario.  But you only have 52 songs to listen to: which ones do you pick?

That’s where Playlist Thunderdome comes in.  Each week, three songs are put on the radio.blog and you pick which one makes the playlist.  The winner goes on to immortality — the other two perish with the Evanescence and Toad the Wet Sprocket CDs.

For your consideration:

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When my kids were small, I used to do cross stitch. Mainly because it was simple yet creative, and easy to pick up and put down with toddlers around. I always did the same kind of design–a quote, with a border around it. I’m a big fan of quotes and they’re easy to do.

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108,667 words, and the sweetest ones of all to write were THE and END. 

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This post was inspired by the guy I saw during my commute who was conducting an orchestra while driving down the freeway in his car.

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I’ve been recording some Ginger Rogers films this week, and watching them, and I think Ginger is really wonderful, so real, and a very good comedienne, and let’s not forget dancer/singer.

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At 1:30 A.M. last Wednesday night, I found myself with about 300 people in an East Atlanta pub shouting "Hail Satan, tonight, Hail Satan." Let me explain.

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