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EppsNet Archive: Movies
Trained Dogs
When Righteous Kill came out recently, the build-up was that it featured Robert De Niro and Al Pacino, “the most acclaimed actors of our time.” So what’s the big hit at the box office? Beverly Hills Chihuahua, a talking dog movie. When you’re “the most acclaimed X of our time” and you can be replaced by a trained dog, you know you’re in a stupid profession. Read more →
Sarah Palin
As Warner Baxter said to Ruby Keeler in 42nd Street: You’re going out there a youngster, but you’ve got to come back a star! Finally, a breath of fresh Alaskan air! Not yet another Ivy League lawyer, yet another warmed-over political hack, yet another condescending, posturing, preening, pandering, pontificating blowhard who’s lost sight of the fact that politicians are employees. We hire them, we pay them, we give them trillions of dollars to spend any way they want to . . . if we didn’t hold them to such ridiculously low standards of accountability, it might be easier to remember who works for whom. And hockey moms are hot! Why? Because hockey’s an expensive sport, so hockey dads have to knock down a pretty good income, which in our materialistic society allows them to be more selective in the spouse department. My wife is sort of a hockey mom, in… Read more →
HW’s Movie Reviews: The Dark Knight
It was a sickness: this great interest in a medium that relentlessly and consistently failed to produce anything at all. People became so used to seeing shit on film that they no longer realized it was shit. — Charles Bukowski, Hollywood Haven’t seen it. Might see it . . . not sure yet. I’ve seen the trailer though and I’ll tell you something: Heath Ledger is TERRIBLE! That’s not acting! Put the same makeup on somebody else, give ’em a script, let ’em read the same lines . . . there’s a million people who could do the same thing. You don’t think so? You don’t think Heath Ledger knew that? Why do you think he’s dead of an overdose? Read more →
Mowing the Lawn
A co-worker tells me that when she was growing up in Seattle, people did their own yardwork . . . not like here in Southern California where that work is done by Mexicans for hire. I told her we used to mow our own lawns in SoCal too. In fact, if you like A Christmas Story, you would have loved our neighbor next door. He was like Darren McGavin, but instead of the furnace, he’d curse at his beaten-down jalopy of a lawn mower. And not in the basement — right out on his front lawn. I mowed my own lawn at the first house I ever owned. Pride of ownership! And this was not in Irvine, where I live now and the lawns are the size of postage stamps, it was on a large lot in La Verne. Of course, I soon tired of it and paid a Mexican… Read more →
Who Says Creativity is Dead in Tinseltown?
It was a sickness: this great interest in a medium that relentlessly and consistently failed to produce anything at all. People became so used to seeing shit on film that they no longer realized it was shit. — Charles Bukowski, Hollywood I keep seeing commercials during the NBA Finals for The Incredible Hulk. Wasn’t there an Incredible Hulk movie out just a few years ago? Why do we have to keep making Incredible Hulk movies? Way to reach for the stars, thespians. Shit . . . Read more →
The Secret of All Secrets
I am letting you into the secret of all secrets, mirrors are gates through which death comes and goes. Moreover if you see your whole life in a mirror you will see death at work as you see bees behind the glass in a hive. — Jean Cocteau, Orphée Read more →
79 More
In memory of Heath Ledger, here’s a list of 79 more stars killed by drugs . . . Read more →
Heath Ledger, 1979-2008
NEW YORK — Actor Heath Ledger was found dead Tuesday of a possible drug overdose in a Lower Manhattan apartment, the New York Police Department said. — CNN.com Possible drug overdose, possible suicide! Oh dear . . . another blow to the theory that being rich and/or famous is the ticket to happiness. I think most famous actors — not all, obviously — are convinced that they can do things that nobody else can do, that they’re not cardboard people who are adored for no reason. Tom Cruise, for example, I don’t think will ever commit suicide. Oh well . . . Read more →
A Christmas Story
One of the cable stations had a 24-hour A Christmas Story marathon. I’ve never understood the mania some people have about this movie. I mean, it’s a nice movie, but 12 consecutive showings?! Anyway, my son turned on the 10 p.m. showing last night and we all watched it. My wife fell asleep as she often does watching movies, but the boy enjoyed it. Merry Christmas to everyone who’s taken the time to read this site over the past year. Read more →
Do You Remember Your First Movie?
Originally uploaded by debaird. Yes I do. The first movie I saw in a theater was Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. The first movie I took my son to was Space Jam. Read more →
Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007
Ingmar Bergman died today, age 89. I swear to God I though he was already dead. Read more →
Is There a Drummer in the House?
We were at my son Casey’s 8th grade graduation this morning when one of his teachers came up to me, obviously revved up about something, and asked, “Did you hear what happened at the assembly yesterday?” From the breathless tone of his question, I assumed at the very least that someone had lost a limb. “No,” I said, “what happened?” He told me they had a performance by a street percussion group called Street Beat, and as part of the show, they asked for a couple of volunteers from the audience. Casey plays the drums, and a lot of kids were yelling and pointing at him to be selected, so he was. What they did with the volunteers was, the Street Beat guys would play something and the kids would try to match it. My kid was able to match everything perfectly, the other kid wasn’t, so they sent the… Read more →
The Old Game
I came up with a new game-show idea recently. It’s called The Old Game. You got three old guys with loaded guns onstage. They look back at their lives, see who they were, what they accomplished, how close they came to realizing their dreams. The winner is the one who doesn’t blow his brains out. He gets a refrigerator. — Confessions of a Dangerous Mind Read more →
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, 1933-2007
In memory of the Rev. Falwell, here’s one of my favorite Woody Allen quotes, from Hannah and Her Sisters But the worst are the fundamentalist preachers. Third-rate con men telling the poor suckers that they speak with Jesus. And to please send in money. Money, money, money! If Jesus came back and saw what is going on in his name, he’d never stop throwing up. Farewell, Falwell! Read more →
Thought for the Day
You didn’t come into this life just to sit around on a dugout bench, did ya? Now get your ass out there and do the best you can. — Morris Buttermaker Read more →
Nelson Algren Goes to Hollywood
From a 1955 interview with Nelson Algren in The Paris Review: INTERVIEWER: How about this movie, The Man with the Golden Arm? ALGREN: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Did you have anything to do with the script? ALGREN: No. No, I didn’t last long. I went out there for a thousand a week. and I worked Monday, and I got fired Wednesday. The guy that hired me was out of town Tuesday. Read more →
How Extortionists Get Their Start
A commercial for You, Me and Dupree — or maybe it was Little Man — comes on the TV and I say to my son, “That looks like a real jackass-o-rama.” “Put a quarter in the swear jar,” he says. We don’t have a swear jar. “OK — first of all,” I say, “‘jackass’ is not a swear word. It’s the name of an animal. And second, where did you get the idea of a swear jar?” “They’re available in catalogs.” “What would we do with the money that goes into the swear jar?” “Give it to me.” Read more →
Why 12-Year-Olds Are Not Allowed to Drive
We’re at a stop sign on 6th St. in San Pedro, waiting to cross Pacific Ave., a busy street with multiple lanes of traffic in both directions. We’ve been waiting for an opening for quite a while when my son says, “You gotta go Tokyo Drift on these pansies.” Read more →
You Remind Me of Superman
A guy at work — let’s call him “Steve” — has been wearing what looks like the same shirt, shorts and sandals for weeks. Another coworker says to “Steve”: “These new Superman ads remind me of you. He wears the same friggin’ outfit every day too.” Read more →