“I thought it was a great drag show, like Mrs. Doubtfire. You’ve blown the family, it isn’t working, so you come back in a different costume, and you take custody of the kids. So you come back asMrs. Doubtfire.”
As I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit addicted to MSNBC, mostly because it’s where loose-canonconservatives go to fade away. So I’ve been watching it, like, a lot. And I know they’re working live without a script, but is that really an excuse for the whole team to fall back on the Chris Matthews gold standard of dragging metaphors out of movies? In the past 12 hours, I’ve heard Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell and Joe Scarborough all compare Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech to The American President, the Rob Reiner/Aaron Sorkin political romantic dramedy starring Michael Douglas and Annette Benning.
Above: an ambitious aspiring film editor bought a fixer-upper and Hitchcockified the bathroom. More images here. Via BoingBoing.
Jeff Wells finds a way to justify talking about “what a gutless dithering douchebag pussy John Edwards has turned out to be” on his movie blog by pulling a Chris Matthews, accusing the former presidential candidate of “acting like the softer, squishier, less decisive brother of Gregory Peck’s character in The Big Country.”
UnitedHollywood links to a PDF version of an essay from Joan Didion’s After Henry, about the 1988 writers strike. “Agree or disagree with how this strike has been waged, she puts her finger on realities that sound eerily familiar, 20 years later — and on some key differences as well.”
Just in time for Valentine’s day, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed a Texas statute restricting sales of sex toys. Jette Kernion finds the movie angle at Slackerwood.
I think this is what qualifies as “comedy” from Vanity Fair. Go easy on them–at least they’re trying.
Don’t criticize Chris Matthews when Jeffrey Wells is looking. Says the film blogger of the MSNBC anchor: “He’s the greatest free-associating blabbermouth provocateur on the airwaves right now. A brilliant shoot-from the hipper, an old-school boomer newshound, a Bill Maher facsimile, a sardonic preacher, a print guy from way back, an agitator, a stalker of evasion, a carrier of the old-liberal Kennedy nosalgia flag and a bullshit spotter par excellence.” Also, he really likes movies.
There have been so many tributes to the late Roy Scheider on the web today that by early-afternoon, I felt like I had nothing else to add. Self-Styled Siren offers her own, as well as a compilation of some of the best from other sites.
A female writer at Entertainment Weekly contends that an Amy Heckerling movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer is going straight to DVD because movies about middle-aged women are unmarketable. Erin at Steady Diet of Film calls bullshit on that, as well as the notion that Pfeiffer hasn’t worked in six years. “Uhm don’t tell that to anyone who saw Hairspray or Stardust (totaling $335M worldwide).”
I’ve been keeping a vague log of Chris Matthews’ tendency to wedge non-sequitor movie references/analogies into his ostensibly hardcore-wonky political chat shows for awhile. Hands down the worse that I’ve seen: on the night of the Iowa caucus, Matthews tried to diagnose Mike Huckabee’s popularity thusly: “He appeals to a lot of people in the middle of the country, mostly because of I Heart Huckabees.” Really, Chris? Really?
When you consider that my minor obsession with this has required me to become a faithful viewer of Matthews’ god-awful, cheap McLaughlin Group-knockoff Sunday morning chat show, I probably deserve a medal. But give me the silver, because whoever put together the montage on last night’s Daily Show––proving that Matthews is not the only guilty party, but certainly the undisputed champion of the “This event is EXACTLY LIKE that one movie…” genre of political analysis––deserves the gold. Skip to about 4:25 on the above clip to go straight to the good stuff.
Your faithful blogger will likely be out for the afternoon working on a podcast. So here’s a batch of links to get you through the rest of the day:
“I do know that at this particular juncture in film history and film criticism, we who write about and care about films allow ourselves to be borne back ceaselessly into the past do so at our own peril.” Glenn Kenny questions his colleagues’ near-universal worship of Pauline Kael. Come for Kenny’s eye-rolling, stay for the unexpected Sonic Youth reference.
The Reeler has compiled the entries thus far in the Totally Unrelated Blogathon. My favorite so far: John Lichman’s story of working for Chris Matthews, for whom he once made “a delicious, chocolate cake with vanilla icing.”
Join Peter Knegt in saying Happy 36th Birthday to “the accidental beard of [his] boyhood,” Winona Ryder.
Girish has convinced me to buy and read Michel Marie’s The French New Wave: An Artistic School with his post on the “bloggable” ideas contained within.
Don’t criticize Chris Matthews when 
