Quote of the day.

"No, Peter fucking Tosh! Fuck that fucking midget!"
-- Sinéad O'Connor.
Context: during an encore at a Chicago concert, Sinéad announced she was going to sing a song by her favorite composer. Someone yelled "Prince?"-- the composer of her megahit "Nothing Compares 2 U." Sinéad responded with the aforementioned quote.

Here, there, everywhere.

Still doing stuff. Alas.
Go here:

• David Thomson on The Conformist's 35th anniversary.
  
  
• I've said it before, I'll say it again: this Match Point buzz is messing with me. Dave Kehr piles on:
  

  As advertised, "Match Point" is indeed Woody Allen's most interesting film in a very long time -- probably since "Crimes and Misdemeanors" (1989), to which "Match Point" bears a chilly resemblance. Though it's set in an imaginary London as eerily cleansed of ethnic minorities as Allen's Manhattan, this is the filmmaker in his High Nordic mode, dipping into a stream of icy misogyny that bypasses Ingmar Bergman and goes straight back to Strindberg.

  
  
• Slate tackles Watchmen and wonders if comics ever really needed "to grow up."
  ("A new edition, retitled Absolute Watchmen and published this month by DC, has drawn critical superlatives and comparisons with Pulp Fiction and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. In truth, it's more like the White Album, a fractious, blitzed masterwork. This is not a comic book that wants you to go 'Wow.' It is a comic book that wants to let the air out of your tires.")
  
  
• Josh has more to say about everyone's favorite feel-good-AIDS-heroin-junkie musical.
  
  
• Click here and scroll down for a first person account of the L. Ron Hubbard museum on Hollywood Blvd. I think I know what I'm doing on Sunday.
  
  
• Have you all been good little hipsters and checked out the DFA Holiday Mix? Head over to the iTunes Store and for a paltry 99 cents you can download a beatmixed overview of most of DFA Records's 2005 remix/b-sides output.
  The tracklist:
  01 Black Dice - Smiling Off (DFA mix/Luomo mix)
  02 LCD Soundsystem - Too Much Love (Rub N Tug mix)
  03 The Juan Maclean - Give Me Every Little Thing (dub)
  04 The Juan Maclean - Tito's Way (Reverso 68 mix/LP version/Booka Shade mix)
  05 The Juan Maclean - Give Me Every Little Thing (Cajmere mix/Xpress 2 bonus beats/Putsch 79 mix)
  06 Black Dice - ABA
  07 Delia Gonzalez & Gavin Russom - #5
  08 LCD Soundsystem - Tribulations (Tiga mix)
  09 LCD Soundsystem - Daft Punk Is Playing At My House (Soulwax mix)
  
  Realted: Pitchfork's review.
  
  
• Evil. But I laughed. A lot. (Via g.fid.)
  
  
• Yes please (for Christmas? Please? Please?):

Hey there.

Back from the wintry and relaxing Midwest. I'm currently playing catchup, blah blah blah. So while I'm sorting through all this email and whatevs, why not tackle the latest pop-cultural grenade from Armond (still don't agree with most of it, still think he's insanely talented and insightful) or peruse Dave Kehr's excellent blog.

Back in a few.

Critical observation of the week.

"Here, the words and the music sometimes play as if two radios have been left on at the same time ('My T-cells are low' doesn't strike me as an especially singable line)."

--Ebs on Rent. (For an epic wrangling with Rent, check out this post from Josh.)

Hello/Goodbye.

Hey y'alls,

Not a whole lot of time to write as I'm wrapping up all my loose ends here before leaving for Thanksgiving in corn country. I might check in--not sure what the Internerd situation is in those parts--but if not, see you in a few.

Here's a parting gift/moment of zen:

Conversation of the day.

Tower Records Video Girl: Hello, Tower Video.

Me: Hi. Uh, so I'm looking for a copy of a documentary called Paradise Lost... do you have it?

TRVG: [type type type] Um... Oh. We have lots of titles by that name.

Me: Well, it's a doc. And it has a gruesome subtitle-- something like The Child Murders of Robin Hood Hills.

TRVG: Oh.. I think I see it... It's a documentary, right?

Me: Yes.

TRVG: And it stars Bernadette Peters, right?

Me: Er, no.

TRVG: Hmm. Oh wait, here's another one that goes by that name. Yeah, we have it.

=======

Now I want to see the other Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills starring Bernadette Peters.

Zing!

"Thanks to McCarthy, and no thanks to Murrow, the worst horror to befall an American citizen in the '50s was the dire prospect of losing a movie credit — although, since then, I suppose having to watch a George Clooney movie would run a close second. "
--Chairman Ann gets her film crit on. (It is, as you can imagine, hysterical in the purest sense of the word.)

Reasons to love/hate Peter Biskind.

I've yet to read Peter Biskind's profile of Woody Allen in the current issue of Vanity Fair, but if this bit, excerpted by The Reeler, is any indication, I might just die in the process. Biskind's shitty "film" books give me enough reason to hate him for life, but his tenuous/retarded grasp on the concept of "Great Directors" (as found in said excerpt) pushed me over the edge. The Reeler offers enough ammo to shoot Biskind down, so whatever to his dumb assertions. The real reason for me bringing all this up is the Dr. Zhivago-in-scale-reads-like-it-was-written-by- Bret-Easton-Ellis comment left on The Reeler's blog. It is, in the words of James Lipton, a delight (and, most likely, all lies-- but I digress). Ladies and Gents, the work of one Soi Rand:

Peter Biskind used to date my mom. This was back in '77. After she split from Ken Norton. Peter was a big fan of Loggins and Messina. When he made love to my mother he would make sure that every candle in the house was lit. Then he would scooch her down to the foot of the bed. I'm not kidding. They were loud. We lived in one of those plywood condos on Beverly Glen. Peter and my mom made the whole place shake. I couldn't sleep so I would watch television and let me tell you that nothing is scarier to a five year old than watcing the preview for Magic while Peter Biskind is going to town on your mother. Peter was the one who took me to see The Apple Dumpling Gang. We sat in the middle and he ate from a bag of Mother's Animal Cookies. I tried to ask him a question during the middle of the movie and he told me to shut the f*&% up. That doesn't mean I don't have pleasant memories of Peter. Because I do. Like the time he took me to Knott's Berry Farm. I remember eating ate the fried chicken restaurant and how bits of mashed potato clung to Peter's moustache. He ate like five or six biscuits and couldn't stop talking about that scene from Altman's A Wedding, the one were Desi Jr and that other guy take a shower together. He said it made him upset. I didn't ask him why it made him upset but he told me anyway. He said that it was disturbing to see a man wear his underwear in the shower.

It didn't disappoint, did it?

Hey, he said it, I didn't.

From Reason's blog:

"Arrested Development will probably be cancelled this season, which means we'll soon see a dropoff in the number of articles telling us what boobs we are for not appreciating that heavy-handed, relentlessly unfunny show and an increase in the number of articles telling us what boobs we were for not appreciating that heavy-handed, relentlessly unfunny show."

And let the hatred pour forth. (Link provided by Tim, so send hate mail his way too.)

Lechaim.

This post was supposed to be an ironic one about young Amber Ridgner's bat mitzvah. Upon further reflection, I think this post would be better used to spread the word that Ja Rule's name is actually an acronym. Did you know that? I didn't. Apparently it stands for Jeffery Atkins Represents Unconditional Love Exists.
I'm not quite sure I understand it either, but now you know.

Anyway, lechaim, Amber. Lechaim.

Life lessons with Charlize.

A couple of months ago, a friend happened upon an HBO showing of the Keanu/Charlize weepie Sweet November. In it, Keanu and Charlize meet cute and have an intense/quirky courtship, but she has a deep dark secret. This friend happened to catch the movie right at the moment where THE SECRET IS REVEALED.

(For all you who'd like the rich tapestry that is Sweet November unsullied, look away, I'm about to spoil the hell out of it.)

You see, Charlize is sick. She's got the cancer and she's been hiding this from Keanu, she's trying to live her life in a "dignified" manner, ignoring her illness. According to my friend--oh fuck the anonymity--according to Tim, the revelation goes like this: Keanu, sick of the lies, rips open the door to the "mystery closet" and finds a room of pills. Perplexed he asks (in full Ted Logan cadence), "Char-leeze... why do you have all these pills?"
Upon hearing this, I did what anyone would do... I put the movie on my Netflix queue. Obviously I was prepared for the fact that (a) Keanu probably wouldn't actually call Charlize by her real name and (b) he probably wouldn't be in full Ted mode. I'm sorry to say that it still let me down, Tim's impression/version is far better than the real thing. For one, it's not so much a closet full of pills, more like a cabinet. That said, it's one full cabinet. I counted eight different pill containers on the top shelf (I was too lazy to pause the DVD to get an exact pill count), and there were four shelves in the cabinet, so you figure that Charlize has at least 32 flavors to fight the C. Anyway, Keanu does not ask her what they're all about, Charlize just buckles and weeps and says "I'm sick" and he hugs her (next to a puddle of her vomit, I might add). That's love, folks.
What I wasn't prepared for is this big revelation happens in the final third of the film; I thought the whole was all about love in the face of cancer. Instead, it's about Charlize (in full Nellie McKay drag) teaching Keanu how to really live. Apparently, when one really lives, one abdicates all responsibility (who needs that job anyway?) and walks poodles on the beach, befriends the latch-key kid, and has heart-to-hearts with the colorful-but-unthreatening drag queen. Oh and Enya's "Only Time" should play in the background during all of these life lessons.
Repeat after me: "Who can say /where the road goes / where the day flows /only time..."

"Maybe they wrote it like a Mad Libs."

When he's not giving me advance buzz on the Award Movie Circuit, C.K. Dexter Haven has his finger on the pulse of the lit world. He sent me a link to an excerpt of Nicole Richie's debut novel, The Truth About Diamonds, which he describes as "a hella-layered conceptual roman à clef." (As in: Nicole's writing an autobiography but she's changing a few minor details and is writing it in the third person.*) We've probed the excerpt so you don't have to; here's what we found:

Best allusion to Lionel Richie's stamina (but not really as Nicole was adopted):
"Chloe Parker was practically born in a club. It's like she spontaneously generated one night in 1981 during a fourteen-minute remix."

Best metaphor:
"Just as everyone in L.A. had to climb the social ladder, Chloe and all the rest of us had to climb three flights of stairs to get to the VIP level at Mode."

Best simile:
"Like Holly Golightly in Madonna-wannabe rags, Chloe had the ability to not only be in the moment, but to create it."

Most obviousBest use of foreshadowing:
"Chloe didn't need drugs to have fun. I mean, drugs would be double-bad for an addictive personality like hers, and I think she knew it. But she was drawn to them for the same reasons any young person may be -- drugs seemed glam, and exciting, and reckless. Being high was intriguing; it made her feel alive. Drugs were everywhere in every club. And drugs took the place of love."

Best use of alliteration:
"At Mode, people acted up, hooked up, and threw up, and the paparazzi stood outside to shoot the stars as they went in looking fabulous and staggered out totally gone."

And that's just from a piece of the first chapter. Considering that Richie is renowned for her "quick wit and candor" (at least according to her official bio), you know that the rest of the novel is going to scorch.

*If you're looking for more clarity, here's the Amazon.com synopsis:
In her electrifying first novel, Nicole Richie tells the sensational story of Chloe Parker, a rock royalty princess and a card-carrying member of Hollywood's inner circle. At the age of seven, Chloe was adopted by a music superstar and his wife, transforming her life from rags to riches. What followed was a wild childhood distinguished by parties with movie stars and rock idols, run-ins with the press and the police, and a subsequent stint in rehab.
Suddenly Chloe shoots to instant fame as a spokesmodel for a national ad campaign. When her long-lost birth father appears out of nowhere and her best friend betrays her, she must struggle to keep it all together -- her sobriety, her friendships, and her integrity despite the betrayals of those around her. Ultimately, Chloe comes spectacularly into her own, achieving stardom in her own right and finding true love.
Through the eyes of the captivating Chloe and the talented voice of Nicole Richie, we are given a no-holds-barred look at Hollywood's new elite, behind the velvet ropes, inside star-studded premieres and parties. Whether they're doing the "circuit" (begin with shopping at Barneys New York, Marni, and Fred Segal, then end with the grilled vegetable salad at the Ivy), or ending up on the front page of your favorite weekly magazine, Chloe Parker and her fellow A-listers never fail to dazzle, their larger-than-life dramas more riveting than any reality show.

Confession.

I just need to say it: I really like "Only." Yes, I'm talking about the new Nine Inch Nails single; that "Only." And yes, when one graduates from high school, one should also graduate from appreciating Mr. Reznor's brand of "fuck this miserable world... Oh wait I am the world" angst and solipsism. But dammit, he makes such neatly constructed pieces of (angsty/solipsistic) four minute aggro-pop that I can't resist. You listen to "Only"'s drum machine crunch, synth squiggle, and Trent's dead-pan delivery (not to mention the "There is no fucking you / There is only me" chorus) and try to deny it.

Realted, Part 1: David Finchr's so-banal-it's-rad-and-oh-by-the-way-it's- 100%-CGI video for "Only" is here.

Realted, Part 1a: And speaking of rad videos, don't miss the latest White Stripes/Michel Gondry collaboration. It's Conanriffic.

This Pitchfork review is beyond best for a number of reasons:

1. It's reviewing the new Goblin Cock jawn. Yes, kids, Goblin Cock. (Credit where credit is due: TMFTML was hip to this shit way back in the day. [Like, uh, last week.])
   
   
2. The album's cover looks like this:
   
   
   
3. The review describes the song "Kegrah the Dragon Killer" as the album's "chugging, Tolkien-core centerpiece." Pause and really savor that for a moment.
   
   
4. It also notes that "the liner notes include lyrics written in runes."
   
   
5. Need I go on?

Three items in search of a post.

1. Slate appreciates Calvin and Hobbes. (BTW: this strip--the last one evs--still gets to me.)
   
   
2. Scarlett: who knew? (But where's Noni Horowitz?)
   
   
   
3. As The Whine Colored Sea is located in Los Angeles, we're hella connected with all the movers and shakers. OK, not so much. But we do know people who get to see movies ahead of their release, so here with the skinny on two upcoming Oscar-baiters, our man on the street, Mr. C.K. Dexter Haven:
   

   I hoped Walk the Line would rise above the small-mindedness of a film like Ray. I hoped it would have a focus. I hoped it would find one cohesive thread to drive the story from beginning to end, that it wouldn’t try to cram in every anecdote about the Man in Black that James Mangold could dredge up (and even more that he simply imagined). I hoped the actors would inhabit characters that felt real – a man named John and a woman named June – not the broad strokes of Embalmed Music Gods. Instead, I was treated to a picture that, referring to a Sun Records-era Elvis Presley, took great joy in delivering lines like, “Elvis loves poon.” Baby, baby, baby. May the wheedling for Oscars begin.
   
   And as for The Family Stone: I kinda liked it.
   
   Up next week: Gay Cowboys and singing AZT-junkies.

I've got competition.

Who knew that haiku movie reviews were so popular? Digital Destruction's got a bunch; my favorite being:

WALK THE LINE

Joaquin plays guitar!
That’s even him singing! Wait…
Cash had a hair lip?

Haiku review: Jarhead.

Jake Gyllenhaal is
as opaque as Sam Mendes
is overrated.

Your bi-weekly Armondism(s).

OK, you guys just have to accept that I'm a fanboy at this point.

Somehow, I'd missed this interview that Armond gave to Filmmaker Magazine in the winter of 2004. It's a horn o' plenty of Armondisms, my favorite section being a series of riffs on modern filmmakers. The best reaction:

Filmmaker: Sofia Coppola.

White: [Grunts] She’s probably a nice girl, but put it this way: as a filmmaker, she gave a great performance in Godfather III, which I defend, seriously. But so far, I don’t have much use for her.

I must also find the review (mentioned in this interview), where Armond compares and contrasts All the Real Girls (which he dislikes) with the video for Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" (which he loves).

And for the record: his reaction to Paul Thomas Anderson hurts.

That sounds about right.

The Snob Site takes on VH1 and presents an excerpt from I Love the Aughties, Part One. Smug/mean/exactly right:

2001:
Footage of the World Trade Center towers aflame, smoke trailing from their tops.
Hal Sparks, actor/comedian: I couldn’t help but think that those huge black plumes of smoke billowing off the top of the towers looked kinda like old-school flat-tops—it was like this huge, epic-scale image of Kid ’N Play.

(Via The Pop View.)

[Insert V. Gallo/masturbatory joke here.]

If you've got a couple of extra ducats, Vincent Gallo's essence can be yours. That's right, kids, he's selling his sperm on his website. But before you go racing to the bank, please be aware that (1) the going price is $1 million and (2) there's a bunch of legal loop holes and/or special discounts. Among them (and please keep in mind, I am not making this up):

• Mr. Gallo maintains the right to refuse sale of his sperm to those of extremely dark complexions. Though a fan of Franco Harris, Derek Jeter, Lenny Kravitz and Lena Horne, Mr. Gallo does not want to be part of that type of integration.
  
  
• [F]or the next 30 days, he is offering a $50,000 discount to any potential female purchaser who can prove she has naturally blonde hair and blue eyes.Anyone who can prove a direct family link to any of the German soldiers of the mid-century will also receive this discount.
  
  
• Under the laws of the Jewish faith, a Jewish mother would qualify a baby to be deemed a member of the Jewish religion. This would be added incentive for Mr. Gallo to sell his sperm to a Jew mother, his reasoning being with the slim chance that his child moved into the profession of motion picture acting or became a musical performer, this connection to the Jewish faith would guarantee his offspring a better chance at good reviews and maybe even a prize at the Sundance Film Festival or an Oscar.
  
  
• To be clear, the purchase of Mr. Gallo's sperm does not include the use of the name Gallo. The purchaser must find another surname for the child.

Mr. Gallo--like his filmography--is as charming as ever.
(Thanks for the link, PL.)

Scooter's into bears.

During last week's Scootergate/Plamegate buzz, I meant to look up whether Mr. Libby had some sort of dubious lit background. I was convinced that he'd written some scandalous book about lesbians pioneers, but then realized I was confusing Scoot with Mrs. Cheney (I'm sure Dick does that all the time). She wrote about the lesbo pioneers in her chef d'oeuvre Sisters. After that, I was pretty certain that Libby's erotic novel was just the product of my imagination.

Thankfully, Lauren Collins and The New Yorker are there for me, offering me evidence that I am not losing my marbles, and that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's novel, The Apprentice, does exist. Not only does it exist, it sounds excellent.

According to Collins's article, it took Scoot twenty years to write the book, which is apparently about political intrigue in "a remote Japanese province in the winter of 1903." Very Kazuo Ishiguro, right? Well, here's where things go wonky:

Like his predecessors, Libby does not shy from the scatological. The narrative makes generous mention of lice, snot, drunkenness, bad breath, torture, urine, “turds,” armpits, arm hair, neck hair, pubic hair, pus, boils, and blood (regular and menstrual). One passage goes, “At length he walked around to the deer’s head and, reaching into his pants, struggled for a moment and then pulled out his penis. He began to piss in the snow just in front of the deer’s nostrils.”

Homoeroticism and incest also figure as themes. The main female character, Yukiko, draws hair on the “mound” of a little girl. The brothers of a dead samurai have sex with his daughter. Many things glisten (mouths, hair, evergreens), quiver (a “pink underlip,” arm muscles, legs), and are sniffed (floorboards, sheets, fingers). The cast includes a dwarf, and an “assistant headman” who comes to restore order after a crime at the inn. (Might this character be autobiographical? And, if so, would that have made Libby the assistant headman or the assistant headman’s assistant?)

Mmmmm... pus, boils, and blood. (Jesus, this is beginning to sound like a Josh post.) But wait! There's more! This passage (with an actual exceprt from the novel!) makes me giddy:

Other sex scenes are less conventional. Where his Republican predecessors can seem embarrassingly awkward—the written equivalent of trying to cop a feel while pinning on a corsage—Libby is unabashed:

At age ten the madam put the child in a cage with a bear trained to couple with young girls so the girls would be frigid and not fall in love with their patrons. They fed her through the bars and aroused the bear with a stick when it seemed to lose interest.

And, finally:

He asked if they should fuck the deer.

The answer, reader, is yes.

Who wants to go in with me? You know it'll be $44 well spent.

Halloweekend.

A run through of my Halloween-related pop culture intake from the past four days:

Nightmare (1964, Francis) [aborted viewing]
The kick-off to the horror festivities was an icy psychological thriller from the Hammer vaults. It's impeccably photographed (in HammerScope no less) and, alas, unbelievably slow. The gathered crowd was demanding gore and Nightmare was not delivering. So we moved onto...

Satanis (1970, Laurent) [aborted viewing]
It's supposedly a documentary about Anton LeVay and the day-to-day in the Church of Satan. All I know is after ten minutes of patient viewing there was not a single virgin sacrifice, goat killing or appearance from the Dark Lord. Satanis got the boot.

The Driller Killer (1979, Ferrara)
Well, it delivered the gore. Unfortunately, it's still an Abel Ferrara film--and his first at that. Do people actually enjoy his films? I've only seen a few, but all of them seem so ugly and full of self-pity/hatred. I mean, hey, go ahead and hate yourself, but could you make it, oh, I dunno, cinematic? Maybe include a hint of an aesthetic?

For those unawares, Mr. Ferrara wrote, directed and starred in this zero-budget exploitation "classic." He intended to cash in and make a gore soaked genre picture, but the project morphed into (an uninteresting and hella dull) document of New York's art/rock scene circa 1978. Ferrara plays a whiny painter who can't deal with his petulant girlfriend(s), asshole agent, The Roosters (the new wave band that's forever playing the "Peter Gunn Theme" in the apartment below), and the skyrocketing phone bill. So he takes out angst by killing homeless men with a power drill.
It's as charmless as it sounds.

I Drink Your Blood (1970, Durston)
Wherein dirty, Satan-worshipping hippies piss off the local town folk and get their comeuppance. (A little boy injects blood from a dog that died of rabies into meat pies. He then sells the meat pies to the famished hippies. After eating said meat pies, the hippies trip balls, start foaming at the mouth, and zombiesque shit ensues.) The end. Not nearly as entertaining as it might sound.


Nightbreed (1990, Barker)
From the imagination of Clive Barker comes a reimagined version of Cats. At least that's what it felt like. The hugely negative: Craig Sheffer is the protagonist. The hugely positive: David Cronenberg plays Sheffer's psychotic psychologist.

"Batdance" (1989, Magnoli, music video by Prince)
Back in the day, MTV used to play this video on Halloween and I loved it. I loved it so much that when Prince released The Hits/The B-Sides, I was furious that he'd left "Batdance"--a number one hit!--off the package. Time has shown me the errors of my ways and I now see the shrewd legacy-minded editing skillz of the Purple One. The song--a medley of three songs from the Batman soundtrack and a shload of dialogue samples from the movie--is pretty damn embarrassing. And the video... It makes me long for the halcyon days of Seal's "Kiss From a Rose" video. That said, propers are deserved for slipping the Dark Knight Returns ref into the video. (See the "Vicki Vale" photo above.)

Brides of Dracula (1960, Fisher)
Hammer Films, round two. Unfortunately, the day's festivities caught up with me and I slept through much of it. I was awake in the middle-section of the movie for, oh, five minutes and I can say that Peter Cushing was an inspired choice for Dr. Van Helsing.

Batman Returns (1992, Burton)
I'm not sure if this counts as a Halloween movie, but it has people in costumes and loads of grotesquery, so I'm allowing its inclusion. First: the film's problems. As much as I love Christopher Walken in the film, the Max Shreck role feels like it was written solely to propel the flimsy subplot about a power-station that sucks energy from Gotham City. Or something. Hell, you can feel the the script's machinery grinding to a halt and then lurching forward throughout most of it. Plus, the action sequences are largely rote and lack any sense of urgency.

Amazingly, in spite of all of that, I really enjoyed the film. Once I came to peace with how creaky the whole venture was going to be, I lapped up the production design, the semi-frequent moments where Daniel Waters's dialogue comes to life with hilarious bits of verbal interplay and innuendo, and uniformly great performances, especially from Michelle Pfeiffer. What happened to MP? She's so outrageously good here--funny/sad/sexy--that it made me realize how much I've missed her. (Can we add her absence to the list of grievances against David E. Kelley?)

It's also a relief to know that I'm not alone in my regard for the film. Anne freakin' Rice really loved it, and you know what an imprimatur that is. Here's a sample of the review (as found on Amazon.com): "A mesmerizing and haunting achievement; a mixture of bold cinematic techniques that reminded me of certain scenes from The Scarlet Empress, or the silent opening of David Lean's Oliver Twist... A shining, brilliant and beautiful film. Gripping, entertaining, worth study. I loved it." See that? She dropped a Lean and a Von Sternberg bomb! How ya like that?

I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that Anne is an Amazon.com reviewing maniac. She only tackles the products she truly loves and, believe you me, when she loves something, she loves it. A sample:

• Alan Parker's film version of Evita: "A work of genius on every level!"
  
• The Passion of the Christ: "Gibson created something of enduring magnificence."
  
• Tolstoy's Anna Karenina "One of the greatest novels of all time. Once you read it straight through and experience its immensity and depth, you can keep it around and dip into it when you need to be reminded that a work of art -- novel, play, film, what have you -- can give you not only continued enjoyment but profound truths."
  
• Dr. Andrew L. Stoll's The Omega-3 Connection: The Groundbreaking Anti-depression Diet and Brain Program: "This is a book that can be life changing... We live in a wilderness of self help and health care books that can confuse us and numb us with their contradictory claims. But be assured this book is a thorough and brilliant record of the results of actual medical research."
  
• Joel Schumacher's adaptation of Lord Lloyd Weber's The Phantom of the Opera: "The film is positively magical -- excessive, obsessive, unapologetic in its pure gothic romanticism, and gorgeous to watch, with sublime music. It will be immortal -- along with The Red Shoes, and Tales of Hoffman [sic]... A real demonstration of what might happen when brilliant talent pays no attention to cynicism or pseudo-sophistication."

I'm willing to ignore the praise for Evita and Christ, but I will not tolerate Ms. Rice comparing Joel Fucking Schumacher and his Duran Duran video on 'ludes move-musical to Powell & Pressburger's transcendence. Nuh uh, sorry, Anne, not on my watch.