You saw that Bats is opening slightly earlier than planned, right?

Oh!

Clive Owen has signed a deal to star in Universal's SF movie Children of Men, to be directed by Alfonso Cuaron (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), Variety reported. The movie is set in a future in which people can no longer have children, the trade paper reported.

Strike Entertainment's Marc Abraham and Eric Newman will produce the film, which is based on mystery writer P.D. James' novel of the same title, the trade paper reported. Owen (Sin City) will play the guardian o

That might be pretty.

Yes!

In my quest to re-locate the Superbowl spot (now if only I could recall who I promised the link to), I noticed that there are a gazillion new Batman Begins wallpapers at the official site.

I waffled, saved them all, and am now using the Batmobile.

Zaphod Beeblebrox For President music video.

(Not in the film, but funny.)

There's a picture of Viggo and his crew in costume for Alatriste here. -- Look at the gallery, there are also some very pretty pictures of Andalusia.

Well, but within the framework of an honor society, as posited in Reservoir Dogs or in your basic Hong Kong gangster movie, death or even painful death isn't punishment. The point isn't that the cop dies; that's a given from the first frame of the movie. The point is that, before he dies, he confesses his betrayal. At that point in the film, Harvey Keitel is arguably mortally wounded; help on the way; the cop could just keep his mouth shut for another 10 minutes and die with his secret or survive with it; but honesty is too important in that situation.

But do you think it's really presented as moral? For the characters it is, but for the audience? I agree that the same events could be presented as if he's doing something admirable, but I don't think they were. And I'm having trouble articulating it... Playing "The Lime in the Coconut" over the credits seems like a very deliberate attempt to distance the audience from the characters and say, "Boy, that was fucked up, wasn't it?" I don't come away thinking, "At least he died with honor."

Playing "The Lime in the Coconut" over the credits

Oooh. Suddenly the Coke with Lime commercial makes a whole lot more sense.

So, last week I saw "A Time for Dancing" which sucked and actually had a fairly small amount of dancing, so it was quite disappointing. I also saw "Newsies" which was pretty dumb, but had great dancing and Christian Bale, so it fulfilled my expectations. I also saw "Closer.' That movie was certainly about people with issues. Good, though. I also saw "Tell Them Who You Are," which was a fairly disappointing documentary, even though Haskell is quite an interesting guy, and there's an extremely powerful scene towards the end. Tonight I saw "The Manchurian Candidate," and we were supposed to have Angela Lansbury come talk to us, but there was a mix up with her driver, and so it didn't work out. That was disappointing. The Manchurian Candidate was interesting, though. I'd say it was good, but I have no wish to ever see it again, nor do I think my life would have been lacking if I hadn't seen it, and there were very definitely things to criticize about it, but overall it was quite good.

Playing "The Lime in the Coconut" over the credits seems like a very deliberate attempt to distance the audience from the characters and say, "Boy, that was fucked up, wasn't it?"

I think that's Quentin's M.O. -- bring you in close and then push you away again. It didn't work, for me, in Pulp Fiction; all I ended up with was annoyance at the pointless coolness. But the spareness of Reservoir Dogs, and the speed with which pointless coolness is dispatched -- what I remember from that movie is the desperation of the doomed characters and their emotional entanglements.