Listen to yer cooter -- don't see the Hazzard movie.

I mentioned this in Literary, but now that I've finished the movie, I'd like to recommend Quality Street to fans of Jane Austen.

In a provincial town in immediately-post-Napoleon England, Katharine Hepburn plays a woman who's snubbed by the man (played by Franchot Tone) who kept her company (but never proposed) before he joined the Army 10 years earlier. To get revenge, she pretends to be her niece. Matters are complicated by the neighborhood busybodies.

Not quite Austen-level, but handles many of the same themes with a generous dose of social satire.

New Line to Adapt DC's "Ex Machina"

The Chicago Tribune gives Charlie and the Chocolate Factory four stars!

So, I just saw The Wild Bunch. And maybe it's cause I'm not really into Westerns, but I found it kind of...boring. Sure, there were a couple of the bloodiest, most violent shootouts I've ever seen, a train robbery, and a bridge blowing up, but for the most part, I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on and I couldn't tell half the characters apart. I didn't find an engaging narrative or interesting characters to care about. They must be there, obviously, since it's so well regarded, but I couldn't get into it.

I also saw An American Werewolf in London, which I liked more, what with a werewolf tearing people apart, a progressively decaying talking corpse, and a hot British chick.

what with a werewolf tearing people apart, a progressively decaying talking corpse, and a hot British chick.

*queued*

what with a werewolf tearing people apart, a progressively decaying talking corpse, and a hot British chick.

*queued*

What more do you really need?

ION, I just watched I, Robot. No matter how I try, I just cannot hear Sonny and Wash as coming from the same actor.

Heh. I found The Wild Bunch hard to sit through the first time, because it is slow, and it's kind of deliberately perverse -- every time you think you know where it's headed, it swerves. The whole movie is setting you up for a conflict that never happens. But I watched it again a week or two later, and then I dug it.

But I like it the way I like Kubrick movies. I don't think you're supposed to care about the characters -- or, at least, you're not supposed to like them.

I just saw Spartan, following in the long line of Kristen Bell fans to do so.

I... don't know if I liked it or not, honestly. The dialogue was rather strange, and I can't decide whether to describe it as "stylized" or "stilted" or some combination of both. Sometimes I really liked it, and sometimes it made me cock my head in confusion and bemusement. This was my first Mamet experience: is he always like this?

Val Kilmer was cool in it. Kristen Bell was good, too. Kilmer's bosses and associates were neat, too. And the story was pretty cool, so far as that type of simple action-drama-thriller thing go.

Put American Werewolf in Paris on the queue too. Cheese, but fun. Plus, Delpy.