Fay, if you really want to develop a crush on Marsden rent the movie Interstate 60 and listen to the commentary. He comes off as one of the most likeable performers I've run across in that. Which is true to some degree of all his interviews.

Watched Eastern Promises last night after the kids were in bed. Wow. It's a pretty good movie and the ending was MUCH better than the ending of History of Violence.

I think Mortenson and Watts both did excellent work and the storyline was compelling.

Dad and I just hung out yesterday, since no one else was able to come over and join us for the holiday. After looking at the TV options, we decided to go for an OnDemand free movie. Dad asked if I was in the mood for John Wayne (his favorite), I was rather "meh" on the notion, and then he saw a movie called Cowboy that he recommended as a good flick, so to make him happy, I decided to agree to the Western. I'm glad I did, because it was an excellent film!

Directed by the same guy who did the original 3:10 to Yuma, it co-starred Glenn Ford and Jack Lemmon as the seasoned trail herd leader and the callow hotel clerk who become partners in the latest venture down to Mexico to pick up a herd to be brought back to Chicago. Along the way, Lemmon's character gets Ford's to get in touch with his humanity as Lemmon becomes a seasoned cowboy who turns hard as nails due to disappointment in love. But as Ford tells him, he's not becoming tough, he's becoming miserable, and by the end, they've both reached a much better place personally. A very good character study, and a film that doesn't glamorize trail life, either.

Slate talks about a movie I never heard of...

Go East, Young Man

Two-Lane Blacktop was supposed to be the next Easy Rider. But it went in a different direction.

Before it even saw the light of day, Monte Hellman's Two-Lane Blacktop was already being immortalized. Months before the film's release, Rolling Stone called it "an instant classic." Esquire went a step further, publishing the entire screenplay and anointing it "the movie of the year." On paper, the prospects looked good. Hollywood in the late 1960s had discovered the youth market. The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde (both 1967) inaugurated the countercultural trend in American movies; Easy Rider (1969) marked its apotheosis. Hellman's movie seemed like a can't-miss proposition: a road flick from Universal's new "youth" unit about dropping out and driving fast. But when it hit theaters in the summer of '71, the kids didn't show up. The movie died a quick death at the box office and eventually slid into oblivion, not appearing on video until 1999.

How could such a sure thing fail so miserably? Perhaps because the hype primed the audience for a movie that Hellman was unwilling to give them. Unlike its contemporaries, Two-Lane Blacktop wasn't a sentimental celebration of restless youth. Refusing to play to its demographic, it offered an abstract and diffident vision of the counterculture. Unlike The Graduate, it didn't romanticize youthful disaffection; unlike Bonnie and Clyde, there was no cathartic violence; unlike Easy Rider, there was little sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. Yet the reasons moviegoers rejected it at the time—its skepticism and rigor—are the same reasons the film, released this month on DVD by the Criterion Collection, has emerged as one of the great movies of Hollywood's last golden age.

The whole article's pretty interesting....

Aw, man. Two-Lane Blacktop is one of my favorite movies.

Sweeney Todd, is it whitefonted in here? Unsure due to thinking everyone knows how it all goes down.

We're at a nearly empty theatre waiting to see Sweeny Todd. I expected it to be more popular than this. This is probably one of those occasions where I expect something that is popular with buffistas to be as popular with everyone else.

Mmm, Sweeney. It was sold out at the theater here yesterday, but that's LA on a holiday, so YSweeneyMV.

Report on our Christmas Movie day. We saw four:

National Treasure: -Expositiontastic and the clunkiest script EVER, but the audience seemed to dig it. Not convinced Diane Kruger could act her way out of a well-liit paper bag with easily visible Exit signs.

Charlie Wilson's War -Tom Hanks and Phillip Setmour Hoffman RULE and it's great fun to watch them playing off each other. Liked the smart Sorkin script and felt really pulled in by the story.

Sweeney Todd -Loved it lots and lots. And lots. Sondheim, Depp, Burton--just too wonderful for words.

Walk Hard -Funny scenes, the music totally works as parody/pastiche and great cameos. (Jack White does a hilarious Elvis) but not as funny as I hoped it would be.

Mmm, Sweeney. It was sold out at the theater here yesterday, but that's LA on a holiday, so YSweeneyMV.

A horde of teenagers showed up at the last minute, so the theatre ended up being about half full. I loved the film, but I'm not at all familiar with the original musical, so I can understand how others feel differently. I thought ASH's scenes were cut, but he was in it for about 5 seconds.

sj - really? I missed that....geeesh. Might have been when I had my hands over my eyes. I loved the movie, but I have blood issues.