For silent films, I love The Passion of Joan of Arc, which had a great print-discovery story. The original cut was lost in a fire soon after it was premiered, so the director put together another version from alternate takes, but he was never satisfied with this inferior version. Then, in 1981, an almost-complete print of the original version was found in the closet of an Oslo mental hospital.

And now it looks like we'll see a matinee tomorrow, as we're wrangling with the shower curtain (it's a whole-shower enclosure ring for a claw-foot tub) and new shower caddy. Projects NEVER go as quickly as you expect them to.

I don't think Bradley Cooper is in any way attractive...more for y'all, I suppose.

I just watched The Great Race. I know, I know, but I didn't watch TV as a kid, which is the only place I would've been able to see it. And honestly, other than Fate's house, I would've hated it as a kid.

So, random thoughts: I'd assumed that I'd gotten most of it via cultural osmosis. Not even close. I want Fate's house, inside and out. I want most of Natalie Wood's costumes. Jack Lemmon and Kevin Kline share an uncanny resemblance.

Funnily, it was actually a little strenuous to watch, like watching a foreign film, where you have to make a lot more effort to grok the cultural and social underpinnings. We just don't make movies anymore with cartoon violence, of the Roadrunner/Coyote sort.

I started to wonder what a remake would be like, with modern steampunk sensibilities, credits by David Malki, etc....then I realized Jim Carrey would be cast as Professor Fate, and I quit thinking about it.

It would make a fun Xbox game though. Lego Great Race?

then I realized Jim Carrey would be cast as Professor Fate, and I quit thinking about it.

Shudder.

Or Jennifer Aniston in the Natalie Wood role.

I'm now picturing John Barrowman as Leslie and giggling.

My Dad & I just watched Flower Drum Song for the first time. I defined pedant when the lead was singing "100 Million Miracles" and she said the sun was 100 million miles away and I said, "well, 93 million". Then we both recoginized "I enjoy being a girl" but couldn't place where we'd heard it. When it got to the chorus I realized I'd seen it performed by a drag queen.

I just watched Team America: World Police and was kind of disappointed. I thought the satire of American global policy and Hollywood actors was pretty good, but the action-movie parody stuff was much less successful. I expected much better, given the popularity and how brilliant the South Park movie was.

That movie was freaky - the protagonist puppet looked so much like Daniel Jackson that I couldn't think of it as the character it was actually supposed to be.

I didn't enjoy Team America at all. I thought the script fell flat and the puppeteering was awful.

I assumed the puppeteering was intentionally awful. I don't know about the script. There was enough that I enjoyed, like the running gags about destroying national monuments and multiplying 9/11, to put me in the generally positive side, but I was bewildered by how unfunny a lot of it was.