The Last Movie You Saw On DVD or VHS or TV.

I cannot reccommend "THE CONTENDER" enough. A movie with Jeff Bridges . Its a story of a soon-to-expire second term of a president whose veep had died and they need to find another vice president. The whole story surrounds the manipulation of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the nominee confirmation process. ITs a semi-great movie . Bridges was nominated for the Academy Award for this and , although he didnt win, the movie needs to be viewed every few years to understand why we are so cynical about our leaders.

I wish we could copy the thumbs up and paste it on our posts

Just watched " The Mechanic" a remake of the Charles Bronson
movie of the same name. Jason Statham takes Bronsons role as
the meticulous assassin. I never liked the original film as I couldn't
stand Jan Michael Vincent who starred in it. I enjoyed this one, I like
Statham as an action actor and basically this was all action from start
to finish. Lets just say it did exactly what it said on the tin.
Worth a look if you're into action movie's.

same plot line?

Pretty much.

i've seen the original, really liked it, interested to see the remake, i've read somethings that kind of dismayed me about the storyline

been digging this british crime drama
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inspector_George_Gently

the british do this kind of thing so well, take a good detective, write or adapt great stories and produce between two or four movie length episodes a year, as opposed to wearing out the characters in a weekly, never ending series (they do that too i might add, but make up for it with the others)

my faves so far, A touch of Frost, Single Handed and George Gently

I tried to watch Sir Patrick Stewart in MacBeth on PBS' replay option last night.

I enjoyed Stewart's thrilling voice and liked (after initial misgivings, as I worried it ripped off Ian McKellar's Richard III) the sort of Fascist setting. I particularly liked representing the witches as nurses and leaving the young women who played them with their own young and attractive faces. Their good looks and the uniforms made the witches more sinister and actually focused my attention on the words they spoke and on MacBeth's ambition that the words fueled.

However, after 20 minutes of a two hour presentation, the video feed quite and the screen announced, "You have just watched MacBeth."

No, I didn't! I watched 20 minutes of MacBeth and want to see the rest of it.

I never had cable and I lost terrestrial television completely several months ago. That means that I haven't seen many of the currently popular shows.

Some time ago, a high school friend emailed to ask whether I was a Mad Men fan. I could have watched the program on hulu but was avoiding it, largely because I have little time and because I tend to avoid what is too popular.

My son, who is 26, was avoiding it as well. However, I didn't ask him why. He was urged to watch it by several people, so, he finally downloaded it (he downloads everything . . . before watching even a few minutes of anything). As he closed in on the end of the first season, he told me he was watching it and said that I would like it as it a character driven series. He also said that his girlfriend and I would love the look of it.

What shocked him was the blatant racism and sexism, which were never part of his life while he was growing up.

I finally broke down and started watching it. The writing is fabulous. The acting is terrific. I was 12 in 1959, the starting point for the series. I remember some of the events, the ad campaigns and the general thought patterns and feel of the era. My son just finds is alien.

A footnote to the above. My daughter and I were talking about Mad Men last night and she googled its leading man, Jon Hamm. She found a photo of him without the Brylcreem hairdo which triggered a "he looks like . . . " reaction in me.

I couldn't remember Timothy Dalton's name but I remembered that he was a James Bond and that he was introduced to AMerican audiences as the young French king in The Lion in Winter. When I remembered Dalton, my daughter googled him and said, "Oh, my god! They could be brothers!" Then she put both names in the search box and found out other people had the same reaction:

http://cheezburger.com/hallarius/lolz/View/3621329408

www.totallylookslike.com is fun. The site demonstrates how much Jude Law looks like Sir Walter Raleigh and how much Justin Bieber resembles the young Jane Fonda.

I remember taking a picture of her from Parade Magazine
and putting it on my wall in the 1950s.

Seen two films this week, first one was "Faster" starring
Dwayne Johnson (the rock). Standard fare, guy gets out
of prison and seeks revenge on those who put him there
and murdered his brother. Ok film, fast action. Billy Bob
Thornton is in it, Billy!! you can do better.


Second film I seen was "The Next Three Days" starring
Russell Crowe. Story centers on a guy whose life is turned
upside down when his wife is accused of murder, cant say
more, don't want to spoil it. Anyhow I really enjoyed it,
Crowe was excellent as usual and the plot however unlikely
rolled along nicely. Ok film, certainly the best of the two I
seen this week, is that saying much?, I don't know.

I finally watched the entire series on New York from the Dutch colony to the WtC collapse. Now I know how New York became rich from the Erie Cnal construction and Alexander Hamilton's vision of banking and industrialization. Interesting to know the builder of the Empire State Building (1931) was also instrumental in creating the 1929 Wall Street Crash as he was the one to start share buying using margins. The Triangle Waistcoat factory disaster was the start of safety and the model for the New Deal. New York was also the city that helped Abraham Lincoln become President. The two Roosevelts were both New York Governors before becoming Presidents. George Washington failed to win New York City against the British in the American Revolution. New York was the Capitol of the fledging nation until Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson brokered a deal in which a national bank could be established in New York and the political capitol would be Washington, D.C. Of course, the highway system by Eisenhower really made American a car -oriented nation thus a gas guzzling nation dependent on oil. The Robert Moses almost destroyed New York neighborhoods when he tried to steamroll highways thru Manhattan Island.

I didn't watch a movie tonight but I noticed that the Sonic Youth appearance on Austin City Limits was available for viewing. Kim Gordon sometimes comes into the liquor store,creating a wave of excitement. I always miss her. Really miss her: I didn't recognize her at all.

We watched ...


It's long (2-1/2 hours), but the minutes flew by and I found myself rooting for the central character, Malik, albeit sometimes reluctantly. Violent and gritty, but suspenseful and well made. I recommend it.

I watched it a couple of months ago. Very well made. Despite not liking the main character very much, I did enjoy the film as well.

The Manchurian Candidate
Strayed Too Far

In 1962 I moved with my parents from the little town I had grown-up in to an equally little nearby town some 10 miles away where I did my matriculation studies. My mother was closer to her job and it was she who brought home the bacon for our little family of three. I played my last game of baseball that year and the film The Manchurian Candidate1 was released during the Cuban missile crisis.2 In 1962 my parents also helped to form the first local spiritual assembly in that town, Dundas Ontario, for the Canadian Baha’i community.

The novel by the same name came out in 1959, the year I had joined this new world religion. I don’t remember when I saw the film, but last night I saw a reimagining, a remake so to speak, of this film.-Ron Price with thanks to 1“The Manchurian Candidate(2004),” Wikipedia, 16 February 2011; and 2The United States requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on October 25 1962 to discuss the Cuban missile crisis; the film was released on 24 October 1962.

I don’t remember seeing you in this film,
Frank,1 perhaps it was because they took
it out of circulation from 1963 to 1988...
after JFK's assassination. Controversial
on publication, and just as timely today,
is that novel The Manchurian Candidate.
It is & was a riveting take, a sci-fi concept,
of American soldiers captured, brainwashed,
programmed by first Chinese captors and, in
this new version, American conspirators who
returned to the states as unsuspected political
assassins to secure by techno-psycho-means
the top job in the nation: the Presidency!

You can read all about it if the topic interests
you;2 the film showed to me what I had come
to believe as early as the 1960s that humanity
had strayed too far, suffered too great a decline
to be redeemed by the political forces of the left
or the right, however disinterested their motives
or concerted the action, or unsparing the zeal &
devotion of the socialists or liberals, labour or
republican, democrat or conservative: channels,
pursuits that are ultimately doomed to failure!*

1 Frank Sinatra starred in the 1962 version of The Manchurian Candidate
2 Several internet sites will provide a detailed outline of the plot of this film

Ron Price
18 February 2011

Lianne HAnsen had an interesting conversation with Sir Derrick Jacoby on Sunday's Weekend Edition (20 February 2011).

I am watching the Godfathers documentary. Quite interesting. It appears Tony Soprano was modeled after Frank Costello.

Finished watching The Tillman Story. Should have been nominated for Best Documentary instead of Exit through the Gift Shop.

It's a shame that its another issue documentary where no resolution will come out of it. No one in the higher ranks of the military or government will ever be accountable for their attempts in covering up this tragedy.

I caught the end of 'Scent of a Woman' on tv today. I've never seen that movie. It captured my interest - I'll have to rent it to find out the backstory that I missed.