Iggy Flop and the Sweet and Lo-Down

    Oh, these updates do get farther and farther apart, don't they?  I'm trying to remember a time when blogging was less of a chore than it now is, but failing completely.  Oh well.  Those of you looking for other blogs to read should check out the Blogs of Note at left.  I've added a couple new ones, or at least ones new to this cyber-rag.  Give them a scan or two.

 

    Not too much to report here, save for my recent super-consumption of movies old and new.  Some late acquisitions, in digital form: Carol Reed's The Third Man, Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Throne of Blood, and the grand Vincent Price schlocker Theatre of Blood.  Have also been subjecting myself to junk like RV, Mission Impossible 3, Firewall and the remake of The Wicker Man, along with better fare like the brilliantly funny Thank You For Smoking, Good Luck and Good Night and Brokeback Mountain.  The worse movies always linger, though, like farts in a small room.  MI3 is stupid beyond stupid, shamelessly cannibalizing every Tom Cruise movie that came before it in a risible example of ego-stroking.  It's nothing but a painfully pretentious paean peppered with explosions to paper over its empty plot.  Same with Firewall, though it seems less an attempt to massage Harrison Ford's ego than to go to a dried-up well just one more time.  The Wicker Man makes me think Edward Woodward has a case for legal action, though surely not as good a case as Christopher Lee, whose part is played by Ellen Burstyn like Elaine Stritch on a helium high. RV is further proof Robin Williams can't do movie comedy anymore, though the film's focus seems instead to be filtering the sixteen year-old pseudo-starlet named JoJo, irresistably pictured aside to prove a point, through the eyes of Humbert Humbert.  Her manager should just rename her LoLo and be done with the prevaricating.  (Lolita's "eerie [and fictional] vulgarity" seems positively tame now, doesn't it?)  Occurs to me now, however, that Williams would make an interesting Quilty.  It'd let him mix his comedic antics with the darker dimensions he has come to do so much more effectively.  Hollywood take note.  Me, I prefer to tarry on the prospect of James Mason starring in any movie involving a motor-home. 

 

    Some other bits and pieces:

• Dylan's Modern Times is terrific.  Get it.  Now.  Don't worry, this blog will wait 'til you get back.
  
  
• I finally forced myself to re-include Van Morrison's Moondance in my musical library.  I haven't listened to it in its entirety in almost eight years for reasons I won't explain here.  It's such a glorious album, but it's still not easy to hear, too many memories of a former self still attached to it.  Odd how that happens.  No wonder I've politely refused the offers I've had over the years to replace my copy.  (Insert philosophical shrug here.) 
  
  
• The new game show 1 vs 100 is on as I write this, and it's unwatchable.  It drags like a damp cigarette (a menthol, no less).  Bet it's cancelled by month's end.  It has "flop" written all over it, though the presence of Bob Saget should have indicated that a priori.
  

    And, in a last matter, Michael Ignatieff, the Ighead Who Would Be King, has declared that he's willing to open up the constitutional debate in Canada.  Again.  (Insert stunned silence here, followed by the trepidatious chirping of a few nervous crickets.)  To which, Liberals all across the country are suddenly saying, in remarkable unison, "Okay, Rae it is--- so long as he keeps his damned pants on." 

 

    (Besides, with Dalton McSquinty in office in Ontario, wouldn't it cause a synaptic overload to have two Liberal leaders that so alarmingly resemble Anthony Perkins?  They must both assume they have faces you can't help believing.)

    I should, however, explain something for my non-Canuckistani readers about our particular national no-no. 

 

    There is only one truly offensive c-word in Canada, and it's not a colourful one, even if it rhymes with "prostitution" and deals with "country matters."  (How's that, RK, for cunning linguistic play?)  Consequently, Canadians caution their contending custodians to keep their caucuses from (er...) coming anywhere near The C-Word.  As tempting as it may be to make it expand and contract, you can't fiddle with it and you can't gentle its condition.  Ever.  Most Canucks have learned this and are adamant about it. 

   When it comes to The C-Word, just leave it alone and accept it as it is. Warts and all.