Movies Watched -- Stay (2005)

98 minute running time so a good length, but I watched it at 2-4x fast forward. Stars sock-less Ewan McGregor, playing a shrink, young Ryan Mouseketeer Gosling playing his suicidal patient ‘Henry,’ and Naomi Watts is girlfriend of the shrink, frustrated artist, at-one-time-suicidal-patient-now-girlfriend (yes, another in my Naomi Watts series of movies)… Mouseketeer Gosling can see into the future maybe? …looks like some kind of psychological mindbender, but an annoying one … Gosling’s parents killed in a car crash apparently, Henry was driving…. ah, I don’t want to spoil it, but things become semi-clear at the end, or not really, the ending may further muddy what came before.

You’d really have to be in the mood to watch pretentious nonsense like this, but I wasn’t. The critics universally hated it… Rex said, “This is the kind of flop that makes even the popcorn taste lousy.“ Roger Moore called it a, “heartless puzzle [with] many cryptic clues that don't really lead to that finale.“ Bob Denerstein says it “plays like an impenetrable collage.“ Peter Rainer may have captured it best by calling it “a great big blurry mess.“

Love that necklace

Movies Watched -- Strange Planet (1999)

92 minute running time so a good length… but the old DVD I got had poor audio and no subtitles so I couldn’t understand much and watched it at 1.5-2x then 4x fast forward. Terrible soundtrack. Another movie in the Naomi Watts series of movies I’m watching. Odd to hear Naomi speaking her native Australian English. Apparently a movie about relationships … Naomi and her two pretty girlfriends and a parallel three guys … also features the bad guy from Matrix, Agent Smith … Naomi plays a good girl, I guess. They eventually all fall in love in the end … it was probably pretty bad from what I could see at 4x ffwd, just boring, conventional, trite stuff. A chick flick. Red rating.

Student Naomi

Diagnostic Criteria: Trading Disorder

* For informational purposes only *

A. Persistent and recurrent problematic trading behavior leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, as indicated by the individual exhibiting four (or more) of the following in a 12­-month period:

a. Needs to trade with increasing amounts of money in order to achieve the desired excitement.

b. Is restless or irritable when attempting to cut down or stop trading.

c. Has made repeated unsuccessful efforts to control, cut back, or stop trading.

d. Is often preoccupied with trading (e.g., having persistent thoughts of reliving past trading experiences, handicapping or planning the next venture, thinking of ways to get money with which to trade).

e. Often trades when feeling distressed (e.g., helpless, guilty, anxious, depressed).

f. After losing money trading, often returns another day to get even (“chasing” one’s losses).

g. Lies to conceal the extent of involvement with trading.

h. Has jeopardized or lost a significant relationship, job, or educational or career opportunity because of trading.

i. Relies on others to provide money to relieve desperate financial situations caused by trading.

B. The trading behavior is not better explained by a manic episode.

Specify if:

Episodic: Meeting diagnostic criteria at more than one time point, with symptoms subsiding between periods of trading disorder for at least several months.

Persistent: Experiencing continuous symptoms, to meet diagnostic criteria for multiple years.

Specify if:

In early remission: After full criteria for trading disorder were previously met, none of the criteria for trading disorder have been met for at least 3 months but for less than 12 months.

In sustained remission: After full criteria for trading disorder were previously met, none of the criteria for trading disorder have been met during a period of 12 months or longer.

Specify current severity:

Mild: 4–5 criteria met.

Moderate: 6–7 criteria met.

Severe: 8–9 criteria met.

The Grammatically Correct Charlie Rich

The great Charlie Rich … when singing along, I always change the line to “Because I believe she’d do the same if she were me, and I wouldn’t know where to turn if she were gone.”

The Great Charlie Rich on Hee Haw

Pause and Retract Claws

Sounds like Tal has been working on her singing (most think of it as “unremarkable”) … I think she’s great.

Tal Wilkenfeld - "Killing Me" Opening for "The Who" at TD Garden Subscribe to Tal's channel to stay up to date with her latest videos and releases: https://talwilkenfeld.lnk.to/YouTubeSubscribe Listen to Tal Wilkenfeld's new album 'Love Remains,' here: https://talwilkenfeld.lnk.to/LoveRemains Follow Tal Wilkenfeld: Website: http://talwilkenfeld.com/home Instagram: https://talwilkenfeld.lnk.to/Instagram Facebook: https://talwilkenfeld.lnk.to/Facebook Twitter: https://talwilkenfeld.lnk.to/Twitter Spotify: https://talwilkenfeld.lnk.to/Spotify See Tal perform live on tour!

Movies Watched -- Flirting (1992)

99 minute running time so the perfect length. I really enjoyed this one. From Australia so subtitles, which my DVD thankfully had, are required to understand the English. I spent the whole movie thinking I was watching young Ben Mendelsohn, but the lead was another guy from Melbourne born in 1969 named Noah Taylor. I got this one because it’s another in my series of Naomi Watts movies … Naomi was born in 1968, Nicole Kidman in 1967 — features all these talented young Aussies when they were in their early 20s.

The female lead is a stunningly beautiful mulatto girl named Thandie Newton (born in England in 1972), the daughter of an actual Zimbabwean princess (I believe it) and an English father.

Teenage love story with an interracial spin, set in the boarding schools (one for girls, one for boys, separated by a lake) of 1965 Australia. Racism, honor, jealousy, friendship, and the usual boarding school horrors.

Sweet story, good writing, good acting. Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote: “a winner of many prizes in Australia, this lovely feature deserves them all,“ and I agree! Green rating.

Just flirting. (Young Naomi second from the right)

Movies Watched -- Persons Unknown (1996)

99 minute running time, which is the perfect length, but this was a terrible movie. Continuing my Naomi Watts series of movies … she’s good in it, but the story is so bad and the writing is so bad and the acting is so bad and the budget is so low — just awful, it wouldn’t even be shown as a made-for-TV movie, straight to the dumpster. Made in 1996, but it feels so out of date, like it’s 100 years old, not twenty. Red rating, avoid like the plague, unless you want to see Naomi tear up on demand in scene after scene.

Nerdy 70s glasses with matching VW bus .. shadow created the pencil mustache

Movies Watched -- Eastern Promises (2007)

100 minute running time, so the perfect length. The second in my Naomi Watts series of movies. This one wasn’t terrible like The International, but it also wasn’t very good — it’s slickly made but the story is kind of lame. Stars Aragorn, Son of Arathorn, who plays a Russian mobster (with a twist, no spoilers). It’s based in London so Naomi gets to work on her British accent, and Aragorn speaks Russian at length, I wonder how well?

There’s one great fight scene in a bathhouse which Aragorn does completely nude. There’s always been a double standard when it comes to full frontal nudity in the movies, so I was glad to see Aragorn willing to put his uncircumcised dingle-dangle on display. The guy who plays Kirill, the main mobster’s son — an old guy with bright blue eyes, really eats up the role. It’s a pity that the lack of long winters in London has turned him into a homosexual. Orphan baby rides off into the night on an old Ural (without sidecar). Yellow rating.

Peter Bradshaw said it was “clunky and inauthentic,” and Tony Lane asks “Must [Cronenberg] cling to his schlocky reputation at all costs?“

Goodbye, Anna Ivanovna

Movies Watched -- The International (2009)

119 minute running time so at least 20 to 30 minutes too long. I’m on a Naomi Watts kick, trying to watch every movie she has ever been in, which may be a mistake. I think she’s super talented and she looks just like the Australian version of one of my closest Chinese girlfriends from back in the day.

This movie was terrible. Clive Owen can’t act, but he has the designer stubble, cleft chin, and deep brown puppy dog eyes that got him some work for a time. Dumb story, badly written. No one is interested in criminal banks, even if they are led by Kai Proctor (god, I loved Banshee). One interesting thing they did was build a Guggenheim Museum set and shoot it up, but this was so idiotic, so incoherent, so pointless. Poor Naomi having to take roles like this with embarrassing expository dialogue. Lots of drone shots of fabulous locales, but just lousy, not thrilling, not interesting … a total waste of time. Red rating, avoid.

Edelstein called it a “slow road to nowhere,” and Rex (sorry, no link) said it “makes no sense at all.”

Teary on demand

Office Art

I had the classic Al Ross (Abraham Roth) cartoon, “Welcome Bagholders” (from December 1981), framed for my spare bedroom, er, home office. The framer did a great job with it.