Movies Watched -- Fed Up (2014)

92 minute running time. Documentary about the obesity “epidemic.” Wasn’t super thrilled with it. Features several obese kids and their fat parents. The interesting thing to me is why aren’t the siblings of these fat kids similarly fat? They’re all eating the same crap food in the same amounts, yet only one of them is 250 pounds at age 14. It’s obvious to me that the super fat kid has some metabolic issue which is preventing him from processing the junk food in the same way his siblings are.

Everyone knows sugar is bad, processed foods are bad, Pizza Hut and carbonated sugar water in the public school cafeterias are bad. There’s nothing new here. And they didn’t explore the metabolic root of the fat kid problem, which would have been truly interesting. I can’t recommend this one.

Pass the Nutella & Go! (23 grams of sugar and 13 grams of fat)

Movies Watched -- The Hit (1984)

97 minute running time so a good length…. a little strange, sort of a crime thriller but more of a comedy with some philosophizing … I’m sure it inspired Tarantino and others like him … it’s quirky and not bad, I can see why Criterion put it in their Collection. I’m not sure I can give it a coveted green-go rating, but it’s worth seeing.

Laura of the Sun

Movies Watched -- On Dangerous Ground (1952)

82 minute running time … another weird Nicholas Ray movie… starts out noirish (dark streets, burned-out cops), but turns into a love story … it’s not bad. Stars Robert Ryan who’s a big handsome bastard with a square-jaw. Great cameo by A.I. Bezzerides. Bernard Herrmann score as heavy-handed as ever.

Checking out the officer’s gun

The Same Old Buzz, Just Because

Start the video at 0:54 … thought it was Alan Jackson the first time I heard it … some clever lines, a great sound, I love it. Look at all the idiots in the audience watching the performance through their phones… oughta be a law.

Midland performs "Drinkin' Problem" Live on the Honda Stage at Gruene Hall Get Midland's album, On The Rocks, including "Make A Little" & "Drinkin' Problem", here: http://smarturl.it/MidlandOnTheRocks Keep up with us...

Movies Watched -- They Live By Night (1948)

95 minute running time, so the perfect length. This was not your average studio movie, and it was good. Noir but with a heavy romance angle … doomed lovers. Farley Granger had sort of feminine good looks with his full mouth and dark brow … Cathy O'Donnell looks like the Tiger Mom’s older daughter Sophia, a real beauty.

I didn’t know any of the back story (Nick Ray’s directorial debut, etc.), but I did feel like this is a special movie, it’s unusual … someone said Ray didn’t know what he wasn’t supposed to do, which made it really fresh and interesting.

Anyway, if you haven’t seen it, you should make the effort to do so, I recommend it.

Keechie, you don't belong with that kind of people

Movies Watched -- Gilda (1946)

110 minute running time so at least 10 minutes too long. Weird one with no story really. Margarita Cansino is the “curvy bombshell” who lip synchs some songs and does a strip tease of sorts (skirting the old Hays Code with all the sexual innuendo) … just dumb, they try to make it thrilling by involving evil Germans, and a casino, and a tungsten cartel, and setting it in Buenos Aires, but it just isn’t, and the relationships make no sense … just another crappy studio movie from the 40s. Don’t see it.

Ms. Cansino, beaming

Movies Watched -- We Don't Live Here Anymore (2004)

98 minute running time so the perfect length, but it’s pretty slow, I had to watch it at 1.5x ffwd. A story about marriage, adultery, and friendship. Two youngish couples: 1) Older brother from Six Feet Under (Peter Krause) and Naomi Watts (yes, another in my Naomi Watts’ series of movies), and 2) gorgeous Mark Ruffalo and Laura Dern (Bruce’s skinny-ass daughter).

Mark and Naomi are having an affair. Both couples have young children. Both men teach at the local community college. Peter is a frustrated writer, Mark grades the occasional paper. Naomi drives an old Mercedes station wagon, so she has family money; there is a scene where she gets a check from her Mom. Laura Dern is broke, so there is a money/class angle they touch on, though briefly.

It’s a small town (Vancouver), Mark and Naomi would be found out immediately — it’s unrealistic. Later Peter Krause and Laura Dern start screwing … Bruce’s skinny-ass daughter looks like the Wild Witch of the West even when she isn’t screeching. Painful to watch these couples as they contemplate splitting up (since they have kids, otherwise I wouldn’t care). Gets complicated, arty drama, very restrained, educated white people stuff. You know, boring.

It wasn’t terrible, just sort of blah, who cares. Yellow rating at best.

Eleanor Ringel Cater got it right: “A movie as empty as its title. A lot of good acting is going on, but there's nobody home.”

It’s much easier to live with a woman who feels loved

Honor Thy Stop

Another great Chat With Traders episode, this time with Nishant Porbanderwalla, a prop trader with Kershner in Texas … lots of great bits, especially his insights on patience and confidence, you should listen to it all closely, but this was my favorite bit:

“I spoke with a senior trader and he said if you have a stop, you respect your stop and get out. If you still like it, take some time, and get in again. I learned that the hard way.”

The original text from Buzzy:

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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