José James (from Minneapolis) covering the great Billy Joel song:
Movies Watched -- Swoon (1992)
90 minute running time, but I didn’t make it too far in … the horrific true story of Jewish homosexual lovers who kidnapped and murdered a child in 1920s Chicago (ya know, Leopold and Loeb) … I was not in the mood for this, esp. the artsy fartsy style in which it was made … I thought this was a John Farr reco (“a crucial work of new queer cinema [no caps],” said Dick Brody), but shockingly it isn’t. I don’t know how it got in my queue.
Babe and Dickie
The Plural of Lexus is Lexi
Dr. Goose a big fan of the LC500 … I like it in Flare Yellow or Cadmium Orange (below), and yes, I do like that grille:
Click to enlarge
GSP Ozu
I like a lot of stuff Gotts Street Park puts out … Ozu transported me back to the days when I would spend a lot of wee hours in expensive hotel bars with beautiful women, which was not that long ago, but feels like a lifetime ago:
Jack Kellogg Trades, First Half of 2021
Jackaroo put out a video detailing his first six months of the year. He’s generous to share all the details with the rabble (like me) … here are his first half 2021 trades if you want to study all 927 of them one by one. I, of course, already have.
My buddy @nawkk used OCR to make a useful spreadsheet from these useless screenshots:
Movies Watched -- Caché (2005)
In French. 118 minute running time so at least 20 to 30 minutes too long … I loved Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon so I thought I’d try another of his movies, but this was no good and it’s certainly not a “thriller” … I didn’t know about the Paris massacre of 1961 … but I don’t know why the guy wouldn’t straight-up tell his beautiful wife (Juliette Binoche) the truth about his past … why would he feel that guilty about it?!? I did like the video-in-a-video gimmick where you couldn’t tell if you were watching reality or a taped version, you know, toying with the audience… with the final long shot the ultimate gimmick.
Andrew Sarris got it right when he wrote: “Too much of the plot's machinery turns out to be a metaphorical mechanism by which to pin the tail of colonial guilt on Georges and the rest of us smug bourgeois donkeys.”
One day he was gone, and I was glad.
Movies Watched -- The Onion Field (1979)
126 minute running time but felt like an eternity, could easily cut at least a half hour out if not much more … I loved Joseph Wambaugh’s The Choirboys when I read it 30 years ago, and I may have read The Onion Field and forgotten about it. James Woods plays a good creepy idiot psychopath in this, but the movie is no good, it just doesn’t work, the pacing is no good…. This was a John Farr reco, but I say give it a miss.
We’re sort of a family here
My Heart Went Out To Play
Nice cover by Raquel Rodriguez… beautiful and a great voice, you need it all to make it these days, and even then it may not be enough….
A Priceless Exchange
Assuming you understand what it means….
I Know The Things I'm Not
Norah Jones at 40 … I think she’s as good as she has ever been, maybe better … distinctive sound, wonderful voice, still beautiful…