caulfield12

You can avoid watching SLEEPING BEAUTY (NC-17) unless you really have a thing for Emily Browning. (FWIW, I actually enjoyed the Soderbergh movies with Sasha Grey 5X better even though there was no nudity). Yet to see Shame with Fassbender, will have to check that one out. Ides of March...not quite as good as it could have been when it bogs down into some of the traditional political cliches and conflicts two-thirds of the way through, but I thought it was an overall "decent+" movie and certainly worth watching.

QUOTE (Milkman delivers @ Dec 1, 2011 -> 02:00 PM) Actually, yes. You're right. It makes sense that I never equated Pablo and Antonio possibly being related in my head. Perhaps the article meant to say that the guy is the nephew of Pablo Ozuna? That, or they made two mistakes. http://mopupduty.com/jays-on-verge-of-sign...rto-osuna-1205/ Definitely no connection to "flying across 1B while signalling safe on any close infield grounder" Pablo Ozuna.

QUOTE (knightni @ Nov 30, 2011 -> 10:10 PM) Here's the guy that Paddy replaced. Why was I expecting a picture of Dave Wilder/Club Burn instead of this?

Does anyone want to make the case that Edgerton/Hardy are better in Warrior than Bale/Wahlberg in The Fighter? Warrior seems a little bit more like a promotional vehicle for MMA... In that sense, I would say it's clearly better than Real Steel (similar genre), but still not the overall quality of acting across Fighter with Amy Adams and Melissa Leo. Nolte was solid, though. And I always like the guy who plays the school principal in Warrior...I think the first time I remember seeing him was in the movie DAVE.

Winter's Bone? Right. I'm talking everyday poor that also isn't a focus on the nobility of being poor in that condescending way. Even with that, her character obviously had an education and knack for creativity (the bakery)...that would clearly separate her from the chronically poor/underemployed, like former GM/Ford/Chrysler assembly line workers in Michigan whose jobs have all been outsourced over the last 20 years. Pursuit of HappYness would also be close to this idea of portraying a poor but hard-working family fairly realistically...although obviously it has the Hollywood-ized happy ending.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 28, 2011 -> 07:38 PM) Blah, in pretty woman they added the bulls*** "oh but it was her first night as a prostitute" line. I think Bridesmaids resonates more because she is "falling behind" her friends and is trying to keep up. Swingers actually hit on being poor and young better than most. It's just ridiculous that I'm struggling to find any movies where the characters are poor and them being poor isn't a stereotype. ...where the heart is? Has it come to this? Even look at the League, those dudes are all comics who struggled for years, and first shot they get they create themselves all as uber succesful. Being poor sucks, but it's also where a lot of comedians inspiration comes from. Yet it's not represented in cinema often. Julia plays Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman. Vivian's time with Edward was not her first but it was her first time to kiss a client. I've watched that movie maybe 3 times, and I don't remember the line about it being her first time working as a prostitute. I agree, they do try to explain/rationalize her working as a prostitute to take the rough edges off her character as much as possible for a movie of that time period (I think it was 1990). It's not like Hesher or Greenberg in being a ruthless "dark" character, or Will Ferrell in "Everything Must Go."

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 28, 2011 -> 05:39 PM) I loved bridesmaids. Bridesmaids was one of the few movies that acknowledged that there are people in the world who aren't so comfortably rich that money has no impact in any moment in their lives. Movie about a journalist? They are a rich columnist with a 2 million dollar condo in manhattan. Movie about a chef? He's a rich chef with a beautiful house and garden. Everybody is a doctor, or wealthy, or millionaire. Any attempts to show poor people are usually "poor people are the salt of the earth with common people knowledge. Money sucks" stories. I related more to kristen wiigs character than any recent one in years. Agreed, but they still needed the plot device of framing her against Rose Byrne's uber-rich but patently unhappy inside character. I was trying to think of a movie where the character is in a similar or worse predicament in the beginning, movies like Pretty Woman, for example. Or Shawshank, which is obviously a very different genre of movie.

The fourth Twilight (Breaking Dawn, Part 1) is better than the 2nd but worse than the 3rd and clearly worse than the original movie. Very very slow, and reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies that preceded the more satisfying finales. I would never pay money to watch in a theatre...found it on the net. Harold and Kumar Rock!!! That first movie doesn't get enough credit for resuscitating NP Harris' career after the unforgettable Starship Troopers, which has become something of a cult classic in the years since.

Really liked 50/50, and Seth Rogen was actually fairly tolerable in that movie, albeit as the supporting actor. Starting to watch Javier Bardem in Biutiful.

QUOTE (bmags @ Nov 22, 2011 -> 03:24 PM) I saw the descendants on Saturday. I'm going to give you a short little take: Really poorly put together beginning and a strong finish that leads me to say that I rec this movie. I liked it. I liked it even though i'm damn tired of all these hollywood movies about really rich people feeling isolated and having trouble relating to your kids. STOP WRITING WHAT YOU KNOW. That's why I liked "The Kids are Alright" so much, it felt like it could actually be a true story, rather than one of those Apatow versions or Bridesmaids, etc.

QUOTE (Brian @ Nov 22, 2011 -> 06:11 AM) Should win an Oscar for best Cinematography. I didn't realize Kirsten Dunst was so "chesty," I'm still 50/50 on whether she had plastic surgery or not. Really hard to say definitively with her... The Charlotte Rampling character was so strong...even if her few scenes, but I'll never forget her in SWIMMING POOL...or maybe I'll never forget her younger co-star's presence in that one, not sure which.

Melancholia's very good, Lars Von Trier's best recent work by far. While it's not necessarily enjoyable, calling to mind recent movies like Rabbit Hole, Reservation Road, Blue Valentine or even Kirsten Dunst's earlier "All Good Things" with Ryan Gosling, it's definitely worth your time and has some incredible cinematography. I thought it was a much better film, for example, than The Tree of Life.

Bridesmaids was better than Horrible Bosses. I'm indifferent about ranking Horrible Bosses versus Bad Teacher, could go either way. As far as the TOG's goes, I had pretty low expectations so it was pleasantly surprising. Like..."My Idiot Brother," the critical response was pretty tepid and the box office low, so I thought it would suck, even though I usually enjoy Paul Rudd movies. My thoughts on that one are pretty much in alignment with Ebert. Also agreed with Ebert on The Immortals. It's not coherent or cohesive at all, it's just a big mess that merely LOOKS good. It actually makes Clash of the Titans look like Masterpiece Theatre.

QUOTE (The Baconator @ Nov 20, 2011 -> 02:28 AM) I'm guessing you're referring to my post that was about 'The Raid' from the Toronto Films Festival? http://asianmediawiki.com/The_Raid_(Indonesia_Movie) One of the actors looks very familiar....the Asian one who ended up with the super-hot Israeli chick at the end of the most recent Fast&Furious movie?? Doesn't seem it could be him, though, if it's an Indonesian movie set in Jakarta.

Has anyone seen The Descendants yet? That's the movie everyone is pointing to Clooney getting an Oscar nomination for, as well as the young actress who plays his daughter.

Tower Heist---2.75 stars Warrior---3 1/2 stars The Immortals---2 stars (1 for Freida Pinto's beauty/butt but 1/2 subtraction for stunt double) My Idiot Brother---3 stars Paranormal Activity 3---1 1/2 stars Moneyball---3.25 stars (good, but not Sorkin's best work) Twilight running at 27%, 38 positive reviews and 102 negatives. Looks to be trending right along with the last Twilight, which will make it either the 4th or 5th highest opening weekend of all-time.

I looked at the five tables and just estimated where the five main countries in terms of bonds purchased stand: France $675 billion (because of the huge bets on Italy) Germany $500 billion UK $350 billion US $170 billion Japan $87.5 billion Clearly, the French banks/banking system are the next domino to fall in this puzzle...Germany's sitting on top of enough reserves to cover losses if need be, but the French government, not so much

Ryan is coming back to the Twins. Why would Hahn be going there? Plus they brought back Krivsky and still have Radcliffe.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Nov 6, 2011 -> 09:56 PM) He'd be a classy president. And popular in Wichita, Emporia, Lawrence, Manhattan, Topeka and Johnson County, KS.

I haven't read of very many at all liking the Green Lantern movie. And I'm a big Blake Lively fan. Thor and Captain America were very different types of movies....with Captain America being a bit more similar to the recent X-Men: First Class movie. I enjoyed Thor in a quite different way, but they were both good entertainment, overall. Green Lantern, despite Reynolds' efforts, not so much. The Parallax just wasn't a very convincing villain/foil. And not a big Mark Strong fan either, except for THE GUARD.

The likelihood of default and NOT getting even 50% on those bonds back is still very high. It's just that by punting it down the road, there's the "hope and a prayer" that somehow the Greek economic system will miraculously recover by buying everyone (especially the German banks and Greek politicians) more time. The whole argument is it what point does it make more sense for the Greek government to default and the German banks to absorb those losses? Has there been one single optimistic sign or indicator the Greek government, from the beginning of this situation over a year and 1/2 ago, has started (or is even capable of) getting their economic house in order? Why throw good money after bad when the situation...with the logjam occuring between the ECB, IMF and the European Commission, the counter-argument is simply that buying more times allows the politicians to find a better solution. But the odds of the Greeks ever paying those loans off at even a 50% haircut have to be around 10-15%, probably less. Even if the Greek situation is pushed back six months, you still have Italy, Spain and maybe Belgium to deal with. The Italian dilemma's likely to be even more intractable.

Which day is your birthday? November 3rd? or 4th? Sometimes it's hard to tell which day I'm in because I'm usually 12-13 hours ahead of the rest of the board. Weird. I randomly met a German chemical engineering student here in China who had the exact same birthday (a 1 in 365.2 possibility, or 0.0027 likelihood) so we celebrated together last night. On a related topic, he mentioned my White Sox hat and said Germans were confused why Ozzie Guillen was fired, and that he would like to share a Paulaner brew with the Ozzerrooo. Go Scorpios!

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Nov 2, 2011 -> 08:45 PM) MF Global is a poster child for exactly what I have been telling people outside the financial sector for years now: 1. There are some serious sleezballs in the trading and investment world, who will take all the chances they can to make a buck, and stomp anyone in their way. 2. Those sleezballs are but a small % of "the financial sector", which includes everyone from them to bank tellers. MF Global (formerly Man Financial, formerly EDF Man) was a successful brokerage, retail and institutional, right up until this. And the 90% of the employees in the firm who work in those areas just got screwed in the worst way. The 10% who work in prop, probably 10% of them or less finagled this mess, and brought down the ship. People who work in finance are not evil, but there are evil people who work in finance. --- Seperate but related, MF Global's demise is related primarily to two major factors. One was the absurd 40-1 leverage they were using in making naked directional bets in their prop business - much of that debt being unsecured, amazingly. Two was the pillaging of customer funds to cover the proprietary trading unit. These two types of incidents could be, if not prevented, certainly made a lot less likely two occur, by taking just three steps: 1. Implement the Volcker Rule aka Glass-Steagel. 2. Require daily public reporting of debt ratios, margin collateral condition, tagged asset ratios and excess margin capital availability and state. 3. Significant increase, and then centralization, of regulatory oversight at the federal level. And you want to know the best part? ObamaCo could do all three things, RIGHT NOW, without any further action from Congress. When I harp on regulatory uncertainty in certain sectors, this is what I am getting at. Not that they are necessarily overregulated - they are in some areas but UNDERregulated in others - but that no one knows where the hammer is going to fall. So f***ing drop it already and lets move on. Barack, we are waiting. Show some leadership. They're (the big financial institutions) all going to line up behind Romney anyway, so he has nothing to lose and more to gain by actually taking a position and sticking to it. It would be a lot better than a couple of pontificating speeches, tepid support for Occupy Wall Street but then nothing substantive to come out of it. What percentage of those making $200,000+ per year is he really going to alienate further and lose their votes, at this point?

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Nov 2, 2011 -> 10:17 PM) He must be confusing her with someone else. That makes no sense. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7253092094138727420 Check out THE HOT SPOT, or just try any random search for Jennifer Connelly/Don Johnson or the movie title Second, the movie "Career Opportunities" I just have the advantage of being over 40 years old now and have watched her career evolve over that time. Thought of in another way, she was the Eva Green of her day. Just shows how well she has put that past behind her that nobody knows, haha.

Or futbol, more precisely (outside of England/Europe)