— Today has been muggy as hell. There is a haze of mug in the air. The city across the river looks sickly, drowsy, and OUT of it. There is not the usual glitter. It’s too hot.<\/p>\n
— Thunder has been grumbling in the night air for a couple of hours now. I can hear the leaves in the trees starting to move outside … sudden gusts of wind … so probably some sort of storm approaches. It will be a relief. I don’t have AC in my apartment.<\/p>\n
— I have the hardest time sticking to my ‘weekend to-do list’ which is always a mile long. Honestly, I need more discipline. I only checked a couple of items off today, and I hate that feeling. I consistently feel like Scarlet O’Hara … “tomorrow’s another day!” Yeah, that’s true, Scarlet, but what about TODAY, huh? Let’s try working on stuff TODAY! At least I got a new coffee pot, because my old one suddenly died this morning. Check it off the list.<\/p>\n
— Saw Cinderella Man<\/i> tonight. Renee didn’t ruin it for me. An analysis of why this is the case (besides my contempt for her) will follow. But Russell Crowe is wonderful, Paul Giamatti is fantastic, and my favorite part of the movie is how vividly it invokes the Great Depression. Times were tough<\/i> … and movies, in general, have a hard time dealing with that fact. They feel the need to sentimentalize it. Except for, say, Grapes of Wrath<\/i>. I truly got the sense of hardship. The boxing scenes are brutal. The sound effects – the sound of the punches – were awful, almost worse than the visuals. Renee is her same old phony self – commenting on the character the entire time, simplifying her, boiling her down. It’s an extremely unimaginative portrait. She does not come to life, because Renee Zellweger, at the get-go – probably from the first read-through – decided who this woman was, and never let any surprises come out from that moment forward. <\/p>\n
— Mainly it was good to see the movie to hang out in air-conditioning for a while.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
— Today has been muggy as hell. There is a haze of mug in the air. The city across the river looks sickly, drowsy, and OUT of it. There is not the usual glitter. It’s too hot. — Thunder has … Continue reading