Kevin's Watch

Semifinals day at Madrid. Djokovic has made a good start against Nadal. This stuns the crowd because they have forgotten Nadal used to make a habit of starting a match behind, and then coming back.

Edit: Which he did again, bless his big heart.

Watched Doubt on Saturday-I won't comment about the nature of the film or it's plot, but I will say that all 4 principals; Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Viola Davis deserved Oscar nominations. I believe Ms. Davis actually won the Oscar for best supporting actress-if so it was a very intelligent decision (and I rarely say that about the Academy). Tour de force acting all around.

Caught the last 50 minutes of LA Confidential on FX today. Wow! First time I tried to watch it, oh 6 or 7 years ago, I couldn't even handle the first 15 minutes-dam was I wrong. Incredible cast: Spacey, Crowe, Pearce, Redmond, DeVitto, Bassinger...(it's in my queue)

Isn't that wonderful, danlo? I thought it should have won the Best Picture Oscar. And be sure not to miss the first part of the movie! Lol.

I'm a huge Crowe, Spacey and Pearce fan and it's already made my top 5 Crowe list along with films like The Insider, A Beautiful Mind, Master and Commander, Cinderella Man...crap, it knocked Gladiator off the list!

My Crowe Top 5 list is LA Confidential, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, The Quick and the Dead, For the Moment

LA Confidential is a fantastic movie, no doubt about that.

Dragonlily wrote:My Crowe Top 5 list is LA Confidential, A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, The Quick and the Dead, For the Moment

Very happy you've seen For the Moment! It's such an overlooked film, and I imagine not widely available, that I'm a little surprised you knew of it.

One of his first away-from-Australia movies -- in Canada, of course. The casting director was truly sharp to pick him as a serious romantic hero. It has some majorly powerful scenes. More people should know of it.

I didn't have room to add Virtuosity to my list of five. Crowe got to show his comedy skills.

Just got Killshot with Thomas Jane, Diane Liane and Mickey Rourke--I've been looking forward to this movie for years. Looks like it went straight to DVD after a 2 year delay and rumors of it dying off altogether. I like these semi-scraped or returned for controversial editing films, like The Salton Sea they usually turn out to be pretty freaking good.

Dragonlily wrote:One of his first away-from-Australia movies -- in Canada, of course. The casting director was truly sharp to pick him as a serious romantic hero. It has some majorly powerful scenes. More people should know of it.

I didn't have room to add Virtuosity to my list of five. Crowe got to show his comedy skills.

I just realized it's been 15 years since I first saw For The Moment. 1994 was a significant year in that it was the 50th anniversary of D-Day. For The Moment was a film that no doubt was consciously made to coincide with that anniversary. Back in '94, that film, in addition to things like an exhibition of war-time paintings at the art gallery, really helped me gain an emotional comprehension of that era.

(I saw Virtuosity just once, when it aired on TV. It was quirky, but fun.)

I thought Killshot was pretty darn good, then again I'm a prejudiced Mickey fan. I disagree with this reviewer's take on Joseph Gordon-Levitt's performance and would have really liked to have seen some of the cut scenes. Yes, to some degree it's a shelved flick slapped back together to capitalize on Mickey's great performance in The Wrestler...it's still worth watching Killshot deserved better...

I just watched the Clint Eastwood 'Dollars' trilogy pretty much back to back. It's the first time I've seen them in almost fifteen years, the first time ever I've watched them in rapid succession. As a result, some things struck me this time that didn't before.

The first film is easily the most brutal of the three, and this incarnation of Joe/Monco/Blondie is the coldest, the most callous. The storytelling is less tight than the sequels, and some of the acting is a bit ropey, but overall I think this is the best of the trilogy. Ruthlessly playing the factions against one another, driving them to mutual annihilation - good stuff. Of course, I know it's based on Yojimbo, so now I want to watch that for the first time.

The second film is more coherent, and introduces a personal element in the form of Colonel Mortimer's quest for revenge. It's interesting that Eastwood's character (here called Monco, for some reason) takes something of a back seat to Mortimer. He's no longer the unassailable badass he was in the first film - or rather, he's still just as badass, but now there are others who can compete with him. Just as I was beginning to grow vaguely weary of the emphasis on Mortimer's vendetta, Monco showed up to prove himself still the man he was in the first film, with his arbitration of the showdown. In some ways, the fact that he was the neutral overseer of this confrontation works better than having him take part in the duel. A good film, but Monco was somehow lacking in the cold opportunism he displayed in the first film, and I missed that.

The third was a disappointment. Though the scale has grown, I disliked the way most of the film was played for goofy laughs. There were also a few jarring lines of dialogue, such as a reference to a sunbed (unless the accent confused my ears...). The character deserves better than a film that is essentially a mismatched-buddy comedy. Yuck. I also got tired of the seemingly endless run-ins with Civil War armies. Still, it wasn't all bad. The climactic cemetary scene is a good one, and the sense of beleaguered futility among the troops at the bridge was surprisingly powerful. Unfortunately, the weak points were too numerous and too persistent; even Lee Van Cleef was underwhelming as Angel Eyes after his expert performance as Mortimer, and frankly I just didn't buy Eastwood's familiar grizzled gunslinger as a petty con man.

To me, then, the 'Dollars' films are a prime example of diminishing returns - each film is weaker than the last. Shame.

I followed these with Unforgiven, which, again, I haven't seen in years. Good film, but it seems I watched a cut version, since there were some lines that referred to things that didn't happen. Blech.

Next, after taking a break with Unforgiven, I return to the fourth and final film in my Eastwood box set (after the 'Dollars' lot): Hang 'Em High. Never heard of it, never seen it. No idea what to expect.

My local newsagent unloaded a stack of Observer and Sunday Times dvd's on me the other day because I bought the first two Agatha Christie collection films: Murder on the Orient Express, which is still quite good to see Albert Finney out-shine all the other stars - and Murder at the Vicarage with Geraldine McEwan as Mrs.Marple, which I really enjoyed and will watch again. Looking out for the Margaret Rutherford ones!
The newspaper dvd's are:

The Three Musketeers with Oliver Reed and Rachel Welch
Local Hero with Burt Lancaster
With Nail and I with Richard E Grant and Paul McGann
WWII in colour, part one and two
and three audio discs, Christmas with the Choir(?), the Doors, and Cliff Richard a 50th anniversary, which has Carrie (nice sax break and the rythm guitars).

So I'm spoiled for choice this weekend.

Been a while since the Doors showed up anywhere except in my CD player. Hope you enjoy them.

I'm watching Armageddon. It isn't my favorite of the two asteroid movies of that year, but it has a colorful cast of characters. Besides, that the one that's airing.

La Jetée. Yuck. I'd been told it was an interesting science fiction thing, but whether it is or not, I had to stop watching after five minutes. Narration over still frames? For half an hour? Bugger that.

I watched The City of Lost Children, which I've heard people rave about for years....F*cking horrible. Great set design, and that's about it.

Wimbledon

I'm following Wimbledon, too. But Sharapova is gone. Nooooooo...

Nadal isn't around. Nooooooooo...

Oh, well, it'll still be exciting to see if Andy Murray can win the trophy for the home crowd. Even though some of them are cool towards him cuz he's a Scot (and proud of it), not English. His game looks sharp so far. The commentators mentioned that since his loss to Federer in the US Open last year, Murray has actually beaten Federer four times. I had no idea.

Yep, I think the one firm advantage Federer has over Murray in the final is experience. Both of them have a sense of destiny -- but I think Andy has patience built into that, because he's at the beginning of his time at the peak.

It would be wonderful if Rafa's career could last long enough to win as many finals as Federer, but not likely with the wear on his knees. He's such a joy to watch.

I would love to see Sharipova reestablish herself in the top 3 of the WTA. I think she and the Williams sisters are the 3 women players who are mentally strong enough for the top.

We do have a couple of promising women players going into the second week, Lisicki and Oudin. Did you catch their matches?

I'm happy that Roddick, Hewitt, Karlovic and Haas are still in it.