If you get around to watching it, lemme know what'cha think. You may get a kick out of Jullianne Moore's role.

Sam Rockwell is the shit! Anyone that plays Zaphod Beeblebrox is cool in my book. Though my favorite role of his has gotta be Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind -- Love that movie sooo much. Which brings to mind a genius writer (Charlie Kaufman) and an actor/director who is both over and underrated: George Clooney. I love half of his work (inevitably the underrated stuff) and the other half I could do without.

Diane Keaton, Nicholas Cage, Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks, etc. etc. Don't do it for me either. Though Cage Occasionally gets it right. (Or maybe it's the writers.) Mel, Mel, Mel -- what scares me about him is that his true personality may be Martin Riggs, but with a touch of the religious zealot. Definitely not a good combination. I would be careful not to harm his dog.

Favorite actors... Oh my, where to begin. So many decades of cinema to recall! To avoid a carbon copy of your list -- all noteworthy thesbians -- I'll fill in some of the missing pieces: The Marx Brothers (I love them all equally), Hepburn's flame, Spencer Tracy, the other Hepburn, Audrey (mostly because of those eyes), Cary Grant, Humprey Bogart (Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon are films that I can watch from any point and be satisfied completely for every second the films goes by), Lauren Bacall (Ze Big Sleep; dear lordy, more top ten material), Clark Gable, Gary Oldman (You said it, but he's too good and far too underappreciated to not mention), Helena Bonham Carter (another one I CANNOT avoid mentioning -- a dark favorite of mine: Morgan le Fay, Elizabeth Frankenstein, Ophelia, Anne Boleyn -- dear GOD, she's a even a freakin' death eater. She has to be a reader.), Elliot Gould (More noir favorites), Michael Gambon (brilliant), Alan Rickman, Edward Norton, Tim Roth, Brad Pitt, lil' Dakota Fanning, Kyle MacLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, and Dennis Hopper -- I think that's the cast of Blue Velvet, another potential top ten movie with top ten actors lol. Maybe we should make lists of the people we DON'T like... on second thought... (Sorry, this got long.)

Yes! Mothersbaugh, of course. Wes Anderson's pocket composer and devolution advocate. Don't forget Sigur Ros, either. That's the part of the movie where yer supposed to cry. I heart those Icelanders. A Bowie fan too. David Bowie is my best friend's father.

Make up a top 5 real quick. (No pressure.)

In reply to this comment by thepinky:
You're right. I have about 15 or so that are floating around in my favorites list. My top movies are not neccesarily the best ones I've seen. Like you said, they are the ones that I have an emotional connection to.

Wes Anderson is awesome but I haven't seen all of his films yet. My favorite so far is also The Life Aquatic. I love those covers. The Mark Mothersbaugh numbers are awesome, too. The scene where Steve introduces his boat and crew, accompanied by Mothersbaugh's "Let Me Tell You About My Boat" is one of my favorite scenes. I also really liked The Royal Tenenbaums.

Oh, underappreciated and overrated actors. It is relatively easy for me to rattle off some of my favorite actors. Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Ingrid Bergman are definitely in the top 5. Other actors I love off of the top of my head: Gary Oldman, Anjelica Huston, Gregory Peck, Katharine Hepburn, Bruce Willis (most people love him for the wrong reasons), Bill Murray, Charlie Chaplin, Helena Bonham Carter (I love how much her older stuff contrasts with her more recent roles. She's great.), John Goodman (I have always had a thing for this guy. He is a pleasure to watch.), James Stewart, Topol (I've only seen him in Fiddler but it is one of my favorite performances EVAR), Henry Fonda, Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Oliver Reed. This list was about 5 times as long before I cut it down. You're welcome.

I'm sure you're the same way that I am with actors. Sometimes I love them because they are truly great actors and sometimes I love them because they are good actors and you just enjoy watching them for whatever reason. I admit that one of the reasons that I love Newman, Brando, and Bergman is because they are all incredibly sexy. They also happen to be exceptional actors. Who are your favorites?

Severely overrated: Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton (used to be okay, now I can't stand her), Nicolas Cage (liked him in Matchstick Men...which reminds me that I love Sam Rockwell), Keira Knightly, and there is something about Mel Gibson's acting that seems...is it insincere? Affected? All I know is that something is off with him and I'm not a fan.

I'll rent The Big Lebowski one of these days.

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You're right. I have about 15 or so that are floating around in my favorites list. My top movies are not neccesarily the best ones I've seen. Like you said, they are the ones that I have an emotional connection to.

Wes Anderson is awesome but I haven't seen all of his films yet. My favorite so far is also The Life Aquatic. I love those covers. The Mark Mothersbaugh numbers are awesome, too. The scene where Steve introduces his boat and crew, accompanied by Mothersbaugh's "Let Me Tell You About My Boat" is one of my favorite scenes. I also really liked The Royal Tenenbaums.

Oh, underappreciated and overrated actors. It is relatively easy for me to rattle off some of my favorite actors. Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, and Ingrid Bergman are definitely in the top 5. Other actors I love off of the top of my head: Gary Oldman, Anjelica Huston, Gregory Peck, Katharine Hepburn, Bruce Willis (most people love him for the wrong reasons), Bill Murray, Charlie Chaplin, Helena Bonham Carter (I love how much her older stuff contrasts with her more recent roles. She's great.), John Goodman (I have always had a thing for this guy. He is a pleasure to watch.), James Stewart, Topol (I've only seen him in Fiddler but it is one of my favorite performances EVAR), Henry Fonda, Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Oliver Reed. This list was about 5 times as long before I cut it down. You're welcome.

I'm sure you're the same way that I am with actors. Sometimes I love them because they are truly great actors and sometimes I love them because they are good actors and you just enjoy watching them for whatever reason. I admit that one of the reasons that I love Newman, Brando, and Bergman is because they are all incredibly sexy. They also happen to be exceptional actors. Who are your favorites?

Severely overrated: Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton (used to be okay, now I can't stand her), Nicolas Cage (liked him in Matchstick Men...which reminds me that I love Sam Rockwell), Keira Knightly, and there is something about Mel Gibson's acting that seems...is it insincere? Affected? All I know is that something is off with him and I'm not a fan.

I'll rent The Big Lebowski one of these days.

In reply to this comment by poolcleaner:
You probably already know your top movies, you just haven't declared so boldly what they are. Like I said though, most of my tops are in contention, I just happen to have an emotional connection to two films which may always reign supreme.

If there's anyone to be jealous of it's Wes Anderson and his siblings. Must be awesome to make films with your family and best friends. Loved and own every one of their movies. I think Life Aquatic is my favorite... yeah, definitely Steve Zissou. I mean, you can't go wrong: a movie starring Bill Murray, filled with brilliant sets and costumes, and a soundtrack comprised of David Bowie cover songs by Seu Jorge? Is it wrong that I'm salivating right now? I also really enjoyed Darjeeling Unlimited, despite it's lack of closure. I was hoping Murray would tie in at some point.

As far as people and their movie tastes... You didn't feel the gripping suspense of Armageddon?! Didn't it make you weep when -- I honestly, cannot remember a thing about that piece of trash, except Liv Tyler. (Typical.) I have a friend who once told me The Marine was his favorite film of all time. It was really obnoxious because he was interrupting my first viewing of The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover; kept complaining that he needed an explosive hook.

Now, Big Lebowski... is one of those movies you either love or hate. I've only known people who are one or the other. Probably due to over 200 f-bombs. If you can get over that, you'll realize it's a brilliant homage to Philip Marlowe and old screwball comedy. (And the soundtrack is amazing.)

(I completely agree about Goodman. Thank god for the Cohen Brothers. At least they recognize talent and put him in most of their films.)

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>> ^jonny:
And as for poor Ms. Newman here, she should brush up on her legal knowledge before going off like that. Implied consent allows police to set up random checkpoints wherever they want. It doesn't automatically allow a vehicle search, but abusive and uncooperative behavior pretty much does.


At what point was she abusive? He asked her a couple of times to tell him who she was and immediately he was there forcing her door open. How threatening is that.

I am not sure about whether it's illegal to not tell him who she was or not, but regardless she was making a stand. If more people made a stand, he would think twice before acting like that - the power has gone to his head.

She was happy to go and speak to his supervisor - why can't he take her in quietly to speak to him?

>> ^mauz15:
>> ^Duckman33:
Yeah, I hate to say it, but Damn Yankees does not fit the Heavy Metal genre of the 80's. More like Iron Maiden, Dio, Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax, Priest, Sepultura, etc. Damn Yankes was more pop-rock than metal.

But you could say they were seen as "mainstream heavy metal" at the time, I dont think they are metal at all, but at the time, all sorts of crap were labeled metal.
Sepultura, slayer, early metallica, those are trash metal. Weren't trash metal bands part of the underground scene?


Yeah, you have a point there. I listened to a lot of different genres back then. Everything from Gary Newman to Steely Dan to King Diamond. But now that I think about it, those bands were labeled as "trash, or thrash metal" back in the day.

I love this movie. Here's the trivia section from IMDB:

* Charlotte Rampling had a role as a hitchhiker whom Kowalski met while en route, but her scenes were deleted before the US release. The scenes were re-inserted for the UK release. The DVD release includes both the US and UK versions.

* The car featured in the film is a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T, with a 440 cubic-inch V-8, and not a 426 Hemi V-8 (as is often believed). Five white Challengers loaned from the Chrysler Corporation were used during the filming.

* The Challenger had Colorado plates: OA-5599

* There were actually four 440 Challenger R/Ts and one 383 Challenger R/T, which was an automatic with green interior. This one was used for some exterior shots and it pulled the 1967 Camaro up to speed so the Camaro could hit the bulldozers. As confirmed by property master Dennis J. Parrish, all of the cars were NOT originally white. They were just painted white for the film. During the scene where Kowalski has a flat tire, you can see green paint in the dents.

* Cameo: [David Gates] The singer/songwriter (of Bread fame) played the piano during the rousing revival in the desert with the J. Hovah singers.

* The city names on the California Highway Patrol tracking board (where Kowalski never made it) were Stockton, Oakland, Berkeley and San Francisco.

* Director Richard C. Sarafian's original choice for the role of Kowalski was Gene Hackman, but the studio, 20th Century Fox, insisted on using Barry Newman if the movie was going to be made.

* The color white was chosen for the car simply so the car would stand out against the background scenery in the movie. White was not symbolic in any way. The director says this in the DVD commentary.

* A 1967 Camaro shell (no engine) loaded with explosives was used for the final crash. You can see the "Camaro" fender nameplate upside-down in the lower left corner of the screen after the crash.

I agree with you that songwriters play roles. But Newman chooses to sing about a very volatile subject: racism in America. And instead of denouncing it, he takes the perspective of a bigot which complicates things.

Wikipedia has a great write up about the song:

Like several of Newman's songs, "Rednecks" is sung from the perspective of an interesting, non-neutral narrator — in this case a stereotypical Southern "redneck". In it he expresses his dismay at the way that the North looks down upon The South. In particular the narrator describes his ire at watching a "smart-ass, New York Jew"[1] mock Lester Maddox on a television program (this is an allusion to Maddox's 1970 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show whose eponymous host is actually a gentile). In response to his frustration at the television show, the narrator goes on to list, sarcastically, a litany of negative qualities that Southerners are reputed to have. He focuses especially on their reputed institutionalized racism, or, as the narrator puts it: "keeping the niggers down."

However, as the song ends, the narrator turns the knife on judgmental Northerners, calling them out as hypocrites. He achieves this by singing that the "North has set the nigger free," but pointing out, again sarcastically, that African-Americans are only "free to be put in a cage" (i.e., segregated) in various bad neighborhoods of big Northern cities — victims of, one assumes, the exact same racism that the Southerners are reputed to have. The song's final verse lyric is: "They [the Northerners] gatherin' 'em up, from miles around/Keeping the niggers down."

Like many Newman songs, it is difficult to tell with certainty how much or little Newman himself identifies with the narrator. Clearly, Newman desires to poke fun at smug Yankees that tar all Southerners with the same brush as ignorant, racist fools. But at the same time, he also pokes fun at the narrator himself, demonstrating the narrator's own clear prejudice ("smart-ass New York Jew") and his slavish adherence to his own kind ("he may be a fool, but he's our fool.") In a sense, "Rednecks" shares a lot with another famous Newman tune "I Love L.A." in that Newman both identifies with and seeks to make fun of the narrator at the same time.

Thanks, amigo! Sorry I didn't thank you sooner. I've had pressing matters to attend to recently. Working on the sequel to 2 Girls 1 Cup.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
*promote

>> ^The_Mutt:
Actors play roles. Sometimes songwriters do too.


Definitely true. If you're not singing about yourself, you should always be in character.

I don't see what's so difficult. Newman is pointing out the hypocrisy of the rest of America using the South as their scapegoat for bad race relations, as if there is no racism in the North or on the West Coast.

Why do people have so much trouble understanding that some songs are written in character? Actors play roles. Sometimes songwriters do too.

If you think this is questionably offensive, try "Rednecks"

http://www.videosift.com/video/Randy-Newman-Rednecks

Be on the lookout for "Newman's Own: Coffins" flooding the market.

I kid, I kid. Paul Newman, class-act. *tips hat*

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Paul Newman, RIP' to 'Paul Newman, RIP, 60s' - edited by swampgirl

My favorite Newman role was Henry Gondorff in The Sting. I shall miss you, Paul!

Goodbye, Mr. Newman. You gave us many wonderful portrayals, such as the uncredited fight spectator in The Joe Palooka Story, and Billy the Kid in The Philco-Television Playhouse.

Thank you for not showing your exposed genitals while exiting a car.

This one is for my homies. *pours balsamic vinaigrette on the ground*

>> ^swampgirl:
^you do realize that was a Heston quote


Doh!

I mean, I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about.