Gooder Than Hell!

Something happened a few weeks ago that I truly never thought I would see: Sherlock Holmes was the subject of a big-time Hollywood blockbuster movie.

You see, I’ve been into the Great Detective for pretty much all of my life. I’ve blogged about Holmes and related topics for years. I’ve spent more money than I care to remember on eBay on Sherlock collectibles and books and pipes and comics.

It is precisely my love for the character and the canon that makes me not the target audience for the Robert Downey Jr. version. Read the rest of this entry »

There was some brouhaha (a great word) that coincided with the premier of the latest Pixar film “Up,” about the fact that Pixar has made ten awesome films but none of them have had a main character that is a female.

Let me put this to you, Linda Holmes and all the other presumptive bloggers that picked up on this: How do you know WALL-E is not a female?

I re-watched the film recently, and unless I am missing something, there is nothing in the film that explicitly details that WALL-E is a male robot. Eve is quite clearly female, yes, but WALL-E could easily be a girl.

So, if I am right about this, then Pixar has not only flipped the whole debate on its ear – since the people making the complaint are the ones who assumed him to be male, because what else could he be? – but they have introduced the first same-sex relationship in a Disney film.

If you’ve never seen this clip before, man are you in for a treat. The 1943 movie “Stormy Weather” featured 20 musical numbers in a mere 77 minutes – and one of them was this astonishing piece featuring Cab Calloway and the Nicholas Brothers, which still might be the best tap-dancing routine ever filmed.

About the brothers, from their estate web site:

The Nicholas Brothers grew up in Philadelphia, the sons of musicians who played in their own band at the old Standard Theater, their mother at the piano and father on drums. At the age of three, Fayard was always seated in the front row while his parents worked, and by the time he was ten, he had seen most of the great black Vaudeville acts, particularly the dancers, including such notables of the time as Alice Whitman, Willie Bryant and Bill Robinson. He was completely fascinated by them and imitated their acrobatics and clowning for the kids in his neighborhood. Harold watched and imitated Fayard until he was able to dance too, then apparently, he worked his own ideas into mimicry. (continue)

Have you ever felt the urge to cry, for no explainable reason? Yes you have. Maybe you’ve just fought it better than most, but we’ve all felt that occasional surge of emotion that makes no sense. David Lynch, the reigning king of Makes No Sense, delivers an amazing emotional sucker punch in this scene from Mulholland Drive, a scene that is as enigmatic as it is heartbreaking. Why are they crying? I don’t know … why are you?

Put a lot of thought into what exactly would be this site’s first sweet-ass thing … and for some reason, kept coming back to the awesome movie/fable “The Point,” written by Harry Nilsson and narrated by either Alan Thicke or Ringo Starr, depending on how old you were and where you lived when you saw it. Here are the first few minutes.