The_Triple_Lindy

If you do, remember that Paul prefers that you hold the mic.

Last 10 from the ipod, according to the "back" button: "I Can't Go For That," Hall & Oates "Material Girl," Madonna "Controversy," Prince "HandClap," Fitz and the Tantrums "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic," The Police "Feel it Still," Portugal the Man "Let's Dance," David Bowie "You Don't Get Me High Anymore," Phantogram "Angel of Death," Mac Lethal "Tessellate," alt-J

Well, Milton was both a post-Renaissance poet (so he would've seen many chubby-cheeked renderings) and an Angelican priest-in-training (so he probably would've been familiar with the passages you cite), so you're right -- who knows? If you're really a Bible nerd, may I recommend Elaine Pagels' The Origins of Satan? Great read. She documents extensively the traditional Jewish origins of "the satan" not as an enemy of God, but as a servant and agent of God whose who purpose was to try to catch His people slipping. For example, he was responsible for the incident of Balaam's donkey, and he would've been the one to wager with God over Job. Pagels' overall claim is that our modern idea of Satan is a wholly political phenomenon ... after Christ, various groups of his followers formed, and some of them engaged in propaganda campaigns where they would use the imagery of "satan" to refer to each other. Pagels wrote a couple of books on the Gnostics, which were a separate group of Christ's followers who had their own gospels and rites, and were seen as a threat by those who followed Paul. Point is, I think we're always invited to view every antagonist and adversary in terms of The Ultimate Adversary, and war movies make that particularly easy because war is total Hell, and anyone who could possibly thrive in such an environment must have a little of that hell in him. That's also the most unflattering part of Platoon, because Barnes is so clearly the ravenously self-righteous yet ignorantly destructive side of America that, deep down, doesn't really care about doing good as much as it cares about being in control. "Better to reign in hell," and so forth.

Satan's physical appearance is a heavy focus in Milton's Paradise Lost, which is the text that most other works allude to when they allude to Satan. First of all, he's "monstrous" in size; he's compared to the Leviathan and we're told he towers above all of the fallen angels. Also, even though the poem opens after Satan has already fallen, the reader is told that he was beautiful and "cherubic," which connotes a baby-like face. I think both of those descriptions are interesting because not only does Tom Berenger seem to hulk over everybody, especially as he walks fully upright through a gun fight, but also because his scars make his cheeks (the most pronounced feature on a cherub's face) stand out: Satan's appearance mirrors his character throughout his arc. He is not a purely "evil" character at first, -- he's just trying to assert authority over his own existence ... he wants to live for his own glory, not God's. When he's cast out, he claims that "it's better to reign in hell than to serve in Heaven." But as he dwells in hell and grows more angry and jealous of God's newfound love for Humanity, his hatred causes him to physically change, such that by the end, he's compared to beasts and reptiles. And the speaker declares toward the end of his story, "Hell within him, Hell he brings, and round about him" meaning that hell now exists wherever he is. This all seems to pretty clearly echo in Barnes. As Cameron said, he's the embodiment of war just like Satan is the embodiment of hell. But he also brings war along with him as he goes. He is malicious, egotistical, and savage, fueled by a hatred of everything, especially Elias who is seemingly driven by good intentions ("Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is"), and he makes an awful situation even worse just because he can.

Ha! I totally get where you're coming from, like when Adam Sandler says that he and the cast of Pixels had to have video game training in Key West for a month -- yeah, shut the hell up forever. But I think having actors go through "boot camps" in prep for films like this is less about the actors being macho and more about the psychological brilliance of the directors. Whether moments of duress are simulated or real, it doesn't take long for the effects to set it, and those effects will bleed into everything they do whether they realize it or not. When I hear stories like this, or when I hear about Kubrick making Shelley Duvall a pariah on-set and playing mind games with her in order to put an extra twinge of dread and isolation into her look, I think about how ruthlessly brilliant that is: "This character is tired. The actor can't just act tired -- they need to be tired." It fascinates me to know how susceptible to outside factors we can be, and how big a role context plays in our psychology. We like to think we're 100% in control, but when we're in extraordinary circumstances, stressors play a bigger part than we realize. It's kind of like when my kid is sick and I'm up nights, stressed with little or no sleep ... it doesn't take more than a day or two to start acting crazy, and no matter how professional I am or how well I think I can maintain, my fatigue is probably palpable and obvious to everyone around me. A good director knows how to toy with a human being, and that's all-too often proven dangerous, yet it quite often yields spectacular results in an actor's performance.

I was nervous, but I took a shot and went out on a limb ...

You guys mozzarella like cheesy puns, but I don't think leicester of you.

Pronounced "SmEYEgee," right? Nailed it.

Yes, this! And I also was baffled that this movie treated being a police informant as the kind of thing about which you could throw your weight around in court, as though you weren't ratting out your criminal cohorts as a last ditch effort to keep your own ass out of jail. Not to mention you can't just secretly record a conversation and get that to stand in court. This movie was written by a teenager whose parents watch Law and Order.

That's the very one.

I wouldn't say that Dave Barry is less talented. It's just that his niche is 800 words of offbeat absurdist musing, and so his long-form fiction can tend to become a bit of the slog because you're just trying to make it through long sections of his Dadaist dad humor, which shall henceforth be called Dadadadist. I read Big Trouble and Tricky Business back-to-back one summer and really preferred TB to BT. He had gotten that first book out of the way, which you know he'd been polishing and fretting over in his own head forever. Then, once he finally got a chance to start anew, he did a little bit better. But for sure, his crime fiction in comparison to Elmore Leonard, who is much more invested in crafting a good story that in building a story around his sense of humor.

Holy fucking shit. It seems so obvious now.

Let's talk Annie Lennox for a second: If there's anything in this movie that indicates that this movie had at least some semblance of self-awareness during the rough draft stage, it's the fact that Erin dances exclusively to Annie Lennox. Like living a shitty hotel, we didn't have MTV at my house growing up, but we had VH1, which dedicated a lot of airtime to her. She's a unique kind of rock star and feminist icon. She was almost 40 when she went solo, post-Eurythmics. She had short white hair and sang deep and soulfully. Her videos were artistic and thoughtful and genuine. Her look and style and tastes were very different from everything else out there, and especially everything I listened to. She just kinda represents everything about forgetting what you're supposed to be as a woman in rock and just doing your thing, through and through, and people really loved her around the time this music came out -- kinda riding the same Lilith Fair wave that lifted up Sarah McLachlan and Natalie Merchant, although she had already found her path in the business. She was weird and awesome. So somehow, Erin's use of Lennox's music in this movie must have been intended to add some legitimacy to her pursuits in the adult entertainment business, or to help her transcend the stigma of her new profession in a way that might allow for a little bit of enlightenment to come from all of her struggling. Although in the end, it's just another thing that the movie uses to separate her from the other dancers and places her above them -- her music and her dance is meant to elevate her above her station and those around her. Annie's music is sexy in an unusual, subtle way that's all her own. That could've been indicative of a quality that Erin embraces as a dancer and as a person. Or it could've represented a way for Erin to give the finger to the ridiculously awful men leading empty, devious lives while trying to shame her just because of her job. Or it could have been one big running joke, a hilarious juxtaposition between Lennox's meaningful music and the convoluted stupidity of Erin's situation. Instead, it is none of those things. I'm just saying, Annie Lennox is better than this movie.

Don't you want to see how the head ended up in the fish tank?

I think at some point, the writers of this movie probably believed, misguidedly so, that this movie was going to be an empowering statement for women. Demi is the only non-cartoon character in the world, and her situation is so absurd, with the courts and the custody and the ex and the congressman, that it seems like its trying to show her lopsided fight against the unfairness of patriarchy and the Good ol Boy Network. Plus, she puts how she feels into her dances and backs them with the music from a musical feminist icon. But somewhere along the way, the movie couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to be spoofy satire Showgirls or ultra-edgy Kramer vs. Kramer and it ended up with one of the worst portrayals of a woman's life ever captured on film.

Reminds me of the Bada Bing from Sopranos. I think June is right about him being a serial killer ... Jerry had Dahmeresque qualities about him. Outlook bleak.

Sure, I'm in, unless these storms knock out my power again ... if I disappear suddenly, that's probably what happened.

Mmm, hard pass.

A couple of quick omissions: - When Det. Garcia shows up at Erin's house while she dancing around, she tells him that she was rehearsing, but she was actually getting dressed at the time he showed up. That routine would not be very ... um, lucrative. - When Erin sneaks into her ex's trailer to snatch her daughter, she comes out from behind an old rusted pickup truck, which she hides behind as her ex and his sister walk away. But when she comes out of the trailer, there's a gray Mercedes parked right outside, exactly where the ex would have been walking. - That amount of sugar falling on the henchmen from above would crush them dead, not bury them up to their necks like goddamn Wile E Coyote. - What do you imagine a bog-standard non-motorized wheelchair would go for on the black market?

I have loved these Chicago eps where it's just been the three of them. All glory to the awesome guests and regulars like St. Clair and Esposito and Adam Scott, but the three of them together is pretty magic.

I'll see your Bond and raise you --

I mean, "fire away" is generally my policy. Wait ... I'm suddenly having Best Little Whorehouse in Texas flashbacks.

I don't know about anyone else here, but pretty much all my stripclub experience comes from other movies anyway, so ... :/ But I grew up with rural cable that had no MTV but two VH1 channels, so my experience of Annie Lennox is immense. Fair warning. Also, just a fun, quick story, re: Burt Reynolds -- I was once on a road trip and we stopped at Spinneli's Pizza in Louisville, Ky, and this was painted as a mural on the wall (fair warning -- it's a bit shocking): Bon appetit!

For the jet ski movie, may I suggest: