Django Is Off The Ch-IZ-ain

Bad ass.

Those are the words that came to mind while watching Django yesterday. Quentin Tarantino is one bad ass Muther F*#ker. His entire Django world is bad ass and through all the gore, the blood and violence, twisted justice managed to prevail. The blurred lines in the battle between good and evil are at the core of the adventures of Dr. King Schultz and a black slave named Django.  Bounty hunting is their game and Django and Schultz form a profitable partnership in exchange for Django's freedom. These boys always get their man.





The all star cast: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson had me riveted from the opening seconds, and I seem to have a hankering to now watch Inglorious Basterds. Who is this Christoph Waltz? Where did he come from? Christoph Waltz is Badass. This academy award winning  performance lies at the center of the movie's moral conundrum with bounty hunting as a profession. This movie is no Midnight Run, although you will laugh at it's irony.

And shall we talk about Leo? and Samuel L?

Badass. Both of them.

And if you are in to bloody shootouts, then this movie is for you. I HATE violence, but the violence in Django was somehow necessary and brilliantly executed. Quentin Tarantino, in a cameo appearance, even blows himself up! Ingenious and fun and I can hardly believe I just typed those words. But I did. And that's what a gifted writer does for a story. We are fully vested in his characters and the world in which he creates. Unpleasantries like extreme violence become a vehicle to move the story along.

Talk about poetic justice. Django is one hell of a ride....

Into the smoke smoldering, last man standing, bloody sunset.

Game Day

 Play Video and read on.

So I watched "Silver Linings Playbook" a few days ago.

I thought it was good. Adorable, actually but Oscar worthy? I guess the Academy answered that question. But here's the thing, this movie has actually stayed with me. I find myself thinking about things that happened in the movie. Like today, I heard this groovy song from Train and I actually envisioned Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence dancing at that contest thingie to this song. Weird right?

I though about psychosis.
Bradley Cooper's performance made his character's mental issues palpable. I nearly felt his pain and I'd call that Oscar worthy but I guess it was a bad year to submit this work to the Academy against Daniel Day Lewis and a presidential performance. Either way, I found his character Pat Solitano as sympathetic and teetering on the edge of sanity completely believable. The Chris Tucker cameos were brilliantly amusingly heart-felt.

I thought about family.
When I think about family I also have think about dysfunction and there was plenty of that going on in this movie. Robert DeNiro played Pat's estranged father as a Philadelphia Eagle obsessed gambling addict, who insulated his own psychosis using his doting wife and his sacred ritualistic "game day".

I thought about adultery.
Cooper's Pat was a man wronged by his wife and discovered her in his shower with another man.  This event triggered his downward spiral.

I thought about fear.
The fear of thinking outside the box and that Tiffany, Jennifer Lawrence, represented all of those things to Pat, yet he somehow felt safe and continued to pursue the dance routine he agreed to perform in exchange for a favor. A dance routine performed by jock, ex teacher,  ex-mental health patient at a regional competition?

I though about love.
And the power of love. And how love makes us do things we would never even dream that we were capable of. And that if we believe in love, it just may work out for us, like it did for Pat and Tiffany.

And if a movie can make me think of all these things in the days since I watched it, then I wouldn't call that too weird. I would call that a silver lining.

Cand-nac The Magnificent

OK, so I stole the name from the late great Johnny, so lets hope the spirit of the late, great, Carnac the Magnificent is with me today when I make my predictions for 2013.

Lets start at the top shall we? This is an easy one and I've got a 50-50 shot here, so I'm going with my gut...

1. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West will have a...BOY! Just a hunch here, but I'm thinking boy. I was right about My Tommy and Giselle and baby Vivian Lake, so maybe I'm good at this. I'm thinking Kimmy K isn't showing yet, and her face and body don't look different yet, so I say its a boy. Girls take over like little aliens and change you all up when you are carrying them, and Kim  looks like could have held out on the announcement for a while longer. And she's three months along. I'll be keeping a tight watch on her face, if it changes and she starts to look like shit, GIRL. I also predict that Klohe and Lamar will finally get preggers this year too.

2. The US economy will continue its climb upward. Wishful thinking, really. But I am a retailer and I'm watching people spend money (in an affluent community) and I'm thinking that things are looking up. Consumer confidence is creeping back, and I'm hoping that the jobless rate goes creeping down. A bold prediction here, considering that the retail numbers rose at a mere 0.7% for the 2012 Christmas season and was the weakest rise since 2008. I'm still going to predict a better economic climate and the US Stock market to continue to regain it's strength. Today's Dow number is at 13 thousand, just two thousand off it's all time high at 15 thousand back in 2007.

3. NHL Hockey will not have a 2012-2013 season. Greed, greed and more greed will keep the two sides from reaching an agreement by Jan 11th in order for a Jan 19th- 48 game season to be played.. And here's the kicker...NO ONE will care. For us hockey fans out there, we are beyond disgusted by yet another standoff  and if they loose the fan's interest, they will loose the sponsors interest and that ever important sponsor dollar. Not to mention the network air time and network dollars. If life goes on much longer without NHL hockey, I fear that the fans will loose interest and the game, already an underdog in the network money game, and will be in danger of  never coming back from it. GET IT TOGETHER GUYS!

4. Ben Affleck will win an Oscar for Argo. Since I have yet to see the film, I'm not quite sure if it will be for acting or directing or BOTH, so I'm going to predict at least one more statuette for Ben to bring home for  his latest, Argo.

5. I'm not going to do what I did last year and jinx the shit outta my boys, so I'm just going to predict that a certain team from a certain place will make it to New Orleans on Feb 3, 2012, and that  same certain team will WIN the big kahuna in all sports. If you know anything about me, you will be able to fill in the blanks here.


That's it blooggers! Lets see how I did in about 363 days from now.