Here's a link to a great series on YouTube that was shot in my neighborhood. In fact, Gwen, Owen and I watched them shooting episode two. Check it out, it's really good. The cast includes Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis and Paul Scheer.
The Fuselage is taking some time off from our irregular posting. We'll be back around Labor Day.
Gwendolyn turns five on Monday and we're all very excited about this, especially Gwendolyn, but something is bothering her. And that something is that Pluto is no longer a planet. Back when Gwendolyn had just turned four and was first learning about the solar system from Ms. Frizzle, she was taught that Pluto was a planet. Now that she's almost five she has found out that Pluto has been downgraded and she's not happy. This morning she decided that Pluto has overtaken Saturn as her favorite planet ("Pluto is my favorite small planet, Earth is my favorite medium planet and Saturn is my favorite big planet"). Gwendolyn has told me some reasons why Pluto should be a planet:
Whenever I tell people I thought Wall-E was a good movie but nothing special they look at me and say, "You're the first person I know who didn't LOVE Wall-E." It's awkward. Maybe I was a little tense because I went to see it with Gwendolyn and I spend half the movies I see with her worried about her reaction. She had a great time. Towards the end of the movie I heard her making a weird sound like she was yawning but when I looked I saw she was holding back tears at the story. It was a moment that was heartbreaking but wonderful at the same time. I told her everything was going to be OK and, of course, it was but I wanted to tell her how lucky she was to be four and see everything for the first time and not know there's going to be a happy ending.
Years ago I read an interview with V.S Naipaul, I have no idea why, where he said he would give a book 100 pages or so and if he didn't like it he would just stop reading. I've never actually read any of V.S Naipaul's books but I figure if a Nobel Prize-winning author would quit on a book he didn't like I certainly could. This was a revelation. I've been much more aggressive about giving up on books ever since. So, I bailed on The Daughter of Time after about fifty pages. I'd only been reading it because The Crown Crime Companion said it was the fourth-best mystery ever written. Better than Murder Must Advertise, Red Harvest, The Long Goodbye or Murder on the Orient Express. Better than anything written by Jim Thompson, Ross Macdonald or Ken Follett. I beg to differ. After fifty or so pages I found myself with that familiar feeling on involuntarily skimming paragraphs, then whole pages and then not caring enough to go back.
The story is about a English policeman stuck in the hospital who decides to solve the mystery of whether Richard III actually killed his two nephews. This was an interesting premise but there's too much of that breezy British dialogue that I can't stand. I just don't see the point of reading this book when there are still Agatha Christies and Dorothy Sayers I haven't read.
Since I only read this book because The Crown Crime Companion recommended it that book gets sent to paperbackswap.com too. Go, false guide to mystery novels, go! And I'm not going to read Presumed Innocent, either.
The mysterious Vermont Market & Pharmacy, across the street from my apartment made the New York Times today.
I love the style of 1930s medicine in old movies. Everything is white and sterile and made of chrome and porcelain yet people can still smoke cigarettes in the operating room. The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse is Edward G. Robinson, who becomes a criminal to study the physical effects of crime on the human body. Eventually, he takes over a gang and even does blood work on them before their heists. This movie was a lot of fun and has a cool ending. Highly recommended.
For a guy who has been frequently caricatured, Robinson could be a versatile and subtle actor who tried many different kinds characters in the course of his career. I think he's great in Double Indemnity. In fact, his final role was being turned into Soylent Green. Claire Trevor is also great as one of the criminals.
This movie was written by John Huston and was the beginning of an amazing collaboration with Humphrey Bogart (Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, African Queen) that ranks with Scorsese-DeNiro, Wilder-Lemmon and Jones-Bunny as the best in movie history.
