"Everything I touch dies, so that's not much fun on a date."

A fine interview.

Good Movies Are Good For the Soul

I saw two films at the Wisconsin Film Festival last night. Both were excellent.

My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin's experimental documentary about his hometown, was utterly amazing. It was funny, weird, gorgeous, and very nearly perfect.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies was clever and a lot of fun. Like Down with Love or Far From Heaven, the cinematography, set design, and costumes were designed to give the feel of a time period through the movies of that time period, and they really captured the look of James Bond-ish thrillers. And Jean Dujardin was an eye-opener as the central spy, OSS 117 (sort of a cross between Austin Powers, James Bond, and Inspector Clouseau). He's an amazing comic actor.

Wisconsin Film Festival

The Wisconsin Film Festival starts today. I'm going to a few movies. It's their 10th anniverary this year. To celebrate this momentous occasion, here are some of my favorites from years past.

Whole: an amazing documentary about people who want to have their limbs removed.

The Big Red One: the reconstruction of one of Sam Fuller's great movies and one of the best war movies ever made.

Young Frankenstein: the classic Mel Brooks comedy, shown at the beautiful Capitol Theatre last year. This was just a great movie-going experience. I wish they were using this theater as a venue again this year, but for some reason they're not.

Blackboards: a wonderful, sad film from Iran.

Slasher: John Landis's amusing documentary about used car salesmen.

Cure: a truly excellent Japanese horror film.

Wheel of Time: Werner Herzog's documentary about Tibetan Buddhists. Beautiful.

Story of the Weeping Camel: one of the sweetest, most poignant movies I've seen.

The Life of Reilly: a surprisingly (?) awesome movie about Charles Nelson Reilly.

The Milk Can: one of the funniest movies I've seen in recent years.

Martin & Orloff: a very funny comedy from the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Meet the Parents: the original that the Ben Stiller movie was based on. Much darker and weirder. With Emo Philips, who is weirder than this guy, but maybe not as good an actor.

Youtube Frenzy

Here are a bunch of mostly unconnected youtube videos I just like. They're good, in different ways.

Mike Gravel does "Helter Skelter." Cause that song isn't associated with crazy people at all.


This was his last little number. It's awesome.


Excellent April Fool's gag from Terry Jones and co.


The greatest ad ever made: Hungarian sausages!



And this is sublime and beautiful.

Comedyball

From one of my favoritest web sites: some baseball-related comedy yucks.

Old-timey Slang of the Day

heavy-cake: a ladies' man

AFSCME

Funny PSA on the youtubes.

Jokes With Realistic Endings

Here's a link to something that you can read.

Link.