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Poolhall Junkies and Jennifer Government
Also, NGIP (nearly gratuitous) -- my beloved Z made me a Watchmen icon! Someday I've just got to give Lex a cat named Bubastis.
I love sports movies, though I can't stand sports, and Poolhall Junkies is basically a sports movie. Though there's no uplifting training montage, which is really the best part of a sports movie.
Anyhow, it was pretty funny in parts, though somewhat incoherent. The pool was often fun to watch; the central character starts off so good that it's hard to understand how he could ever lose, though the movie fixes that in a Hustler-like plot turn.
Christopher Walken IM'd in a performance that was nonetheless eyecatching. He had the best line in the movie: upon being taunted about a one-in-a-million shot that won him a bet, with the taunter saying he couldn't ever make that shot again, he says, "I don't have to make it again. I just made it now!"
Good point.
The movie also confirmed what I'd thought for a while: MR is cute and all, but when he's with hair, he does nothing for me. He's just another frat boy with a charming smile and a glint of contempt in his eye for anyone taken in by it.
Jennifer Government by Max Barry: Go read this book. It's a two-days-from-tomorrow story about a world in which corporations rule -- to the extent that one's last name is taken from one's employer -- and Nike stages gang-like hits on customers to promote its new sneakers. And that's just the beginning. The coincidences pile on pretty high, but the plot moves fast enough that it's forgivable. And I'm just a sucker for tough-guy dialogue in new settings (Anita Blake, anyone?), like "You're pretty confident for a guy whose antivirus software depends on buffer overruns." Well, in context it's a great line, and literature does the tech-suspense better than movies, where staring at a screen and waiting for a printer is hard to dramatize, as in that last Tom Clancy/Harrison Ford movie.
Also, the title character, with a barcode on her cheek and enough baggage to fill a cargo hold, is just plain fun.
Go read this book.
I love sports movies, though I can't stand sports, and Poolhall Junkies is basically a sports movie. Though there's no uplifting training montage, which is really the best part of a sports movie.
Anyhow, it was pretty funny in parts, though somewhat incoherent. The pool was often fun to watch; the central character starts off so good that it's hard to understand how he could ever lose, though the movie fixes that in a Hustler-like plot turn.
Christopher Walken IM'd in a performance that was nonetheless eyecatching. He had the best line in the movie: upon being taunted about a one-in-a-million shot that won him a bet, with the taunter saying he couldn't ever make that shot again, he says, "I don't have to make it again. I just made it now!"
Good point.
The movie also confirmed what I'd thought for a while: MR is cute and all, but when he's with hair, he does nothing for me. He's just another frat boy with a charming smile and a glint of contempt in his eye for anyone taken in by it.
Jennifer Government by Max Barry: Go read this book. It's a two-days-from-tomorrow story about a world in which corporations rule -- to the extent that one's last name is taken from one's employer -- and Nike stages gang-like hits on customers to promote its new sneakers. And that's just the beginning. The coincidences pile on pretty high, but the plot moves fast enough that it's forgivable. And I'm just a sucker for tough-guy dialogue in new settings (Anita Blake, anyone?), like "You're pretty confident for a guy whose antivirus software depends on buffer overruns." Well, in context it's a great line, and literature does the tech-suspense better than movies, where staring at a screen and waiting for a printer is hard to dramatize, as in that last Tom Clancy/Harrison Ford movie.
Also, the title character, with a barcode on her cheek and enough baggage to fill a cargo hold, is just plain fun.
Go read this book.
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