Welcome to the 96th Edition of my blog. This is the second week in the NFL and I won my
first game in fantasy with the Myspace Football league by defeating Mike's Space Cowboys
and I did it thanks to Tony Romo, Ellis Hobbs (New England returner), Carolina
defense/special teams, and Clinton Portis, along with some supporting members. This
week I play the team of Crazy Crabs and I don't know who that is but hopefully I can go
2-0. Now I know none of you came to hear me talk about Fantasy Football so here it goes...
Mean Girls (2004): I said last week that I was going to go into some uncharted waters
and this is what I meant. This is the first time I have ever featured Lindsey Lohan on my
blog. Let me say first that I really don't care what she does. I hope she recovers from
her problems and comes back because she was in some pretty decent movies around this
time period and this one seems to be her most popular. I don't keep up with the celebs on
a weekly basis, I don't watch gossip shows and I'm a bit anti-media anyways so I do not
hate Lindsey Lohan, I just don't really care. All I know is that I watched this social satire
and I laughed. This was based on a novel by Rosalind Wiseman and the screenplay was
co-written by Saturday Night Live writer Tina Fey who also co-starred as the teacher.
You can find a couple of SNL alums including Tim Meadows as the principal, Amy Poehler
as the "cool" mom, and Ana Gasteyer as Lindsey's mom. Now to the star of this movie,
Lindsey Lohan. She plays a teen named Cady, who after 16 years is going to a public
school after being home-schooled in Africa and living there. When she gets to this
school, she finds a whole new world. The first friend she makes is a gothic girl, played
by Freaks and Geeks alum Lizzy Caplan, and her gay friend who educate her on the
different cliques in the school and in turn uses Cady to get revenge on her enemy in the
"Plastics", played by Rachel McAdams. She is the leader of the Plastics, I think you can
all guess they type of clique this one is and leads a few other girls played by Party of
Five alum Lacey Chabert, Big Love star Amanda Seyfried, and I'm not sure who the
other girl was. Cady finds herself in with this group in an undercover role but becomes
more and more like them leading into a hilarious girl fight at the school. This is a very
interesting, purposely-exaggerated social satire on the stupid world of cliques in high
school.
Monster's Inc. (2001): Now we go from the controversial Lohan into the world of
Pixar. We go into a strange town where the only way to generate electricity is for
monster's to go scaring children. Billy Crystal lends his voice as Mike and John
Goodman is the top scarer named Sulley who is in competition with his unscrupulous
rival Randall Boggs, voiced by Steve Buscemi. A mishap happens and a little girl
escapes from her room into their world and Sulley gets attached to her and tries to help
her which pits him against Randall. The voice of the little girl that Sulley names Boo, is
voiced by Mary Gibbs who was a real-life little girl and got her voice from following her
play. Cheers alum John Ratzenberger plays the Abominable Snowman who it turns out
we just stereotype him into a horrible person. This was one of the better Pixar films,
maybe a little dark for real young children.
Quicksand (1950): This is the last of my Film Noir series I have been unofficially
doing . This one stars Mickey Rooney who is a pretty nice car mechanic who is way too
determined to impress a girl so he takes $20 from his employer which leads him into a
lot of trouble and eventually into murder. An older Peter Lorre plays one of his
problems and has a great role but I don't think I need to explain much further. It is a
pretty exciting movie for its time and a good role for Mickey Rooney.
Flicker Memories (1941): This is my short film for the week which I got from the
DVD I had of the Marx Brothers' Go West and the Big Store. Pete Smith, who was big
in the world of short films directs and narrates this homage to silent films woven into a
story. Definetly a fun 8 minutes.
Blue Hawaii (1961): Lindsey Lohan makes her debut in my blog series and so does
the King of Rock' 'N Roll Elvis Presley. Elvis is returning to Hawaii from the Army and
goes back in with his surf buddies. Murder, She Wrote alum Angela Lansbury plays his
mom who wants Elvis to move up the corporate ladder where his dad works but he
won't have anything of it and struggles to make his own life. This includes many of his
songs including his beautiful ballad "Can't Help Falling in Love". Many consider this
movie to be Elvis' best and his best performance.
Charlie's Angels (1976): Look at the year, this is not the 2000 Blockbuster
remake, this is the pilot episode which I found in the Free Movies section of
On-Demand and it was different than other things I had planned so I went ahead and
checked it out. This is the original three, Farrah Fawcett, Jaclyn Smith, and Kate
Jackson who I guess also make their debuts on my blog. David Doyle still plays Bosley
here but in this episode, he is right under someone else played by Dead Zone alum
David Ogden Stiers who communicates with Charlie but apparently they felt his
character was unneccessary. Look for a young Tommy Lee Jones who lives by himself
with his dog. I don't really have to explain much except they have a big case. You can
also find this on Charlie's Angels: Season 1 on DVD which is where I first saw it.
Jesse James (1939): A couple weeks ago I featured Jesse James at Bay starring
Roy Rogers as the famed outlaw and was made later. The Roy Rogers version paints
Jesse into nothing but a hero, not even an anti-hero but in this version emphasizes
James as more of an outlaw and a Robin Hood who becomes a lot meaner when he gets
more powerful. I did some research on this and this version seems fairly accurate
including the love of his life, the way he became an outlaw, things like that. Tyrone
Power plays the title character very well who sees a lot of corruption from land barons
and decides to do something about it and forms the James-Younger gang. Henry Fonda
plays his more level-headed brother Frank.. Character actor John Carradine plays the
role of Bob Ford and if you just research Jesse James a little bit, you'll know exactly
who he is. I liked that this did show Jesse's dark side, even in a western of the 30s
because while the Robin Hood qualities might have existed to a point, he was still an
outlaw and a killer at that. Definetly a good interpretation of James and look for
B-western star Randolph Scott who plays the marshall.
United 93 (2006): We all know the date for last Tuesday and with our parents and
grandparents, they have Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 and the Kennedy
Assassination November 22, 1963, our generation will always remember the terrorist
attack on September 11, 2001. I have brought Lindsey Lohan into this blog, now I bring
an even more controversial subject. I'm sure that anyone who has desired to see this
movie has and I doubt I can convince anyone who doesn't want to see it to do so and I
understand. This movie takes place on flight 93 which was the only plane to not hit
their target due to some regular civilians stopping the terrorists and unfortunately had
to give their lives in doing so. Paul Greengrass was the director and we need to credit
him for actually getting the blessing of the surviving family members on the doomed
flight and his selection of the actors as being unknown was also something I thought
really worked. Not only that, he had them stay pretty separate from each other to get
the unknown tensions. The only actor I recognized the second time I watched it was
Boston Legal's Christian Clemenson who plays Jerry and in this movie is the passenger
who organizes the plan to counter the terrorists. Another critique against this movie I
have heard is the lack of character development. This was meant to show the possible
events on this plane, and we know this is not a hollywood film where Steven Seagul,
Chuck Norris, Kurt Russell, or Samuel L. Jackson, saves the day, the heroes here were
the passengers who were not able to survive. This also looks into Air Traffic Control
which was a forgotten group of people who also had a very long day. Let me also say
that I do not hate World Trade Center and thought that was actually done quite well but
I choose this of the two but if you haven't seen it now, you probably won't want to see
it and if someone reading this had a family member or friend die in the attacks, my
thoughts go out to all of you.
Flesh + Blood (1985): I have seen that this movie has been on On-Demand for
quite some time and I finally got around to watching it. This is a movie which takes
place in midieval times. Paul Verhoven who directed Robocop, directs this interesting
tale of a band of mercenaries who kidnap the fiancee of Steven, played by Tom
Burlinson, who goes after her with everything he has. However, she begins to fall for
her captor, Martin, played by Rutger Hauer who seems to not be crazy about his guys.
Jennifer Jason Leigh, an actress I'll never recognize if someone doesn't tell me it's her,
plays the fiancess Agnes. This is rather violent and is definetly not for all tastes, but
fun to watch. I see there is a remake in development, we'll see what that is like.
Carla's Song (1996): The two things I was looking for was a 90s movie and something
relatively unknown and I found this one. Underrated British actor Robert Carlyle plays
a bus driver named George who meets a girl of the title name who is from Nicaragua
and is staying there in exile. George begins to fall for this girl and takes her back to
her country to see what has happened to her family and to her boyfriend and George
finds himself in a war-torn country and has some difficult choices to make. Pretty
decent independent film, nothing great, but still a moving film.
Well, that is it for this week. Thank you to everyone who takes time to read these
blogs. I would like you to check out my new website
http://www.ionways.com/shaunberkey and if you have any questions, just send me a
message. Good luck to everyone in my fantasy league and everyone have a great
week and I'll be back next Sunday with 10 more recommendations as well as a
Wednesday blog on a topic I haven't named yet. Leave your comments, tell me your
favorites and your least favorites, I know I can't satisfy everyone.
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