Movie Night: Cats and Dogs

Those of you who've been around Kal's World for a while are familiar with Movie Night. This is when we break out The Sandra Bullock Scale© to rate the Saturday night movie choices of the Jones Clan.

The Sandra Bullock Scale© was devised to rate a movie sleepability, due to my inability to stay awake through any Sandra Bullock film since Demolition Man. A perfect score of five out of five represents a movie's a) stupifying boredom combined with b) lack of even token nudity despite hot chickage [see Practical Magic... what a waste of time, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock and zero nudity... Rated PG-13 for sensuality my fanny...])

Cats And Dogs (2001)

This movie was the purrfect (bwa ha ha, I kill me!) Sandra Storm.

1) I've already seen it at least five times
2) It's a stupid movie
3) I'd been raking leaves all day so I was kind of tired anyway.

You see, we've finally broken down and gotten Netflix. Now, this is great because our local rental shop closed down over the summer (due to Netflix), and the closest rental place is the next town over that we generally go to twice a month for groceries, so we've been spending an average of $15 per rental, when figuring in all the fascist late fees.

Netflixhas been great. We've been getting two movies a week, and haven't had a problem watching them over the weekend and returning them in time for two new movies the following week.

Last week, however, I had to mail the movies back from Pleasantville instead of Boston, and the pony must have been sick, because I cut it a bit too close and with the federal holiday on Saturday we missed getting back one of the movies in time.

(A digression, if I may. The Pleasantville Post Office is a small branch personed [can't say "manned" anymore] by two people with the urgency of... well... two not very urgent people. They really belong off in Vermont or something, but we're stuck with them. Fine. That's okay, I'm generally not interacting with them too much, since I work normal human hours I leave town and get back to town long before they've opened at 9am and boarded up at 3pm. [Or something like that, I really can't be bothered with the details right now.] But on a couple of occassions recently I've had need of them during a normal business day.

So I trundle up to the Post Office, only to find that they're closed for lunch. They take a lunch hour! From 12:30 to 1:30 they're closed. WTF? There's two people in the office. How hard would it be for one person to cover the desk while the other one scarfs up their Campbell's Soup in their lovely Mr. Zip thermos? [I've got one of those from 1974, it's a prized possession].

And wouldn't lunch hour be the exact time when a service industry person be most needed by those of us who have real jobs? We're going to slip out during lunch and buy our stamps or pick up our certified letters from lawyers threatening us that unless we don't stop sending those love letters to Kate Hudson there's going to be real trouble, but, jeez, it seems that she and Owen are taking some time off from each other, and little Ryder really needs a father figure and...

Oh... Sorry about that.

BTW: Kate: call me...

Any way... Okay, better get back to the main point of this post...

Digression: Off)

Yes, hmm... where were we? Oh, yes. So no kid movie from Netflix this week, and we had to plumb the vast catalog of Family Jones-owned movies for the evening juvenile movie. The Boy, whose turn it was to pick the movie, came up with this stinker. I think I lasted ten minutes. But since I've seen it like eleventy-hundred times before, a couple of notes:

1) How depressing would it have been if this had been Charlton Heston's last movie? As it is, he only did four movies after this (assuming he's done with acting, which I would say is the case four years after a diagnosis of suspected Alzheimer's disease).

2) We have to put a stop to stars having children. This is what happens when stars have children, they make these crappy kid movies. I've got to believe that was the case with Heston, he was doing this for his grandkids -unless his Alzheimers is more advanced than otherwise thought, and he thought he was signing on to some sequel to Planet of the Apes or something... Ye Gods.

3) There is no three. Really. This movie stunk. All over.

Look, I like kids movies. I like not having to think too much about the plot and I feel smart when I get the jokes obviously targeted at at the parents in the crowd.

But this movie didn't have any of that. And, on top of that, it went out of its way to annoy you. It also miscast just about every voice part, with the exception of the puppy voiced by Tobey Maguire, who pulled off the naive newbie routine. But people like Jon Lovitz, Sean Hayes (Jack! of Will and Grace), and Alec Baldwin use so much physicality in their acting they're wasted in a voice only role. Beyond the "oh, yeah, that's so-and-so" they didn't bring anything to the roles.

So, the rating. I was toying with the idea of a "6 out of 5" Sandras award for a movie so awful that you actually try to go to sleep during it to save yourself from having to watch, but that would require work;

Cats and Dogs earns...

5 out of 5 Sandras

Next up: the adult movie of the evening, Thank You for Smoking.

And Kate: really, Wifeypooh would be okay with an open relationship kind of thing. I'll treat you better than Owen, and I won't look like a homeless person like Chris...

I'm Going to Hell...

So, the hard drive got so farked up that I couldn't even defrag it, so it was time to clean out the "slave" drive I'd cannibalized and had mounted for back-up purposes and move some stuff over there so the kids could actually play a game without the damn computer freezing up.

So as I'm slogging through all the crap to see what I can toss, I came upon a folder of screencaps from the computer's DVD player.

Which is where I stumbled upon a bunch of screen captures from In the Cut, the 2003 movie in which Meg Ryan goes au natural. Oh, wait, I should restate that so I get a crapload of search engine hits: MEG RYAN GETS NAKED. NUDE. NO CLOTHES. BUCK NEKKID.

Here's one picture we can show on a family blog.



In the Cut features Ryan as a writing teacher stuck in some sort of imbroglio with Mark Ruffalo, who plays a detective. They get it on. Jennifer Jason Leigh is involved somehow. Frankly, I can't remember the plot at all, if there was one beyond Ms. Ryan getting all de-clothed.

Naturally I made about a bazzilion screencaps of certain scenes, which, as I mentioned, I have recently found after forgetting about them.

Couple of thoughts come to mind which perusing the pics:

1) Mark Ruffalo: I hope you burn in hell. Okay, in one two year period you got naked with Meg Ryan, and made out with Kirsten Dunst (Eternal Sunshine...) and Jennifer Garner (13 going on 30). You suck. I hope you die of some tropical rotting disease.

Could I at least smell your finger?

(ok, that was very, very wrong. I apologize...)

2) Okay, okay. Meg's like 42 in this movie. Don't care. It's Meg Ryan! And in case you google search-bots missed it, she's NAKED. It's kind of like when Tom Seaver pitched 16 games to close out his career with the Red Sox in 1986. Tom freakin' Seaver: first ballot hall of famer, best National League pitcher since, hell, Koufax? And we got to see him. Sure, there were pitchers with better stuff in 1986, but the "touch with greatness" of having Seaver was worth it. Sure, in 2003 there were other actress you'd argue would look better naked, but it's MEG RYAN!

(My life's ambition is to work as an orderly in Meg Ryan's nursing home and woo and conquer Ms. Ryan when she's 80.... That would be sooooo cool. Then I'd call my brother and say: "Oh yeah, I just had Meg Ryan"... Problem is, the bastard would've just got done shagging 65 year-old Alicia Silverstone... Jerk...)

3) The question: what to do with these pictures? The question you have to ask yourself is, what will your kids do when they find them... Because they will. No matter what kind of protection and armed vaults and all sorts of crap I put on them, The Boy will find them someday.

So you've got to figure out, what would The Boy do with them? First possibility: he would, well, do what teenage boys do when they find nekkid pictures (of MEG RYAN!!), and I'd never know about it (but the Kleenix in the downstairs bathroom would disappear at an astounding pace...). This approximates what happened when I found my Dad's stash.

Second possiblilty: he could narc me out to Wifeypooh. That would be bad. Not necessarily the possession of filthy, dirty, NAKED PICTURES OF MEG RYAN (just want to make sure we're clear what we're talking about here), but the fact that I would let my poor, innocent little 15 year old get access to them. (When, in point of fact, if he is like any 15 year old, he'll already have had access to more naughty stuff than I ever dreamt of...).

So... How much do I trust the kid?

Yeah. I thought so. Pardon me while I go delete everything and reformat the disk...

Movie Night: No Chicks Allowed Edition

Well, Wifeypooh's off at a dinner for one of her clubs, so we've got Chez Kal all to ourselves. Put the kids off to bed after a nutritious dinner of frozen pizza and black cows (with extra-special whipped cream because Kal is a whipped dad and The Girl whined until I relented).

This Stag Edition of Movie Night is brought to you by: Tums - our best friend at 3:30 in the morning when the pizza is working its way through...

Tonight's feature: Michael Mann's 1986 version of Tom Harris' book Red Dragon; Manhunter, starring Gus Grissom William Petersen!



Manhunter is a pantheon Kal movie. I fell in love with it when I first saw in on HBO, and William Petersen's portrayal of Wil Graham is still one of my favorite male roles of all time. (Fortunately I get to see Petersen doing Petersen doing Graham every Thursday night on C.S.I.) (Actually, that's not fair. C.S.I. is more Petersen doing Bill Smitrovich's portrayal of the documents expert Llyod Bowman.) (But I digress...)

Anyway, I love Manhunter. I love everything about it:

From the 1980's set design - the stark, all white modernist institution where Lecktor is kept,

To the period costumes - 1980's keys abound; the black shirts with light, thin ties, Lound's ridiculous mushroom cap perm. The only way it could have been more authentic was to have Reba the blind girl in legwarmers. and,

the acting - Petersen's Graham. Tom Noonan's wonderful Francis Dolarhyde. And Brian Cox's breakout role as Lecktor.

Manhunter was the subject of one of my first blogs ever, where I broke down a comparison between that movie and Red Dragon, the 2002 remake starring Edward Norton (ugh) and Ralph Fines Finnes Fiennes (ick). (Which is incidentally still my most popular blog, due to the number of bad spelling straight women or gay men who google "Ralph Feinnes naked").

Anyway, as you can guess, Manhunter ain't going to garner a lot of Sandras©.

In fact, I give it...



0 Sandra Bullocks!

(as you know, the Sandra Bullock scale was devised to rate a movie's sleepability, due to my inability to stay awake through any Sandra Bullock film since Demolition Man. A perfect score represents a movie's a) stupefying boredom combined with b) a lack of even token nudity despite hot chickage.)

Ah, but we're not done.

We've got a new rating system for certain movies here at Kal's World. We'll be using it more over at The Garage, but I wanted to give it a spin over here first.

The Ronnies (patent pending) will judge a movies '80s-ishness. From set, to costume, to dialogue, ambiance and plot, a 5 out of 5 Ronnie movie will exemplify everything we love, or not, about the 1980s.

I looked long and hard for a standard by which to measure, and, while opinions may differ and there are a number of movies which would score 5 out of 5 on a Ronnie scale, I think we're going to assign Top Gun, and The Breakfast Club, as co-exemplars of the genre.

So how does Manhunter measure up?

As we've mentioned, the movie's ambiance is totally 1980s. It was directed by Michael Mann, who cut his teeth on Miami Vice, and, before that, music videos. You've even got fashionable stubble on Wil Graham. the set design and costuming is right out of the 1984. All the movie needed was a denim skirt and a Baby on Board suction cup thingy for the car window.

I was toying with giving 4 Ronnies, because I thought the plot was kind of non-temporally specific; it could've popped up in any decade. But, when you think about it, serial killers, and the FBI behavioralists who chase them down, really came to the fore in the 1980s after Ted Bundy was caught in Florida.

Here's Bundy, and seemingly normal, intelligent and charming man. He's not the freakish John Wayne Gacy-type character that had been the archetype of earlier serial killers. The 1980s saw the rise of fear of the intelligent monster. And Tom Harris rode that fear to three best-sellers and four movies. This is a quintessential 1980s movie, so we're going to give it:



5 of 5 Ronnies!

Ciao.

Movie Night: Pride and Prejudice (2005)

Saturday is Movie Night at Chez Kal most weeks (welcome to middle age...), and due to my desire to get Wifeypooh out of the house so I could finish cleaning by myself (one can only take so much "Oh, and why didn't I think to look under the couch cushions for this half-eaten bag of Cheetos?" sarcasm), I made the mistake of sending her to the movie store to pick the evening's viewing.

You see, it wasn't even her turn. The last movie we rented was Memoirs of a Geisha, and unless you think I'm a completely whipped girly man, there's no way you could confuse that one for a Kal Movie choice. So it should've been my turn to pick out the movie, which means something with a) Arnold Schwarzenegger, b) young busty lasses who seem to misplace their shirts, or c) lasers, or some combination thereof.

So what did she come back with? Yep. Pride and Prejudice. Great literature costume drama. Oh, kerfuffle.

Don't get me wrong. This is a lovely movie, with good casting (I was particularly smitten with Rosamund Pikes' Jane, the oldest Bennett daughter), beautifully filmed and well acted, but man. Here's the problem: when Wifeypooh brought it home she suggested I was free to call Brotherdear and see if he wanted to come over and watch some revolting piece of horror-movie downstairs (possibly involving a bottle of scotch). So put a call into Brotherdear, and went to Saturday church; hopes all full of alcohol and really cheese horror movies.

Spoke to him again when we got back from church. Unfortunately for me, Brotherdear had a previous engagement he was unable to break; so no "Exorcism of Emily Rose" for me. And, in a two-fer, if I slept through this one, after conking out during Memoirs, I was toast.

Thanks to spectacular acting, though, I was saved, and managed to stay up through the entire movie! Was it the subtle and textured portrayal of the pained Mr. Darcy? Pike's absolutely shining playing of the buoyant and guileless Jane? Donald Sutherland's sublime underplaying of the father inflicted with five girls? No - it was rather the authentic British accents which made portions of the movie nearly incomprehensible.

Look, I speak English as well as the next guy. Well, even better than the next guy, if the next guy is your typical Boston cabbie. I love the King's English, and don't even mind the affected late 18th century manner of speaking. It's that I just can't understand it. Particularly when spoken conversationally with background music going on. I felt like I need to turn on the "for the hard of hearing" option on Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail, where the announcer yellingly A-NUN-CI-ATES all the words. Jeez, you limeys: open your mouths when you talk!

Wifeypooh was having the same problem, so we turned on the subtitles. That worked, but also made the movie harder to fall asleep during. Which, on balance, is a good thing, as this was the best adaptation of Austen's canonical novel I've ever seen. Okay, okay... it's also the first one I've been able to watch from start to finish without falling asleep. Okay, okay: so I've never even managed to finish the novel, either...

Anyway, big shout out to Keira Knightley, Rosamund Pike, Don Sutherland, and Dame Judi Dench who can scare the crap out of you just by standing up - now that's a woman. Wonderful movie. Blah blah blah. It still would've had me dreaming of large women (okay, who gets the reference?) in fifteen minutes had I had not to actually read the whole thing. We'll give "Pride and Prejudice":



4 of 5 Sandra Bullocks!

(as you know, the Sandra Bullock scale was devised to rate a movie's sleepability, due to my inability to stay awake through any Sandra Bullock film since Demolition Man. A perfect score represents a movie's a) stupefying boredom combined with b) lack of even token nudity despite hot chickage.)

(And this being said, Pride and Prejudice was a very, very good movie; well written, acted, and filmed. But I still would have snoozed through it...)

Movie Night: Memoirs of a Geisha

Last night was movie night at Chez Kal, and Wifeypooh and I rented Memoirs of a Geisha. Here's my review:

ZZzz ZZZZ ZZ ZZZZZZzzzzz zzzZZZZ Zzzz zZZZz - snork, cough cough - ZZZzzz zzz ZZZZz zzz zzZZz zzz.... etc etc.

Holy cow.

What a friggin boring movie. Yeah, yeah - nice costumes. Big deal. Damn.

I give it 5 out of 5 Sandra Bullocks*



(* the Sandra Bullock scale was devised to rate a movie sleepability, due to my inability to stay awake through any Sandra Bullock film since Demolition Man. A perfect score represents a movie's a) stupifying boredom combined with b) lack of even token nudity despite hot chickage [see Practical Magic... what a waste of time, Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock and zero nudity... Rated PG-13 for sensuality my fanny...])

Manhunter V. Red Dragon

Most Popular Post Ever. While I prefer to think it's that my humoprous and inciteful observations regarding Manhunter and Red Dragon are to blame, Statcounter tells me it's because I get a lot of traffic from people looking for nekkid pictures of Ralph Fiennes...

Some thoughts while trying to not obsess about the computer solitaire game the KEEPS CHEATING ME SO I CAN’T GO TO BED.

(Yes, yes, we are developing a nice little obsessive compulsive tic that requires I beat solitaire before I go to bed. And I’ve got to beat the four different solitaires on my Palm Pilot in sequence to have a good day at work. I tell you, I’m about two degrees separated from needing live chicken blood and the earth from a graveyard harvested under a full moon to get dressed in the morning….)

Rented “Red Dragon” on Friday night. In a fit of typical maleishness, slept through good portions of it. Went back the next morning and watched it while wifey-pooh and the fruits of my looms were out. While I was grouting. You know, if you’re ever too scared of a movie to fully enjoy it, just watch it while you’re grouting. There’s nothing like polishing that skim coat of grout off tiles 400 times to dull the terrifying effects of a movie.

Of course, try writing a review of said scary movie at 1:30 in the morning in a house full of various and sundry sounds. Not good times.

Not that Red Dragon was particularly scary. Actually, I didn’t find it at all scary. Or in the least scary. Or the teensiest bit scary. Well, perhaps Ed Norton’s pathetic attempt at Wil Graham was scary. Yeesh. I hold no particular grudge against Ed Norton. I haven’t seen American History X, so I can’t see him as a tough guy. I did see him in that god awful film with Ben Stiller and Jenna Elfman, where he plays a nice guy priest, and I think I’ve seen him in some other films where he basically plays a nice, dull, young man.

But Wil Graham ain’t a nice young man. He’s a tortured, world-weary veteran of mayhem, death and destruction. Ed Norton as a world weary detective able to see through the eyes of a homicidal sociopath – I’d rather be forced to sit and watch Al Gore speeches, for goodness sakes.

Now, perhaps had I come to this movie as a “Red Dragon” virgin, then perhaps I could’ve bought the whole thing. But I didn’t. You see, Manhunter, the 1986 version starring William Peterson (“Hey. Ain’t that the movie with Grissom?” Says wifeypooh. Pretend not to shudder…. Pretend not to shudder…. “Ah, yes… It is…”) is perhaps one of my favorite movies of all time. And Red Dragon, for all it’s production values, for the valiant consistency with the printed material, just, well… sucks. Let’s do a tale of the tape and compare these movies side by side, Manhunter from 1986, and Red Dragon from 2002.

Wil Graham: Ed Norton (02) vs. William Peterson (86). ADVANTAGE: Manhunter.

Manhunter came along at a very impressionable time for me. And William Peterson’s portrayal of Graham, combined with his role in “To Live and Die in L.A.” and the HBO Bull Durham rip-off “Long Gone” remain the trifecta of crusty, world weary, macho dude role models. There’s a scene in both versions where Graham is talking to Freddie Lounds, feeding him the B.S. story meant to draw the Tooth Fairy into a trap. Peterson-Graham (I keep trying to write “Grissom”) comes off as contemptuous of Lounds and impatient with the whole charade. Norton-Graham practically giggles like a school-girl comparing notes with Lounds (played in 02 by Phillip Seymor Hoffman, who is very good). You do the math.

Lecter: Sir Anthony Hopkins (02) vs. Brian Cox (86) ADVANTAGE: Manhunter.

Ah, yes, you say to me. Obvious proof the boy has flipped his lid. Sir Anthony is a member of the Royal Shakespeare theater… Sir Anthony has been knighted by the Queeen… Sir Anthony was in “Remains of the Day” a costume drama period piece you actually liked! All these things you say to me. I respond: true, all of the above. I say to you: Sir Anthony chewed so much scenery in this movie (and Hannibal) that I needed a sympathetic dose of Maalox. He’s become a caricature of himself. And his accent has become weird to the point of distraction. What the hell is it with that phony southern affectation he does from time to time? And he looks absolutely awful. In one of the DVD extras the director says that Hopkins put on 30 pounds for the role – was it to try and bloat up so the wrinkles wouldn’t show so prominently? This movie was supposed to take place before the other two! Sir Anthony playing Lector has become like Jack Nicholson to me, just playing the same character on autopilot. Cox WORKED to give us Lector, and it’s much more satisfying.

The Tooth-Fairy: Ralph Finnes (02) vs. Tom Noonan (86). ADVANTAGE: Manhunter.

Well, Duh. The Tooth Fairy is supposed to be a scarily deformed man who is shy and awkward with others. Tom Noonan is freaky. Uber freaky, as our good friend Shaggy would say. I mean that little scar on Finnes-Dolarhyde’s upper lip is supposed to be enough to turn him into a serial killer? Puh-leeze. And Finnes accent?! Ye Gods. Between Finnes and Anthony Hopkins it’s a murder-the-generic-american-accent fest. Plus, Ralph Finnes spends entirely too much of this movie naked. Now, I don’t need to see that. I really don’t need the scene where Finnes-Dolarhyde has his morning-after dialogue with the dragon (the dragon wants him to off Reba, Dolarhyde thinks about blowing off his own head instead). When Finnes-Dolarhyde comes bounding up the attic stairs, we are treated to…. Well, you know… Suffice it to say: Damn you Ralph Finnes, for making me feel inadequate to a cleft-palate homicidal sociopath bedwetter. Like I needed to feel any more insecure.

Crawford: Harvey Keitell (02) vs. Dennis Farina (86). ADVANTAGE: Silence of the Lambs.

Okay, okay. I like Harvey Keitell. I loved him in Reservoir Dogs, and I haven’t seen The Bad Lieutenant, so I don’t get PTSD flashbacks from seeing him on screen. Farina from Manhunter loses points for doing that god awful “The Inlaws” series last year. Sure, that’s not fair, but nobody said life was fair. Of course, both of these Crawfords are far inferior to Scott Glenn’s portrayal in Silence of the Lambs. Scott Glenn rocks. Jeez, they brought back Frankie Faison as Barney the Orderly, why did they feel the need to change Crawfords each movie? Bastards.

The obligatory girl in trouble, Reba: Emily Watson (02) vs. Joan Allen (86). ADVANTAGE: Push

Actually, thinking about this, I’m going to change my mind. Joan Allen gets the nod here, for one particular scene. The tiger scene is in both movies, the scene were Dolarhyde brings Reba to “see” a tiger. It’s during this part of the movie where Dolarhyde gives us a glimpse of his suppressed humanity and we begin to root for him, just for a moment, to be able to get himself out of his psychosis. Joan Allen really sold this scene, laying on the tiger to hear it’s heartbeat, caressing the tiger in this, perhaps not so, subtle foreshadowing of her laying with a far more dangerous creature later in the movie. Emily Watson basically pats the tiger, and listens to it with a stethoscope. Ho hum. Just another day at the office, fondling a ten foot long tiger. (Actually, the tiger in Red Dragon seemed a lot less sedated that the tiger in Manhunter. Perhaps Ms. Watson was afraid of being eaten. Perhaps Ralph Finnes had yet again taken off his clothes and was prancing around naked just off camera. Either way, she doesn’t really communicate the sensual nature of the contact, and what it means to her. So, we gotta give this category to Joan Allen and Manhunter.

Graham’s wife: That chick who Josh Lymon gets down with on West Wing (02) vs. Some oldish haggard blonde (86). ADVANTAGE: Manhunter.

In the story, Graham’s wife has a 11 or 12 year old son from a previous marriage. The relationship between Graham and the boy, how the boy learns about Graham’s past and begins to fear him just a bit, really shows us how different Graham is from us, and maybe how much he is like the men he chases. The wife plays very little role in this whole thing, so it’s not exactly a juicy role for an actress. You’ve just gotta be the Mom and wife figure. So, if you don’t bring anything to the party, please be sure to just not pee in the punchbowl. Josh Lymon’s girlfriend fails miserably in this regard, distracting me throughout the movie with thoughts like: hey, this chick is my age, what’s she doing with a 12 year old? And: hey, is the kid the lovechild of her relationship with Josh?, etc etc.

(editor’s note: Acutally, Ms. Mary-Louise Parker would have been 27 when she had the twelve year old in question. She just looks hotter than you. Kal’s note: I would hope freakin’ so.)

Ambiance: Silence of the Lambs look-alike (02) vs. Miami Vice look-alike (86). ADVANTAGE: Miami Vice baby!

Michael Mann, he of Miami Vice and MTV videos, directed Manhunter, and it shows. Everything is that clean, modern 1980’s look. Lots of white, very antiseptic. The soundtrack is moody and synthesized, except for the use of Iron Butterfly’s “Innagoddadavida” during the climactic scene. Red Dragon is very visually similar to Silence of the Lambs, with the sort of world-right-after-a-rainstorm look. It’s much more consistent with the written material: Manhunter almost laughably had Dolarhyde living in this bachelor pad with a large poster of Mars on one end of the living room and Japanese screens (all the better to fall through) in another part of the house.

(I may have made that bit about Japanese screens up. You see, this is the great benefit of writing a blog that nobody reads. No smartass can write you emails saying, “Kal, you ignorant sl*t, we learn that Lector is from Lithuania in the book “Red Dragon” on page thirty-seven, in paragraph six, obviously that’s where his odd accent comes from…” or “they were falling though the poster, not a Japanese screen, in “Manhunter”.)

But this movie captured so vividly a time I hold so dear: no wifey-pooh, no Fruits of my Loom, no mortgage, no J-O-B, that to watch it is to, for two hours, be catapulted back to the age of thin ties, stubble, and Ronnie Reagan. Red Dragon just makes me feel like I need a shower.

Final Score: Manhunter 6, Red Dragon 0, Silence of the Lambs 1.

Till next time, sports fans.

Oh – for obsessive compulsive finders of movie trivia: nothing in this posting, as it’s all about movies. Would be sort of redundant, wouldn’t it now?