"I was trying to pronounce the london marathon winners name Tsegaye Kebede."
https://twitter.com/ClementeAJ/status/326227136061009920
And, to be fair, watching him it does look like he's trying to figure out a pronunciation on the page he's reading.
I am definitely a member of the Getting Carded Until I'm 40 Club.
To all you skeptical cashiers: what kind of sad soul would risk a fake ID to buy a Trader Joe's mix-and-match 6 pack?
I enjoyed this movie, it was fun. But I'm also no Bond aficionado, so can anyone tell me if there is a history to the thing where Bond waits until AFTER the bad guys have killed someone before jumping into action? In Shanghai in the tower he waits until the assassin shoots, then starts a fight? On the island waits until Silva shoots the woman to start taking down the henchmen?
And then M basically staying in court to protect her pride when they knew a crazy guy was coming to kill her, leading to a bunch of other people dying as well? I guess over-thinking the morality of civilian casualties in Bond movies is why the Bourne movies exist, but still.
3. "Run Ricky Run" is another great 30 for 30 about Ricky Williiams, who fascinates me. Major social anxiety his whole life, hates the spotlight, more thoughtful guy than the pothead image he gets in the media. And, if you like basketball, the "Reggie Miller vs Knicks" doc is pretty funny, going into the rivalry and his feud with Spike Lee.
4. Look for me in the pages of SuburbaNites: http://www.nitelife.org/index.cfm
5. My left IT band was really sore after the chicago marathon*, so now I've been giving it a rest to avoid actually injuring it, but I'm getting a little stir crazy. It has been like Derrick Rose: The Return (http://youtu.be/dtj-D8HT9BY) the way this city has rallied around that occasional tightness in my knee, though.
*where, incidentally, I somehow spotted Chris Trash cheering around mile 22, but didn't realize that was him until I'd gone 10 yards past (full brain function had been lost an 30 minutes previous), and then backtracked to say hi, which was probably a mistake because starting my legs in the right direction again suddenly became a feat of immense coordination.
11. I believe it's 49ers v Seahawks tonight, but I'd take San Fran too. Emotional letdown after beating Pats vs
Speaking of which, Michael Grunwald's book about Obama's stimulus, "The New New Deal" is really fascinating. The article below is a good primer, laying out that, despite the poor reputation it got in media coverage, the stimulus has created positive, lasting effects on par with the original New Deal.
http://tinyurl.com/9cs6jvx
I didn't make the connection from the trailers, but while watching the movie it was clear he totally could pass for Hoffman's son in real life. A little disappointed, though, that Landry didn't use the opportunity of appearing in a PTA film to up his body count, maybe make a few Cause skeptics disappear.
The movie was filled with moments where the audience I was with didn't know whether they should laugh or not (they usually did). The same slightly deranged humor that everyone loved in the "I drink your milkshake" scene comes through, just in a more awkward/troubling context (a mentally damaged Freddy's sexual obsessions). Is PTA intentionally finding humor in something so sad? The presentation of scenes like the rorschach test or the department store portrait lighting fight indicate he does.
Relatedly, it was a little cryptic what the ongoing strand about laughter and humor was getting at. Dodd continually references it as being important, but when he reveals that it is the true key to his entire belief system while introducing Book #2, it seems to disenchant Freddy completely.
Worst part of his press conference:
"What else should I be? Noooo apologies / What else could I say? 47% of you are gay"
Reeeal mature, Mitt.
http://mittromneycentral.com/uploads/No-Apology1.jpg
There was a good interview on NPR with Dean Norris (Hank). They asked him how he explained Hank not suspecting Walt all this time, and he said:
"I think we as people, certainly law enforcement, they size people up rather quickly, and I think they then hold on to that opinion. And he has known Walter White for a long time, and he’s only known him to be this kind of ineffectual, milquetoast kind of guy, and that’s who he sees him as."
( http://www.uproxx.com/tv/2012/08/dean-norris-from-breaking-bad-on-nprs-fresh-air/ )
Which, at least within the TV show context, works for me. Hank has used his first impressions/suspicions to make other breakthrough in the Fring case, even when other people thought he was being paranoid. That it is his achilles heel in regards to his once dorky brother-in-law makes some sense.
I think more than the book being "a trophy," it is supposed to be a (or THE) loose end he missed while focusing on the bigger picture (that obvious string hanging off his Heisenberg hat fringe a couple weeks ago). The overall 8 episode arc's focus (and Walt's) was on getting rid of every Gus Fring connection one at a time, from the laptop to Mike to the witnesses in prison.
What trips him up, though, is overlooking someone who had been dead for a while. Just because you can kill someone (a skill he is got better and better at this year) doesn't mean you can erase any threat they pose. The fly he spent an episode hunting down is resurrected in the opening shot. And, ultimately, Gale Boetticher (and his love of Whitman) reaches beyond the grave to undue a full season's work of perfectly executed train robberies, prison murders, and dissolved bodies.
Walt's plan will definitely involve ripping off Declan somehow, and the dilution has been talked about a lot. In fact, that might be the plan he is looking to sell Jesse and Mike on.
But, what with his talk of "empire building," I think Walt interprets Declan's attempt to monopolize the market as a challenge to do so himself. He's not looking to settle financial accounts with Jesse and Mike and go on his way with 1/3 of their hard earned freight. He'll look to ripoff Declan for $15 million, keep the methlymine, and emphatically prove he really is the new Jesse James.
This season was set up for us to keep asking who Walt is running from in that initial flash forward; somehow the potential list just keeps growing: DEA, Mike, Lydia. Now maybe add Declan's operation to that list, with allusions to psychopath Todd and his prison connections looming in the background as well.
If this were an action movie, we'd be headed toward a showdown in the desert with a cornered Walt surrounded by a small army people from every law enforcement and criminal organization in New Mexico catching up to him at the same time. Would it be too cute if they end it just like the opening of the series, with Walt confessing his crimes into a camera as sirens bear down in the background?
Looking back, I think a large reason for the emphasis in these early episodes on the Skyler and Lydia plotlines (both very focused on concern for how Walt's actions threaten their children) was to lead into this episode's ending.
The show has been forcing us to think about young characters being at risk while Walt is indignant at even the suggestion of it. Now, at a totally unexpected moment, the two women's fears have, in a sense, been realized. Walt's fledgling drug biz has quickly graduated from poisoning kids (remember how irredeemably dark a turn that felt like just 5 episodes ago?) to straight shooting them – much like the young brother of Jesse's girlfriend was killed by Gus' man.
The following bedroom scene kept it up. Reminded me a lot of the Godfather Pt II: they're arguing about Kay/Skylar taking the children away, Michael/Walt monologues about how he will use everything in his power to keep the kids with him, and then Kay/Skylar drops the abortion/waiting for the cancer bomb on him. Mob Week on AMC!
I think it's very possible. They made a big point of ending last week with Walt scaring Jesse. While I think he hasn't lost all loyalty toward Walt, he's smart enough to hedge his bets.
There was speculation last week that maybe the "right under my nose" DEA office scene indicated Hank knew the truth about Walt. After this week I highly doubt that's the case, but I could see the show setting up for some kind of reveal at mid-season, and Jesse being secretly Team Mike would fit.
I think that's the right stance, lbt.
Humans, for good reasons, are highly tuned to see hypocrisy in other people and call them out on it. Too often, though, this gets used as an excuse to criticize people who are doing good things. Just because they aren't capable of doing ALL the good things doesn't make them a hypocrite for doing a few. Think about the criticisms leveled at Al Gore for having heavy energy consumption at his house or whatever, as though that invalidated his trying at all to make an impact on climate change.
Ideally (and realistically) it's a process; you make small changes in how you live your life and continue to evaluate other areas where you could improve in. Some human rights activists wear Nike. Some vegetarians wear leather. Some Occupy protestors have BoA bank accounts. It's a lazy/cynical form of criticism to attack those "hypocrisies" while ignoring the root issues.
Well, in the opening flash-forward of the season I believe we saw Walt picking up his "little friend." It seems likely at that point in time he will have been found out by DEA and tried/succeeded to off Mike - bring a whole crew of hitmen after him. Walt is probably planning for a Tony Montana last stand.
I somehow doubt, though, that Gillgan gives Walt the rockstar exit he envisions. I just don't feel like the series is leading up to him going out in a blaze of glory, but probably in a sadder, lonelier fashion (think Michael Corleone at the end of both Pts II and III - sitting alone in a chair having been responsible for the deaths of loved ones in the previous scene).
My theory on action/thriller/superhero movies is that nobody - critic or average moviegoer - really cares or complains about realism unless there are some deeper structural issues in the script bothering them.
In Dark Knight, for instance, nothing about how the Joker continually evades arrest (while planting massive amounts of explosives all around the city, kidnapping major public figures, etc) makes any sense if you stop to think about it. But that movie never really did stop to think about it - we were always swept right on to the next insane, tension filled plot he had in store. Not a perfect movie, but still a masterclass in pacing the action, building a sense of chaos, etc.
Rises, though, hinges its entire plot/themes/final 90 minutes on this occupied Gotham revolution concept. I'm not sure calling it "unrealistic" highlights the issue I had, but it did ask you to accept some huge new assumptions about a world they had spent 2 and a half films building.
All in all, an interesting way to raise the stakes, explore a couple "big ideas," but jarring nonetheless. And I've talked with people other than foucauldian who, despite going in accepting on its own terms as a superhero movie, had simliar complaints.
Still, a very solid movie. There are very few action movies that need to go past the 2 hour mark, but overall this one seemed to fill the long runtime well.
It was also felt way too convenient a way out of the biggest source of tension in the show. If she's alive, the writers actually force Matthew to make a difficult decision. They even could have had them get married and later regretting it afterward as Mary is the other woman in the relationship or something.
To a degree the same was true when William died - it saved Daisy from having to make a decision that hurt someone. Obviously a show set during WWI, Spanish flu, etc is allowed to kill off some characters, but every time they do it feels like a device to tie up loose ends before they needed to be.
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