Month: January 2008

Is my schadenfreude really wrong when it’s directed at the Golden Globes?

I’m not entirely sure what I think about its ending, but I will say this: There Will Be Blood doesn’t feel like a two-and-a-half-hour movie. There’s not a single moment when it seems to drag, when what’s on screen doesn’t seem absolutely essential — perhaps because Daniel Day Lewis, who is riveting in the film, is on screen nearly all the time. Nathan Rabin called it, “a fascinating anomaly—a rip-roaring two-fisted epic concerned almost exclusively with the tormented psyche and spiritual death of a single man.”

I’m sure if I’d managed to see it a week ago, it would have made my list of the best films of 2007. I can’t imagine how it won’t make my list of the best films I’ve seen in 2008.

Am I missing something? On December 26, Goodreads tells me that not one, not two, but five of my friends rated Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. On the day after Christmas, five people, independent of one another, thought, “Hey, you know what I haven’t done lately? Told the world what I think about Franz Kafka. I better get on that pretty quick”?

I’d put this down as some kind of glitch or bug, but then I’d expect all the ratings to be identical, and they’re not. I’ll admit, I haven’t been paying much attention to Goodreads lately, beyond using it to keep track of the books I’m currently reading (which you’ll find in the sidebar, somewhere), but it seems a little weird.

I’m also a little ashamed to say I’ve never read The Metamorphosis myself^*. I should probably remedy that one of these days. I do have a complete Kafka collection laying around somewhere…

* “In his novel Changing Places, David Lodge describes a literary parlor game called ‘Humiliations’ in which participants confess, one by one, titles of books they’ve never read. The genius of the game is that each player gains a point for each fellow player who’s read the book—in other words, the more accomplished the reader, the lower his or her score. Lodge’s winner is an American professor who, in a rousing display of one-downmanship, finally announces that he’s never read Hamlet.” – Jodi Kantor, The Literary Critic’s Shelf of Shame

Edited to add: I have read Hamlet. It’s the one with the ghost, right? Joe Public loves the ghost.

That Rudy Giuliani, always on message:

BEDFORD, N.H. – He flatlined in Iowa and he’s struggling in New Hampshire, but Rudy Giuliani shook off the early-state blues Thursday as only he can.“None of this worries me – Sept. 11, there were times I was worried,” Giuliani said. [via]

Meanwhile, elsewhere in politics:

The Best Moments in Mike Huckabee’s Extremism [via] and the Republican candidates as Buffy villains [via].

You know how this works:

1. “Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee” by Canibus w/ Biz Markie
   It affects your occupational performance
2. “Derelict” by Beck, guessed by Thud
   I gave my clothes to the policeman
3. “Dr. Heckyll and Mr. Jive” by Men at Work, guessed by Clayton
   They are a person who feels good to be alive
4. “Table for One” by Liz Phair
   I’m reaching back through a hole in the wall’s insulation
5. “Get Dis Money” by Slum Village
   Now what you know about the Great Lakes?
6. “Fins” by Jimmy Buffett, guessed by Betty
   Can’t you feel ’em circling, honey?
7. “Playing in the Band” by the Grateful Dead
   Some folks up in treetops just look to see the sights
8. “Just the Two of Us” by Bill Withers (orig. Grover Washington, Jr.), guessed by Eric
   I see the crystal raindrops fall
9. “Space Oddity” by David Bowie, guessed by Betty and Thud
   And I think my spaceship knows which way to go
10. “Fool’s Gold” by Bree Sharp
    Talk about an early frost

And, if you don’t, you can look at last week’s answers to try and figure it out. Good luck!