How do you prefer your Gregory Peck – soft-spoken and dignified, the way he played Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird, or crazed and peg-legged, the way he played Captain Ahab in Moby Dick? John Huston directs Peck in this 1956 whale of a tale. Click here to watch it for free.
© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)
by Eric Hodgins
Mr. and Mrs. Blandings want to build their dream house on Connecticut’s Bald Mountain, but somewhere beneath the grounds of their serene and scenic property lurks a roiling, mischievous stream of water. I can’t think of a better analogy for Hodgins’s clever prose, which is all propriety and elegance on the surface – and a whirlpool of repressed anger and despair down below.
That’s a blueprint for high comedy as we follow the hapless Blandings, two city slickers who run afoul of country anti-bumpkins in their quest to build the American Dream, circa 1946. Try as the Blandings might to fit in with their new neighbors, alas, it is not to be as tensions on both sides of the cultural divide threaten to – and periodically do – erupt during construction of the jinxed house.
This might not say much for human nature, but as an observer it can be wicked fun to sit back and read about someone else’s misery.
© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)
OK, so I suppose I have a sick sense of humor, but when I read that a 66-year-old woman spent 12 days in a Canadian jail for “heroin smuggling,” I thought it was the funniest story of the week. Click here to read about it.
*****
Baseball’s Jim Thome clubbed the 600th home run of his career — and America yawned. Methinks there are two explanations for the apathy: rent-a-players, and steroids. Steroid abuse has tainted baseball’s once-hallowed records, and rent-a-player jocks (like Thome), who seldom spend an entire career with one team, have made the concept of team “loyalty” into a joke.
*****
Dear Grouchy:
Why are you so homophobic?
J. Cagle, New York
Dear J. Cagle:
Two words: Entertainment Weekly. I’m a subscriber, and I’ve noticed that there are two opportunities that EW never misses — the chance to pummel raging heterosexuals like Charlie Sheen and Tracy Morgan, and the chance to plug that fading TV phenomenon called Glee.
Surprisingly, EW fessed up to its Glee obsession in its August 12 issue: “We’ve been huge fans of the show from the very beginning, and we have the angry letters complaining about our constant barrage of Glee covers to prove it.” Wow. Can’t wait to see next week’s issue, with its cover from Glee.
Dear Grouchy:
Why are you so grouchy?
The World
Dear World:
Can’t help it. I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly.
*****
HLN’s Joy Behar keeps referring to the Speaker of the House as “John Boner.” Texas Governor Dick Perry wants to move into the White House. Now, if Republicans could just get New York’s Peter King to switch houses and run the Senate, we could have a country led by Peter, Dick, and Boner. Take that, women’s libbers.
© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)
When this biography of World’s Greatest Jerk Jake LaMotta was released in 1980, it went on to gross $23 million in the United States, a modest haul proving that the American public – at least on occasion – has more sense than do critics, because most moviegoers opted to stay home.
According to Entertainment Weekly, Martin Scorsese’s boxing drama is the fifth-greatest film of all time. Number six all-time, counters a poll in Sight & Sound. One of the ten greatest movies ever made, says Roger Ebert.
Raging Bull is a “knockout” alright: It nearly put me to sleep half a dozen times. What a long, boring slog of a movie. It is made up entirely of unlikeable characters, a script filled with boxing clichés, and a predictable plot. You have to be emotionally invested in a character – any character – to follow a film this dispiriting for more than two hours. There is absolutely no one to root for in Raging Bull, just actors to stare at.
Jake (Robert De Niro) gets married. Jake gets jealous. Jake boxes. Jake gets jealous again. Jake boxes some more. Jake retires and feels sorry for himself. There is lots of swearing and yelling and Brooklyn accents; if that’s your idea of compelling drama, then this is the movie for you.
The acting is generally good, although a wooden Cathy Moriarty, as Jake’s child-bride Vickie, doesn’t remotely resemble the 14-year-old she’s supposed to be at the beginning of the film, and she exudes all the personality of a petrified turnip. Joe Pesci, acting in his first big role, plays the kind of character Pesci always plays (“feisty”).
So why is Raging Bull such a critical favorite? I have three theories: 1) It’s in black and white, which signifies “serious” to some folks. 2) The boxing scenes, full of slow-motion blood, sweat and tears, seemed edgy in 1980. 3) The project reunited critics’ darlings Scorsese, De Niro, and writer Paul Schrader, who gave us the superior Taxi Driver. I guess some critics were also taken with the film’s profound message, which is apparently “Be nice.”
I’m siding with the American public, because most of them were smart enough to stay away from this tedious, unpleasant movie. Grade: C-
Director: Martin Scorsese Cast: Robert De Niro, Cathy Moriarty, Joe Pesci, Frank Vincent, Nicholas Colasanto, Theresa Saldana, Mario Gallo, Frank Adonis, Joseph Bono, Frank Topham Release: 1980
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Thanks to ongoing revelations about our athletic heroes – none of them good – I wouldn’t be surprised if we eventually learn that baseball’s Iron Horse, Lou Gehrig, was actually a jerk. Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth … not guys you’d want to meet your mother. But if you want to escape to an imaginary world where pro jocks are more saint than sinner, you can’t do better than The Pride of the Yankees, a 1942 biopic starring Gary Cooper as Gehrig. Click here to watch it free.
© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)
Bernie Madoff’s pants are in the news, but I’m thinking of buying an “I Love Bernie!” t-shirt because Madoff seems to be the only person in recent memory who was able to stick it to the rich the way the rich continue to stick it to the rest of us.
*****
Mila Kunis caught hell for stating the obvious: Fat people just need to try harder if they want to lose weight. When will celebrities learn that it never pays to speak the truth?
*****
Michele Bachmann defenders are outraged that she was asked about being a “submissive wife” at the Republican debate. Hey, she started it. Besides, Bachmann’s reply, in which she equated the word “respect” with “submission,” was classic bullshit.
*****
Liberals beware, because Fox News is tapping into a cultural niche that’s traditionally belonged to you: televised humor. I am referring to Red Eye’s Greg Gutfeld, who is suddenly everywhere.
But this guy, who can be quite amusing — for the uninitiated, think of him as a poor man’s Bill Maher — drops the funny business to spew demented conservative crap in nightly “Greg-alogues.” Oh, and Louis C.K., I love your FX series, but did you really have to provide a platform for Gutfeld on your show? At least you misspelled his name in the credits.
*****
Good job, Jon Stewart, exposing Megyn Kelly’s hypocrisy. Kelly, who recently returned to Fox after taking maternity leave, believes that government benefits are out of control — unless they happen to benefit her.
*****
“Endless Pools”? Oh, please. There is nothing endless about them; they are glorified bathtubs.
*****
Headline of the Week:
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by Jonathan Yardley
What a great book about books. Yardley, a literature critic at The Washington Post since 1981, has an infectious writing style; I couldn’t decide what I enjoyed more, the prospect of digging into some of his recommendations, or the reviews themselves. Yardley praises the majority of “notable and neglected books revisited,” but on occasion he unfurls critical claws, most memorably on Steinbeck (“too often, for me, reading his prose is like scraping one’s fingernails on a blackboard”), Ulysses (“a book I simply cannot read”), and The Catcher in the Rye and The Old Man and the Sea (“two of the most durable and beloved books in American literature and, by any reasonable critical standard, two of the worst”). He also has some choice words for the National Book Award: “I read Morte d’Urban not long after it won the NBA; in those years that prize still occasionally went to books that deserved it.” But mostly, Second Reading is a love letter to the 60 books and authors in its pages. I’d say more, but I have to get reading.
© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)
Director Rob Reiner takes a Stephen King story and turns it into movie magic. Yes, I’m referring to Misery, but unfortunately, that’s not this week’s free movie. I’ve never quite understood the sterling reputation that Reiner’s first King adaptation, Stand by Me, seems to enjoy. It’s a pleasant, mildly amusing look at the adventures of four 1950s boys – but not much more than that. Watch it for free by clicking here.
© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)
Craig Ferguson took his show to Paris last week, and the result was brilliant television. Ferguson is at his best with just-plain folk, and his tours of French landmarks mixed with man-on-the-boulevard interviews were refreshing.
And whoever decided to send along cute-as-a-button Kristen Bell as Craig’s sidekick deserves a promotion. What a great team they make. And what a shame that Ferguson, Bell, and skeletal robot Geoff have to return to the CBS studio.
Dancing at the Moulin Rouge, sliding across the floor of Versailles, chatting up the owner of Shakespeare and Company, dining with French actor Jean Reno, “dropping” expensive wine, and cutting gourmet cheese — entertaining stuff, all of it. And educational!
*****
Sarah Rocha had a bone to pick. Sarah who?
Sarah is a reader of Entertainment Weekly who was unhappy with a recent EW story about Daniel Craig, the film star who suffered the indignity of a media blitz for his crappy new movie, Cowboys and Aliens. When EW’s interviewer was brazen enough to ask Craig how he felt about promoting his films, Craig growled, “I can’t do the tits-and-teeth stuff. I’m not hardwired to do that. I can’t sell.”
When asked about his wedding to actress Rachel Weisz, Craig snapped, “This question answers itself. … No disrespect, but if you think it through, that’s the reason we’ve said fuck all on that subject. Because it was private.” When the journalist foolishly persisted, inquiring about Craig’s wedding ring, the sullen star barked, “You just see a line in the sand and want to fucking step over it.”
Sarah Rocha sent a letter to the EW editor: “I’m sick of actors who act like jerks during interviews when personal questions come up, like Daniel Craig. … Boo-frickin’-hoo, famous people.”
*****
They are going to eliminate more post offices. Makes sense to me, since e-mail has all but obliterated snail mail. What does not make sense to me is all the sniping about the good ol’ U.S. Postal Service.
I’ve been around a long time now, both sending and receiving thousands of letters and packages, and in all my years I can recall one time — one time! — when something I mailed apparently got lost (in Puerto Rico). As far as I’m concerned, the U.S. Postal Service has done an amazing job, so quit yer bitchin’, people!
*****
About the time Obama was elected president, I heard that he was reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book, Team of Rivals, which is about Lincoln’s admirable ability to play well with others in Washington.
I’m afraid that Obama took the book’s message too much to heart. Some rivals will never be on your team. Obama might be wise to head the advice of a guy who played on another team, baseball legend Leo Durocher, who famously told us: “Nice guys finish last.”
© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)
Poor Kirk Anderson. Pasty-faced, flabby, and bespectacled, all Kirk wanted from life was to be able to wear his Mormon underwear, please his mother, and be left in peace. And what did he get? An obsessed southern beauty, that’s what; a former nude model so convinced that she and Kirk were “soul mates” that she hired a pilot, flew to England, (allegedly) kidnapped Kirk, tied him to a bed, and made wild passionate love to him.
Somebody called that rape, and before you could say “Fleet Street,” Scotland Yard got involved, and then the British press, and the next thing poor Kirk knew, his bizarre relationship with this, um, unusual woman, Joyce McKinney, was front-page news. Thirty-four years later, the strange, sordid saga of Joyce and Kirk is back in the news, courtesy of filmmaker Errol Morris’s new documentary, Tabloid.
Morris tracked down McKinney (not hard to do; the woman seems to love the spotlight), but not Anderson (he declined to be interviewed), placed his camera in front of her, and let her talk. And boy, does she ever.
The problem with Tabloid is that we live in the age of Casey Anthony and O.J. Simpson. Inevitably, a 1977 sex scandal that rocked England pales in comparison to the more lurid, sensational cases of recent years. Morris’s interviews with McKinney and members of the British press seem quaint and insignificant, more like an episode of 20/20 than a feature-length film.
McKinney herself seems garden-variety eccentric, and not all that intriguing. We all know people like her, even if they don’t share her colorful past. Grade: B-
Director: Errol Morris Featuring: Joyce McKinney, Peter Tory, Kent Gavin, Mark Lipson, Jackson Shaw, Troy Williams, Jin Han Hong, Julie Bilson Ahlberg Release: 2011
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