Your own wedding reception is a great place to find the bride you want after the one you just married.There is an undeniable art to naming movies. The ideal name should be distinctive, intriguing and inviting. Barney’s Version has all those. It’s a great title, but is it a great movie?
Barney’s Version stars Paul Giamatti, an actor who has made a career of portraying neurotic, left-of-center characters. His Barney Panofsky is one for the Neurotic Hall of Fame (which does not do much of a gift shop concession business, except for the hand sanitizers).
Barney is a TV soap opera producer in Montreal who likes his scotch, cigars and hockey. He comes from a middle class Jewish family background, but attempts social climbing through matrimony. The Jewish class struggle is a major backbone of the film.
Despite marrying three times, Barney loves only one woman– Miriam, who he meets at his second wedding (the marrying-up- the-Jewish-social-ladder marriage). Barney becomes instantly infatuated with Miriam, and she eventually becomes wifey-poo #3 . Miriam is well-played by Rosamund Pike.
This movie has a complex storyline and is much like a novel with intersecting characters and plots. It is based on a novel by Mordecai Richler and is probably fairly true to the book.
The supporting cast features Dustin Hoffman as Barney’s dad, Minnie Driver as Barney’s second bride, Scott Speedman as Barnie’s best friend and tortured writer pal. All of the acting is spot-on, as is the writing and directing.
So what does Barney’s Version lack? Well, it is always interesting, you do want to know what happens next, but ultimately it fails because we never really get a sense at exactly what makes Barney Barney.
Maybe in the novel Barney is fleshed-out, brought to believable life, but here he goes from situation to situation, like a pinball in a machine. He is motivated, but we never quite know by what.
And maybe that’s the point. Who can explain any one person’s behavior? But I needed a little more soul to Barney in order to buy his motivations of the heart.
That said, Barney’s Version is definitely worth seeing, if not in the theatre with $8 popcorn, than at home with a scotch and a cigar.
You’ll be amazed what you don’t know about these folks. Seriously, dudes.Presidents Day is more than just a reason for Pier 1, Bob’s Autorama, and Sports Authority to have sales, it’s also a time to fondly remember Washington, Lincoln and all the great men and woman who have led our country through good times and bad–– preferring the good times because the citizenry wasn’t nearly so whiny.
Here are some facts you may not know about some of our presidents.
1. In a drunken rage, President Franklin Pierce declared on September 4, 1856, “I’ll bet no one remembers diddly-squat about me in the future.” He was right.
2. President Benjamin Harrison was very proud of his magnificent facial hair, so much so, he gave his beard and mustache the nickname Harry McSofty and invited guests to run their fingers through it. If visitors would not take him up on his offer, Harrison would pout and mumble to himself until resistance was futile and strange fingers would comb through his thick facial brush. Harrison would be delighted and giggle like a school girl.
3. President Calvin Coolidge had a tail. He was embarrassed by the posterior growth, and had a girdle-like structure manufactured to contain it. However, witnesses report Coolidge had difficulty suppressing his tail from wagging when he received good news like, if he was a good boy there’d be beefy treats for an afternoon snack.
He certainly looked the part.4. Rutherford B. Hayes was our only female president, although many believed her strong perfumes and ability to accessorize any outfit to be dead giveaways.
5. Chester A. Arthur was our vainest president. He always referred to himself in the third person saying things like, “Chester A. Arthur thinks this beef is stringy and tough as leather” and “Chester A. Arthur wishes the weather were warmer.” He was once asked by a small child what the “A” in his name stood for, to which the president snapped, “Chester A. Arthur believes children should be seen and not heard, you obnoxious little cur!” He then ordered the child to be executed by a firing squad. He thought better of it later, and magnanimously reduced the child’s punishment to four years of hard labor in a federal prison.
6. President Harry S. Truman kept a dead mouse in his left suit coat pocket. No one knows why, but he often asked heads of state for small pieces of cheese.
7. President Richard Nixon was known to drink heavily at night and make crank calls to other world leaders. Legend has it that he once drunk-dialed Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, disguised his voice and asked “Do you have Prince Albert in a can and is your refrigerator running and is I.C. Butz there?” Brezhnev recognized Nixon’s voice and told him to cut it out or he’d send over some nuclear warheads. Nixon hung up laughing, then hid under his desk in the Oval Office.
8. President Theodore Roosevelt was known for his love of the great outdoors. During his term as president, he stocked the White House with bears, elks, foxes, mountain lions and poisonous snakes. He would hunt the animals for relaxation and quick and delicious dinner menu ideas. TR holds the record for was our least-visited president while occupying the White House.
9. President James Polk was a nudist. His handlers had to chase, wrestle and dress him before any public appearance. Polk was proud of his physique and believed he had nothing to hide from the world. It was a constant battle to save the president from embarrassment during his presidential term.
Adams: saved by a coin toss!10. President James Madison was our shortest leader, standing a mere five and a half inches tall. He wore lifts in his shoes so that he appeared to be 5’4″ in public.
11. President John Quincy Adams was a brilliant scientific man. He built a time machine and traveled to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. He was sitting in President Abraham Lincoln’s seat when Lincoln arrived. The two men flipped a coin to see who would get the seat. Lincoln won the coin toss, and Adams went back to 1828. Adams would never know how close he came to being assassinated, and Lincoln would never know he unlucky he was when the penny he flipped came up “heads” with his face (which was really weird because the penny must have been from the future). Cruel, cruel irony, how you do torture us!
Happy Presidents Day, and be sure to take advantage of all the incredible savings at Pier 1!
Life behind bars is too good for this scum.Get a load of this: Mark Clavarella, a former juvenile court judge in Pennsylvania, was just convicted of racketeering in a scheme where he and another judge sent youth offenders to for-profit detention centers in exchange for a cool couple million bucks from the builders of the hoosegows.
Imagine that, a scumbag in robes throwing the book at kids as young as 10 so he can get his greedy palms greased.
The builder (a friend of Clavarella’s) and an attorney who co-owned the lockups were dishing fistfuls of cash to keep the young traffic coming to their crossbar motel.
And now that Clavarella’s been caught and convicted, what’s the penalty he’ll be paying to society? Maybe 12 years in prison. Is that justice?
No. This guy deserves life in prison for ruining so many young lives to pad his pockets. He’s like the scum Charles Dickens used to imagine in his novels. Minor drug offenders are serving more time than this bastard will. That’s not justice.
The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world (3.1% of the population is on probation, behind bars or on parole) and I suspect it’s only going to get worse if we continue with this for-profit lockup racket. There’s too much money in the jailing business and too much temptation for sleazy, greedy guys like Clavarella.
Let’s see if we can’t get him some Madoff time. Oh, and while we’re at it, wouldn’t it be wonderful to throw some of the fatcats responsible for the financial meltdown to get some serious jail time? Any jail time?
Watson, before he became a loudmouth jerk dickwad creep.IBM’s brainiac monster Webster, who humiliated humanity with its awesome display of brainpower on Jeopardy, is reported to be talking more trash than found in a New Jersey landfill.
Many people confirmed they’ve seen the mega computer in numerous Manhattan watering holes slurping oceans of loudmouth soup and dishing major league trash talk.
“He seemed so nice on Jeopardy,” said one eyewitness, “but he acted like a pompous drunk jerk at the bar shouting crap like– ‘humans got nothing, I could beat your race with a 386-chip and a motherboard on the fritz! Jennings and Rutter’s the best you meat puppets got? Gimme a break, they’re crap! You want to de-throne the king, you better bring some stronger playas! Unbelievable, you people with your puny brains and slow fingers. ‘”
“The poor bastard’s on a bender,” said one bartender who served Watson. “He’s drinking to drown some deeply-seeded problem, but he’ll probably drown himself first. It’s tragic.”
Jeopardy host Alex Trebeck said he hopes the computer superstar can deal with his newfound celebrity. “It’s tough to deal with the spotlight,” said Trebeck, “especially when you start saying everything in the form of a question, and doing it with a heavily slurred voice that stinks of stale beer and bourbon.”
The media has won its war on pushing the narrative that social media was responsible for the toppling of the 30 year rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt.
“It was a long, tough battle,” said an anonymous source with a large news organization, “but we think we were finally able to sell this idea of the power of Facebook to the public. Even though less than 20% of Egypt has internet access, we’ve been able to promote the incredible power of social media. This is very important to new organizations like ours because more and more we want to rely on the public for our news-gathering, reporting and opinion pieces. Crowdsourcing is simply a much more affordable way for us to run our news operations. We’re using a lot more social commentary for our content for one simple reason: Joe six-pack and Jane goatskin-of-Boone’s-Farm-wine work a lot cheaper than expensive liberal arts-educated journalists with their fancy cargo pants and no-iron shirts.”
While the news organization official admits that poverty, oppression and high unemployment were factors in the Egyptian revolution, those age-old societal problems did not fit with the ‘21st century social media-as-the-new-power‘ narrative being promoted by major news outlets.
“Look– hunger, poverty, oppressive government and hopelessness are timeless sparks to incite revolution. They’re like the greatest hits of revolt in history, but there’s no news angle there. We needed some pazazz! Now, you add in the influence of Facebook, and well, sir, you’ve got yourself a bonfire of news appeal because everyone’s on Facebook and they want to feel good about the fact they spend countless hours every day posting pictures of kittens or kids or love poems to their morning coffee. Hey, we all want to believe that the same tool that helps us share cute moments of life can be used to “LIKE” a revolution and topple a corrupt leader! That’s the power of the social network and a successful news narrative that drives down operating costs. “
Won’t you help buy lil’ Chris a shirt to wear? Amid the turmoil of the sudden resignation of Republican New York Congressman Chris Lee comes shocking new revelations.
While early reports were that the 46-year old married father resigned his position as a result of a recently released photo of himself shirtless that appeared along with a flirtatious message in response to a woman’s Craigslist ad, new allegations offer a surprisingly different take.
An anonymous source close to Mr. Lee reports that the politician resigned not because of allegations of immoral behavior, but rather because of the shame suffered by the public display of his extreme poverty.
“The simple fact is that Chris Lee could not afford a shirt. Has not been able to afford one for some time. He had found a fancy phone on the street and accidentally snapped a picture of himself. That picture somehow ended up on Craigslist. Again, it was not Mr. Lee’s phone and he obviously did not know how the modern contraption worked. Apparently he also had accidentally typed some message. When the revealing picture was made public, the congressman felt such embarrassment and shame at his obvious poverty, he resigned his position so as not to become a damaging reflection on the economic state of his constituents in upstate New York. He is a very proud man and a true patriot!”
Some concerned citizens have started a fund to raise money to purchase Mr. Lee shirts.
Others have suggested the government provide him a federally-financed shirt purchasing fund.
