You may or may not have the day off, but rest assured, In Other Blogs never rests.
Cinematical commemorates the release of Drillbit Taylor with the Big-Screen Bullies You Love to Hate. Our personal favorite, O’Bannion from Dazed and Confused, comes in third, with top honors going to Marty McFly’s nemesis from the Back to the Future series. “The ultimate jerk, Biff Tannen is everything you'd ever want in an on-screen bully all wrapped up into one tall, dumb-looking knucklehead.”
Beyond the Multiplex offers up some Cannes gossip. The official selections won’t be announced for a couple of weeks, but Andrew O’Hehir isn’t buying rumors that the Coens’ Burn After Reading or the latest Indiana Jones movie will be opening the festival. “I wish I felt the same skepticism about the rumor recently floated by Hollywood Reporter blogger Steven Zeitchik to the effect that Michael Patrick King's likely-to-be-misbegotten Sex and the City: The Movie may wind up as opening-night fare at the Palais des Festivals. Unfortunately, it all fits: modest star power, wide international appeal and a certain vapid pretense at sophistication and cultural significance.”
Scanners takes a look at Las Vegas, as seen in the movies. “Like Disney World, it's hard to imagine anybody actually living there. For most, it represents a transitory state, impossible to sustain. Few care to wonder what happens to all that money, all that lust, any more than they wonder how much of that water from pools and fountains simply evaporates into the desert air. Win or lose, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”
A couple of weeks back we gave praise to the mysteriously eloquent blog title Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. With baseball season just a few days away, proprietor Dennis Cozzalio offers a sort of explanation disguised as a fantasia of attending a ballgame with the Fistful of Dollars director. “He looks at me like I’m crazy. The old man has come to see, in this accelerated afternoon, a microcosm of the world on the field, in its orderly procedures and open-ended framework, a game that takes as long as it takes to play out to the end, sometimes nine innings, sometimes more. Does not the infield fly rule negate some of the possibility of unpredictability in a game that otherwise thrives on it, a game where any number of things can happen in any given moment, despite its apparently rigorous structure? If Tuco can shoot intruders with a gun half-submerged in a filthy bathtub, then why cannot a shortstop pretend to bobble a ball and lure a runner into a trap?”
Finally, Slashfilm presents a gallery of film geek graffiti.
