GreekGeek

As a whole, I love A Christmas Carol in any incarnation (apart from the Kelsey Grammer one, which I found dull.) My favorite live action one is the Alistair Sim version. I liked the extra bits of backstory even if they weren't in the original, such as young Scrooge and Marley conniving to put Fezziwig out of business. My intro to the story as a kid was Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, and I still love it, even though I notice things now that I wouldn't have so many years ago--the fact that it's technically a play but the "audience" never moves; or that there's no way an actual play could do so many setting and costume changes so fast. It had wonderful songs; the scene of Kid Scrooge and Old Scrooge singing "All Alone in the World" together can still make me puddle up. All other Christmas themed movies, I'm kind of "meh" about. A Christmas Story is nice, but over-played. Do we really need a 24-hour marathon? The final third of It's a Wonderful Life (the alternate-world Bedford Falls, or "Potterville") packs a wallop, but it takes a lot of set-up to get us there. (It also doesn't help that people have spent decades snarking on this movie and pointing out that Potterville was actually pretty cool.)

I thought of another UO: I don't think it's a terrible injustice that Crash won Best Picture over Brokeback Mountain. I don't buy the allegations of homophobia. I thought Brokeback was abominably slow; and films where emotion is repressed rather than expressed outright don't make for very exciting viewing to me. Crash didn't say anything that was groundbreaking about racism, but I did find the characters interesting and the interlocking stories engaging.

I agree! Making him into a baggy-pants clown for that number was a stroke of genius. Regarding that same movie--To me, its big flaw was that I just couldn't buy Renee Zellwegger (sp.?) as an ingenue who has the whole town of Chicago at her feet. Zellwegger, to me, is OK when she's not supposed to be particularly hot--as in Bridget Jones's Diary or the love interest in Jerry Maguire. (I haven't seen Cold Mountain, but she looked downright frumpy and sexless in the snippets and photos I've seen.) But when she's supposed to be devastatingly sexy--nope.

It was something like, "This disease consists of bingeing and...well, never mind." Sorry, I can't find the exact words. I thought it was a bit flip, but not horrible. (But then, I've never had the disease.) The thinking might have been that people didn't want to hear about vomiting during what may be dinner hour. I agree; I don't see why they were necessary. I can't imagine the show doing anything bad enough to make me quit watching (short of making the questions kindergarten-level easy), but gimmicks like this really irk me.

I haven't seen A Cool Dry Place, but the plot sounds very much like Kramer vs. Kramer. Ted Kramer wasn't a perfect dad, but he did his best and ended up bonding really well with his son. The father and stepmother in Juno were very supportive of Juno. I loved Allison Janney telling off the nosy ultrasound technician. Cher and her dad in Clueless had a very nice relationship, even though he spoiled her silly. I don't know whether to put Mildred Pierce here or on the Worst Parents list. In the Joan Crawford movie, Mildred is almost a saint and Veda is a fiend. (Ironic, when you think of what we've learned about Crawford as a mom in real life!) In the Kate Winslet miniseries remake, Mildred is much more harsh and coarse, but she still gives everything she's got to get the affection of a kid who hates her.

I loved both Ray and Walk the Line, and I was sure Joaquin Phoenix would get an Oscar for the latter, except that it had been given to Jamie Foxx for playing a troubled singer the year before. A cute spoof of both those movies, by the way was Walk Hard. Oliver Stone's Nixon wasn't perfect. Anthony Hopkins didn't much resemble Nixon physically, (Nobody resembled their real-life counterparts very much except for Joan Allen as Pat Nixon and Paul Sorvino as Kissinger) but he managed to make him a complex human being instead of the usual caricature. Of movie Nixons, my favorite is Dan Hedaya in Dick, with a very young Michelle Williams as a teenager with a crush on him. The idea of a 1970's teenager being sweet on Nixon (even if she later sours on him) is hilarious, as is the thought of the notorious gap in the tape being her singing "I Honestly Love You" to him.

Here are my nominees, in no particular order: Henry and Lila Wingo in The Prince of Tides, for different reasons. Henry is the stereotypical knock-'em-around brute; Lila is the more subtle "let's all pretend everything's fine" liar and manipulator. Neither thinks much of their children, who have their emotional troubles (the daughter especially) but are also intelligent, attractive, and talented. Cher's character in Mermaids, whose own daughter was a mother to her. The parents in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, who are horribly overbearing and constantly undercutting their daughter. The dad in Affliction--does Nick Nolte have the worst screen parents or what? Abe in East of Eden--so virtuous he's bad. He gives all his love to Aron and deprives Cal, and can't see the desperate bids for affection in Cal's actions. Beth Jarrett in Ordinary People--another control freak who can't transfer her motherly affection to her surviving son Conrad after her favorite Buck accidentally dies, but instead blames Conrad for the accident. Scarlett O'Hara never shows much interest in Bonnie. In fairness to her, she's even worse in the book, where she has two other children by her first two husbands. David Hilfgott's dad in Shine--pushing his son to excel and then being angry when David wants to leave Australia to pursue opportunities in England. Speaking of pressuring dads, there's also Jim Pearsall's dad in Fear Strikes Out. Best moment: Jim, in a mental hospital, being told to stand up to his father: "I can't do that, he made me what I am today!" Christine Mannon in Mourning Becomes Electra, an Americanized version of the Greek tragedy that gave us the concept of the "Electra complex."

Yes, it's goodbye to Julia, at least until the ToC. But she had a great run and nudged ahead of Dave Madden for the longest streak apart from Ken Jennings'. But I was really rooting for Brian. I'm a sucker for Irish brogues, and I loved the fact that Jeopardy! was the first American TV show he saw.

I wonder how many of the players really are "lightweight" and how many just seem that way because the champs are so good with the buzzer. A lot of Julia's opponents seemed formidable at first but then faded as she pulled away in DJ. For the next special tournament, instead of bringing back the same people who've already made their Jeopardy money, I'd love to see a season of People Who Lost to Ken, Dave, and Julia.

I always loved the story that he spent days in his costume epic clothes off screen, since he had to look as though he had always worn them. That's the sort of "method acting" you don't associate him with, but it totally makes sense. Regarding the negative thoughts about Casablanca--I think the problem with that film is that it's been quoted and referenced and excerpted too often, especially the final scene. It might have packed more of a punch when people actually didn't know from the beginning whether Ilsa would "stick with Rick or leave with Lazslo." I feel the same ennui hearing Henry Fonda's farewell to Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. I loved Forrest Gump when I first saw it and I still would re-watch it for Gary Sinise as Lt. Dan. It's unfortunate that it became used as a representative of wholesome values (if you overlook what Mama Gump had to do to get Forrest in school) in contrast to dirty decadent Pulp Fiction, and it became uncool to like it.

Agreed. I thought the miniseries starring Steven Weber and Rebecca DeMornay was better. The more leisurely pace allowed more of the episodes from the book to be dramatized, and I liked the more gradual loss of contact with the outside world. I also thought Shelley Duvall was a bit miscast in the movie. I could not believe that she was ever a high school cheerleader. I guess she was supposed to be beaten down and unhappy after years of living with an alcoholic, but she was so dowdy and spiritless.

I confess I didn't watch any of the sequels until years after they came out and I still haven't seen IV or V. Rocky Balboa was a nice way to bring the series full circle. But it did bug me that Rocky was changed from a has-been (or a never-was) putting in one huge effort for a personal victory into one of the greatest fighters of all time. Someone who was already over the hill in the 1970's would not still be fighting--let alone giving a youthful champ a serious challenge--in the 2000's.

I watched his entire streak, and I did not see why the media made such a big deal out of him. He was not the first contestant to board-hop; Jeopardy geeks know that strategy as the "Forrest Bounce," for Chuck Forrest, the first contestant to win big by skipping around the board. It was his personality that many found polarizing, more than his game style. That is correct; what bugged was not only that he did it but immediately said "I don't know" instead of making an educated guess. It was a sports category, and all he had to do was name a sport. I get that he didn't want to waste time, and that he was more interested in keeping the DD away from the other players than in getting it right himself, but it came off as un-sporting.

Pithy has described the process well. I took the test in January of 2008 and was called to audition in May 2008 in NYC. It was my second time taking the test. I was called in November 2009, which if you count is just about at 18 months. By a bittersweet coincidence, it was the day of my mother's funeral. I was sad that that she didn't live long enough to see me on the show after we had watched it together since the early Art Fleming days (though I didn't use that as one of my stories--they have you write three anecdotes, of which Alex chooses one to interview you about). My show aired in June 2010. I wasn't fast enough on the buzzer to beat the champ, who made it a runaway, but I was the only one of the three to get Final Jeopardy.

The "popular guy" was Tom Nissley. He lost on Monday. This is Tom Cavanaugh, and I agree he came off as a jerk, and self-righteous to boot. Normally I love it when someone gets off a bit of good-humored snark at Alex, but the comment about his expensive suit being made at a sweatshop was out of line.