After finally seeing Fat Girl (imdb | rotten tomatoes), it’s become official: I hate Catherine Breillat‘s movies. I think she’s manufactured a reputation for herself of being a put-upon genius by making senseless, dreary movies with a few (or many) sexually shocking moments. I thought Romance (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was one of the worst peices of crap I’ve ever watched — I couldn’t even bother to finish watching it — and this movie didn’t do much to repair her image in my mind. It’s the last time I’ll make the mistake of renting one of her movies.

Thomas Walkom of The Star wonders if we should indict Bush on war crimes when he pops up for a visit next week. It won’t happen of course, but it raises an interesting question. It also makes it pretty clear why the US didn’t want to join the International Criminal Court.

from Matthew Good’s blog

One down, a dozen or so to go. I got back from the intensive portion of my first MBA course on Friday, after 6 days just north of the city at our training facility. The work (kind of like a cross between finance and economics) wasn’t too bad, it’s just being trapped in there for 6 days, taking in piles of information, bland food and recycled air, takes a toll on you. But I know more about yield curves and derivatives now than I did a week ago, and I got to know many of my classmates. All in all, a good first trip…the first of many. I go back again in January.

Since I’ve gotten back I’ve done my best to relax…ordered food and basically justacted like a zombie Friday night, went out with G&C last night for steaks and beer. Today’s been chore day, and involved me stupidly getting on the subway at the same time that all the parents & kids heading to/from the Santa Claus Parade. Bad, bad idea. I’m never willingly having children.

We watched Man On Fire (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night, and I was prepared for it to be pretty bad — a co-worker said it was awful, and the reviews haven’t been stellar — but I actually quite liked it. I liked the style most of the time, it wasn’t overly predictable, and Dakota Fanning is too good an actor to only be 10 years old…it was rather alarming. And am I the only person who doesn’t mind when Denzel Washingtonn does something other than chew the screen with an Oscar-worthy performance? I like seeing him play the semi-everyman in dumb-ish action movies like Crimson Tide or Fallen.

I always find the vengeance movies a bit hard to swallow, but this one seemed to keep the avenging-angel heroics under control. It was terribly long (2.5 hours!), but not a bad movie at all for a lazy weekend.

I’m off for a week to attend the intensive part of my first MBA course. I likely won’t be able to post while I’m up there (it’s just north of the city, but we stay there for the whole week), so I’ll talk to you in a week.

Be good.

I’ll be off the air for a little while. I’m away for a week and, while I’ll likely have access to a connection, I probably won’t have time to post (nor anything to post about anyway).

Rawk.

Though I didn’t really want to see it, I suggested yesterday that we go see Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Why? Because my wife loved the first one, and really wanted to see the second one. Also, she’d worked all day while I took the day off to study, so she needed a treat.

We should’ve stayed home. I can tolerate the first one when she watches it at home, but this one was just painful. My wife pointed out afterward that they’d just taken the first movie, scene for scene, and wrapped it slightly (but not much) different scenarios. If you played them on two screens next to each other, they’d probably pretty much match up at each crucial kissing/rescuing/sad scene. And yet, a whole slew of women in the audience cooed and swooned every time Colin Firth did something predictable.

Making it worse was the two guys sitting next to us; both talked loudly throughout the movie, and one guy would sing along with the soundtrack. My wife was giving them dirty looks long before I got annoyed with them, but when he started singing for the third time I leaned over and told them to shut up. I don’t think they heard me over the chorus of “Everlasting Love”.

Anyway, all around, a shite movie; I’m not really the target audience, but even my wife didn’t like it, and she’s most definitely the target audience. This movie is only useful for straight guys looking to build up bad-movie capital which they can then use to drag their wives/girlfriends to an equally bad movie. Like, oh, say, this one.

Leave it to The Onion to be brilliant & brutal.

“What’s so bad about this? Could some Democrat explain it to me in under an hour, without starting to scream or cry?”

Almost forgot…we watched Bad Santa (imdb | rotten tomatoes) on the weekend. Not bad, but I couldn’t recommend it to many people. It was funny, but uncomfortable funny. And no one who adores the Gilmore Girls should ever watch this movie. My girlfriend plays a slightly different character than the nice mom on TV.