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Ken Jennings

Ken Jennings paid the price for doing his own taxes, and maybe for a little hubris in his two incorrect Daily Double questions in Double Jeopardy, losing to a real estate agent from Ventura on last night's show. It was a good run. I think I'll take a few weeks off - it won't be the same without Ken at the right-side podium.

Update:The real estate agent lost in her first game as champion.

Here's an audio clip of the Final Jeopardy answer: Listen

Clip Your String

One of my favorite movies of all time is Grosse Pointe Blank. John Cusack plays a hit man who winds up at his ten-year high school reunion. Anyway, the kids and I have watched it maybe 40 or 50 times. A few years ago, one of the Starz channels ran the same three movies over and over again for a week. We must have watched GPB 20 times the week it was in the rotation.

We know the movie so well, we'll quote random lines as part of day-to-day live. If I have trouble opening up the front door, Justin will tell me "you can't come in', using the bad Jamaican accent that Minnie Driver used in the movie.

Lately, Justin and I had an argument about one of my favorite scenes in the movie. Rival hitman Grocer (Dan Ackroyd) meets up with Blank (Cusack) in the local diner, with no love lost between them. As Blank is explaining something, Grocer says either: "Clip your string, Chatty Kathy, I don't need to know" [this is Justin's version], or "Chatty Kathy, clip your string, I don't need to know" [my recollection].

The argument escalated to the point that I needed proof, so I setup the DVD with captions, and paused it at the right spot:

I rest my case.

Before Sunset

Jason, Carole, and I went to the Laemmle in Pasadena to see Before Sunset.

Kill Bill, Vol. II

After Jennie and Janet left on Sunday, I went to see Kill Bill Vol. II at the new Edwards in Alhambra with Jason and Jeremy.

I squirmed a little when Bea crushed Elle's eye ball with her toes. Not because I'm squeamish - far from it - but because we all knew that there were at least two kids in the theater, both 8 or younger, accompanied by their parents.

Why can't there be an R-13 rating: no one under 13 allowed, even with their idiot parents or guardians?

The girl who plays B.B. is fantastic.

School of Rock

Now Playing – April 16

Seriously good stuff.

Girl next door is now girl in the other room

calendarlive.com: Original story

Diana Krall has a new CD on the way and a new collaborator: husband Elvis Costello.

By Don Heckman, Special to The Times

April 13 2004

It's only noon, but Diana Krall looks weary.

Curled up on a couch in a room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Los Angeles, she smiles wanly, noting that she is well into the third week of publicity events for her new album and is eager to get back to her music.

"Talking about yourself," she says, with characteristic candor, "can get very boring after a while. You start digressing, forget what you said to who. I'll just be glad when I'm playing again."

Krall always has been a determinedly private person, as protective of her personal life a decade ago, at the start of her career, as she is now. But publicity, by definition, demands revelatory information and her marriage to pop star Elvis Costello in December has generated precisely the questions she most dislikes.

Temptation

A two-song teaser for the upcoming album The Girl In The Other Room, this is a nice step back from the commercially focused over-lushness of the last studio album. The title track is an old Tom Waits tune, well played by the band with a heavy bass line that overextends the pathetic factory speakers in my car.

Dutch pink and Italian blue
he is waiting there for you
my will has disappeared
now my confusion's oh so clear

Now Playing

Now playing…

• School of Rock soundtrack
• Diary of Alicia Keys
• Blink 182
• Hank Williams, Sr.
• Johnny Cash
• Weakerthans
• Eels

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

The kids and I went to see Return of the King this afternoon. We'd made arrangements to meet Mandy and her dad at the Hastings - Jeremy got there first, so we all went in on his coattails.

The movie lived up to its reviews - an old-fashioned epic, where the action is used to highlight the universal truths about love, friendship, and honor.

A kid in the row behind jabbered through the whole movie. His parents and I exchanged dirty looks on the way out of the theater. It's not the kid's fault - his parents need to teach him that it's inconsiderate to disturb so many people's viewing pleasure, and that questions and comments can really wait until the end of the movie.

Mandy's dad seemed nice - apparently a big movie fan. We all bemoaned the crummy seats at the Hastings; a 3+ hour movie raises the punishment level on your back to neo-medieval in scope.

Religious Interpretations of Groundhog Day

December 7, 2003
Groundhog Almighty
By ALEX KUCZYNSKI
Original article

A new movie series from the Museum of Modern Art, "The Hidden God: Film and Faith," features some pretty brooding stuff. There's a 1955 Danish movie about a man who thinks he is Jesus Christ, an Ingmar Bergman pastiche about a tormented pastor, a Roberto Rossellini movie about monks. These are, of course, the "intellectual with a capital I" films that audiences might expect at a religious-theme retrospective organized by a major museum. Subtitles and all that fancy stuff.

Master and Commander

Jason was out of town on his birthday, so we did his birthday dinner this afternoon. Beforehand, the boys and I went to see Master and Commander, the new movie based on two of the twenty Aubrey/Maturin novels by Patrick O'Brian.

I've been a big O'Brian fan for many years, and own all of the A/M books. The movie was very true to the overall atmosphere of the books: the sad, dreary life below decks, the harshness of months at sea, and the friendship between the Captain and the doctor. Russel Crowe with blonde hair closely matched the descriptions of Aubrey, and he did a more than credible job in the role.

Lost In Translation

A great, subtle movie.

I liked Bill Murray in the otherwise forgettable Wild Things, and his work here is somewhat similar in style to Rushmore. I always thought he was good in Mad Dog and Glory. In LIT, his understated expressiveness works well with the overall personality of the movie.

During LIT, I assumed Scarlett Johansson was mid- to late-twenties, but IMDB says she's not quite 19. A mature performance here, with a lot of nuance.

How's that for a pretentious-sounding movie review?