Tuesday's Things to Click On (3/23/10)

Believe it or not, movie reviews will appear here again someday, though I've yet to decide if they'll be in the same format or not. I enjoy the discourse of writing and commenting back and forth on them, but something's....missing. To be continued, I suppose. It's certainly not for a lack of other content (I hope you agree with me there). Coming soon - the March 2 Box Office Madness game, and another long-delayed tournament of sorts that I'm anxious to get off the ground.

Movies watched for the first time (non-theatrically) since last week:
Um...none that come to mind. We sat down to watch A Streetcar Named Desire, but stopped about 45 minutes in and have yet to pick it back up yet (I currently have about 10 movies I need to watch the endings of...). Thought Brando was good (and damned if he didn't look younnnng), but that Vivien Leigh was laughably bad. Then I had the ending inadvertently spoiler for me - no big deal there, though. At least in doing so, it made her performance a few ticks better. Still, the acting style of ye olden days just turns me off faster than you can say "melodramatic." Please recommend old movies that contain what you might call a contemporary acting style...

Music I'm currently obsessed with:
* Not music - catching up on my podcast listening after a number of days without a commute (my prime podcast listening time).

Book I'm currently reading:
My trip to Washington left me with a lot of reading time, so I finished Chuck Palahniuk's "Snuff." A nice, short read (under 200 pages); not my favorite of his, though. There are very few characters and all of them speak a bit too much like a stereotypical Chuck character. The story is sparse, yet typically interesting/"shocking." If you're a diehard, check it out - it won't take long. Otherwise, don't worry about avoiding.

Having finished that on one plane trip, I was forced to head for the airport bookstore, where there were no copies of "The Girl That Played With Fire" (bummer), which left me perusing the store for something interesting. Came upon A.J. Jacobs "The Year of Living Biblically," a yearlong journal of a secular guy (born Jewish) attempting to live according to the rules of the Bible (all of them, no matter how minute) for 365 days. Jacobs is an editor/writer for Esquire, so I'm probably familiar with his work even if I'm unaware of it. It's not laugh out loud funny, but it's interesting, even if I don't buy some of his scenarios and/or how much commitment he made to the "transformation" (like many followers, he seems to randomly assign importance to certain rules according to the whims of the day).

Finally, the Things to Click On:
* First off, a salute and well wishes to Foolish Blatherings' Branden, who's headed off on a journey that's sure to be interesting (and who knows what else). Best of luck, Branden, and the blogosphere (particularly the movie portion of it) will miss you and await your return.

* I've had The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo on the mind for some weeks now, but Fandango Groovers is ahead of the game (and not just because he's already seen the Swedish version, hitting U.S. cities any day now), putting out some casting suggestions for the U.S. remake, which is already in the works.

* Castor over at Anomalous Material takes an in-depth look at the recent theatrical market statistics released by the MPAA. Cool stuff.

* Jason finally sees Point Break. Will the B movie king give it his seal of approval or seal his fate in my doghouse?

* Finally...the answers are already in the comments, but The Cooler's 2nd annual Eyes of March post is the kind of movie quiz I can get behind (even if I would have scored pretty poorly overall).