Appreciating A Movie

    

Tucson Weather Today

 

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I happened upon a movie yesterday titled Happy Accidents, a 2000 American film starring Marisa Tomei and Vincent D'Onofrio.

Although I do not often watch love stories, I noticed that the stars of the film were Marisa Tomei and Vincent D'Onofrio... and since I've had for many years a somewhat lascivious lust affair with Marisa Tomei, and since I enjoyed Vincent D'onofrio's performance as the alien bug in the Edgar suit in Men In Black, I decided to give it a chance.


Happy Accidents is a 2000 American film starring Marisa Tomei and Vincent D'Onofrio.

The plot:

Ruby Weaver (Marisa Tomei) is weary of her long history of failed relationships with men when she meets Sam Deed (Vincent D'Onofrio) in a park. But after the two fall in love, Ruby becomes suspicious of Sam's past, his obsession with a "Chrystie Delancey", and "causal effect." Under pressure from her, he finally explains that he is really from the year 2470 and is what he calls a "back traveler."

Happy Accidents was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25, 2000 and received much praise from the audiences. Which means (to me) that it is not you run of the mill story.

However, in his review of the film Roger Ebert described Happy Accidents as being "essentially silliness crossed with science fiction."

So my praise for the film might be one of those 'just me' things.

Marisa Tomei

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Did you know that . . . ?

The Pentagon, in Arlington, Virginia, has twice as many bathrooms as is necessary. When it was built in the 1940s, the state of Virginia still had segregation laws requiring separate toilet facilities for blacks and whites.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day, November 5, 1862 in Minnesota, more than 300 Santee Sioux were found guilty of raping and murdering Anglo settlers and were sentenced to hang. A month later, President Abraham Lincoln commuted all but 39 of the death sentences. One of the Indians was granted a last-minute reprieve, but the other 38 were hanged simultaneously on December 26 in a bizarre mass execution witnessed by a large crowd of approving Minnesotans.

The trials of the prisoners gave little attention to the injustices the Indians had suffered on the reservations and largely catered to the popular desire for revenge. However, President Lincoln's commutation of the majority of the death sentences clearly reflected his understanding that the Minnesota Uprising had been rooted in a long history of Anglo abuse of the Santee Sioux

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WORD FOR TODAY

lust
noun
1. Intense or unrestrained sexual craving.
2.
a. An overwhelming desire or craving: a lust for power.
b. Intense eagerness or enthusiasm: a lust for life.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Roy Rogers
(Nov 5, 1911 - July 6, 1998)

Roy Rogers was an American singer and cowboy actor. He and his wife Dale Evans, his golden palomino, Trigger, and his German Shepherd dog, Bullet, were featured in more than 100 movies and The Roy Rogers Show. The show ran on radio for nine years before moving to television from 1951 through 1957. His productions usually featured a sidekick, often Pat Brady (who drove a Jeep called "Nellybelle"), Andy Devine, or the crotchety George "Gabby" Hayes. Rogers's nickname was "King of the Cowboys" and Evans's nickname was "Queen of the West".

Vivien Leigh
(Nov 5 1913 – July 8 1967)

Vivien Leigh was a British stage and film actress. She won two Best Actress Academy Awards for her performances as  Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939) and Blanche DuBois in the film version of A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a role she had also played on stage in London's West End in 1949. She won a Tony Award for her work in the Broadway version of Tovarich (1963).

Sam Shepard
(born November 5, 1943)

Sam Shepard is an American playwright, actor, and television and film director. He is the author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child. Shepard was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff (1983). Shepard received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009.

Elke Sommer
(born November 5 1940)

Elke Sommer is a German actress, entertainer, and artist. She became one of the top movie actresses of the 1960s and made 99 movie and television appearances between 1959 and 2005, including A Shot in the Dark (1964) with Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, The Art of Love (1965) with James Garner and Dick Van Dyke, The Oscar (1966) with Stephen Boyd, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966) with Bob Hope, the Bulldog Drummond extravaganza Deadlier Than the Male (1966), and The Wrecking Crew (1969) with Dean Martin; Sommer was the leading lady in each of these films.

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“Every time I think about that girl, my mind commits a sin.”
--Jake Vander Ark

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am

Hey Buddy, Have A Drink

Tucson Weather Today

 

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An intentionally overused indoctrinational term intensely echoed by each outlet of the clueless media that makes me want to seriously vomit is The Fiscal Cliff.

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I just recently learned that GEICO is an acronym for Government Employees Insurance Company.

Did you know that?

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Why do so many people on the planet drink alcohol?

 

What is so fine about fine wines?

Surely the reason for craving alcohol (aside from physical addiction) is not merely for the flavor. Modern chemistry can modify simple grape juice to create a festive and seemingly elite elixir placed within an expensive bottle, any fine flavor that might appear desirable to members of the supposed human elect -- so why has rude plebeian alcohol not been abandoned long ago in favor of mildly hallucinatory but relatively harmless drugs?

From age 15 (in 1954) until the age of 42 (in 1982) I was an avid if not addicted imbiber of various alcoholic products. Then, all at once, I simply stopped drinking anything containing alcohol.

Why?

There were many reasons; some are quite personal and some I don't wish to disclose. But the principal reason is that ingesting alcohol was making me physically ill. Not merely a suffering from a regular hangover, but a severely painful rejection by my tortured stomach and a debilitating sluggishness of my intellect. My doctor told me that I had evidently acquired an intolerance for alcohol.

So I stopped drinking alcoholic beverages.

Simple as that.


Exactly what effect does alcohol have on the human brain?

The image below is from MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE of alcohol, the brain experiences impairments in the regions shown:

Frontal Lobe (A) Loss of reason, caution, inhibitions, sociability, talkativeness and intelligence.
Parietal Lobe (B) Loss of fine motor skills, slower reaction time, shaking.
Temporal Lobe (C) Slurred speech, impaired hearing.
Occipital Lobe (D) Blurred vision, poor distance judgement.
Cerebellum (E) Lack of muscle coordination and balance.
Brain Stem (F) Loss of vital functions.

Alcohol's effects on the Brain and Body

This blog entry is meant neither as a sermon nor a morality lecture; it's just a topic nibbling at my mind at the moment. After I think some more about it, I might elaborate on the subject.

. . . Or not.

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WORD FOR TODAY

acronym
noun
A word formed from the initial letters of a name, such as WAC for Women's Army Corps, or by combining initial letters or parts of a series of words, such as radar for radio detecting and ranging.

Note: I especially like SCUBA for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

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BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY

 

Marisa Tomei

 

Born December 4, 1964
Age: 47 years old

Marisa Tomei is an American stage, film and television actress. Following her work on As The World Turns, Tomei came to prominence as a supporting cast member on The Cosby Show spinoff A Different World in 1987. After appearing in a few films, her breakthrough came in 1992 with the comedy My Cousin Vinny, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Appearing in many films over the past fifteen years, her most commercially successful films to date are What Women Want (2000), Anger Management (2003), and Wild Hogs (2007). She received critical acclaim for her performances in Unhook the Stars (1996), Slums of Beverly Hills (1998), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) and received Academy Award nominations for her performances in In the Bedroom (2001) and The Wrestler (2008).

Note: Marisa Tomei is one of those celebrities for which I feel some mysteriously profound attraction. And I don't know why. But GOD -- she's gorgeous.

Jeff Bridges

 

Born December 4, 1949
Age: 62 years old

Jeffrey Leon "Jeff" Bridges is an American actor, musician, producer, photographer, cartoonist, storyteller, and occasional vintner. He comes from a well-known acting family and began his first televised acting in 1958 as child with his father, Lloyd Bridges, and brother Beau on television's Sea Hunt.

Among his best-known major motion films are: Tron (and its sequel), Fearless, Iron Man, The Contender, Starman, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Jagged Edge, Against All Odds, The Fisher King, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Seabiscuit, Arlington Road, and The Big Lebowski. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Otis "Bad" Blake in the 2009 film Crazy Heart and earned his sixth Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in 2010's True Grit.

George A. Hormel

 

Born December 4, 1860
Died June 5, 1946

George Albert Hormel was the founder of Hormel (then known as George A. Hormel & Co.) in 1891.

Hormel was born in Buffalo, New York, USA, in 1860 and later settled in Austin, Minnesota. He established his meat packing company in 1891 and established a food company that continues to thrive today. He remained head of the company until 1929 (passed to his son Jay Catherwood Hormel).

Tyra Banks

 

Born December 4, 1973
Age: 38 years old

Tyra Lynne Banks is an American model and television personality. She first became famous as a model, appearing twice on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and working for Victoria's Secret as one of their original Angels. Banks is the creator and host of the UPN/The CW reality television show America's Next Top Model, co-creator of True Beauty, and was the host of her own talk show, The Tyra Banks Show.

Banks is one of four African Americans and seven women to have repeatedly ranked among the world's most influential people by Time magazine.

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People like to ask me if writing can be taught, and I say yes. I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to write dialogue, maybe even how to construct a plot. But I can't teach you how to have something to say."
--Ann Patchett