'A Christmas Story' has always meant a lot to me personally.
I have a female colleague who gets annoyed that Tina Fey seems to go out of her way in her movies to deride her looks, as if she weren't such an attractive woman.
Well, the movie isn't bad. For a while, I even told myself I liked it, even as it missed one mark after another. But in the end, it's shapeless and blandly apolitical, apart from its watered-down feminism. You see, Fey's Kim Baker - changed from Barker - transforms herself from a neophyte reporter, condescended to by male war correspondents, soldiers and Afghan officials, into a hard-charging political animal who speaks the language fluently and parties as hard as men. That's about as edgy as a sitcom.
Still, you can't complain about the number of movies being made. Never have the means of making movies been so accessible to so many. The problem is getting bodies into seats.
Every year, I'm depressed that so few of the documentaries I've loved break through.
Along with my peers, I gripe about the increasing number of superhero films, and I'm sad that so many critics so uncritically use words like franchise, which should be reserved for your local Burger King.
The economic and technological changes are real, but I just can't bring myself to wax apocalyptic about the future of books.
When you finish reading a script and you realise that you didn't think of anything else, that you were just focusing on the script and were caught up in the story, then that's when I am amazed.
We don't have an explanation for everything that happens. We don't control almost anything. And if we are not open to that mystery, life becomes so small.
I missed you, Angel. Not one day went by that I didn't feel you missing from my life. ' -Patch (PG 274)
If I turned around every time somebody called me a faggot, I'd be walking backward - and I don't want to walk backward.