End of Silence

By now, you’ve probably heard from somewhere about the Star Wars line at Grauman’s Chinese Theater and also about how, as of this moment, Revenge of the Sith isn’t actually playing there.

Blogging.la, the granddaddy site to our own Austin Metblog (btw, there’s a permanent feed of the latest stories in a box somewhere over there on the left) has had some highly amusing coverage of the line since the beginning. You owe it to yourself to go read all of the posts and comments. The best one so far came today with a recap of a line visit by Jessica Stover. I don’t know who she is, but I’m in love (sorry, Wife). Wil’s recap of her visit doesn’t quite do it justice, you have to read the original.

Kuff passes on a meme that I can’t pass up. List the movies on IMDB’s Bottom 100 that you’ve seen.

Here goes:

• Giant Spider Invasion – I saw this in the theater. I was 4. What were my parents thinking?
• Jaws: The Revenge
• Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre – I blame Scott for that one.
• Jaws 3-D
• Best Defense – I *think* I saw all of this on cable, but I don’t recall.

I was actually surprised at how few I had seen and that I had seen most of them in the theater. I’ve seen bits a pieces of some others on the list, but I didn’t count them because I didn’t see them in their full glory.

The list seems skewed to more recent films. I know there are a ton of candidates for the bottom that aren’t on there. Here’s a few that immediately come to mind for me: Lorenzo’s Oil, Backdraft, Freejack, Phone Booth, Howard the Duck, A.I., and Batman & Robin. I saw all but Batman & Robin in their entirety. Over the past 10 years or so, I’ve been filtering my movie watching so much that now, if it’s remotely bad, I just don’t see it.

Scott Heim, an amazing author and friend, is gearing up for a big year in 2005. The film version of Mysterious Skin, his first novel published almost 10 years ago, is having a good run through the festival circuit after appearing at the Toronto Film Fest and the London Film Fest. It’s getting screenings at Sundance this month as well and has been picked up for U.S. distribution later this year. Scott’s been working on his third novel for quite some time and has this offering on Nerve today.

Set DVR to record Frontline every week so that you stop missing stuff like this and this. You can access these and many other past programs online here.

Preparations for this week’s ACL Festival have begun in earnest. We’ve got an out-of-town guest arriving tomorrow and we secured babysitting for Saturday night so we can all see The Pixies without tired kids. Now that I’ve realized that Franz Ferdinand is responsible for “Take Me Out”, which I’ve been hearing a lot on the radio, I decided that I need to see them on Friday night. Given their similarities to Gang Of Four, it’s serendipitous that Bob has a post this week about everyone’s favorite late 70’s/early 80’s punk/funk brit band. I must dig up my out of print Infinite Zero CD of Entertainment! for another listen.

Other must-see bands as far as I’m concerned are Trout Fishing In America (for the kids), Cake, Wilco, The Roots, Modest Mouse, Elvis Costello and Earl Harvin Trio. Anybody have any other recommendations? I heard a rumor that the surprise guest this year is Prince. Can anyone confirm or at least corroborate the rumor? You can e-mail me if you don’t want to incriminate yourself publicly. Really.