Actors

Here are my opinions on an assortment of actors, some of whom I like more than others.

We'll start with Tom Cruise. First off,  he is a Scientologist which is decidedly weird. I haven't watched that many things he's been in but he's decently well known. Aside from the Scientology being weird part, I don't have a strong positive or negative opinion of him. I can't say that he's an idiot, so I guess that means I like him ever so slightly more than George Clooney (*narrows eyes*).

And with that, on to George Clooney. First off, he has aged rather well even if I think he is an IDIOT. Like personality wise. This impression comes from something I read in a magazine years ago that I just happened to pick up in a grocery store and flip through a little bit, and happened to read an interview of George Clooney in which he bad-mouthed Leonardo DiCaprio. So because of that, I have a negative impression of George Clooney as a person. I think it was totally not classy of him to say those things about Leo in an interview. I guess he's a halfway decent actor though, otherwise he probably wouldn't be so famous. I don't think I've seen anything he's been in so I can't personally say if he's a good actor or not in my opinion. But I do think he's an idiot. Coincidentally, the guy with the eyelashes looks ever so slightly like George Clooney, I suppose. 

Brad Pitt: I don't particularly care for him but he's a decent actor. Which is something I realized a few years ago when it was Halloween and a movie was on that I happened to watch where he plays a vampire. [whoa, I just remembered, Tom Cruise was in that movie too! As a vampire with long, blonde hair... it was quite something! I wonder if the hair was actually his or if it was a wig? Tom Cruise looked really interesting as a vampire with long, blonde hair... Also, thinking of that hair on Tom Cruise made me go google that movie because I wanted to see how he looked in it again, which turned up an article in which Brad Pitt describes the movie as having been a "miserable experience" for him, which was... interesting.]  

Johnny Depp: He is kind of strange looking especially nowadays but I liked him in Edward Scissorhands.

⚝ James D'Arcy ⚝ : first off, he is my favorite actor, I think. He is tall and British and NOT an idiot like George Clooney is. I.e., he's good natured and doesn't say unsavory things about other actors in interviews in men's magazines. Also I think his last name is cool looking. D'Arcy. (not D'arcy, or Darcy, or d'Arcy. It's D'Arcy.) 

Leonardo DiCaprio: one of the actors I like enough to consider trying to watch a number of films he's been in. With other actors I don't care about doing that as much.

Vincent D'Onofrio: considering the past content of this blog, maybe he should have gone at the top of the list. (also, as an aside, I have put all the actors with similarly structured last names together - D'Arcy, DiCaprio, D'Onofrio)

Mark Ruffalo: a second rate version of Vincent D'Onofrio who voice sounds like he doesn't move his tongue around in his mouth enough when he talks. He was in the movie Zodiac which I thought was pretty bad. I guess it wasn't totally his fault though; it was whoever wrote the screenplay. 

Patrick Dempsey: apparently his bad behavior is what cause Shonda to kill his character off on Grey's Anatomy. And he likes racecars. And he is from Maine. I guess he's kind of decent looking even if he doesn't have a first rate personality. I wonder what Grey's Anatomy would be like had he not gotten killed off. 

Daniel Craig: first off: James Bond! He was also nice in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I've seen some other things that he's been in as well. 

For the record, if you're interested in reading this interview of George Clooney, I think it was in a men's magazine, published within the last... 10 years, at most.
For now this post is completed, but if I think of other actors in the future that I haven't included here, I might add them to this little list of actors and my opinions of them. 

Movie review: Se7en

I like writing it Se7en just cause it kind of looks cool, to me at least. In any case, I watched this movie finally; I had been wanting to watch it for awhile and this afternoon I finally did. Mostly it was the murder/serial killer and detectives aspect of it that interested me. This was also directed by David Fincher, who directed Fight Club (I think?), Zodiac (I know, and it was rather disappointing), and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (which I really liked). That makes him probably one of the directors I've watched the most films of, at least off the top of my head. 

In any case, I thought going into this I might probably keep comparing it to Law and Order, and I kind of did. I would say this was a good movie, which is odd because I thought Zodiac was really bad. But TGWTDT was really good. I'd put Se7en as better than Zodiac, definitely, but maybe not quite as good as TGWTDT. Brad Pitt was in this movie; I have no particular preference towards him as an actor, but I guess he's a decent actor. It reminded me of the time a few years ago when it was Halloween and Interview with the Vampire was on and I happened to watch that, which was the first movie of Brad Pitt's I had seen and made me come to the conclusion that he was a decent actor, even if I don't particularly care for him (I care for Leonardo DiCaprio, though). I guess he did a good job in Se7en, even if his character was kind of an unsophisticated jerk. 

It was a pretty decent movie although I think perhaps it could have had more... substance, or something. Maybe I wish I liked the characters more? I know with a movie there's not as much time to really endear the viewer towards the characters as there would be in many episodes of a tv show (hello, Law and Order), but I guess I've just been used to watching tv shows where you get repeatedly exposed to the same characters. This movie was sort of similar to the stuff that happens in Law and Order, but it had more drama and it was a bit grittier. I definitely noticed the general look of the film was consistent; the cinematography and colors, which is a thing I also noticed in TGWTDT (lots of blues, darkish colors to convey the Swedish setting and the darker tone of the movie), so perhaps it's a Fincher thing. This movie didn't completely WOW me like Shutter Island did, so I'd say Shutter Island was better although Se7en was definitely decent and not a waste of time. I thought some of the tortures the serial killer used were... interesting. I liked how the interrogation room was rather similar in general appearance to the one in Law and Order - the same square tiling on the walls, and the Navy chairs (!). The colors were darker though, a bit more green, whereas in Law and Order the colors of the interrogation room are more of a light grayish blue. 

I do wish there were more information given about the setting, rather than it just being some ambiguous inner city type place. I don't think it was supposed to be NYC because the badges weren't right. I guess it was intended to not take place in a specific, real, city. Maybe it was Chicago? Not that I even really have a clue what Chicago looks like, but it's the second thing that came to mind if it doesn't seem to take place in NYC. I guess it's because I'm used to Law and Order and the NYC setting is definitely an essential part of the whole Law and Order-ness of it. 

So all in all, it wasn't a waste of time although perhaps it could have been somewhat better. But it was definitely better than Zodiac. But not better than TGWTDT or Shutter Island. I am kind of curious what the movie would have been like if Leonardo DiCaprio had played Brad Pitt's character. Although in 1995 he probably would have looked a little young for the role. But let's say, theoretically, the movie was made in... 2003, and Leo had the role. I wonder how it would have been like. 

This blog goes political (sort of)

(but only for a short time... by no means am I turning this into a politics blog. Don't worry. You can keep tuning in to see my ramblings about tv shows and the like)

So. What a debate. More in groan-inducing why can't this election be over already, but anyways. As you know, our favorite guy with the eyelashes is a Republican. A conservative. A right winger. (At this point I don't know other ways to say Republican) So, naturally, I don't agree with him on political stuff for the most part. But at least he doesn't support Donald Trump. However, I was watching a clip from an appearance he did on tv after the debate offering commentary/analysis on Donald Trump's performance. The guy with the eyelashes thinks that Donald Trump won the debate last night because he managed to not completely self destruct. Which I have to respectfully disagree with. I don't think that the fact that he managed to not completely self destruct means that he won the debate. Sure, he could have done worse but the fact that he didn't do worse =/= won the debate. Sorry, guy with the eyelashes. I think you're intelligent and probably a decent person, but I have to disagree with you here. (not that it really matters, I just felt like spouting this all out even though there's hopefully 0 chance that the guy with the eyelashes reads this because if he did how embarrassing would that be? Especially given my other post all about eyeballs and eyelids and eyelashes. Although that was a couple of months ago at least.) 

But I still like you for your eyeballs and eyelashes. Please don't ever trim your eyelashes and/or get brown colored contacts. 

Types

Apparently, I have two types, it seems. Or let's say, three. In no particular order:

Type 1: middle aged (30s-40s or so) men with graying hair to some degree (in some cases this degree is completely white) and blue-gray eyeballs. Think the guy with the eyelashes (who will remain unnamed even though that certainly hinders the use of him as an example) and Anderson Cooper. Oh, Anderson.. Note: this does not, I repeat, not, include George Clooney. I think he's an idiot although I will admit that he has aged rather well. But I still think he's an idiot.
Type 2: delicate male model types. I apparently have a particular soft spot for blondes. Tall, thin, pale, delicate and sort of European looking, if you will.
Type 3: actors, particularly British ones and/or ones with last names like D'Arcy / D'Onofrio (or rather, how he looked about 15 years ago... yeah, I know I'm shallow) / DiCaprio (he also kinda looked better at least 10 years ago than he does now. Again, I know I'm shallow).

I just thought I should put this out there.

We'll stay forever this way...

This is not a post about Titanic even though the title is a line from the song My Heart Will Go On (which maybe is stuck in my head a little bit at the moment or something). 

This is a post about tv shows. Yay, more musings on tv shows. 

I'm about to reach the end of the three original seasons of Arrested Development. The fourth season (and now, apparently a fifth?) was added on years later on Netflix. I'm not sure if I'll watch it. I assume they intended for the show to end after season 3 and therefore any additional ones are kind of... iffy. If that makes sense. This can also apply to the Millennium Trilogy and how recently a fourth book written by not Stieg Larsson has been published. And it also applies to the final (10th) season of Law and Order CI. All three things ended, and then were revived later. (4th season of Arrested Development, 10th season of CI, book 4 in the Millennium series) 

I figure, I enjoyed the original run of these things so why possibly let the later additions to them be possibly disappointing? Hence the "We'll stay forever this way..." title to the post. I'm going to purposefully avoid consuming the post scripts, if you will, or perhaps you can call them epilogues... well, you get the idea. That's how I consider them, at least. So that I don't have to worry that the additions won't live up to my expectations. I'm okay with how the things originally ended so I don't necessarily need to watch the epilogues and see an additional ending. 

Although of course perhaps I wonder what happens to the detectives, or the Bluth family, or Salander and Blomkvist after their respective original stories ended, I'm okay with just leaving it at that. The fear of disappointment is greater than the desire to know what happens in the post scripts. 

Also, an update on Criminal Minds: haven't been watching that since I got into Arrested Development, but seeing as I only have like two more episodes of that left, perhaps I'll start back into watching Criminal Minds. I think I'm in the middle of season 6 or so. Maybe like 1/3 into that season. Something thereabouts.

Notebooks

Tonight I was in the grocery store and looking at the books and magazines. In particular, the knitting magazines, but the 4 or so they had all cost at least $7 which I didn't feel like spending on a knitting magazine. I can find knitting ideas/patterns online if I so desire. In this aisle there is also a small selection of notebooks/notepads/journals/whatever you want to call them. I saw one which was small and the cover had pink and white stripes. It was your general little spiral notepad except the spiral was at the top, which maybe isn't the most common position as most journals/notebooks are bound at the side. 

On one matter, I completely prefer spiral notebooks over composition ones. For some reason. I just like how the pages turn on the metal spiral coil, I guess. This applies to regular sized notebooks for school as well as small notebooks/journals that I mostly just write random lists and stuff in for personal use. For personal use notebooks/journals, the paper has to be the right kind (a little nicer than the texture/kind of paper found in your standard spiral notebook for school) and the ruling has to be the right size. If the lines are too close together I won't get it even if I particularly like the design on the cover or whatever. I'm rather particular about these things. 

On a slightly different matter, I was watching Law and Order SVU today and in this show the detectives can be seen taking notes occasionally in little notepads they carry in their jacket pockets. These notepads are always the top spiral kind which is... interesting, in a way. Why top spiral? Why not side bound? Is there some reason? And if so, what reason is it? These little notepads, as far as I've noticed, usually have plain colored covers. I guess perhaps the style of notepads (fictional, for this matter, although perhaps also real ones since Law and Order is sort of realistic? as realistic as a tv show can be, I guess. Any tv show will have some degree of unrealisticness, some more than others. And I've felt that the Law and Order shows have erred more on the side of more realistic than not, but again, it's a tv show, and even if it's more realistic than other shows, it still can be unrealistic to some degree compared to real life) detectives use is regulation? Do they buy their own notepads or are they provided by the police department? Big questions. If I were theoretically a detective, I think I would use a snazzier looking notepad. With a job like that, you've gotta add a little bit of... color and whimsy where you can. It would be ever so slightly in the vein of Penelope Garcia of Criminal Minds. I wonder if my theoretical detective colleagues would frown upon also taking the notes in colorful pen inks (think purple! or a sparkly gel pen color!) aside from your usual black or maybe blue. I think it's very possible they might. And/or just not take me seriously. Again, all theoretical. But wouldn't that be an interesting job? (read: I have been watching way too much Law and Order. Speaking of which, in a couple of months it'll be my 'one year anniversary' since starting to watch the show,or rather, the CI variation.. is that something maybe I should celebrate? [probably not. I think you should get a life, maybe. Just a suggestion.])  And my theoretical detective note taking notepad would probably be side bound, unless, upon becoming a detective I learn that there's some justifiable reason they use top bound ones.

Again, too much Law and Order. I think I might also really enjoy being a set decorator. Although to my knowledge the aforementioned notepads count as props and therefore would be under the responsibility of the props person/department and not the set decorator. Although maybe set decorators and props departments work closely together? Depending on the show, costuming could be interesting too. Guess I'd better start studying movie/tv production or something along those lines.

You would think that I've gotten my day's serving of true and fictional crime (via watching some episodes of SVU and reading posts on /r/unresolvedmysteries) but at the time of writing this, around 10 pm, I think I could still be up for more. More episodes of SVU or some other Law and Order. Maybe not Unresolved Mysteries. Those can get a little unnerving to read late at night sometimes. Although I recently read a bit on a serial killer case that (surprisingly?) I was not familiar with. And I'm at least sort of familiar with a number of serial killer cases. (let me seduce you with my knowledge of serial killers!)

And with that, we'll end this post. Although... come to think of it! The requisite Vincent D'Onofrio related content. So today, I 1) read an article about the Marines that was quite reminiscent of the events in the first portion of the movie Full Metal Jacket, which Vincent was in way back in the 80s and 2) watched a video that was a short analysis of the new western movie he is in. Watching this video solidified my decision to not see said western movie featuring Vincent D'Onofrio. From the scenes/clips shown in the analysis video, the movie seemed to me to be rather cheesy, as I guess western movies tend to be? I wouldn't really know as I don't watch western movies. Although then later after I had watched this video and was thinking about western movies, I realized/remembered that a couple years ago or so I did watch this one western/scifi movie. Which was because it had Daniel Craig in it and I admire his performances as James Bond. For some reason, a number of the times I've watched something "because it had (insert actor here) in it" it has not ended up with me watching a movie I enjoyed. Well, actually, the only two examples that come straight to mind are Full Metal Jacket and this scifi western movie with Daniel Craig, so I guess I can't say that whenever I watch something because it has a certain actor in it it always turns out in me watching some movie I end up thinking wasn't that good, because a number of movies that I've watched because they have some actor that I like in them have actually turned out to be movies I enjoyed. But a couple of them have been ones that I didn't particularly love. Although I didn't particularly love Full Metal Jacket, it does seem to have stuck with me. Mostly the topics of the Vietnam War and the Marines evoke memories of the movie Full Metal Jacket in my mind. Although then I feel the need to remind myself that there's more to the Vietnam War/the Marines than just what was portrayed in Full Metal Jacket. (Also Apocalypse Now. Although I would say that movie was less a movie about the Vietnam War than a movie based on Heart of Darkness that just happened to be set during the Vietnam War.) And by the way. Heart of Darkness was not a book I enjoyed. I read it because it was for English class. I watched Apocalypse Now in the hope that it would give me some enlightenment regarding Heart of Darkness, but alas, it did not. And I wasted like three hours watching that movie. And for some reason it's a classic famous movie. Which I will have to say, I don't really understand. What do/did people see in it? I would assume obviously they got more out of watching it than I did. After seeing both Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now, I decided that I would not watch any more war movies in the future. Except maybe Saving Private Ryan since that one is supposed to be really good. It has Tom Hanks in it. 

In retrospect, this post should probably be titled "Notebooks (and a long aside about Vincent D'Onofrio which goes on tangentially from there) 

For reference, here is the article about the Marines I read. If you are familiar with the movie Full Metal Jacket, I'm sure you'll see the similarities. 

Law and order and Donald Trump

Three posts in one day! A new record! 

This one is about the matter of how Donald Trump claims himself to be the "law and order candidate," stuff like that, and the ironic fact that in many people's minds (or at least mine) the words "law and order" evoke the idea of a tv show about (dedicated) detectives who investigate crimes and district attorneys who prosecute the offenders.. These are their stories.. (episode begins). [I just had to.] 

I was on the New York Times' website where I saw a link to this article, which is about the history of the use of the term "law and order" in the political world. It's rather interesting. Of course, I had to take a look at the comments. This one struck me as particularly amusing: 

Television cop shows have gotten much more violent each decade since the days of Dragnet, Adam-12, and Andy Griffith! 
Starsky & Hutch and Miami Vice upped the violence significantly, as did Streets of San Francisco and 21 Jump Street.
Barney Miller and Columbo showed lots of petty and domestic crime, but were never in the violence range compared to the modern CSIs and Homicide: Life on the Streets, as well as NYPD: Blue, Hill Street Blues, The Shield, and The Wire. 
So maybe the television violence is indeed actually higher these days contrary to this article's premise. So maybe they should heed calls to bring back television's Law and Order series which blended police procedural and courtroom drama created by Dick Wolf. The series ran for 20 seasons on NBC, from 1990 to 2010, with 456 episodes, spawning four American spinoffs and a movie.

Also, see this article here, titled, "If Donald Trump Were the Real Law and Order Candidate." This one I also found quite amusing. It even has Donald Trump photoshopped into various screencaps from Law and Order.