Movie Talk at Rogue Slayer Law Student Movie Fan

Ways the DNC and Academy Awards ceremony are similar events:
-Events are scheduled and produced for the tv audience.
-Many speakers do so in an effort to solidify their reputation and expand their future opportunities.
-Speakers are urged not to be blatantly critical of the present administration (by name, anyway).
-High security levels.
-The audience gets lots of airtime.
-Previous winners are always given mic time.
-Most of the current year's contenders are given mic time.
-Music to accompany the speaker walk-ons and walk-offs. 
-Fashion watch.  Elegant couture to crazy hats.
-The biggest audience draws are saved until the very end, when much of the at-home viewing  audience has fallen asleep.
-Most people pay attention to the event in some way, at least by checking the news the next day.
-Many people watch some but not nearly all of the coverage.
-Some people watch all of the prime time coverage.
-A few hard core viewers watch the whole thing, start to end, including the pre- and post-event events, and then discuss and analyze it endlessly with other like-minded individuals. 
-Breakfast parties, lunch parties, cocktail parties, dinner parties, and just plain party parties.
-Gift bags.
-It always goes long.
-You can't get inside without an invitation.
-Political protests are kept outside.  Preferably out of sight. 
-Glenn Close, Michael Moore.
-Expansive use of the phrases, "Thank you" and "God bless." 
-I want to attend at least one before I die.

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Romeo San Vicente reports in his latest Deep Inside Hollywood column that Jodie Foster (!) has her next starring role lined up, in Flight Plan. Foster plays a woman whose daughter disappears from an airline flight, and it seems that no one remembers seeing her on the plane in the first place. Sounds very much like Frantic, Breakdown, and even The Disappearance, the third season episode of Big Valley where Audra disappears while travelling with Victoria (don't you just love Barbara Stanwyck?).

According to IMDB, filming begins this September in L.A. , with Imagine Entertainment producing and Touchstone handling distribution next year.

I should add that during a section of Maggie Cassella's show in P-Town, she asked members of the audience who is on their cheating excemption list. These are the people, usually celebrities of some sort, with whom you would never have a chance in hell of actually having an affair, but if the opportunity should arise for whatever reason, you would be allowed to have that affair without it being considered cheating. Among the women, Jodie Foster was by far the winner.

Amazon links: Frantic, Breakdown, Jodie Foster.


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Jerry Goldsmith passed away from cancer last night at home in Beverly Hills. Movie and sci-fi geeks like me have Goldsmith's work embedded in our souls - he wrote and conducted the soundtracks for scores (pun intended) of movies and tv shows, as well as the Oscar fanfare played at the Academy Awards ceremonies. He was the music of Star Trek (current aberration known as the Enterprise theme song was not his doing), including his work on (in reverse order from IMDB) ST: The Experience - Borg Invasion 4D, Nemesis, Insurrection, First Contact, Voyager, The Next Generation, The Final Frontier, and The Motion Picture.

He was also the music man for other favorites of mine, including Powder, First Knight, U.S. Marshals, Alien: Resurrection, L.A. Confidential, Bad Girls, Rudy, Forever Young, Sleeping With the Enemy, Alien Nation, Poltergeist, Alien, Logan's Run, Room 222, The Trouble With Angels, The Twilight Zone, Wanted: Dead or Alive, and many, many more.

He received 19 Academy Award nominations, and won for Best Original Score for The Omen. His main title theme song for Star Trek: Voyager garnered him one of his several Emmy Awards. His list of nominations and awards is long, and his enduring place in our hearts is guaranteed.

Amazon link: Jerry Goldsmith

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E! Online reports that Baz Luhrmann has put his Alexander the Great project on unspecified hold. The Universal Pictures/Dreamworks project was to have starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Nicole Kidman, and was to have been released next year.

But fear not - Oliver Stone's Alexander is still on schedule for release this coming November. The Warner Bros. project stars Colin Farrell, Angelina Jolie (!) and Anthony Hopkins.
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A number of people find their way to this blog each day by searching for pictures or information on Selby Wall, the character played by Christina Ricci in Monster. Stop searching - Selby Wall is not a real person. She is a fictionalized version of Wuornos' lover Tyria Moore.

For more information on Tyria Moore, see About.com's Tyria Jolene Moore, which includes a link to a news article that includes a photo of Moore.

For more information on the actual events of Aileen Wuornos' life, check out CourtTV.com's In-Depth: Aileen Wuornos page, which has photos and links to documents and other websites. One of the links is to CourtTV's Crime Library entry on Wuornos, The Myth and the Reality, which is a multiple page, detailed biography. I would also recommend Nick Broomfield's documentary Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer.

For an interesting comparison of the movie with the actual events, see Reel Faces and Sue Russell's More of a Monster Than Hollywood Could Picture, although I disagree with Russell's conclusion that "Monster" fails to leave the audience with a sense of the dangerous volatility of Aileen Wuornos.

You can buy the following at Amazon.com: Monster, Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Aileen Wuornos - The Selling of a Serial Killer (Nick Broomfield's first documentary on Wuornos), and Sue Russell's book Lethal Intent.

UPDATE (8/5/04): Scheduled for publication on August 30, 2004 is Monster: My True Story, cowritten by Aileen Wuornos and Christopher Berry-Dee. You can pre-order it now and it will be shipped on publication in a few weeks.

Amazon links:


Aileen Wuornos - The Selling of a Serial Killer

Monster: My True Story


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I recently read John Grisham's The King of Torts, at about the same time that I saw Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls.

The King of Torts follows a public defender who finds himself handed an opportunity to strike it rich in the field of mass torts. He attempts to justify his actions by his good intentions, and is convinced that he will stay above what he sees as the distasteful excess of other mass torts lawyers.

Mean Girls follows a previously home-schooled-in-Africa teenager who suddenly finds herself in a mainstream American high school. She befriends some outsiders, who encourage her to infiltrate the in-crowd when she receives an unexpected invitation. She tries to walk the line between these two groups, convinced she can manage without being corrupted or betraying any of her new friends.

Both were immensely enjoyable, although I found myself wincing at some of the choices made by both protagonists. I found the two works are a good pairing, in that both can be summed up as cautionary tales about how easy it is to drown in the shallow end.

Amazon links: Mean Girls, King of Torts

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