Category: Entertainment

Endless Capitalist Fun

Entertainment

I’ve had quite a lot of fun with the Monopoly board game on this here website over the years.  In case you’re new to this back porch, or your brain is as old-fartish as mine, see here for an explanation of Poor Man’s Monopoly, here for Feministical Monopoly, here for some updated Chance / Commmunity Chest cards, and of course we have our old favorite, Black Monopoly:

Now we have this kind of Monopoly:

Going back to the original Monopoly for a moment, we now discover this seldom-exercised yet official rule:

“Whenever a player lands on an un-owned [vacant] property he may buy that property from the Bank at its printed price. If he does not wish to buy the property it is sold at auction by the Banker to the highest bidder.”

I’m interested in the terminology “…it is sold at auction” — it doesn’t say “can be sold”.

Does this mean that the auction is mandatory?

I invite the Powdered Wigsters among my Readers to debate the jots and tittles, in Comments.

Unexpected Pleasure

Entertainment, Literature

While New Wife was off doing girl-shopping the other day, I decided that instead of hanging around the department store looking bored (a.k.a. the Husband Exile), I’d go over to a nearby bookstore and browse some second-hand books because I’ve run out of fiction to read.

I have written several times before how much I enjoyed the wonderful Stieg Larsson “Millenium” TV series — The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest — and I’ve watched the series several times.

Anyway, I decided to read Larsson’s original novels, just to see for myself how bad they are — yes, he’s a filthy socialist but then again #Swedish so that’s not entirely surprising — and I discovered something quite rare:  the TV series is actually better than the novel series, but not by much.

What the TV show of Dragon Tattoo  did was to cut out, for example, the relationship between Lisbeth Salander and her boss, as well as Mikke Blomkvist’s affair with one of the murder suspects — both of which were quite extraneous to the plot.

More importantly, the sexual encounters between Blomkvist and Salander, which were numerous in the novel, were pared back to a only a couple in the TV episode — making their relationship much more fragile as a result.

I’ve only read the first novel so far (Dragon Tattoo) because I didn’t want to buy all three in case they sucked terribly and I would be stuck with two unread books.  But now that I’ve read that one, I think I’ll go back and get the other two because once I’d learned to ignore the rampant socialism, I rather liked Larsson’s writing style.

If you’re really stuck for some reading material (as I was), you could do a lot worse.

Better still, though:  buy the Extended Cut DVD version of the TV series*.

And do not repeat NOT buy the non-Swedish version with Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara, because Noomi Rapace (Salander) and Michael Nyqvist (Blomqvist) are both beyond-words brilliant while the other two aren’t.  We won’t even talk about the stunning Swede MILF Lena Endre…

 

*Be warned that the current version of Millennium available through Netfux has been severely edited, and it’s terrible:  whole scenes have been deleted and even some characters erased, making the show almost incomprehensible, not to say less enjoyable.  (Netflix delenda est)

R.I.P.

Bad News, Entertainment

Like most people, I suspect, I was saddened to hear of the death of actor Gene Hackman a couple of days back.  I know he retired from acting well over a decade ago, but his career was so long, and featured such brilliant roles that he deserves to be in any pantheon of great actors. He might even be the best.

While his forte was dramatic roles, he showed an unexpected flair for comedic ones too, and some of his best performances were when he combined the two.

So my question for the day:  What are your 5 favorite Gene Hackman performances?  (list is here)

Mine:

  • The Conversation (Harry Caul)
  • Unforgiven (Sheriff “Little Bill” Dagett)
  • Mississippi Burning (FBI agent Anderson)
  • Get Shorty (Harry Zimm)
  • Target (Walter Lloyd) — by the way, a totally silly movie, but Hackman is beyond brilliant in it.

Honorable mentions (next five, any of which could have been in the top 5):  The French Connection (Popeye Doyle), Bonnie & Clyde (Buck Barrow) Under Suspicion (Henry Hearst), Hoosiers (Coach Dale) and The Royal Tenenbaums (Royal Tenenbaum).

Honestly, considering that Hackman’s career spanned sixty-odd years, I could have picked yet another five quite easily;  and it was absolute hell to pick only a Top 5.

I’ve seen pretty much all his movies, and I’m trying to think of a bad performance.  Can’t.  (Some of the movies stank — see Target, above — but that’s not his fault.)  I have several Hackman movies on DVD, and I think I’ll watch a couple tomorrow.

Random thought:  he had the worst hair of any actor, ever.  Yet he still turned in brilliant performances regardless.

R.I.P. Gene, and thanks for all of them.

For what it’s worth, John Nolte agrees with me, more or less.

Commemoration

Entertainment

As Mr. Free Market reminds me:

Hey, what am I:  chopped liver?  I mean, I haven’t sent any rockets into orbit, but I bet I’ve sent a lot more lead downrange, and got a lot more people to do the same than ol’ Elon ever has…

And if I may be so bold:

 

We transplanted African-Americans all do our bit for our adopted country, in our own way.