Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Always fun to highlight culture-bargains.

* Wes Craven's "Red Eye" is now $5.99 -- I wrote about this clever, well-acted, and exciting thriller here.

* "Cellular," an L.A.-set thriller that showcases a lot of ingenuity, professionalism, and bravado, now goes for $7.99. If you liked "Speed," you'll probably enjoy "Cellular." I raved about this resourceful and exuberant picture, which was directed by David Ellis, here.

* J.S. Cardone's "8MM 2" -- which, amusingly, has zero to do with the original "8MM" -- is on sale for $5.99. I found "8MM 2" to be an inspired, moody, and sexy B movie; I wrote about it here.

* Michael Bay's 2005 bomb "The Island" is nothing if not overblown, hectic, and pretentious -- a philosophical thriller for MTV-addled frat boys. I enjoyed it nonetheless, if in a half-camp way. Nothing wrong with enjoying a movie in a half-camp way, is there? I wrote about "The Island" here.

* Will Farrell's NASCAR comedy "Talladega Nights" starts out slow but gets wilder and wilder as it goes along. And what a cast! I wrote about "Talladega Nights" here.

* Annette Bening is perfectly amazing in the satisfying backstage period drama "Being Julia," from a novella by Somerset Maugham. My blogposting about the movie is here; I wrote about the masterly Maugham here.

* The Berry Gordy-directed Diana Ross showcase "Mahogony" is a classic example of "perfectly awful and terrifically enjoyable." It's soapy / campy, over-the-top -- and non-ironic -- melodramatic bliss of a juicy and absurd kind that they really don't make any longer.

* Mariner Software sells a first-class word processor for the Mac called MarinerWrite. Why hand hundreds to Microsoft for Word when you can download MarinerWrite for just $34.95, its current on-sale price? I blogged about some other excellent and cheap writing tools for the Mac here.

Best,

Michael

i thought talledega nights was another of will's so so films. if you think you like will, michael. (i am a fan of altman, ferreri, blier, etc also not just some hick) you should check out anchorman: the legend of ron burgendy and blades of glory for (for me) more inspired smart stupid humor.

Posted by: t. j. on August 17, 2007 2:22 PM

Thanks for the recommendations Michael!

Posted by: Lester Hunt on August 19, 2007 11:14 AM

Why spend any money on Word when OpenOffice is available for free? It's actually a nice suite of programs (though the interface could use work -- typical of free programs) and it offers pretty much everything Word does, for me.

Posted by: Cineris on August 23, 2007 3:44 AM






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