Movie of the week (at least for me, if not TV): Michael Winterbottom's Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story. It's a lark. The suddenly handsome (good haircut, that) Steve Coogan is at the top of his game and his tooth-obsessed co-lead Rob Brydon is spot-on hilarious. As a film based on a famously "unfilmable" novel, Tristram Shandy has some fun (and gives itself some leeway) with the movie-within-a-movie device. When it flounders, it makes fun of itself for floundering. While this relieves some discomfort, overall the film is wobbly. I say, wait for the DVD and you'll get a hearty laugh. High points include the refreshingly real Jennie vs. Jenny subplot, the veddy witty dialogue, the brilliant send-ups of self-involved egomaniacs (some employed by the film industry, some not), the dreamy-even-when-knackered Jeremy Northam and the closing credits exchange about De Niro. It's a little Woody Allen, a little Monty Python and a little Charlie Kaufmann. Not a bad bunch of geezers to be rubbing artistic elbows with, innit?
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I wanted to make a joke about Cheney's shooting incident, but The Washington Times writer Joel Achenbach saved me the trouble in this peppered post.
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