Why did the critics hate The Punisher so much? It's certainly not a favorite of mine, but I thought it was entertaining and worth the rental. Even if you're disappointed in it, it's more middling and forgettable than outright bad in anyway. So why the venom?

In defense of "Marcia", I'm not sure that Patches Kennedy can even get his own name right in his more lubricated moments.

It great to see 24 back and it will be even greater to see Special Agent Freckles again tonight, but this assassination plot is a bit on the lame side. After watching Jack preventing L.A. from getting nuked or destroyed by a deadly virus or nerve gas and taking down a corrupt POTUS, I just can't get all fired up about what happens to some philandering kleptocrat from South Ickystan. I'm sure they'll start in absurdifying the plot pretty soon, but the stakes are still looking a little small after last night's preview.

(And by the way, wasn't that questionably accented guy Looney Bin Jim from the new Punisher movie?)

You beat me to the punch vis a vis Marilyn Monroe. I have never understood the Marilyn phenomena. She wasn't that great of an actress and I've never even thought she was particularly attractive. Is it just the fact that she O.D.'ed and b**ned a couple of Kennedys? No other reason for the attention given her is discernable to me.

Do you mean?

"I 'effin saw an 'effin Rat. 'Eff, did you 'effin see an 'effin Rat?"
"Are you an 'effin Rat, mother'effer?"
"We are 'effin gonna 'effin get that 'effin rat 'effer!"
Etc.

Mystic River has warnings for the future of over-rated movies as well. The author of the book, Dennis Lehane, wrote a series of absolutely fantastic P.I. novels - one of which made it to screen as the very good Gone Baby Gone. At some point he decided he was too good to be a mere "crime novelist" and turned artsy-f**tsy with a capital f**t. The result was the novel "Mystic River" which is pretentious, hyper-purple, overwrought and boring all at the same time. If anything, the book is worse than the movie because at least the movie doesn't subject you to endless pages of self-consciously purple prose.

I bring this up because Lehane now has an even worse book in the movie pipeline - "Shutter Island" - with all the annoying purple prose and none of the coherent plot of "Mystic River". And to top it off, the adaptation will star everyone's second favorite man-child, Leonardo DiCaprio. Look for this one on the list of most over-rated of the 10's.

Douthat is a sad case. I used to read him quite a bit myself back when he wrote online for the Atlantic and I thought he had some interesting things to say. But now he's sold his soul to a mere limb of Satan - the New York Times. The Times is not going to allow any real conservative voice on their op-ed pages so they hire right-of-center people they are convinced will be good squishes for them. Unfortunately, Douthat has agreed to this and will now spend the next several years of his life muttering and nattering on about how the GOP is far too right-wing and how Sarah Palin is a dunce and how wonderful the crease is in Obama's pants. He has signed on to be nothing less (and is there anything less?) than a second-string David Brooks and anything he has to say while still a part of that infernal organization can be dismissed out of hand.

The film has been subjected to a sustained assault from many on the right, most notably by Ross Douthat in the New York Times, as an “apologia for pantheism.”

If Douthat, that egg-headed squish that calls himself a right-winger, doesn't like it then maybe I'm going to have to change my opinion of it. Or does the stopped clock have the correct time for the moment?

Ouch!! That's a very thought provoking post, but it's got some very very scary parts too:

http://www.cinematical.com/2008/07/02/sacha-baron...

It would be truly off-putting if a lot of homoerotic "slash" asides are in the final cut of the movie. One of the reasons this looked appealing to me is the fact that they do seem to play up the angle that Holmes and Watson are best friends. We've gotten used to the bumbling old-fogie Watson because of the old Rathbone-Bruce films and I never thought that did the Watson of the stories justice. Giving Jude Law a plum part and making him something of the equal of Holmes at least in the man-of-action department would be giving Watson his due I think.