Everybody’s Talkin’ 5 – 17 (Chatter from Other Bloggers)

So there’s me last night, walking back in the door at 2 am after a late screening of STAR TREK at the IMAX theatre. I’m pretty bushed and already staring down the barrel of about four hours sleep. I thinking I’ll get ready for bed and hit the hay in short order, when on the elevator ride up to my place, I glance at Twitter.

It’s then that I discover what my city’s mayor has been up to. Google “Rob Ford”…I’ll wait…

I largely avoid politics on this space. Not only is political discussion not my forté, but it can spark some endless arguments. Today however, I need to vent.

It’s this simple folks – I don’t care if you’re left wing, right wing, or independent. I don’t care if you’re socially liberal or fiscally conservative. I don’t even care if you’re squeaky clean, since I believe in many cases we are asking our public figures to perch on a pedestal few can balance on. But if you decide to run for an office that is designated for leaders – a mayor, a governor, a premiere, a president, a prime minister – you owe it to those who voted for you, and also those who didn’t, not to become a total fucking embarrassment. This isn’t about a gaffe or two; those happen when you have a mic in front of you as often as our leaders do these days. This is about being an upright citizen and trying to live within certain margins.

If you can’t do that, if you can’t serve your constituents without making a complete fool of yourself – and likewise the office you serve – then sit the hell down and let someone qualified do the job.

Sorry for the rant folks, back to movie discussion.

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For your listening, viewing, and reading fulfilment, I give you…

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It was a pretty big week over at Fogs’ Movie Reviews. Go listen in to The Title Pending Movie Podcast where the boys discuss THE GREAT GATSBY and raise a glass while you’re there.

Best of The Past is a classif film blog I’ve been following for a little while, but curiously haven’t linked to until now. Remember how I’m making an effort to do more reading about film? Well Marcela does me a solid and recommends several good books to bone up on classic film – and she does it via video!

Not enough multimedia? You greedy bastards. How about this then – sometimes podcaster Brian J. Roan has also tried his hand at video with a series he calls Reel Talk (musta hurt himself coming up with that title). All jokes aside, give his handiwork a look.

Inspired by a brilliant young critic, Jessica takes a moment to ponder the whole notion of rating films.

TO THE WONDER is a film I didn’t connect with – which is really strange considering how dearly I love Terrence Malick’s other five movies. I plan to revisit it someday, but at first blush I couldn’t seem to latch on to its thesis (if it had one). That said, I’m continually interested in hearing what others have to say about it, and Kevin down at Movie Mezzanine has put up a pretty interesting piece on the film.

Ruth at Flix Chatter celebrated her tenth wedding anniversary this week (huzzah!). In honour of that, she’s gathered ten of her favorite wedding scenes into one post.

Another film from TIFF 2013 that I’m looking forward to revisiting is Noah Baumbach’s FRANCES HA. Over at Black Sheep, my man Joe has posted his review this week and it turns out he enjoyed it a great deal!

Join me in pitying Dan Heaton at The Public Transportation Snob – the poor sod just sat through Steven Spielberg’s 1941.

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For the Tweet of The Week, I turn to Jill at Sittin’ On a Backyard Fence. She celebrated her anniversary this week by negotiating a card trade-in and watching Fritz Lang’s M. Which led to this pearl of wisdom…

[blackbirdpie url=”https://twitter.com/biscuitkitten/status/334001870865575937″]

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Enjoy!