The Fantastic Adventures of Furious D: Cyd Charisse RIP

Legendary dancer and musical star Cyd Charisse passed away at the age of 86. She was a graceful, sexy, and classy presence in those MGM musicals and I think we should remember the way she was meant to be remembered, dancing up a storm...

Definitions You Need To Know

Self Fulfilling Idiocy
Any plan to solve a problem that is so obviously stupid, that it creates a much bigger problem. This bigger problem is so easily predicted, and so utterly obvious as the only result of said plan, that only a complete idiot can't see it coming.

Juvenile Dementia
Hollywood's increasingly demented obsession with youth, which results in childish plots, and immature stars.

Axis of Ego
Hollywood, Malibu, and Beverly Hills where the inhabitants think they are the centre of the universe. The East Coast Axis of Ego consists of New York, The Hamptons, and upscale areas around Washington.

Flyover Country
That part of the world that lies between New York and Los Angeles where the people whose money actually supports the movie business lives.

Neo Feudalism
The belief among certain business people that they must have everything by divine right, and to hell with everyone else who might have a share.

True Capitalism
Not the art of grabbing your piece of the pie, but making your own pie, that's bigger, fresher, and has enough to make everyone involved in the deal happy.

Double Thank You
That moment after a true capitalist deal where each side thanks the other, because both sides got what they wanted.

Mandatory Moments
Those annoying moments you see repeat in dozens of movies because someone feels that it has to be there. Example: The cat leaping out and scaring everyone in a horror/suspense film.

Other's Words of Wisdom

"So it can be seen that the trouble with the motion-picture art was (and is) that it is too much an industry; and the trouble with the motion picture industry is that it is too much an art. It is out of this basic contradiction that most of the ills of the form arise."
-Garson Kanin

"It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous."
– Robert Benchley

"The faster I write the better my output. If I'm going slow I'm in trouble. It means I'm pushing the words instead of being pulled by them."
– Raymond Chandler

"Every writer I know has trouble writing."
– Joseph Heller

"A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit."
– Richard Bach

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
– Ray Bradbury

"Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia."
– E.L. Doctorow

"All the fantasy writers I know have a way of dwelling on their own fears and phobias. A writer spends his life being his own psychiatrist."
–Charles Beaumont

"Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it."
–David Sedaris

"Behind every man now alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, roughly a hundred billion human beings have walked the planet Earth. Now this is an interesting number, for by a curious coincidence there are approximately a hundred billion stars in our local universe, the Milky Way. So for every man who has ever lived, in this universe, there shines a star."
– Arthur C. Clarke (1917 - 2008)

"Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any."
– Orson Scott Card

"When I examine myself and my methods of thought I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge."
– Albert Einstein

"Ah, stardom! They put your name on a star in the sidewalk on Hollywood Boulevard and you walk down and find a pile of dog manure on it. That tells the whole story, baby. "
-Lee Marvin

2008/06/17

Cyd Charisse RIP

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