The Last Ten Movies We've Seen (as of Wednesday)........Are We the Doom Generation?

Greetings to our blog readers in South Korea, Romania, and Egypt......

Happy Ramadan to our Muslims friends.....

Today, we look at the last ten films we've seen; this is an idea we originally got from "Film Comment" magazine, where Gavin Smith is the editor-in-chief.

The last ten films we've seen, include two that are in theatres ("Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl;" "The Overnight"). The earliest Hollywood film on the list is "The Brothers Karamazov" (bottom image) which is a 1958 film which marked the film debut of William Shatner (Captain Kirk on "Star Trek") and the earliest film overall is "Torment" from 1944, a Swedish film with a screeenplay from a young Ingmar Bergman.

The other two foreign-language films on the list are "Inside" (Yeralti) by Turkish director Zeki Demirkbuz and "Stray Dogs" (center image) from Taiwanese filmmaker Ming-ling Tsai.

It is not very often that we have a film from the 1990s, or the "Seinfeld" decade as we like to call it, on the list, but the very last film we saw on this survey is a strange spree killers road movie called "The Doom Generation" (top image: Courtney Love, we are using her symbolically as she is not in the film) which features a supporting character played by Parker Posey, who is one of the film's few highlights! (We agree with the late Roger Ebert who called it an awful film!).....

Here is the last ten:

1. "The Doom Generation." director: Gregg Araki. 1995.

2. Stray Dogs. Taiwan. dir: Ming-ling Tsai. 2013

3. The Dark Crystal. Jim Henson and Frank Oz. 1982.

4. Next Stop, Grenwich Village. Paul Mazursky. 1976.

5. Death Hunt. Peter R. Hunt. 1981 w/ Charles Bronson and Lee Marvin

6. The Brothers Karamazov. Richard Brooks. 1958.

7. The Overnight. Patrick Brice. 2015 w/Jason Schwatzman

8. Torment. Sweden. Alf Sjoberg. 1944

9. Me, Earl and the Dying Girl. Alfonso Gomez-Rejan. 2015

10. Inside. Turkey. Zeki Demirkubuz. 2012

http://www.filmcomment.com

http://www.tcm.com

Top Ten Comic Strips from Sunday Dec. 28th Washington Post

Greetings to our blog readers in Singapore, Nepal and Taiwan..........

This week, we look at our top ten favorite Sunday comic strips from "The Washington Post;" once again, Stephan Pastis did brilliant work for "Pearls Before Swine," a comic strip which only ran in a few newspapers when it first started and is now even in "The News and Advance" in Lynchburg, Va. (we love making fun of Lynchburg here at 'The Daily Vampire').....In the latest Sunday strip, Pastis has Goat telling his mutual frenemy Rat that he can in his house as his house if getting painted. SPOILER ALERT: But, Goat has so many attached conditions that Rat just decides to check into a hotel anyway, hence the reason we have an image of an old motel postcard from Joplin, Missouri (top image). "Pearls" wins this week's comics survey for this amazing strip.

In a close second, we have "Lio" where the little boy who is the title character attempts to return a dragon in a long line for Christmas returns at some Sears or Target or Wal-Mart or Best Buy (you get the joke, I hope)......btw, a dragon from Wales is featured here in our middle image...

In third place, Scott Hilburn's "The Argyle Sweater" ponders what would happen if a fisherman working for Red Lobster found one of Spongebob Squarepants' friends (bottom image)....

Here is our top ten, that we are typing up as we listen to Peter Gabriel's great 1992 album "Us" which would listen to more of instead of vegging out to Billy Idol (forgive the Gen X humor)....

1. Pearls Before Swine

2. Lio

3. The Argyle Sweater

4. Foxtrot

5. WUMO

6. Dustin

7. Brewster Rockit: Space Guy

8. Reply All

9. Sherman's Lagoon

10. Prickly City

For this week's "Roanoke Times" comic strips survey, go to our sister blog's link here: http://www.politicscultureandotherwastesoft.blogspot.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/

http://www.gocomics.com/

http://comicskingdom.com/

http://www.visitmo.com/

Quote of the Day/Week- Chris Rock

Today's quote of the day/week comes from Chris Rock, 47, who was one of the subjects of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders' excellent photography "The Black List" at the National Portraits Gallery, that ran until April 22nd.

Rock is a comedian/actor/film producer who grew up in New York and became a 'not ready for prime time' player on "Saturday Night Live." Rock is one of the few "SNL" alumni who became famous in spite of being on the show rather than being on it because his presence on the show was limited to stint appearances and bit parts.

But, Rock made a stellar comeback on the standup comedy circuit, and by 1998, he was a full-fledged movie star. Rock who has appeared in such films as "New Jack City," "Dogma" and "Bee Movie" also played a fictional president in the film "Head of State," which makes this quote, from when George W. Bush was president, quite ironic, as well as the fact that Barack Obama is now the leader of the free world:

"A white boy that makes Cs in college can make it to the White House."

SIDEBAR: Well, we apparently jinxed tennis star Serena Williams as she was upset in her French Open opener to Virginate Razzano, 29, a virtually unknown French tennis player. We also goofed when we said that Williams had advanced to the quarterfinals of the French Open, as it was the tourney was not even underway! But, thankfully, no pays attention to blogs. Having said, thanks to those of you in Indonesia, Taiwan and Ukraine who stopped by here today!

http://www.chrisrock.com

http://www.washington.org

http://blacklistphoto.com

Quote of the Day/Week_ Michael Dukakis

Hmmm....since there is the NCAA men's basketball tournament here in the United States (editorial comment: Go Harvard! They face Vanderbilt today) and the UEFA Champions League soccer games in Europe, assuredly Taiwan may be one of the few places where actual work is getting done today.

Today, we quote Michael Dukakis, the Democratic candidate who unsuccessfully ran against George H.W. Bush, in the 1988 presidential election. All this month, we are quoting men who fought the good fight, but didn't end up serving in the White House. Last week, we quoted Republican Robert Dole who lost to Bill Clinton in 1996.

There is a bit of a personal connection with me and the Dukakis campaign. Since I was 18 in 1988 and I was one of the few people from my high school in a conservative zip code who disdained the policies of Ronald Reagan, I was eager to vote Dukakis. And, I did.

The problem is that I'm a Turkish-American, and this didn't go over well with the relatives in Istanbul. In fact, my since deceased uncle by marriage Omer Bati pretty much threatened to throw me over the balcony for voting for Dukakis.

We learned today that Dukakis, a Greek-American, actually has connections to modern-day Turkey as his parents came from the Turkish port town of Erdemit in the Balikesir province. There are still many Turkish citizens of Greek heritage in Turkey; most of them reside in Istanbul.

Ironically, Dukakis was the second Greek-American to become the governor of a state. Long before Dukakis became the governor of Massachusetts, a post later held by both Democrat John Kerry (who lost to George W. Bush in 2004) and Mitt Romney, who is likely going to be the Republican nominee this year, one Spiro Agnew was the governor of Maryland from 1967-69.

Agnew's life is however best remembered for scandal as the Republican who would become Richard Nixon's first vice president was forced to resign from that post due to a bribery scandal.

As for Dukakis, he is perhaps best-remembered for taking more firm stances on liberal issues, including his opposition to the death penalty and his belief in gun control.

As for me, there are no regrets about voting for Dukakis, though today, I may not share voting for a Greek-American with other Turkish people.

Here is the quote from Dukakis:

"The best America is a nation where the son of Greek immigrants, with your help, can seek and win the presidency of the United States."

Yes, We Have Experienced Distractions

The proverbial easy thing to do would be to lie and say we took a trip to Miami or Park City, Utah, for a few days, but nope that's not what happened. I've been interested in some new creative projects and the computer hasn't been working as properly as it should. I guess everyone else has been there too.

But, we hope to at least somewhat get back to our regular schedule. Of course, this is made difficult by the fact that on occasions, I can become somewhat of an insomniac.

Thus, I was able to catch an interesting Taiwanese film on Link-TV, based in San Francisco, last week called "Blue Cha Cha" about a woman who was imprisoned in jail for killing her husband, but is now being released and has to make a normal life for herself.

It turns out that Link-TV is showing Taiwanese film's every Thursday as part of a "Made in Taiwan" series in conjunction with the Taiwanese Government Information Office.

This coming Thursday, Link-TV will air "Nyonya's Taste of Life." The film deals with the subject of immigration in Taiwan, and the central story revolves around Indonesian and Thai workers who come to Taiwan looking for a better economic situation. There is also apparently aculinary aspect to the film.

The term 'nyonyas' refers to daughters from intermarriages between Chinese and Malaysian parents.

And, according to Twitter, which I haven't checked on in a long time and since there is a cover story regarding how Twitter has been declining in "Fortune" magazine I must not be the only one, the physicist Stephen Hawking is a trending topic today. I don't watch "The Simpsons," as much as some of my friends, but I caught the episode he was in, it was pretty good!