oscargamblesfro (86) on 7/6/2006 5:43:33 PM, said: One of the greatest reviewers I've seen on the site, one of the most technically skilled, interesting, diverse, and verbose, yet he lacks pretension. And possibly the most single underrated in terms of comedy. Good guy too. |
ma duron (65) on 6/8/2006 10:44:55 PM, said: Someone seriously appreciative of actresses Virginia Madsen and Annabeth Gish, and of movies like ‘Destry Rides Again’ and ‘Bad Day at Black Rock’ can't be all wrong.
Challenging our intellect gives no offense. Following are fragments from some of his more straightforward listings:
“The day I stop learning and the day I stop breathing had better be one and the same.” On FROGIO: “…reminiscent of Henny Youngman on a cocaine binge: lots and lots of ‘one-liners’.” On HARRY POTTER: “...if you keep putting out variations on the same idea, you're bound to eventually end up with some threadbare results...“ “The Bible is a chore, but one you're better off doing regardless of your worldview.” CLERGY: “The worst are the ones who...aren't candid enough to hang up their robes and straddle a real-world job.“ On EASTER: “...the Gospels have never achieved a cohesive narrative in terms of the ‘resurrection’...” “Hammurabi did the Ten Commandments before Moses; Confucius arrived at the ‘Golden Rule’ 500 years or so ahead of Jesus; some of the Beatitudes are decent, but most still hinge on a degrading ‘rewards’ system.” On SAMSON: “Another of Yahweh's slow-motion deputies, sent to undo the trouble he was constantly changing his mind about...An oversexed offensive lineman without the jersey or the diploma.” On THE DEVIL: “Our current visual depictions of Old Nick...: the goatee is Spanish, the hand-held gig is Roman, and the hairy-legged, cloven-hooved ‘manimal’ is a pre-Christian Germanic interpolation... On PAUL (‘Bible Characters’): “Long before James Brown hit the scene, there was another ‘hardest-working man in show business’, and that man was Saul…Speaker, faith healer, sower of dischord: Saul was the original televangelist.” On KING HEROD: “Herod's ‘slaughter of the innocents’ is revisionist conjecture...However, this isn't to say that Herod wasn't a rat bastard...Not on anyone's ‘invite’ list, but others have done far worse.” THE THREE WISE MEN (On ‘Famous Trios’): “A cute story, but...one wonders why it was even included in the Bible, as astrology involved divination...” |