News You Can Bruise

(2) Thu Oct 22 2026 13:14 Upgrade test:

I took advantage of/participated in the recent software vulnerability panic and did some software upgrades on Crummy. Most of the things you're here for are working, since 99% of you are botnet scrapers unwittingly installed on peoples' smart TVs, looking for yet another copy of the Beautiful Soup documentation to use as LLM training data. The rest will be coming online gradually.

Sat Oct 03 2026 10:35 September Film Roundup:

Bells are Ringing (1960): Judy Holliday does it again! A light, fun movie that only makes sense to the extent it's based on a true story. We also got another 1960s dental office. What's with all the dentists in these old movies? I theorize "dentist" is a super-networker character. You don't need to explain why someone would visit a dentist, or why a dentist might know any random person.
Anyway, Judy's great as always. The all-classic moment in this movie is when Dean Martin asks "Are you psychic?" and she mentally fumbles for a bit before saying "...Yes?" We coulda had Judy Holliday as Sean Spencer, folks.
The Birdcage (1996): Nothing brightens up movie night like a surprise "Screenplay by Elaine May" credit. The main thing I think could have been improved here is the characters of the kids who are getting married. Right now they're defined primarily by their rebellion against their parents, and it's like watching the romantic subplot of a Marx Brothers movie while the older actors are chewing scenery left and right. But the chewing is definitely entertaining.
I haven't seen the French/Italian movie this is based on and supposedly May's adaptation was really close to the original, but there's a suspicious amount of The Heartbreak Kid (1972) in this one.
According to a contemporary interview in The Advocate, Gene Hackman "relished the chance to return to his roots in improvisational comedy." I've seen several Gene Hackman movies and suffice to say that's not where I thought his roots were. But there is a part in this movie where he delivers a long rambling monologue that's not very funny, so maybe? Oh, and in honor of the end of this movie we came up with the perfect drag name for him: Jean Hackwoman. Tip your waitresses!

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Mon Sep 07 2026 11:46 August Film Roundup:

Coyote vs. Acme (2026): Saw in a preview at the museum with two of the stars talking afterwards. This was a fun movie that has a couple of really emotional moments and pretty clear signs of studio interference (beyond the fact that the studio killed the movie and we're only seeing it due to a rare win for the "angry nerds on the Internet" community). Whose idea was it to limit Bugs and Daffy to one scene each? Sounds like the nefarious work of a studio that smells a big round Acme bomb and wants to keep their prime assets in reserve for a Super Bowl yogurt ad or something.
The thing I keep coming back to is what a quisling Foghorn Leghorn is. He responds angrily to racial slights in private, then aw-shuckses away the same slights in public, in the service of selling out his fellow toons. A bit of intentional depth in what's mostly a "don't think about it too hard" movie.

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Sat Aug 08 2026 20:15 July Film Roundup:

The Hunt for Red October (1990): Really enjoyable thriller. I was thinking there might be an extra twist vis-a-vis what Sean Connery's character really intended to do with the sub, but then there was a scene where Jack Ryan was putting forth his theory and all the brass were shitting on it, and I was like "well, the protagonist has spoken, that's it for twists." Still a fun film. Gates McFadden has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it role as Jack Ryan's wife.
I think Sumana would want me to mention that Jack Ryan has a bad habit of leaking sensitive national security information when he talks to himself in infodumps. You can fix this plot hole and restore your enjoyment of the movie by simply putting your finger in front of your face to cover Alec Baldwin's mouth, so that it looks like he's doing an internal monologue in voiceover.
Listers (2025): Watch it on Youtube! A charming documentary about birdwatching, brotherhood, and mistaking the measurement for the thing being measured. The bit that sticks with me is the cautionary tale of the guy who's so competitive that he saw on the news somebody had the biggest Christmas light display in the area, and he got really into Christmas lights just to outdo that guy. I hate to think of what happens when he watches the Olympics. PS: there's a California condor in this movie, one of my favorite birds.
Knightriders (1981): Like many moviegoers, I watched this on the strength of the awesome poster, and was disappointed by the lack of time travel. Also the movie's way too long. Like a lot of baby boomers (Peter David, J. Michael Straczynski), George Romero has a self-indulgent fascination with Arthurian romance. Maybe if I, too, was a successful director or comics writer, I'd feel the lure of comparing myself to the semi-mythological leader of a team of knights. But more likely Monty Python and the Holy Grail just made it impossible for anyone of my generation to take it seriously.
After the initial disappointment wore off, I liked the first 30 minutes of Knightriders quite a bit. It was cool to see an old-timey ren faire, the stunts were cool, and Steven King(!) was fun as the strawman rube. But pretty soon I tired of it and the main thing the film had going for it was its out-of-nowhere beef with Bakersfield.
See, Knightriders is clearly filmed in Pennsylvania and equally clearly takes place in Pennsylvania. But very important to the plot is a real crappy place called Bakersfield, with corrupt law enforcement like you wouldn't believe. In the climax of the movie, the sheriff of Bakersfield is given a swirlie from a soft-serve ice cream machine. So I have to assume George Romero had a bad experience with Bakersfield (understandable) and decided to make it the laughingstock of this long, weird movie. Sometimes they say the location is a character in a movie, but rarely is that character the comic relief.

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Sat Jul 11 2026 16:03 June Film Roundup:

Possibly the latest Roundup in Film history. We just did a big product launch at work and I've had no energy. Before that happened, though, I was able to get it together enough to sit on the couch and watch some movies:

Bullet for a Badman (1964): Unremarkable western, to the point I thought maybe I'd seen it before. But no, it's just reusing a lot of stuff from other movies and not bringing new things to the potluck. I can sense the shadow of Shane (1953) looming large over westerns that include kids, even though I haven't seen Shane. Sort of like how I regard Bonnie and Clyde as a mysterious piece of dark matter that abruptly changed Hollywood's orbit in 1967. Anyway, not recommended.
The In-Laws (1979): Now this one I can recommend. Alan Arkin at his most neurotic and Peter Falk exploiting his Columbo fame to deliver a character who acts the same but thinks totally differently. Falk loves doing this; witness the previous year's The Brink's Job. In fact, you know when he shows up in The Muppet Movie (1979) and tells Kermit a ridiculous tall tale? He's reprising his character from this movie.
Yeah, just a fun movie overall. There are a lot of great Carter-era comedies that hold up really well but people only know about Airplane! and The Jerk. I'm trying to change that in my small way.

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