Announcing Pa Rock’s 1st Annual DEAD POOL!
That’s right, all of you prescient prognosticators! I’m organizing a Dead Pool for the year 2008!
The Rules:
1. Make a list of 10 notable people whom you think will die in 2008. (The names should be readily recognizable to most people – politicians, royalty, celebrities, sports figures, etc)
2. Submit your list to pa.rock.macy@gmail.com or directly to Pa Rock’s Ramble.
3. Entry deadline is 15 January 2008 at midnight.
4. Sit back and check those obituaries.
5. The Dead Pool will end on 31 December 2008 at midnight.
What could be easier?
You will be awarded points whenever anyone on your list bites the dust. The number of points will be determined by subtracting the dearly departed’s age from one hundred. The younger the deceased, the more points you will receive. If an old coot on your list dies, the points will be much less.
There will be no entry fees and prizes will consist only of really classy certificates for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishers.
Here is my list. You may borrow freely.
1. Prince Philip of Great Britain
2. Woody Harrelson
3. Betty Ford
4. Rudy Giuliani
5. Jack Lelane
6. Eartha Kitt
7. Angela Lansbury
8. Britney Spears
9. Bob Dylan
10. Phyllis Diller
Showing posts with label Woody Harrelson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Woody Harrelson. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Saturday, December 1, 2007
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy’s book, No Country for Old Men, is a tough, gritty, blood-soaked tale of violent encounters and slow death in the hard land of southwest Texas. The time is 1980 and the old days of individual crimes are being swept aside by corporate, high tech drug dealers and big money flowing across the Mexican border. An aging sheriff gets drawn into this paradigm shift when his deputy is brutally murdered by a psychopath who is pursuing a suitcase of drug money. It is not a happy book, but it is a very, very absorbing read.
I read No Country for Old Men last year and was kicked in the gut by its brutality and power. This afternoon I took a chance and went to see the movie, knowing that its full impact could not be readily translated to film. The movie, after all, is never as good as the book. Well, not usually.
The Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, wrote the screenplay and directed the film version of McCarthy’s book. They were true to his story, page for page, with film shots that were so suspenseful one might suspect that they were channeling Hitchcock. The actors, especially Tommy Lee Jones, the sheriff, and Tess Harper, his wife, were as hard and coarse as the land that defined their lives. If there was any make-up used in this movie, it wasn’t applied to them. Javier Barden was a soulless killer who pursued his prey for money or principle, and might decide whether to take a life on the flip of a coin. Josh Brolin found a suitcase full of money at a drug deal gone bad, and had just enough machismo to think that he could get away with keeping it. Woody Harrelson also had a few good scenes in the movie as he tried to neutralize the psychopath and reclaim the drug money. All of these characters inter-played deftly and with a shifting perspective that kept the intensity and punch of the novel and brought it seamlessly to the screen.
Cormac McCarthy’s book is given life by the Coen’s vision. It is not a happy book, and not a happy movie – just an unvarnished view of warm blood oozing into a hard land. No Country for Old Men is worth a visit in either medium.
I read No Country for Old Men last year and was kicked in the gut by its brutality and power. This afternoon I took a chance and went to see the movie, knowing that its full impact could not be readily translated to film. The movie, after all, is never as good as the book. Well, not usually.
The Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, wrote the screenplay and directed the film version of McCarthy’s book. They were true to his story, page for page, with film shots that were so suspenseful one might suspect that they were channeling Hitchcock. The actors, especially Tommy Lee Jones, the sheriff, and Tess Harper, his wife, were as hard and coarse as the land that defined their lives. If there was any make-up used in this movie, it wasn’t applied to them. Javier Barden was a soulless killer who pursued his prey for money or principle, and might decide whether to take a life on the flip of a coin. Josh Brolin found a suitcase full of money at a drug deal gone bad, and had just enough machismo to think that he could get away with keeping it. Woody Harrelson also had a few good scenes in the movie as he tried to neutralize the psychopath and reclaim the drug money. All of these characters inter-played deftly and with a shifting perspective that kept the intensity and punch of the novel and brought it seamlessly to the screen.
Cormac McCarthy’s book is given life by the Coen’s vision. It is not a happy book, and not a happy movie – just an unvarnished view of warm blood oozing into a hard land. No Country for Old Men is worth a visit in either medium.
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