"My God," said Ms. Snopes-Magnolia-Ortiz, "it's like that Simpsons episode where Bart's evil twin is kept chained in the attic!"

John Carroll Lynch

(played Leigh in Zodiac)

POTENTIAL ZODIAC SPOILERS

Des -- yes, the Donovan song which sort of "bookended" the film was chilling, though I always found something kind of dark in it, anyway.  Maybe it's that weird reverb thing.

The guy who played Arthur Leigh Allen (why do so many killers have three names?) must be the most ubiquitous actor in the biz these days, and yet I don't even know his name.  I see him everywhere.  First noticed him as the trencherman husband in "Fargo." 

The camera work is so good that I watched it a second time just to take in some of the really great shots while not straining to follow all the dialog. 

My dad was a journalist and I remember occasionally meeting the newsroom drunk/cynic -- Downey nailed it, AFAICT. 





     

Agree the indie ensemble was stupefyingly large and, as you say, added to the fun.  One quality of a really good film like this is the sheer amount of information there is to take in, and how much meaning there turns out to be to little bits you barely noticed -- just in the first scene alone, with Darlene driving around and looking anxious, and then later you understand the signif of all that.  So it's a film that you can watch again and hopefully get more out of it. 

I thought Ruffalo absolutely shone in this -- note-perfect and quietly making me believe absolutely in his character.  Some of the byplay between him and the cartoonist/Gyllenhaal is....well, I want to go back and run those scenes again right now. 

Gyll:  [describing the painting party at Darlene's where Leigh showed up and was scary]
Ruff:  What's a painting party?
Gyll:  Basically, you paint your house and invite people over to have drinks and help you paint.
Ruff: Doesn't sound like a very good party.

There was a fuzzy nude photo of her one day in a supermarket tabloid I noticed as I waited in the checkout line....I had to avert my eyes.

I believe in Jennifer Aniston's right to bare arms.

I have been a newbie myself and am keenly aware how much (1) is always a factor.  However, I think there might be a number (4) here, i.e. "an idle jest." 

Clearly, we are dependent, utterly, on the biosphere and it is vital to maintain its health.  Since there really is no debating the fundamental reality, I think the average citizen may simply not have a sense of where to begin in dealing with all the issues involved with the provenance of nourishing food, potable water, breathable air, and an ambience that includes some of that wildness that refreshes the soul.  If there is one key issue, it might be population control.

Without it, every other effort to make the planet livable is undermined by the grim reality of mathematics. 

"I was gone in search of a simpler and more innocent time," said Junior, spitting out gypsum dust and insulation.

"Onanism!" cried Aunt Mildred.  "Fetch me the saltpeter!"

Rescue Dawn has yet to manifest here in Sticksville, I saw Pan's in late 2006, so Zodiac is my tops, so far, for 2007.  I really want to see Das Leben des Anderes, though.

Multiply by five, then divide by eight...

400 km. times 5 = 2000

2000 divided by 8 = 250 miles

There was a sign in a butcher shop in London that read:

Watership Down:  you've read the book, you've seen the movie....

Now eat the cast!  Rabbit Meat on special this week!

Far from the festering swamps and fleshpots of Baja Arkansas, Barton looked across the vast steppes of Inner America and said to himself, his voice nearly drowned out by the omnipresent prairie wind, "Oh, if only Katrina could have been a Category Six!"   The wind, which they called Mariah, or maybe it was Murray (the wind's diction was generally poor, its gender ambiguous), answered back, "No more Jimmy Dean?"

"Well," said Barton, "Jimmy Dean would then only be a mediocre breakfast sausage, no more than three inches long, and dripping pork grease."

St. Eve, striding past on his way to his new and demanding job greeted Bart:  "Hey, what kind of wood doesn't float?"

"I don't know," said Bart.  "Ebony, maybe?"

"No," said St. Eve.  "Natalie Wood!"

Just saw "Zodiac."  Wow.  I don't have my appreciation for this film worked out to where I can write coherently about it, so let me just say it is easily the best film of 2007 so far.

I believe that wild rabbits carry diseases that would make a Strine think twice about eating them.  Strines view rabbits so deeply as vermin that I think there's not a big culinary interest there, anyway.  IIRC, they brought in European predators (foxes?) to control the unchecked rabbit population, which in turn caused other ecological disruptions and didn't really cut back that much on rabbits.  I imagine the whole rabbit story down under is quite complex...and chilling.

[I think "jumping" is an emphatic sort of word added to Biblical names in order to produce a high-octane exclamation....I doubt that the historical Jehosephat was known for jumping....]