It’s like the old nursery rhyme: in the second week of April, something something Open Thread.
What’s on the plate? Hanna, the Cate Blanchett / Saoirse Ronan action-thriller (words I never thought I’d type), opens this weekend to largely favorable reviews. Glenn Beck announced his show coming to an end, and since he’s as much entertainment as news I feel that’s Thread-worthy. Adele has 2011’s best-selling new release (so far), while Britney Spears’s newest album is number one on the Billboard charts.
Oh, and George Lucas’s daughter is apparently an MMA fighter. Badass.
Comment of the Week goes to newcomer Mark Berry, commenting on Fenzel’s article on the the Pseudoscientific Philosophy of Source Code:
Hoo boy … yeah. Well, I’ll say this — never in history has there been a website so perfectly, accurately named as this one!
Anyone playing the Overthinking It drinking game at home, take a shot!
And don’t forget that our latest custom-made commentary track, The Overview, is now available for The Karate Kid. Listen to Mark Lee, Dave Shechner and yours truly speculate about Southern Californian geography, Asian stereotypes and the socioeconomics of biking to school.
Could Amanda Lucas beat clandestine assassin Cate Blanchett in a duel atop Glenn Beck’s plywood desk? Or is there something we missed? Sound off in the comments, for this is your … Open Thread.
Does George Lucas’s daughter have a nom de MMA?
Princess Slaya
Queen Slammadala
?
Do they do that in MMA? I don’t pay any attention to it. Those names sound perfect for Rollerderby, though.
If not, they really should.
Fighters often have nicknames. So there’s Jon “Bones” Jones; Tito Ortiz is “The Huntington Beach Bad Boy”; Marcus Davis is the “Irish Hand Grenade” (probably the most unfortunate nickname in MMA; as badly as things end for the recipient of a hand grenade, they don’t end well for the grenade either).
So there’s precedent.
Cristiane Santos is called Cyborg. So Princess Slaya being such an awesome name everyone should use it regardless of it’s legal status or if Amanda Lucas likes it, it’d kinda be a reverse Muhummud Ali thing where people kept calling him Cassius Clay even though Ali was better. And yes, I’m saying calling Amanda Lucas Princess Slaya undoes racism and if you don’t her that you’re a racist.
Princess Slaya was a roller derby character in ‘Whip It’ and I’ve seen real roller girls use it, but Queen Slamadala would be an awesome one that I haven’t heard before. You can check the uniqueness of candidate roller derby names on this Master Roster, although their list isn’t exhaustive.
Star Trek roller girl names aren’t as good as the Star Wars ones. The best I could come up with were Beverly Crush-her and Deanna Des-Troi (not too intimidating).
[Shout out to my favorite roller girl Goblynn with HKRG!]
Not recognizing the nursery rhyme, I googled it and still didn’t find it. What I did find has me wanting to hear the rhyme ‘In the second week of April after the Maoist attack…’
Glenn Beck is leaving his show to return to raving about Socialists in his parents’ basement.
The Civil War documentary by Ken Burns came on this week, you know, the classic 1990ish series that was icnonic for its soundtrack. I had that stuck in my head all week (in fact, I can hear it now) but when I told a buddy about it, he had no clue what I was talking about. I was ten when the show came on, he was three, so I guess he can be forgiven for not having been aware of it at the time, but surely he would have had to hear about the film in some aspect of his life, right? Or am I just getting old?
What are they teaching kids these days?
I was just in the UK for work and they were advertising a movie called ‘Tomorrow, When the War Began’. I don’t know anything about it and haven’t seen it advertised in the U.S., but all I can think of when I see that title is Shaka, when the walls fell. I hope they talk like Tamarians the entire movie. If they don’t, it would be so Pesci, his groin paint-canned.
Something I have been thinking about lately about Steve Buscemi, and how much of an oddity he is as a Hollywood actor. Some actors get work for their sex appeal, or because they are muscular action stars. Buscemi’s job is to look creepy and weird. You have a character who’s supposed to be creepy and weird, and not at all attractive? Try to get Buscemi first. And if you can’t… what do you do, do a cattle call?
Because someday he’s going to be too old for the roles people want to put him in. Or he’ll retire. Or, you know, like all mortals, he’ll die. So who’s going to be the next Steve Buscemi? I remember a discussion a few years back about who would be the next action stars of our generation, because Stallone, Schwartzenegger, and anyone else you could think of were all becoming old men. We now have Vin Diesel and, depending on who you ask, Shia LeBeouf, but is there anyone out there who can be the next Steve Buscemi?
I pose this as both a rhetorical question (“I doubt that it will be easy to find the next Buscemi”), and as a request or information (“Please tell me if you can think of an actor who is unattractive, creepy, and weird”).
Michael Shannon might qualify, but he’s not frail creepy like Buscemi.