Top 10 Movies of 2012 - Forthcoming

I'd like to go to work soon on my Top Ten movies of 2012 (I have a list of 11 right now that will need to be whittled down), but I realize I'm missing too many movies to make an accurate list. Meaning, there are too many remaining movies to be released (The Hobbit, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained), and too many movies I haven't yet seen yet (Life of Pi, Brave, Ted, Wreck-It-Ralph), which have a legitimate shot to crack my top ten.

When I start to write these lists, I'm always surprised to remember how many good movies have been released in the past year. I saw a LOT of good movies this year - just like last year. However, I am confident in declaring this year to be the worst year for comedies in cinema history. The only comedy that will make my Top Ten list (probably) is 21 Jump Street. Yes, I am as surprised about that as you are.

But even though I am eager to get started on my list, I think I will wait until at least Django is released before I write my Top Ten list. It sounds strange, but I might be the only person who thinks Quentin Tarantino is underrated. His very worst movie (Reservoir Dogs) is only "good". [That train-wreck Death Proof never happened]. All of his other movies, including Jackie Brown, are fantastic. Inglorious Basterds, which I thought was average when I saw it in theaters, really gets better with time. And I think it made Michael Fassbender, who was brilliant in the movie's best scene.

True story, when I saw Inglorious Basterds in the movies, I fell asleep during that scene. What?!? I was tired!

Another billionaire, another self-deluded whiner

Are there any billionaires who aren't delusional sociopaths? I mean besides Bill Gates and Warren Buffett? Today's whine of the day comes from "The Man Who Owns L.A.", aka Tim Leiweke, the latest con man trying to extort a city for a publicly-funded stadium intended to line his own pockets with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Here, in The New Yorker, he complains that Barack Obama hurt his fee-fee's so he's taking his ball and running home:

"Look, I personally came from nothing," he said. "Someone making me look like a bad guy because I'm making money now? I resent that. I'm really upset about the way he is positioning this now about protecting the rich. I was never rich in my entire life! I earned everything, built my life from the ground up, and never got one damn break in my life! I resent the fact that when my mom was sick, and my dad had to pay for her treatment, it took every dime from my dad and broke him as a human being and he was never the same. And then, after we have overcome that, now to make me look like I'm bad, I'm evil, I'm greedy, I don't give. Terrible!"

God, there is so much delusion in this statement its hard to figure out where to begin. First, the statement that he was "never rich in his entire life" must, for some reason, omit the fact that he has been extremely wealthy for the last two decades of his life. Funny that. It's also humorous how he's suggests that he "never gotten a break in his entire life" - I suppose the City Council's decision to seize thirty acres of public land through eminent domain and give it to Leiweke to build the Staples Center wasn't a break for some reason. I wonder how lucky the citizens and businesses evicted from their homes felt about that.

But the most unfortunate rant concerns his feelings about his mother getting sick when he was younger. By his own admission, the experience broke his father. And yet, in the very next sentence, he attacks the very people who would fight to ameliorate this healthcare disaster. I'm not sure what interpretation of this cognitive dissonance would be worse. Does Leiweke think that Americans need to individually experience catastrophic personal and financial loss in order to rise above and achieve great economic success (i.e., "How dare we spare the poor this essential life lesson!"). Or is Leiweke, this "modern-day Horatio Alger", too dumb to understand that he is attacking the very politicians and policymakers that would have supported the healthcare reforms needed to spare his mother and father this life-altering calamity?

God I just can't deal with these assholes. I'm pretty sure if I was ever invited to this man's house, and he started spouting nonsense like this, I'd nod politely, go pound some more of his booze, and then take an "upper decker" in the main bathroom.