Jun 04

Tenacious but not swift

A family member of mine who’s a big Sherlock Holmes fan watched the Robert Downey Jr. version recently, and his reaction was that while it was a good movie, and he enjoyed it, it wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, and he wished they’d named the characters something else besides Holmes and Watson.

Similarly, I can’t tell you just from seeing this trailer whether the movie advertised will be good on its own terms. But I can tell you Jonathan Swift is turning over and over and over in his grave.

A much more faithful adaptation was done for TV in the 1990s with Ted Danson and an all-star cast including Peter O’Toole, Alfre Woodard, John Gielgud and Ned Beatty. According to IMDb, it was the first TV or film adaptation to tell all four stories, not just the one about Lilliput.

Oct 28

They’re always fighting foo

Like about a zillion other people, I’ve been having fun with MTV’s brand new new music video site:

And, like about a zillion other people, I’ve made jokes about MTV’s suddenly revived interest in its old stock in trade.

Anyway, like Dave Letterman (the source of my post title), I loves me some Foo Fighters, especially the songs that also have funny videos. And this is a supremely funny video, with Dave Grohl playing about 12 different parts and with cameo appearances by Jack Black and Kyle Gass.