LOST IN TRANSMISSION

Ducking the war and all the rest of the dementia and turning to Pay for View for a chance to become prone in front of the TV but not totally mindless, I ceased to be one of the few inhabitants of the LA Basin who hadn’t seen Lost in Translation. My reactions?

1. Boy was I disappointed. Not that it was a bad movie, but it had been so over-sold to me that I was expecting considerably more than I got. And, folks, I love Bill Murray. I have seen Groundhog Day some 38 times, and this, Ms Coppola, was not Groundhog Day.

2. Boy would I like to back in Tokyo amid all that neon. I could have watched the teen-rituals in the video arcade for an hour. (And all the ennui of the characters seemed less than sympathetic in a city that so positively vibrates. If you’re fresh in Tokyo and bored, you got crisis energy problems, Bob and Charlotte. I recall being in my hotel room with jet lag, and watching inexplicable movies, but bouncing up and down with delight, even at the commercials.)

3. Boy was that some racist movie. The dumb-depicted Japanese were such stereo-parodies of the infinitely courteous and helpful people I encountered, I just found myself becoming irritated to the point that I didn’t give a rat’s ass what he whispered to her at the end.

4. Boy do I want one of those toy machine guns with the laser bullet-effects.

KILL THE WABBIT

Later, on Letterman, a resemblance between George W. Bush and Porky Pig was more than adequately demonstrated with film clips. Yes, kill the evil d-d-doers.

That’s all folks. It was 100F in LA today. The end is nigh, but distaff ire, if nothing else, seems to have brought the comments software back online. (Open now for "soft" jokes.)

CRYPTIQUE – B-b-b-banzai!