The Sexiest Man Alive Is...

Not George, not Brad, not even Bond. The good news (for men anyway) is that the award this year is not about a charming softy. A sexy man, as it turns out, is a hard man. And that man is...click here to find out.

Regurgitating Rice Crispies

Soundbites from The Breakfast Club

Bender: Remember how you said your parents use you to get back at each other?
Claire Standish: [nods]
Bender: Wouldn't I be OUTSTANDING in that capacity?

Allison Reynolds: You have problems.
Andrew Clark: Oh, I have problems?
Allison Reynolds: You do everything everyone tells you to do and that is a problem.

Allison Reynolds: I'll do anything sexual. I don't need a million dollars to do it either.
Claire Standish: You're lying.
Allison Reynolds: I already have. I've done just about everything there is except a few things that are illegal. I'm a nymphomaniac.
Claire Standish: Lie.
Brian Johnson: Are your parents aware of this?
Allison Reynolds: The only person I told was my shrink.
Andrew Clark: And what did he do when you told him?
Allison Reynolds: He nailed me.
Claire Standish: Very nice.
Allison Reynolds: I don't think that from a legal standpoint what he did can be construed as rape, since I paid him.
Claire Standish: He's an adult.
Allison Reynolds: Yeah, he's married too.
Claire Standish: Do you have any idea how completely gross that is?
Allison Reynolds: Well, the first few times...
Claire Standish: The first few times? You mean you did it more than once?
Allison Reynolds: Sure.
Claire Standish: Are you crazy?
Brian Johnson: Obviously she's crazy if she's screwing a shrink.

Allison Reynolds: Have you ever done it?
Claire Standish: I don't even have a psychiatrist.
Allison Reynolds: Have you ever done it with a normal person?
Claire Standish: Didn't we already cover this?
John Bender: You never answered the question.
Claire Standish: Look, I'm not going to discuss my private life with total strangers.
Allison Reynolds: It's kind of a double edged sword isn't it?
Claire Standish: A what?
Allison Reynolds: Well, if you say you haven't, you're a prude. If you say you have you're a slut. It's a trap. You want to but you can't, and when you do you wish you didn't, right?
Claire Standish: Wrong.
Allison Reynolds: Or are you a tease?
Andrew Clark: She's a tease.
Claire Standish: I'm sure. Why don't you just forget it.
Andrew Clark: Oh, you're a tease and you know it. All girls are teases.

John Bender: She's only a tease if what she does gets you hot.
Claire Standish: I don't do anything.
Allison Reynolds: That's why you're a tease.
Claire Standish: OK, let me ask you a few questions.
Allison Reynolds: I already told you everything.
Claire Standish: No. Doesn't it bother you to sleep around without being in love. I mean, don't you want any respect?
Allison Reynolds: I don't screw to get respect. That's the difference between you and me.
Claire Standish: It's not the only difference I hope.
John Bender: Face it, you're a tease.
Claire Standish: I'm NOT a tease.
John Bender: Sure you are. Sex is your weapon. You said it yourself. You use it to get respect.
Claire Standish: No, I never said that she twisted my words around.
John Bender: What do you use it for then?
Claire Standish: I don't use it period.
John Bender: Oh, are you medically frigid or is it psychological?
Claire Standish: I didn't mean it that way. You guys are putting words into my mouth.
John Bender: Well, if you'd just answer the question.
Brian Johnson: Why don't you just answer the question?
Andrew Clark: Be honest.
John Bender: No big deal.
Brian Johnson: Yeah answer it.
Andrew Clark: Answer the question, Claire.
John Bender: Talk to us.
Everyone: C'mon, answer the question. Come on. Answer it.
John Bender: C'mon, it's easy. It's only one question.
Claire Standish: NO I NEVER DID IT.
Allison Reynolds: I never did it either. I'm not a nymphomaniac. I'm a compulsive liar.

[John Bender is absently tearing up books]
Andrew Clark: That's real intelligent.
John Bender: You're right. It's wrong to destroy literature. It's such fun to read. And
[examines title]
John Bender: Moe-Lay really pumps my nads.
Claire Standish: Moliere.

Claire Standish: What's your name?
John Bender: What's yours?
Claire Standish: Claire.
John Bender: Claire?
Claire Standish: Claire. It's a family name.
John Bender: Oh, it's a fat girl's name.
Claire Standish: Oh, thank you.
John Bender: You're welcome.
Claire Standish: I'm not fat.
John Bender: Well not at present, but I can see you really pushing maximum density. See I'm not sure if you know this, but there are two kinds of fat people: there's fat people that were born to be fat, and there's fat people that were once thin but became fat... so when you look at 'em you can sorta see that thin person inside. You see, you're gonna get married, you're gonna squeeze out a few puppies and then, uh...

John Bender: What's in there?
Claire Standish: Guess? Where's your lunch?
John Bender: You're wearing it.
Claire Standish: You're nauseating.
John Bender: [pointing to Claire's lunch] What's that?
Claire Standish: Sushi.
John Bender: Sushi?
Claire Standish: Rice, raw fish, and seaweed.
John Bender: You won't accept a guy's tongue in your mouth, and you're going to eat that?
Claire Standish: Can I eat?
John Bender: I don't know. Give it a try.

John Bender: Sporto.
Andrew Clark: What?
John Bender: You get along with your parents?
Andrew Clark: Well, if I say yes I'm an idiot, right?
John Bender: You're an idiot anyway. But if you say you get along with your parents, well, you're a liar too.


Brian Johnson: Dear Mr. Vernon, we accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you're crazy to make an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain...
Andrew Clark: ...and an athlete...
Allison Reynolds: ...and a basket case...
Claire Standish: ...a princess...
John Bender: ...and a criminal...
Brian Johnson: Does that answer your question?... Sincerely yours, the Breakfast Club.

From IMDB.com
Click here for a review.

Film reviews: Matt Damon is Bourne again

The search for his true identity isn't over yet for Matt Damon - there are assassins and a government agent to despatch on the path to enlightenment

By MANOHLA DARGIS
NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE, NEW YORK
Friday, Aug 10, 2007, Page 16

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
DIRECTED BY: PAUL GREENGRASS

STARRING: Matt Damon (Jason Bourne), Julia Stiles (Nicky Parsons), David Strathairn (Noah Vosen), Scott Glenn (Ezra Kramer), Paddy Considine (Simon Ross), Edgar Ramirez (Paz), Albert Finney (Dr. Albert Hirsch)

RUNNING TIME: 111 MINUTES

Jaw clenched, brow knotted, Matt Damon hurtles through The Bourne Ultimatum like a missile. He's a man on a mission, our Matt, and so too is his character, Jason Bourne, the near-mystically enhanced super-spy who, after losing his memory and all sense of self, has come to realize that he has also lost part of his soul. For Bourne, who rises and rises again in this fantastically kinetic, propulsive film, resurrection is the name of the game, just as it is for franchises.

Their sights set far beyond the usual genre coordinates, the three Bourne movies drill into your psyche as well as into your body. They're unusually smart works of industrial entertainment, with action choreography that's as well considered as the direction. Doug Liman held the reins on the first movie, with Paul Greengrass taking over for the second and third installments. And while the two men take different approaches to similar material (the more formally bold Greengrass shatters movie space like glass), each embraces an ethos that's at odds with the no pain, no gain, no brain mind-set that characterizes too many such flicks. Namely remorse: In these movies, you don't just feel Bourne's hurt, you feel the hurt of everyone he kills.

The Bourne Ultimatum picks up where The Bourne Supremacy left off, with this former black-bag specialist for the CIA grimly, inexorably moving toward final resolution. After a brush with happiness with the German woman (Franka Potente) he met in the first movie (The Bourne Identity) and soon lost in the second, he has landed in London. Stripped of his identity, his country and love, Bourne is now very much a man alone, existentially and otherwise. Damon makes him haunted, brooding and dark. The light seems to have gone out in his eyes, and the skin stretches so tightly across his cantilevered cheekbones that you can see the outline of his skull, its macabre silhouette. He looks like death in more ways than one.

Death becomes the Bourne series, which, in contrast to most big-studio action movies, insists that we pay attention and respect to all the flying, back-flipping and failing bodies. There's no shortage of pop pleasure here, but the fun of these films never comes from watching men die. It's easy to make people watch - just blow up a car, slit someone's throat. The hard part is making them watch while also making them think about what exactly it is that they're watching.

That's a bit of a trick, because forcing us to look at the unspeakable risks losing us, though in the Bourne series it has made for necessary surprises, like Potente's character's vomiting in the first movie because she has just seen a man fling himself out of a window to his death.

That scene quickly established the underlying seriousness of the series, particularly with respect to violence. There's a similarly significant scene in the new film, which caps a beyond-belief chase sequence in which Bourne runs and runs and runs, leaping from one sun-blasted roof to the next and diving into open windows as the cops hotfoot after him. He's trying to chase down a man who's trying to chase down Bourne's erstwhile colleague, Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles).

When Bourne comes fist-to-fist with the other man, Greengrass throws the camera, and us along with it, smack in the middle. It's thrilling at first, and then - as the blows continue to fall, the bodies slow down, and a book is slammed, spine out, into one man's neck - ghastly.

An intentional buzz kill, this fight succeeds in bringing you down off the roof, where just moments earlier you had been flying so high with Bourne. (Look at the dude go!) Greengrass knows how to do his job, and there's no one in Hollywood right now who does action better, who keeps the pace going so relentlessly, without mercy or letup, scene after hard-rocking scene.

But he, along with the writers (here, Tony Gilroy, Scott Burns and George Nolfi), also wants to complicate things, mix some unease in with all the heart-thumping enjoyment. Not because he's a sadist, or at least not entirely, but because the Bourne series is, finally, about consequences, about chickens coming home to roost.

The Bourne Ultimatum drives its points home forcefully, making you jump in your seat and twitch, but it's careful not to leave any bruises. (It's filmmaking with a rubber hose.)

Amid the new and familiar faces (David Strathairn and Joan Allen), it introduces a couple of power-grasping, smooth-talking ghouls and stark reminders of Abu Ghraib that might make you blanch even if you don't throw up. As Bourne has inched closer to solving the rebus of his identity, he hasn't always liked what he's found. He isn't alone. Movies mostly like to play spy games pretty much for kicks, stoking us with easy brutality and cool gadgets that get us high and get us going, whether our gentlemen callers dress in tuxes or track suits.

What's different about the Bourne movies is the degree to which they have been able to replace the pleasures of cinematic violence with those of movie-made kinetics - action, not just blood.