Favorite Actor Monday

Since I haven't updated in a long time, and inspired by Spacebeer's Secret Boyfriend Wednesday, I think I will institute a weekly feature: Favorite Actor Monday. It will be a welcome balance to the otherwise director-heavy focus of my rant-heavy movie blog. I can think of no one more appropriate to kick off this weekly feature than Harry Dean Stanton. I love character actors. He is one of the best. I was born on July 14. He was born on July 14. He plays guitar in a band. I like the rock and roll. He's been in a lot of good movies. I like movies. Harry Dean Stanton, you are one of Mr. Krauter's favorite actors.

Recommended Harry Dean Stanton performances:
Ride in the Whirlwind (Monte Hellman, 1965)
Two-Lane Blacktop (Monte Hellman, 1971)
Cisco Pike (Bill L. Norton, 1972)
Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)
Cockfighter (Monte Hellman, 1974)
Rancho Deluxe (Frank Perry, 1975)
Farewell, My Lovely (Dick Richards, 1975)
92 in the Shade (Thomas McGuane, 1975)
Straight Time (Ulu Grosbard, 1978)
Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
Repo Man (Alex Cox, 1984)
Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders, 1984)
Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch, 1986)
Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (David Lynch, 1992)
She's So Lovely (Nick Cassavetes, 1997)
The Straight Story (David Lynch, 1999)
The Pledge (Sean Penn, 2001)

Even if some of these movies disappoint, and most of them don't, they work whenever Stanton is on the screen.

A whole lot of bullshit

I've got a lot on my mind, particularly concerning my visits to the Vietnam Memorial and Holocaust Museum during my vacation to D.C. last week, and their relations to my life and art, Art, and ART!!!, and their relationship with both elitism and cultural tourism and/or terrorism, and what the fuck it actually means to be a citizen of the United States, but first I want to point any real, living human being to these thoughtful reviews of Oliver Stone's latest shitsterpiece, "World Trade Center." I think they set up a lot of what went through my mind last week when I was a cultural tourist/terrorist, though I must warn everyone that I haven't seen this film, and hopefully never will. I've spent enough time with Oliver Stone movies to realize that he is undoubtedly the worst filmmaker I have ever had the unfortunate luck of being acquainted with. (I have to end that sentence with a preposition, sorry. If you have a problem with that, watch "Nixon." Then fuck off.)

Jonathan Rosenbaum

J. Hoberman

Jim Emerson

(The J. Hoberman headline is seriously misleading. This headline is yet another example of how newspaper employees don't communicate with each other.)

I'm sorry our mainstream culture is so damaging. Maybe Conor Oberst can write a horrible song about this. Problem solved.