Jomobes-1

Whenever I see a movie based on I book I really like, I always expect the worse. Cold Mountain is a great exception. The Romanian scenery is perfect. The actors all give it their best. One problem...after months of hard labor on the farm, Nicole always appears like she just walked off a Cosmo cover shoot, I mean, come on, NOBODY looked that good coming off a hardscrabble North Carolina farm in 1864. But that's a small quibble...the movie is great The music really works well too. Another good credit for T Bone Burnett.

Gangs Of New York is a very ambitious attempt by Scorsese to invoke a time and a place that most Americans are completely ignorant about. In some ways he succeeds brilliantly, but all in all, the movie fails to deliver. Daniel Day Lewis is a force of nature...incredible to watch. Every minute he's there...the movie totally grabs your attention. Decaprio on the other hand, seems totally miscast. In some movies he may be a fine actor, in this case however, he was apparently chosen for the potential box office rewards of inserting a "hot" young star in a big role. Actually I found it hard to believe that a slight, pretty boy like Leonardo would last 5 minutes on the mean streets depicted in the film. And finally...the movie was way too long.

I saw this movie in Aberdeen,S.D. in the summer of 1974, as the third show in a dusk-to-dawn marathon at the local drive-in. There was a car-full of us, well lubricated with wine and weed, and I thought this was one of the funniest pictures I'd ever seen. We practically peed our pants laughing. Fast forward to 1995. I see "When Women Had Tails" at the local video store and,remembering the hilarity, take it home. I got through, maybe 20 minutes. It sucks really bad. Really, really bad. The actors, the script, it all sucks. They didn't even have the decency to show some nudity (I mean...come on,it's supposed to be a sex comedy).

Just goes to show...you were stupid when you were 19. At least I was.