Looking for a bit of light fun on a Friday evening, our thoughts turned to The 40-Year-Old Virgin. Great call. After enjoying Steve Carell in Dan in Real Life recently, and laughing endlessly at Knocked Up this summer, it was a blessing to not have seen this Apatow film yet. Just moved Superbad to the…

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No Country for Old Men is bleached with violence. But the menace remains, so the gore doesn’t deaden you to the story. I haven’t read Cormac McCarthy’s book, but the Coen brothers certainly know how to make a movie which doesn’t feel like anything you’ve seen before. The Texas countryside is beautiful, but blasted by…

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Last week, we saw Dan in Real Life, with Steve Carell and Juliette Binoche. Metacritic only cites a 65 — but I enjoyed this film. Family story, with humor coming from small realities and inter-family dynamics that really never change once they get set early on. People grow up, but that doesn’t mean they change.…

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We went to see Michael Clayton a few weeks ago. George Clooney does a good job. The plot is more of a foil for a character study, though. Clooney’s struggles with his role as a frustrated lawyer in a “fixer” role, and his less-than-simple family life, pluck more interest than the case at the heart…

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Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl jumped onto my list from the wife’s bookgroup. And I’m grateful. I didn’t love the book, yet it was a different read. I needed some fiction. The ending startled me, but also disappointed me. I didn’t see it coming…which is fine. Yet the twist didn’t feel true…

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Reporting Vietnam: American Journalism 1969-1975 is a book I own for one reason: my cousin’s picture is on the cover. He wrote one of the articles, and he provided the picture because one of the editors asked if he had any photos from that period. Turns out he did, and it fit what they wanted.…

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Neal Stephenson’s website doesn’t even list The Cobweb as one of his works. The reason? It was originally published, in 1996, under his pseudonym Stephen Bury. But, after Quicksilver made him a NYTimes bestselling author, it was a no-brainer to re-publish under his real name. No mention of what Stephenson might be working on now……

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Over the weekend, I pulled the boy’s loose tooth out. He asked me, and after watching him worry over this rotating incisor (top left) for days, I was glad to end the suspense. (And it didn’t hurt him.) The hard part? Remembering to play the part of the tooth fairy. Fortunately, my better half delivered,…

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I email myself things I want to look at later, and maybe blog. (I use del.icio.us more for work, and I’ve never spliced my feed for that reason.) Problem is, my blog trails other interests, so the tasty tidbits pile up. Here’s a quick scoop from the 60 (!) possible links waiting in my personal…

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Game Theory at Work: How to use game theory to outthink and outmanuever your competition by James Miller isn’t my usual brain candy. I asked for this book last Christmas, on a semi-whim, and got it as a gift. I read it last month. Though written by economics professor James Miller, this book reads well.…

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