Top 5 Movies to Watch During the Potential Government Shutdown

With the looming possibility that Congress will not pass a budget and the cogs that turn the American machine will jam and rust over (more or less) the best thing I can think to do is watch movies and hide under the covers waiting for the sun of a functioning bureaucracy to shine again. Below are some of my favorite movies related to politics and government:  a mix of inspiring, critical, and satirical that will make you the appropriate mix of fed-up and pissed off. Enjoy with a beer named after a famous patriot, and you can throw the bottle at the wall while quoting our forefathers!

5. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington – A man goes to Congress, does his job.

4. Quiz Show – A man goes to Congress, does his job.

3. All the King’s Men (1949) – A man enters into politics, becomes disappointing.

2. Nixon – A man enters into politics, becomes disappointing.

1. Duck Soup – A man enters into politics, becomes hilarious.

Top 5 More Important Questions Than "Does Angelina's New Tattoo Mean She's Having Another Baby?"

The internet is tackling the tough questions today. I’ve seen three different places pondering about Angelina Jolie’s new tattoo. Here are five questions you should ask yourself first, before investigating this totally important celebrity body art news.

5. How’s your Mama and them?

Have you talked to her lately? Do any of your cousins have new tattoos or new babies? Call home, child. She misses you.

4. Are you a good tipper?

Many people think they know the answer to this one, and they are wrong. The poor economy is hard on service industry employees who rely on tips to make up the huge gaping hole between their minimum wage and everybody else’s. Remember this: If you can’t afford to tip, you can’t afford to go. If you need a lesson, watch the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs ‘cause this shit’s important. And then watch the rest of the movie while you’re at it, because it’s been a while since you’ve seen it right?

3. Has Brad Pitt shaved his beard yet?

I think we all care a little more about this one, right? I mean, think of the smooth-skinned Adonis from Fight Club and now think of the scraggly, pajama-wearing hobo that walks around claiming to be Brad Pitt. Paul Newman got better looking with age, why can’t this guy?

2. Is the milk you’re drinking going to give you cancer?

Cause some of it might. Also check into your fresh produce, water bottles, cookware, shampoo, your sunscreen, or lack thereof. It’s coming from everywhere, guys. Everywhere.

1. Are you having a baby?

This is definitely the most important question you should ask yourself today, and every day. Far more relevant than the Jolie-Pitt’s growing clan is what’s happening in your own neighborhood. If you are unsure of the answer to this one, take a test or make a phone call right away, kiddos. And if you find out you are not having a baby, might as well celebrate with a new “I’m not having a baby” tattoo on your arm.

A Very Important Matter of Taste

I watched The Godfather with my parents tonight, because my mother doesn’t like it. That seems nonsensical, but it’s very important to me, actually, that my mother likes The Godfather. We got into a discussion the other day where she admitted that she didn’t like it, and I set out to make a believer out of her. I made marinara sauce, like Clemenza, to win her over with spaghetti and meatballs. I convinced myself that if she were in the right mood, and I could build enough excitement, she’d enjoy it. She’d get it. She’d realize how wrong she was to write it off when she saw it in the theater 40 years ago. It didn’t work. She said it was boring. The Godfather is not boring. It demands an acute attentiveness which, if given properly, rewards you with one of the most engrossing movie experiences you can find. She didn’t get it.

Why is it so important to us that our loved ones share our interests? It’s nice to have things in common, to discuss and share, and it’s nice to have different favorite movies, like different bands and read different books to keep things interesting. But don’t we all have one or two things we value enough that it’s an outright problem if someone we respect doesn’t appreciate them? I mean, could you love someone who doesn’t love Otis Redding? Could you respect someone who doesn’t like The Godfather? Could I marry someone who doesn’t like Southern poetry?  It’s so silly, but so easy to get hung up on these things. This whole ordeal with my mom just makes me think of how hard it would be to put up with a guy who didn’t like the right things, brings up my fear that I really will get attached to someone who doesn’t like Miller Williams or Robert Penn Warren. Wouldn’t that be a problem?

If your affection for High Fidelity is as intense as mine (if it isn’t, I probably have a problem with that) you know what I’m talking about. Nick Hornby says, and it feels so true, that what matters is what you like, more than what you are like. I’ve agreed and disagreed with this, back and forth over the years. The first gut reaction is “yes! of course!” but as I grew out of being as pretentious and judgmental about artistic tastes as I once was, I sort of let it go. Rob Gordon and company are pretentious and judgmental and were exactly what I wanted to be, what my asshole friends and I prided ourselves on being back in college. But that’s all bullshit. It’s such a snobbish way to walk through the world, looking down on people for owning Julio Iglesias albums. When I got more comfortable with liking things that weren’t high brow or obscure, enjoying things because they were enjoyable, not just because they were good, I decided that what matters isn’t what you like as much as why you like it. That’s where the good stuff is. Liking terrible music because you listened to it with your parents on car trips; watching crappy movies because you always watch them with the same person. The relationship someone has with the things they like is way more interesting than a list of all the right favorite things.

But that only goes so far. I still can’t get past it when someone doesn’t love what I love. What you dislike, that matters. It matters what you like when it doesn’t include The Godfather. To say that “it’s no good pretending any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn’t even speak to each other if they met at a party” is placing too much importance on approving of your counterpart’s interests. Let that stuff go. The troublesome stuff is this: when that which you connect to most deeply in the world is totally unaffecting to someone you care about. The art that you’re most passionate about in the world, the books, the movies, the music you love, these things define you as a person. They’re part of you. I don’t want someone who thinks I’m funny or nice or smart, I want someone who knows what I’m talking about when I talk about the last verse of “Oh My Sweet Carolina.”  Sharing that with somebody – that’s the point.

I’ve run into the problem of having too much in common with a guy. It’s boring. There’s never anything to argue about, and you don’t learn anything new. Maybe we should just let go of the compulsion to impose our favorite things onto other people. So what if they don’t like what we do? What does it hurt? Surely we can find other points to relate on. But there’s something so satisfying about that moment when someone tells you they love what you do, so reassuring. And there’s something so great about falling for something that someone else loves, and passes on to you. Is it enough? Is going without it enough?

I’m not a person with a lot of answers. I told my mom to try and dream about The Godfather and we’d talk in the morning. Last night after my sister read The Great Gatsby for the first time and said she didn’t like it, I spent ten minutes telling her why I loved it and what’s so great about F. Scott Fitzgerald, and by the end she was telling me all her favorite things about it, saying that talking about it had changed it for her. I have a friend who doesn’t like High Fidelity, but I haven’t resigned the idea that I can win him over. And that’s the part that makes me feel okay about not having any answers. There’s hope in believing that you can still help to change someone’s mind, but even better than that is knowing that you still want to.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I like your typical holidays – Christmas is nice and my birthday lasts two pretty terrific weeks usually – but tomorrow marks the beginning of my very favorite time of year. Beginning now in the dead of winter and extending until early April is my season. The high holy days that I look forward to all year and miss as soon as they are gone. They are, in succession, TCM’s 31 Days of Oscar and the NCAA Basketball Tournament. I have no need to lament the weather outside when I can get genuinely excited about being stuck in the house all day staring at my television like a true, red-blooded American.

March Madness is still a ways away; these are the days of studious preparation (or in my case, blind delusion mixed with scorn) but fortunately TCM’s annual cinema celebration is here just in time for the winter storm that will surely kill us all. Every movie the network plays will have been nominated for an Academy Award in some category and they are grouped each day according to themes. If you find yourself snowbound this week, these are my best bets to pass the time:

Citizen Kane – kick off the festival tomorrow with what is widely praised as the best movie of all time. Airing at noon central time (as all listings will be here), it’s an obligatory viewing for everyone at some point in life, so why not watch it when you have absolutely nothing else to do? It’s a perfect snow day movie – there’s a sled. But that’s as much as I’ll say about that.

Five Easy Pieces and Easy Rider – Wednesday night is a marathon of Jack Nicholson films, and these are the most exciting. Airing at 7p.m. and 11:30, you’ll have no reason to miss them if you live somewhere where you’re actually expected to go to your job in the middle of Snowmageddon or the Icepocalypse. Back in the early days before the unbearable ego and one-note performances, Nicholson was just a terrific actor, which is why he has more Oscar nominations than anyone else. You don’t want to miss the man at his best, and maybe films about the irrepressible fight for freedom will help those trapped-in-the-Overlook-Hotel feelings you’ll surely be facing before you wind up searching for an axe.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? and A Streetcar Named Desire – Thursday brings the goods with classics featuring family tension that might make you pretty pleased to be snowed in by yourself. There are two rules of thumb with classic cinema: Watch anything with Sidney Poitier, and watch anything with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Guess Who at 9:30a.m. meets both rules, so no sleeping in. And the only thing in the world wrong with A Streetcar Named Desire is that Jessica Tandy is not in it, and Vivien Leigh almost always annoys me. But she won an Oscar for it, as did Karl Malden and Kim Hunter. Only Marlon Brando didn’t, and he defined the Stanley Kowalski role for the rest of eternity. So there. Airs at 4:30.

The Lion in Winter and The Bridge on the River Kwai – Friday offers up more Katharine Hepburn at 1:45, bringing it hard as Eleanor of Aquitaine alongside Peter O’Toole and a young and sprightly Anthony Hopkins. This is a favorite for any history nerd, as is The Bridge on the River Kwai at 9p.m.. This one will probably make you cry, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

If you need me this week, I’ll be getting “snow drunk” (where you can drink wine all day long because you can’t have anywhere to go) and burning my retinas with the great American pastime.

The dresses are all that really matter, right?

Last night reminded me of something I tend to forget, which is that the Golden Globes are completely irrelevant. I attempted to watch for a few minutes, but between the awkward order of the awards, the way they had people introducing their own films for Best Picture awards, and the fact that they gave an award to Burlesque, I realized that the Golden Globes are like the Deep Impact or Edtv of awards shows. They realize they are doing the same thing that other awards shows are doing and hope that, by setting themselves apart by appearing first or far enough after, people will pay attention. But they just don’t get it right. Hollywood pays attention to the Globes for about a month and then everything belongs to Oscar. It seems like television harps on Golden Globe achievements even less. The self-congratulations fall silent after a couple of weeks because the Emmys define good television.

The Golden Globes are awkward. The television awards get pushed aside – it seems like the night had barely started when they gave the award for Best Drama series, which is the ultimate prize at the Emmys – or are combined carelessly in categories that compare apples to airplanes. The TV people spend all night in the shadow of Movies, but Movies only care about these awards as a prequel to real achievement.

I’ve always heard that the Golden Globes are the most fun awards party, and that the stars like mingling with one another and having a big table full of food and drinks to enjoy while people aren’t talking about them. I think we should just let the Golden Globes be the fancy midwinter fashion show that it is, and let the beautiful people have their party with Ricky Gervais, because that’s fun. But pretending to assign significance to the trophy is a little silly. I think next year I’ll watch the Red Carpet, then spend the evening actually watching good films or good television instead of inevitably feeling awkward and sorry for half the people in the auditorium. Then I’ll do what everyone else does, and wait for the Oscar nominations…

Top Ten Obsessions of 2010

10 Backwash – I’ve loved Josh Malina forever but this web series he wrote and starred in was one of the most unexpected pleasures of the year. Every moment of the 13 episodes was a surprise, and though it got off to a slow start and dragged at times, it was refreshingly imaginative and incredibly stupid. But like, in a good way. Claymation, opera singing, plenty of physical comedy and cheap sight gags fill the story while a cast of guest hosts hold their own as reason enough to tune in. The best is Jon Hamm, and the reappearance of his springtime beard was certainly welcome. Notice how so many of the other hosts talk about him? Who can stop themselves? But Michael Vartan and John Cho were hilarious, and Dulé Hill tap danced. Add those to Michael Ian Black’s flamboyant ice cream truck driver and you’ve got the makings of a top notch way to kill time.

9 Psych’s homage to Twin Peaks – May have more to do with the fact that Twin Peaks was one of my biggest obsessions in 2010; frankly this wasn’t the best episode of Psych this year. Nonetheless, it was fun. And two decades later, Sherilyn Fenn is still hot.

8 Jenny Wade (@jenny_wade) on twitter – The star of Fox’s The Good Guys is hilarious. In a really unfair sort of way. But she’s incredibly smart and irreverent, and you could spend forever scrolling through her old tweets and laughing out loud (and I have).

7 Mark Paul Gosselaar’s guest appearance on Weeds – We should never take it for granted that Mark Paul Gosselaar is hot. We should be reminded of it every day. He’s that hot. Breathtaking at times. And what better reminder than to watch him have his way with Mary Louise Parker in the most graphic sex scene the show has ever done? The much-talked-about scene was too much for some people, and well, just enough for others. The tension Nancy is feeling being alone is drawn out in great scenes with Gosselaar and Parker sharing chemistry and pushing one another’s buttons in a dark, empty bar. Then their charged “no smoking” argument is almost hotter than the sex scene itself. Almost. This is what TiVo was invented for.

6 Secretly Memorizing Ke$ha songs – There is this recurring daydream I have whenever I hear a Ke$ha song on the radio that involves a riotous party where out of nowhere one of Ke$ha’s interchangeable dance anthems comes over the speakers and my friends and I get to gleefully belt out the terrible lyrics (I mean, you guys have heard “Take It Off” right?) with the joyful abandon of youth. Nevermind that I don’t go to riotous parties anymore and have, mostly, bid farewell to the joyful abandon of youth. I still can’t help but listen when I’m alone in my car and succumb to the catchy hooks and danceable beat. Oh, what life must look like covered in glitter…

5 True Grit – I didn’t really have a great year at the movies. Despite my best laid plans, I didn’t see Inception, or The Social Network, or even Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. I saw Twilight something or other. In my defense I was a guest and it was free, and you know, I was going in to hide from a rainstorm, or something… Anyway, by the end of the year I was ready to see at least one of the important movies, and I’ve been obsessing over True Grit since I first heard about it. And it’s great. It’s not the Coens’ best film by a long shot, and it’s probably not the best movie of the year, but it’s good. It’s not as heavy handed as it threatened to be, but strikes a great balance between humor and intensity and doesn’t take itself too seriously. Matt Damon plays the best part in the film, even if no one is talking about it. My love for it though mostly has to do with setting my feet back down in Arkansas, and hearing a familiar history on screen, told by warm accents that are endearing, not mocking. True Grit is everything it promised to be, and a little better.

4 Sleepwalk With Me – Mike Birbiglia’s book of comedic memoirs, Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories, based on his 2009 off-Broadway one man show of the same name, deserves all the praise it’s gotten from his comic peers Lewis Black and Eddie Izzard, as well as This American Life host Ira Glass and fellow contributors. Birbiglia toes the line between stand-up comic and American illuminary, and his book is both laugh-out-loud funny and personally affecting. I obsessed about the play when I knew I could never see it. When I learned it was going to print, I waited anxiously for most of the year for the chance to read it, and was so glad to find out how well it delivers. The hilarious stories of “My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend” and his mom’s quip “Like Fun” are familiar, but new stories about his relationship and reaction to Mitch Hedberg’s death and his sleepwalking disorder are surprising and moving.

3 Community – From the beginning, Community was a creative comedy with an ensemble cast of players who ALL manage to be funny, but as time went on Dan Harmon and company continually pushed the envelope with high-concept theme episodes that pay off in spades to the viewer who can give them the leeway to do it. The zombie nightmare Halloween episode, a secret garden with a magic trampoline, and “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” make Community one of the best shows on television. I just wish I could get Jeff and Britta’s awkward, super French kiss from the season premiere out of my head.

2 Sally Draper – Mad Men didn’t lose stride at all during season 4, but instead managed to go broader and more daring with the growth of characters. And as nice as it was to see Don Draper working on self-improvement, this year was all about the women (see “The Beautiful Girls”). Joan faced new levels of disrespect, sexism, and personal drama as her career reached new heights; Peggy struggled to find a balance between her career and personal life and found she could never please everyone. Over and over we were shown that these women would have to face their struggles alone (We saw Faye left high and dry by Don Draper, but if we know anything about Don, it doesn’t look all that hopeful that Megan won’t have a life of loneliness ahead of her). Surprisingly the biggest standout this year though is Sally, who it seems has a snowball’s chance in hell of growing up well-adjusted. It’s one thing to be among the first of her peers to have divorced parents but she’s got a self-involved, workaholic lush for a father and an emotionally-stunted mother who shows no qualms about slapping her hard across the face. Not to mention stifling Sally’s maturity and growth to save her the inconvenience. Sally was the most compelling character in a room full of intrigues, and I can’t wait to see what happens to her next year.

1 Joe Pug – I haven’t been able to shut up about Joe Pug all year, though I promise I’ve tried. His full length album Messenger dropped at the beginning of the year and I’ve been drooling over it ever since. Pug’s introspective, prophetic brand of Americana music is the kind you can’t seem to shake. He sings with the intensity of a man who has a message he desperately has to get out, and songs like “Not So Sure” and “Bury Me Far (from my uniform)” display a wisdom far beyond his years. The pain and regret he so eloquently conveys in “Not So Sure” are haunting, and whether listening to Messenger or last year’s Nation of Heat EP, it’s impossible to hear Joe Pug and be unaffected. He inspires the kind of pensive self-reflection that has to make other writers jealous, not just songwriters. Also, “Speak Plainly, Diana” is virtually impossible to get out of your head. Resistance is futile.

Runners Up: Tulsa, obvs. And watching videos of puppies on YouTube.