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JC, huh?

Always with the inside info from Big Daddy, eh?

Wait, a real post, too? I was going to, but I think I’ll go watch Despicable Me instead. Y’all know how I love my 3D animation, and I haven’t seen the first one yet (let alone the second).

Well, “Dutch” had had a fairly-major stroke back in April (IIRC), and had been doing pretty poorly of late, so…

Proof that, now and then, the Good don’t all die young – age 87’s a pretty good run.

Gonna miss him, though – nobody did better dialogue or more interesting characters, and his plots were always near-seamless…

Be Cool is one of my mom’s favorite films. It’s not good, but it’s fun. I just helped her save it from the TiVo to videotape.

We also like the “Jesse Stone” mysteries with Tom Selleck.

Oh, now that was fun. Very nice. Predictably predictable plot, but the character animation was awesome.

I can’t tell you how grateful I am to have gotten my hands on 3D software from early days. I mean, not that *I* did anything great with it, but I got to watch it grow up from the very beginning.

On that note, here is another Irish drinking song, as sung by the minions… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6czsWW6OUog

I never even made up my mind. 🙂

Rich, the Jesse Stone adaptations of the Robert B. Parker novels are some of the best I’ve ever seen. Parker’s terse dialog works perfectly on the small screen. While Jesse in the novels is about 30-35 years old, Tom Selleck has made the character (now aged to match Tom) his own. Maybe Selleck would have been the perfect guy to play Parker’s other major detective, Spenser, in that TV series in the mid-Eighties.

Don’t forget that Leonard started his career writing Westerns, some of the best, like Hombre (movie with Paul Newman) and the short story that became 3:10 to Yuma. He had a lot of novels adapted to film.

Leonard’s last couple books were kind of disappointing but he was a very good writer who thankfully was quite prolific.

If you’re looking for a writer like him, try Loren Estleman, who also writes crime novels (especially hard boiled detective) and westerns.

Estleman is very good. His skill with language approaches Raymond Chandler, and he’s been a lot more prolific. He’s written solid Westerns (the Paige Murdock series), officially-approved pastiches of Sherlock Holmes, a modern series about an antihero hit man, his regular PI series about Amos Walker of Detroit, and several historical crime novels about Detroit in the Twenties, Fifties, and Sixties.

One of my favorite of the genre is Jim Thompson who wrote The Grifters which you probably know from the movie with John Cussack and Angelica Houston.

Good film adaptation , better book. He writes very simply, casually, and knowingly of a criminal world that I didn’t know existed

I’ve seen all the Jesse Stone movies with Tom Selleck, but on a lazy afternoon, I like to bring one up on Amazon prime to watch on my computer. But I need to round up all of Parker and start at the beginning. Those of you who love to read Westerns should like Elmer Kelton. Though not a “Western” in the conventional definition, Kelton’s book “The Time It Never Rained” will leave the reader gutted.

Yeah those Jesse Stone films are both relaxing and unsettling at the same time. They really showed me how great an actor Tom Selleck can be.

Loren Estleman has also written several movies about Hollywood history, the early history of film making. Its fascinating stuff.

Been AFK for the last month or so – new job (yay), so I just found this out.
Thanks.