Photo of the Day posts

This is a pre-CGI shot of the epic battle between Thor and Hulk in “The Avengers” movie from 2012:

So at least we know Chris Hemsworth's biceps are real. Full video on here.

This is from last summer but I just came across it via @TheKansan on Twitter. It's the Harlem Globetrotters living up to their name:

Not much that still exists reminds me of my childhood more than the Harlem Globetrotters. I don't know if they were at their pinnacle in the early 1970s but they were close to it. They were a Saturday morning cartoon, then a live-action “popcorn machine” show. ("And now ... Rodney Allen Ripey, take a bow!) They toured the country and the world and kept popping up on TV. We knew them by name: Meadowlark Lemon (who had his own song), Curly Neal (and his half-court shot), Geese Tatum, Marcus Haynes (to show you how). 

Has anyone done a serious history of them? There's this George Vescey book but that's from back then, June 1970. Such a history has got to be fascinating. Particularly for the players who bridged the gap in the Civil Rights era: who were touring in the 1950s and into the 1970s; who were other and then central.

Here are two photos from recent walks on different days in downtown Seattle. They just seem to go together. 

This:

Then this:

On my walk to work the other day—First Hill to lower Queen Anne, mostly along the waterfront—I saw a harbor seal swimming in Elliott Bay off Myrtle-Edwards Park. On my way back, I saw this docked off one of the piers. Did a doubletake, then returned to take this picture:

Apparently there are tours.

Seen on the way back from the Harvard Exit this afternoon.

I cried.

My nephew Ryan takes a defiant stand at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wis.

I like the juxtaposition of these shots of Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and Superman (Henry Cavill) turning their faces toward the sun in, respectively, Paul Thomas Anderson's “The Master” (2012) and Zack Snyder's upcoming “Man of Steel” (2013):

Almost the same image. Then you run through the differences:

• Freddie is on a South Seas island at the end of World War II; Superman is in the Arctic, presumably at the beginning of his journey.
• Superman gathers his strength from the sun; Freddie ... well, I'm not sure what his strength is.
• Superman is wish-fulfillment fantasy, Freddie a sad PTSD reality.
• The angle of Freddie's shot is skewed, as is he; the Superman shot is more conventional, and takes advantage of Cavill's handsome face.
• “The Master” grossed $16 million domestic and $28 million worldwide; “Man of Steel” will gross that before we wake up on June 14.

There's this, too. Though he needs to belong, though he needs comfort, Freddie ultimately rejects the wish-fulfillment fantasies of Lancaster Dodd, while we surely will not reject the wish-fulfillment fantasies of “Man of Steel.” In this way, Freddie Quell, bent, childish, the anti-sexy-symbol of post-WWII America, is, in e.e. cummings' words, more brave than me, more blonde than you.

Here's a recent Twitter conversation, or “conversation,” with New York Times' film critic A.O. Scott.

First he tweeted about David Edelstein's recent New York magazine piece on Rachel Weisz:

lovely piece. sounds like it was a lovely lunch. David Edelstein on His Acting Crush Rachel Weisz vulture.com/2013/03/rachel… @vulture

— anthony o. scott (@aoscott) March 5, 2013

When I asked him who his current screen crush was, he tweeted back:

my reviews are full of crush confessions... At the moment I'd say Marion Cotillard (f) and Channing Tatum (m) @eriklundegaard @vulture

— anthony o. scott (@aoscott) March 5, 2013

Je suis d'accord.

Marion Cotillard in “Rust and Bone.”

Et vous?

Like most anyone interested in hard news and tired of the false equivalencies of the mainstream media—the confusion of objectivity with stupidity—I enjoyed a few of Soledad O'Brien's interviews this past year. Ones with John Sununu and Rudy Giuliani, for example. Plus she's got a great name and she's not hard on the eyes. Maybe that should be her slogan: “Hard news. Not hard on the eyes.”

Anyway the other day I was finally looking through last week's New York Times Magazine, the one with Jerry Seinfeld on the cover, and out of the corner of my eye, on their short Q&A page, I caught a glimpse of ... was it a superhero? Someone in a Star Trek outfit?

It was Soledad. Wearing the day-to-day.

It's interesting comparing her outfit to a Star Trek outfit. Even a Star Trek Barbie outfit.

Beam me up, Scottie.

Good Q&A, too. Been a long time since I've heard anyone use the word “mulatto,” tragic or otherwise.

I know. Any excuse to post a picture of Marion Cotillard.

This one came from the Facebook page of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. I guess they have a regular feature there: ask such and such a star a question and maybe we'll use YOURS! Then they make a video of the star answering what turns out to be some pretty lame questions. (Ex.: “What advice do you have for someone starting out?”) By the way, Oscar, what's with the chirpy background music? Is silence too much to ask?

But the photo. Ah, the photo. All is forgiven.

Saw this on Facebook today. Don't know its origin. Love it. My feelings exactly. See Gerry Spence's comments, the end of this review of “Fast Five,” and, appropriately, this advice to Pres. Obama for the next debate, which is tonight, and which I'll be watching with beer, klonopin and a prayer rug.

Afternoons I like to walk from lower Queen Anne, where I work, to upper Queen Anne, Kerry Park, and its views of Puget Sound and downtown Seattle. Today, the first day of October, Mt. Rainier was out as well. Not a bad little view. I think I'll keep it.

If you were wondering about the five-day interruption here, and who wasn't, I was in Minnesota for a few days of work-work. (Thus the Eagan hotel encounter.) But you know the saying: all work-work and no play-play... I lucked out there. Glorious weekend. Clear skies, low 80s. Some iPhone photos:

Saturday: Lake Harriet from the bandshell side. All the boats were out. Or nearly.

There's an initiative on the Minnesota ballot in November to define marriage as between one man and one woman in the state constitution. It's running about 50-50. In South Minneapolis, of course, different story. I saw nothing but VOTE NO signs but this was my favorite: in front of the Shir Tikvah Synagogue along the Parkway. Obviously I hope it won't pass, and Minnesota will VOTE NO, but I also think of the time and energy it took to force this non-issue before the public, to waste all of this time and energy and money, and shake my head.

Is there a better ice-cream place than Sebastian Joe's? One quibble: They never have my favorite flavor anymore, Angelica, which is a mix of hazelnut ice cream and coffee ice cream. Where's the love? Because, you know, Molly Moon's and salted caramel is making overtures.

Sunday morning walk, Lake Nokomis.

I liked the lettering on these boats—that alone took me back—but wondered about the word TENDER. Later a friend explained that a tender boat is one that takes you from the dock to your boat. Good to know. “A learner, rather,” as Stephen Dedalus says.

The turtle at the Lake Nokomis beach.

Mel the cat in Ingrid's garden, looking like a miniature, lopsided version of the NY Public Library lions.

“Before 9/11, the World Trade Center was never particularly beloved. 'A standing monument to architectural boredom,' said one critic in the early 1970s. 'Two huge buck teeth' blighting the Manhattan skyline, said Norman Mailer. Earlier skyscrapers tended to end like church spires, pointing towards the heavens—the Empire State Building is even called 'The Cathedral of the Skies'—but tapering means losing valuable real estate. Thus modern skyscrapers’ blocky shape. The World Trade towers pointed at nothing. They just stood there.

”The towers came to represent not architectural beauty like the Empire State Building, nor the liberty of the Statue, but blunt financial power. 'Greed is good,' Gordon Gekko famously says in Oliver Stone’s 'Wall Street,' and so the film begins with morning shots of the Manhattan skyline, with the World Trade Center front and center. 'I have a head for business and a bod for sin,' Tess McGill says in Mike Nichols’ 'Working Girl,' but this is a feel-good movie, and so in the single-shot opening, the focus is on another working girl, the Statue of Liberty, who gets her 360-degree close-up. The twin towers are once again relegated to the background.

“Now those very background shots take our breath away. God, the World Trade Center towered, didn’t it? It towered over even New York City, which towers over the world. Other cities have one tall building, but only New York, New York, the town so nice they named it twice, had the audacity to throw up two. Now that they’re gone, the skyline doesn’t look the same. Now that the buck teeth have been knocked out, we keep probing their absence with our tongue.”

--from “Remembering the World Trade Center: How the World Trade Center was portrayed in movies before 9/11; how it’s been portrayed since,” which I wrote for MSNBC in August 2006. The above shot is from Julian Schnabel's “Before Night Falls,” starring Javier Bardem, and released in 2000. Patricia and I watched it again in late August. The WTC snuck up on us in the background. It took our breath away.

For a more extensive list of movies featuring the World Trade Center ...

Pres. Barack Obama reacts to finding Academy Award-winner Sissy Spacek among the crowd at a stopover in Charlottesville, Virginia. My evening with Sissy Spacek here. Other posts about Barack Obama here.

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)