Pun Salad

I will give in to the temptation to make an off-color stupid pun: the only good things about Kirsten Dunst's Melancholia are Kirsten Dunst's melons. I'll rate it as a one-star, or one half-star per boob.

A Netflix pick by Mrs. Salad. About five minutes in, she noted: "I thought this was going to be different."

It is an arty movie about tedious people at the end of the world. Justine (Ms. Dunst) and Claire are sisters, and as the movie opens, Justine's getting married to Michael. She is, however, a barely-functional whack job. Claire and her husband, John (Kiefer Sutherland!), who have paid for the shindig, find themselves increasingly impatient with Justine. Other people at the wedding party say and do things that other people find offensive. (Almost always because they are offensive. But never in an interesting way.)

[How immensely this movie would have been improved had Kiefer Sutherland just shot someone in the thigh, or exclaimed into his Bluetooth headset, "Dammit, Chloe! There's no time!"]

Meanwhile, a large planet called Melancholia is on track for a close encounter with Earth. We learn that "scientists" all agree that Melancholia will make a spectacular flyby, then zip off into space again.

Guess what? They're lying. (I assume they're not simply mistaken, because accurate celestial mechanics ain't that hard to do.)

So, bottom line: nothing that happens in the movie matters, because everybody gets pounded into hot interplanetary dust at the end. Not exactly a feelgood movie.

Note: The movie got a number of awards, and so did Ms. Dunst, the professional critics were generally supportive, and the IMDB raters didn't hate it. So your mileage may vary.

• I had my mind just about made up to vote for Gary Johnson in November, but this bit from an interview of Mitt Romney by Brian Williams was brought to my attention...
  BRIAN WILLIAMS:
  I know how much you love quoting unnamed Romney advisors, so here's a Republican official familiar with your campaign selection process, told the folks at Politico, you are looking for a quote, "Incredibly boring white guy for your vice presidential nominee." Can you confirm or deny?
  
  MITT ROMNEY:
  You told me you were not available.

  … a couple more like that, and Mitt's probably got me.

• Dave reports from London and the Olympics.
  There’s a lot of security. You see soldiers everywhere, and the government has installed surface-to-air missiles, including some on the roof of an occupied apartment building. Really. It’s called the Fred Wigg Tower, and the tenants are not happy about having missiles on their roof. I don’t blame them. When you choose an apartment building, you’re looking for many qualities — good location, adequate parking, etc. — but as a rule you are not looking for a building that might get into armed combat with an airplane.

• That was yesterday. Today, the name "Thurl Ravenscroft" is mentioned. And you probably know Thurl's voice even if you don't know who he was.