TRAGEDY IN LAS VEGAS: Much to my horror, a recent visit to lovely Las Vegas was marred by the discovery that the MGM casinos (the Mirage, Bellagio, Luxor, etc.) have REMOVED THEIR WHEEL OF FORTUNE slot machines! I realize this may not rank as "tragedy" in any sane person's book, but I've been losing, I mean, "playing" Wheel Of Fortune for years and it's still one of my favorite machines. I managed to lose, I mean, "play" some other machines (a nice waitress pointed me at an especially liberal ersatz-Wheel game that proved to be a winnah) and I got a dose of Wheel at a non-MGM casino, but still... jeez.
TRAGEDY IN THE THEATER: I caught a screening of The Spirit. Yikes. I want to give every benefit of every doubt to Frank Miller, who has done great work in comics and helped create the movie versions of Sin City and 300, but this is a real misfire. Stylish as heck, but all in service of... not much. Something tells me Spirit 2 may be awhile in coming...
NON-TRAGEDY IN THE HOME VIDEO WORLD: Slumdog Millionaire really IS a great movie and highly recommended. How the producers were able to cajole "Do You Want To Be A Millionaire" to allow them to use their game show is one of those mysteries that I probably don't need answered. Frost/Nixon is fun, though Mark Evanier has an interesting perspective/debunking of some of the movie's points on his site. He wonders why David Frost is enthusiastically supporting a movie that presents him in a rather unfavorable light, and I have to agree... I don't recall there being this much angst over a mere "talk show host" getting the Nixon exit interviews back in the day, nor do I recall Frost being considering some airheaded doof who lucked into the project. That said, it's still fun!
