I'm not sure how I haven't seen this movie until just now, but Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is definitely a film worth its while. Directed by Frank Capra and starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur, the story is about a man named Longfellow Deeds, who inherits millions of dollars when a distant relative passes away. Deeds is quickly brought from his small town to the big city, and is courted by numerous people who all want to share his money and fame. One of these people is a slick reporter, who poses as a lady in distress, which is his weakness. He makes her his girlfriend, unaware that on the sly, she is writing scathing stories about him in the newspaper. Of course, she actually falls in love with him, which makes things a bit complicated.

Something I've been noticing lately when watching old movies is that the media really hasn't changed all that much since the "olden" days. The tabloids seem just as bad in several of the movies I've been watching, although the focus is slightly different (more on story and less on body image). Deeds can't seem to get a break, because anything he does gets reported in the newspaper. The general public knows what he's up to at all times, and if he makes a single mistake, people have a set opinion about him. He even receives a death threat from a total stranger, which is not unlike some of the stories we hear about celebrity stalkers and restraining orders.

The beauty of this story, though, is that its main character (unlike a lot of folk in real life that we often seem to be watching self-destruct) makes a change. When confronted, he realizes he hasn't done anything truly useful with his fame and fortune, and decides to help those who are down and out.

Cooper is great as a wry but goofy guy. I like that he is able to convince us of his character's simultaneous displays of shrewdness and naivety. Arthur, too, has a great balance between a city slicker and a lovable girl. The dialog is quick and witty, and the movie moves along at a wonderful pace.

Watching Mr. Deeds reminded me of my love for old movies. I hadn't seen one in a while. Since then I've kind of gone through a flurry of them. Reviews to follow! :)

Halo 3

King Dork by Frank Portman

Battlestar Galactica - Season One

I'm usually all about the latest trends and new websites but I just haven't caught the Twitter bug.  This article got me a little curious but to me the whole thing just seems like overload and another unnecessary thing for me to add to my pile of social networking sites and other junk.  Do any of you readers use Twitter and like it?  Has it really changed your life?  What's the deal?

Now that the b2e xmlrpc appears to be fixed I figured I would test out the ScribeFire Firefox extension.  While I really like the b2e back office, I think something like this makes it easier to post links and other items straight from the page you are on.  Hopefully it will work!

brendoman.com is now running on b2evolution 2.4.0. There are a few new features including podcast support, better uploading and thumbnail creation for images and lots of xmlrpc fixes (which means if you want to post from a desktop editor, it will probably work now). There are even more fixes to make things run smoothly. I contributed a fix to prevent you from getting emails notifying you that you commented on your own post. As always, if you run into any problems, please let me know.