Grimm Amusements.

Terry Gilliam fans take heart: Although Don Quixote may be dead and buried, it looks like The Brothers Grimm has now secured funding from a parnership of MGM and Dimension. The film currently stars Heath Ledger and Matt Damon as the eponymous brothers, with Robin Williams and Jonathan “Sam Lowry” Pryce as the villains. Dimension, the senior partner, has a pretty lousy track record with regard to burying films they don’t have control over (Re: Existenz and Below), but hopefully Gilliam can buck the curse this time around.

Was it Tuttle or Buttle?

Well, that’s that, then. Despite some historic raging against the bureaucratic behemoth by Sen. Robert Byrd, the Senate passes the Homeland Security Act 90-9. Nice to see Feingold voted against it, at any rate. Well, here’s hoping my extra history degree will find me a place in Information Adjustments (and well away from the careerists in Information Retrieval.) Hmm…speaking of which, I wonder what history books out there might suggest “patterns indicative of terrorist activity.” Guess I better buy them earlier rather than later…and in cash.

Majority Report.

Saw Minority Report over the weekend and quite enjoyed it, although [Spoilers:] the last twenty minutes or so almost completely derailed the film (a la the Saving Private Ryan bookends.) Then again, I liked it better once I read the AICN talkback hypothesis that, as in Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, everything that happens after Anderton is “halo’ed” is his dream sequence, as foreshadowed by creepy-as-all-git-out Tim Blake Nelson’s soliloquy to that effect. Since that’s the exact scene after which the film began to smell, I much prefer this alternative. At any rate, I’m going to have to view it again to see if it holds up. I hope so.