Commentary

What’s a blogger meme? Oh, now I know.

WWTW wants to embrace web friends, old and new. So here goes — my A-Z alphabet meme. Here’s where it all began as well as the rules of the game. I added a twist to the meme. Each letter sparks my word association skills — with every letter corresponding to something movie related, natch.

Please to enjoy:

“Attica! Attica!” - What Sonny cries out during the great bank heist flick “Dog Day Afternoon”

“Broadway Danny Rose” - Balloon folding acts and aging crooners … one of Woody’s best films.

“The Chocolate War” - Former “Back to School” star Keith Gordon brought us this utterly unconventional school flick.

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Tis the season for Christmas movies - but beware the lumps of coal.

For every classic like “A Christmas Story” there’s a half-dozen features desperate to become the next holiday staple. But it ain’t that easy.

Just look at “Story.” OK, we’ll get the director of “Porky’s” and give him a slew of non-stars and see what happens.

Yuletide gold happened. But these five were more like the gifts you receive from your aunt who hasn’t figured out your age — or sweater size — in a decade:

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Holocaust pictures, even one as brilliant as “Schindler’s List,” never impressed me as much as other film fans.

The horrors of that chapter in human history seem too big, too indescribable, for a simple film to convey. I remember seeing the awful film clips taken by U.S. soldiers once they overtook the camps, and those were the definitive images for me.

It’s one reason why I found “Life is Beautiful” so disarming. It approached the subject matter from a unique perspective, but didn’t undermine the horrors or belittle the tragedy of the Nazi war machine.

I had a similar reaction watching “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” a film which views the Holocaust from another curious angle. It follows a German boy who befriends a concentration camp prisoner, a lad very much like himself. But the German child doesn’t understand why the boy wears those funny “Pajamas.”

It’s a story of childhood innocence that underlines the atrocities of the Holocaust in remarkable fashion.

Not everyone share’s my enthusiasm for the story. That’s putting it mildly.

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That’s the question I had before Daniel Craig’s near-brilliant “Casino Royale.”

And it’s on my mind again, and I’m sure I’m not alone.

Strip the gadgets, pithy one-liners and tuxedos away from Bond and what do you have?

“Quantum of Solace,” that’s what. But is “QoS” so much different than the “Bourne” films, or any other action franchise, for that matter? Do Bond Girls still have pop culture cache? When was the last time a Bond Girl appearance launched a major career?

Will post my review tomorrow.

Have you heard about the disaster that is “Australia?”

No? Maybe because you haven’t seen it yet. Few people have - it comes out Nov. 26.

That hasn’t kept the knives from being drawn by the movie press. Film scribes are eagerly reporting the film’s woes, rumors that the ending is being tweaked and other unflattering tidbits.

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Bond, James Bond has survived knife fights, armored assaults … even the casting of George Lazenby.

But the venerable franchise has taken some pretty heavy hits from this five calamities:

• The invisible car: The Bond Gadget era hit its nadir with “Die Another Day.”
• Bond in space: Yes, the Bond folks were trying to capitalize off of “Star Wars” with “Moonraker,” but did they have to stuff an aging Roger Moore into a rocket ship?

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Quentin Tarantino once worked at a video store.

So did I.

Quentin became a world famous movie director and dated Mira Sorvino.

I got free movie rentals for a few years.

My video daze also gave me lots of curious memories - one being that we couldn’t keep “Cheech and Chong” movies in stock. They kept getting rented … and never returned.

Wonder if that fate will befall the stoner duo’s latest movie?

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Forgive a little steam release …

One of my two DirecTV setups conked out over the weekend, and I was told it’ll cost me $50 to have a repair person come and fix it.

My wife and I barked … and we finally got DirecTV to offer us a deal that met to our satisfaction.

Lessons?

• It pays to bitch … but do it nicely.
• Competition remains fierce. We threatened to leave DirecTV ASAP … and I bet that helped broker the deal we received.
• It’s crazy that a service you pay big bucks for can go down - through no fault of your own - and you’re expected to pay for it.

Kudos to the supervisor we spoke to for meeting us half way.

A side note: A good pal has had trouble aplenty with Comcast and often blogs about it. Turns out Comcast reps scour the web for such info — and contacted his blog about his concern.

The latest Bond adventure, “Quantum of Solace,” has 007 battling a fiend who wants to monkey with the world’s natural resources.

He also happens to be a highly regarded environmentalist.

What? He’s not a Euro-trash villain? A fundamentalist killer?

Nope. He’s a tree hugger gone bad. His last name is Greene, for Pete’s sake.

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