I'm skipping film #31 for now. Sue me. This one is easier to write

Why is it easier? I wrote this film up for the Weekly Dig a few years ago and was lucky enough to speak with actor Bruce Greenwood during his promotional tour. So I don't really have to do much more than point you to some prior art.

Here's a taste:

Normally the presence of Kevin Costner is a sink or swim proposition for me. Sometimes, Bull Durham being the most noteworthy example, I like the guy and in turn I like the film. Other times, Prince of Thieves being the most notorious example (although The Bodyguard isn't far behind), Costner drives me nuts and the film ends up in my "what a piece of crap" pile. Thirteen Days, surprisingly, is a movie that manages to do that which I thought was impossible, survive an onslaught by the "bad" Costner and come away relatively unscathed.

I'll start off with the easy stuff- riffing on Costner, and then I'll get into the positives.

Why does this guy insist on taking roles with accents? He can't do them effectively and one would think he'd suffered through enough grief after all that Prince of Thieves silliness. Maybe he thinks if he affects an accent he's really "acting." Anyway, he's got one in this film and, as you probably could have guessed, this one sucks too. Sounding like Mayor Quimby from the The Simpsons, Costner presents exactly what I didn't want to hear; a caricaturish "Kennedy" accent.

Read my full review of Thirteen Days.

Very exciting stuff…

Visually, I'm going to missing the 200* decade. The two 00 next to each other are just way too easy to draw in cool ways. The two-zero-one pattern? I'm not sold on that yet. Give me a couple of years

Banksy in graffiti war with fellow street artist after painting over 24-year-old mural

You aerosol

Long story short- Banksy went over a 24 year old piece and was gone over in response.

I'm saddened by the loss of the original piece and I didn't even know the work in question. If I'd grown up seeing a survivor like that (Bostonians- imagine the SAINT piece in the South End.) I'd be positively heartbroken to see it gone over. It's a clever gag, but any piece of graffiti that old is rare. Even tags that old are rare. Pieces that old? They don't exist. That's a damn shame.

Here's the pictorial history of the beef
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That's what this says…

Over at my comics blog, I did a 10 for 10 post about comics. You should really check it out.

The focus here is on American mainstream comics. I have no apologies for that These are in no order. They are, however, presented with plenty of love for a decade chock full of good comics.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Sleeper

Comprising Sleeper: Season One and Sleeper: Season Two, this series went way too far under the radar. It was clearly one of the best superhero efforts of the decade, although at the end of the day it was more cloak and dagger than capes and cowls. Thankfully both Phillips and Brubaker went on to become fancy, big-selling stars for Marvel after finishing up this classic. I just wish a few more people had been able to check out Sleeper when it was running. It was tough talking into a vacuum.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal

Criminal took the Noir aspects of Sleeper, jettisoned the superhero aspects and distilled a pure drauft of crime drama. I have an affinity for their source material and love these two guys as individual talents so I was basically made to love this book.
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