Marathon Thursday!

Lots to write about, and not totally sure where to start...well, let's go in order.

1. While running yesterday, I came a gross a group of Navy folk who were doing some sort of training run along the Charles. Every 100-150 yards there was a Navy guy yelling "good run! nice work! keep it up! almost there!" I was pumped for the positive words of encouragement even if they weren't directed towards me.

2. My new favorite thing, Next to Normal, opened to rave reviews last night, including a particularly strong notice in The New York Times. Brantley called it "brave and breathtaking" and I just got tickets to see it again May 3rd. Huzzah!

3. John Madden is retiring from broadcasting...is he still going to have is video games?!

4. The list for films "In Competition" at Cannes (opening May 13th) was leaked and it's a doozy. I'm jealous, the line up is a variable who's who of international cinema....

• Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, the Nazi-hunter saga with Brad Pitt
• Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, about 1969 music fest, with Emile Hirsch
• Francis Ford Coppola’s Tetro, an Argentine family drama with Vincent Gallo
• Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant remake with Nicolas Cage
• Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, horror-thriller with Alison Lohman
• Pete Docter’s Up, the 3D Pixar adventure with Ed Asner
• Jane Campion’s Bright Star, a John Keats bio with Ben Wishaw
• Lars von Trier’s Antichrist, horror in the woods with Willem Dafoe & Charlotte Gainsbourg
• Ken Loach’s Looking for Eric, about a troubled teen soccer fan
• Johnny To’s Vengeance, a hitman-turned-chef in Hong Kong to avenge his daughter’s murder, with Johnny Hallyday
• Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank, teen troubles with Michael Fassbender
• Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, about incipient fascism at a rural school in 1913
  (Tetro and The White Ribbon are both shot in black and white)
• Pedro Almodovar’s Broken Embraces, a noirish melodrama with Penelope Cruz
• Marco Bellocchio’s Vincere, about Mussolini’s secret lover
• Bong Joon-ho’s Mother, a thriller about a ghastly murder
• Park Chan-wook’s Thirst, about a small-town priest who turns into a vampire
• Lou Ye’s Spring Fever, about a young threesome overcome with erotic longings
• Lu Chuan’s City of Life and Death, epic about the 1937 massacre of Nanking by the Japanese army
• Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Air Doll, about the love affair between a videostore clerk and an inflatable sex doll
• Tsai Ming-liang’s Face, about a Taiwanese director in Paris to make a film about Salome, with Mathieu Amalric, Jeanne Moreau, Fanny Ardant, Nathalie Baye, Laetitia Casta and Jean-Pierre Leaud
  -courtesy of awardsdaily.com
  

And there are rumors swirling that Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (Heath Ledger's final film) will also be in competition...I'm most excited about the Almodovar and Loach films, both had exceptional works when I went to the festival in 2006, Almodovar brought Volver and Loach presented the eventual winner, The Wind that Shakes the Barley (come to think of it, Andrea Arnold was also there 3 years ago with her break-out film Red Road, which I didn't care for at all).

Off to a Marathon cocktail party with Katie and then big weekend coming up, back to back 5k's and Marathon Monday! Wish me (and Katie) luck!