{"id":1495,"date":"2004-02-02T11:30:41","date_gmt":"2004-02-02T18:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/8stars.org\/aa\/2004\/02\/02\/the-cooler\/"},"modified":"2004-02-02T11:30:41","modified_gmt":"2004-02-02T18:30:41","slug":"the-cooler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/2004\/02\/02\/the-cooler\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cooler"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saw The Cooler<\/a> with Gwen yesterday. Good movie. William H. Macy has made a good career out of playing the nice-guy schnook, and he does so here in a role that has a little more meat than those roles usually do. Alec Baldwin is perfect as the tough-guy casino operator who is, in his own way, more pathetic than his schnook employee.<\/p>\n

The story is a little disjointed–the interlude with the long-lost son is just sort of plunked down without really fitting in, and some of the backstory is never filled in–but it mixes the fantastic and hard-bitten reality in a way that I like, and kept me guessing how it would turn out until the end (which you might say is more because of my suspension of dis<\/em>belief than anything else).<\/p>\n

The movie is about gambling and luck: Macy’s character Bernie Lootz has such impossibly bad luck that any table in a casino he walks past instantly starts losing, making him an asset to the casino that employs him.<\/p>\n

After the movie we threw some trout and veggies on the grill. I’ve never been much of a gambler in the customary sense, but I think barbecuing is where I give vent to my gambling urge: there’s always an element of chance with a grill, and every time a meal turns out well, I feel like I’ve beaten the odds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saw The Cooler with Gwen yesterday. Good movie. William H. Macy has made a good career out of playing the nice-guy schnook, and he does so here in a role that has a little more meat than those roles usually do. Alec Baldwin is perfect as the tough-guy casino operator who is, in his own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/8stars.org\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}