The movies that are going to be written about in Brittany Murphy's obituaries are Just Married, 8 Mile, Clueless, and maybe Sin City. But the one most sadly relevant is a movie that few people saw, The Dead Girl. Each chapter of the movie shows how a different woman is affected by the discovery of a woman's body in a field, until the last chapter doubles back and shows us her haunting final days. Murphy invested the young woman with desperation, sadness, and doom, qualities that will only seem more intense now that she too has died young. It's not for everybody (Steve Dunn didn't seem to like it), but it was the best movie in 2007 that I saw, and it succeeded on the strength of its powerful acting. Murphy will be missed.


One Reply to Final Chapter

Jackie Mason | December 24, 2009
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Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Sarasota

Aaron Weiss likes taking pictures with his spiffy new camera – go figure – and yesterday he captured this beautiful panoramic shot of part of downtown Sarasota. This is why I live here. [I compressed his version for filesize, which caused the pixelization in the sky.] Go »

Revisiting Survivor: Australia

Since I'm a fan of Survivor and I missed the first halves of early seasons when they aired, lately I've rented them on DVD to see what I missed. And it's given me an opportunity to reflect on how the show has changed over twelve seasons. The first two seasons had a special quality that has largely been missing every since, which is the genuineness of the cast. Go »

Documenting My Discomfiture

My company hired a new guy to do documentation a few weeks ago, Rajeev. I've seen him walking around talking to the software developers, and attending meetings with managers in glass-walled rooms. I've heard several managers praising Rajeev by name and telling me that we need to get Rajeev to review prior documentation before we begin on projects. Go »

R.I.P. Russ

Twelve years after losing her mother, Kelly has now lost her father too. This loss was a quieter and tidier affair, partially due to Russ not wanting a funeral or wake, and partially due to his very strained relationship with Kelly in recent years. We waited a few days to work out the trip schedule, flew up there, had a nice little graveside gathering with immediate family and then lunch out, spent time seeing the old hometown and Russ's new adopted small town (oh how I don't miss driving for hours through corn fields to get literally anywhere in Illinois), and returned with lots of tasks for Kelly to do to resolve the estate. Go »

24 Hours in Orlando

Recent conversation with Brenda: me: "It's nice to meet you!" Brenda: "It's nice to meet you too!" As Steve mentioned, Kelly and I drove up to Orlando on Friday night to have dinner with the vacationing West family. Go »

The Importance of Being Richard

A conversation drifted today into weird shortening of names, like Robert into Bob and William into Bill (how come Michael doesn't become Bike?), and inevitably Richard into Dick came up. How did that even happen, anyway? Go »