The Visitor

Gathering my thoughts for this post, I thought to myself that "The Visitor" feels a lot like what I'd written about "The Station Agent" back in January. Turns out both were written and directed by the same guy: Thomas McCarthy (often credited just as Tom). Who, by the way, starred as the snakey, Stephen Glass-like character Scott Templeton in one of the top, oh, say three TV shows ever made: "The Wire."

But I'm off topic, and, what the hell, let's go even further afield. I'm moving away from New York after 12 years here, and one of the things I've been up to is making a list of things I'll miss (and trying to decide if any of them are stoppers), i.e., the Staten Island Ferry, the ability to see Swedish vampire movies the weekend they open on, at most, two screens nationwide (this one's almost a stopper, but hey, that's what Netflix is for, right?), the variety of food. And that's about it.

But today I added one tiny thrill I'll miss: spotting celebrities whose work I admire, which often seems to correspond with the kind of actor, etc., who you might read in Entertainment Weekly decide that the "legitimate work" in New York trumps living in LA for them. So today I added Seth Gilliam, who played Sgt. Ellis Carver, to my small, but quality list of "Wire" players. Okay, there are really only two, the other being a really crabby looking, though perfectly in character, John Doman, who played the bush league Machiavelli, Deputy Ops. Rawls.

But these two, Jim Jarmusch, Sigourney Weaver and Peter Greene (Zed, "Pulp Fiction," with whom I got in a now-hilarious shouting match over a stool at a downtown bar) do not a home make. So I'm out. (But if I bump into Omar, Bunk, Bubbles and Stringer Bell at my going away party, I'm cancelling the damn truck.)

Mmm, and right, if you liked "The Station Agent," and what's not to like, add "The Visitor" to your queue.