Yes, I watch television

In honor of trying to return to posting about things that are not clothing-related, I thought I'd tell you about all the TV I've been watching recently. We figured out how to connect our Wii to the Netflix, so we have been having self-imposed marathons of TV shows we weren't cool enough to watch most of the first time around, like Pushing Daisies, The Guild, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and now Dollhouse.

Pushing Daisies was just my kind of weird and bizarre, but I can also see why it got cancelled after only one midseason-replacement season and one strike-shortened season. By the end of it, the repetition of the "I'm sorry I got mad at you, it's just that I'm sad that no one knows I'm alive, but I'm happy you made me alive again, even though it means you can never touch me or I'll die again" and the "I understand why you're sad and I hope you're not upset that I made you alive again because I'm not even though I can never touch you or you'll die again" stuff got a little weary.

The Guild is a web series that started off just wretched, particularly in terms of the acting, which I suppose is to be expected from a web series, but actually did get better over the course of the show. Plus, I just love Felicia Day, because she is adorable and hilarious and altogether awesome.

We watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog over Thanksgiving, and it was amazing, as expected, but also terribly sad which I did not expect, but all-in-all reinforced the awesomeness of both Joss Whedon and Neil Patrick Harris and is definitely the best thing to come of the Writer's Strike, in my opinion.

Finally, we're now in the second season of Dollhouse, which we actually did watch some of in its first season back when it was on the air. I remember liking it then (again, Joss Whedon, how could I not?), but recognizing its flaws in terms of the pacing and the not-great acting of the dolls in their "doll state." Watching them all back-to-back definitely improved the pacing, and the "doll state" parts get fewer and further between, and also get more depth. Now the problem in the second season is that we watched the episode at the end of Season One that never aired, but was shown at ComicCon or something, and it puts a very different feel over everything that happens in Season Two, so it's much much darker. Actually, come to think of it, that's not a problem at all, it just makes it so I need to take more breaks between episodes or I descend into utter madness. You know... like that.

Ballroom dancing and other pretentious things

Here is your Movie of the Week/ Every few months or so when I have time: Strictly Ballroom.

This has been on our Netflix queue for about three years because our list is like 400 movies long or so, and it's not getting any shorter (as I discovered when we were ready to send this one back and I went online to find out what was coming up and saw that we also have had the same movies in our house for about three months). This is how they make money, in case you people who get 6 movies a week ever wondered.

Anyway, I was also preparing a final presentation on the political and historical contexts of graduation tests while watching this, so mostly what I got from it is:

1. It's in Australia. Did you know it's in Australia? Did you also know that their accent can be 90% approximated by replacing every vowel sound with the hard EEEE (as long as you say it with your bottom chin jutting out)?
2. Baz Luhrman is a weird, weird dude. I like that.
3. There are Hispanics, or at least folks who live in a barrio and speak Spanish, in Australia. Did you know that? Turns out, I know very little about Australia.
4. Ballroom dancing is fun and edgy if they're allowed to dance whatever steps they want. Or, as they say in Australia, steeeps.
5. How do I not have cable and also go through Netflix movies at a rate of 1 every quarter year? Because I'm smart and I don't watch television because it's bourgeois. Or else because The Price Is Right is just that addictive.

So, there you go. Check out this movie if you like flamboyant costumes and the Australians. Or, if you like that massive closeup shot from above that Baz Luhrman favors, which makes everyone look like a shiny, bloated wax statue. In other words, A-plus!

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I had a social life for a minnit

It's been awhile since I've done a Movie of the Week, probably because it's been awhile since I've seen a movie that I don't already own and even then I usually fall asleep in the first twenty minutes and then replay it over and over during the night. That's normal, right?

Anyway, that's beside the point, which is that you should all go see Zombieland, and I don't even care if you hate horror movies or comedy or that kid from Rodger Dodger, and who hates him anyway, he's so adorably awkward and lovable, what kind of person are you, do you hate Michael Cera too? You shouldn't.

From the opening credit sequence, which builds a feeling of despair and destruction that you are sure you'll never shake, which you do though because it's a comedy after all and so there are hilarious broken ankle bones and vomiting of blood and your good friend Jesse Eisenberg running around and around and around a gas station parking lot, all the way to the almost completely zombie-less third act with a very special guest star and then on to the end that I can't tell you about, but I promise it completely follows zombie movie tradition right up until it doesn't and then it does again and then doesn't, and it's really awesome.

So go watch it, or I'll give you a much longer treatise on why I think that zombie movies are really "in" post-9/11 because we are afraid we've destroyed our civilization from the inside and we can trust no one and we spent so long just trying to survive through alienating everyone around us that we are starting to realize that if survival means cutting off our humanity that it's almost not even worth it any more so we're reaching out for human connection, even if it puts our very lives at risk because we've finally decided that the risk is worth it.

Also, Woody Harrelson and Emma Stone and Abigail Breslin are all really good too, and you can't possibly hate ALL of them because you're just not that awful of a person.


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A book, a movie and other random thoughts

So, with all the moving about and unpacking of seventeen boxes of knick knacks and random wires, I've been behind on the reading and watching of new movies lately. On the other hand, we have absolutely no reception on our tv in here (even with a fancy digital to analog converter box of the future), so I have been rewatching all the old standards about fifty times a day. If I didn't have "Super Troopers" memorized before, I definitely do now.

We did finally find our Netflix movies yesterday, though, and watched "The Believer*," which is an uplifting little film about a Jewish Nazi. I learned three things from this movie. Number one, I think that neo-Nazis just like being angry. Otherwise, why live in New York and take the subway, where you're destined to run in to Jewish people and black people and Asian people and all those folks who send you into a murderous rage? You could move to a small Nebraska town and just never ever have to deal with it. Obviously, they have not been attending their yoga and meditation classes.

Second, and I should probably get myself checked out for this, but I still think Ryan Gosling is hot, even when all Nazi'd out. Ok, not a big fan of the swastika shirt, but the shaved head is kind of sexy. Is this a problem I should worry about?

Third, it turns out there are movies that can have an ending that I will not ruin for you, but I will warn you is not all puppy dogs and light, but is about the best of any possible world you could imagine for the character anyway. That's vague, but you should watch it because you won't cry and get as depressed as you might think you will. On the other hand, if you're like me, you will have dreams that night about killing people and then wandering the streets naked.

Your book recommendation this week is much less disturbing, even though the author died of heroin-addiction-related illnesses before his novel was published. It's called "2666," and it's by Roberto Bolaño. For this week, I just recommend the first section: "The Part About the Critics," mostly because that's the only part I've read yet. This first part is about four academics (three men, one woman) who all translated the work of a German author called Archimboldi into their own languages (English, Spanish, Italian and French) and wrote other critical essays on his work, and thus met at boring academic conferences. The woman and the French and Spanish men each carry on ill-fated relationships, including at least one threesome, before they travel to Mexico to find Archimboldi, whom no one has seen in years, but they hear he's hanging around some rural area where a lot of young ladies are being killed. While the French and Spanish man chill in Mexico, the English woman goes back to Italy and starts shit up with the other man and thus ends part one. There's some other shit that happens too probably.

So, try it, you'll like it. It has some old standby themes of narrator unreliability, the inconstancy of man and the role of the external in identity construction. That sounds smart, right? It's also written very straightforwardly (for example, he'd never use the word "straightforwardly" probably) and pulls you into the story very quickly. So get on that and get back to me.





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*Not to be confused with the magazine, which I have a subscription to, and enjoy explaining to people trying to sell me magazines over the phone, since it's actually a literary magazine and has nothing to do with God or Jesus or Nazis either.


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Titles are for blogdorks

So, I thought about looking into how often I start a blog with the word "So," but that seemed like a lot of work, so I didn't.  Fascinating.

I also start a lot of sentences with "Anyway," which probably indicates that I get sidetracked a lot.

What was I saying?  Oh right, you of course have read both of the books I recommended yesterday, so you get a movie treat.  Houseboy had libarry business to take care of in downtown yesterday afternoon, so when he was done he met me after work and we went up to the River East theater, wandered around looking for one particular Irish bar among the clumps of Irish bars in downtown and somehow circling it about twenty times before it appeared out of nowhere like that one town [insert literary reference here]*, and then offered us hummus.  

After the hummus, we saw the movie showing closest to when we arrived at the theater, which was Drag Me To Hell.  Even though I like horror movies, I was skeptical about this one at first, expecting it to be in the vein of recent horror movies, which are really just torture porn**.  But then I read that it was written and directed by Sam Raimi, of Evil Dead, et al. fame, and that it was going to be funny.  Well, ok, I was still skeptical even then, because I liked the Evil Dead movies and found them funny and all, but I've seen plenty enough 80s horror/comedy failures to know that that formula is not always successful.  

Anyway, to cut this rambling nonsense to shorterness, I will avoid any in-depth discussion of the distinction between "death" and "hell" or the slippery slope of sin that leads us from denying old ladies bank loans to condemning people to torture for eternity because we can't take responsibility for our own actions, or why an Indian dude can translate Spanish, and just say: FUNNY.  It was FUNNY.  And jump-scare and gross-out scary.  If you liked Shaun of the Dead, you'll like it.  If you didn't like Shaun of the Dead, you should read this post, and then never come back here because you have deep-seated mental and emotional problems that I can't help you with.  

Oh, and if you go see it, be on the lookout for a great scene between the main character, her boyfriend and her boyfriend's parents, in which he says "HAVE.  You HAVE a cat... unless something happened to it?" and she gives the funniest, creepiest damn look I've seen in a movie in a long time.  

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* I know it's Brigadoon, and it's not a book, it's a musical.  Shutup you face.

** Obviously, I didn't make up that awesome turn of phrase:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splatter_film

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Sex and the Children of the Perfect Man

The blog title was unwittingly suggested by Houseboy, who confused the hell out of me with his cleverness.  In the last week we actually watched THREE movies: Children of Men (which has been saved on our Tivo for about 6 months), The Perfect Man and the Sex and the City movie.  

Watching the Children of Men needs no excuse, because it is a movie that Smart People like, and we are Smart People who watch Smart Movies and have Smart Friends who suggest Smart People Movies to us.  The reason it sat on our Tivo for 6 months is that everytime Houseboy suggested we watch it I was like "Isn't that the post-apocalyptic tragic landscape one?  Let's watch Superbad again instead."  And we did.  Because we own that, and I love the penises.  

Anyway, we finally watched it last night because we had to eventually, because I have a moral obligation to my Tivo queue.  Turns out it's pretty depressing, but not actually as bad as The Road, with which it had many similarities, such as corpses burning on the roadside.  The overall message seemed to be that our society is about to hit a massive an apocolyptic downfall, but that the scary thing will actually be the way the survivors treat one another, rather than the mysterious attack from the outside.  In this way it's also like 28 Days Later, which I think got at the message a little more clearly and also more directly, what with zombies being more frightening than infertility, at least to me.  Interesting side note: in all these stories, it seems that the 3rd world and undeveloped countries also descend into madness and chaos, even though one could argue that the message is directed at us first-worlders who treat each other with such lack of basic humanity.  Sucks to be an Aboriginal person and have to pay for the sins of the rest of us, I guess.

So, the excuse I offer for watching The Perfect Man is that my sister is a brilliant and lovely and wonderful person, but her taste in all things entertainment-related is just wretched, in my opinion.  She apparently not only bought this movie, but accidentally bought it twice, and so was kind enough to give me her extra copy when she was out to visit last week.  Being the Not Snob that I am, I decided to watch it after work one day when my brain was fried.  Being the Snob that I am, I did not like it.  I'm all about the stupid movie and even the romantic comedy when I need stress relief.  I own Bring It On, for crying out loud.  And I've watched it recently.  It makes me happy. 

All that said, The Perfect Man just didn't do it for me.  I thought the acting was terrible, the plot was laughable and there were not enough musical numbers for my taste.  In its favor, it was not very long, and I didn't regret spending time on it as a result.  The Sex and the City movie, on the other hand, seemed to last for-fucking-ever.  I was never a fan of that show, and I wanted to tear my eyes out every time someone claimed to be like one of the characters, who I believe to be heinous female stereotypes who have actively frustrated the progression of feminism.  This may be why I disliked the movie, since it seemed to just be a really long version of an episode.  Also, since I wasn't a regular viewer I don't know for sure, but I got the impression when the movie started that the series ended on a sort of "happily ever after" for the characters, and all this movie did was uproot that and then re-plant it.  In other words, it had no actual reason for existing except to get more money out of the fans of the show.  The cardinal rule of storytelling is that you should have a reason why you are telling this particular story in a character's life, and I just didn't see it here.

Oh, and my excuse for watching it at all is that I came upon it just as it was starting.  That never happens!  

I need to start being more picky...

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One Hundred Blogs of Solitude

Welcome to the 100th post, ladies and gentlepersons!  I should try to make this a good one.  

What is good/funny/interesting that I can tell you?  Let's start with books! I participated in this Facebook meme "100 Books," which claims that, according to the BBC, the average person will have read only 6 books on the list.  Because there are few things that I love more than feeling superior to the British, I made my little check marks and came up with 53.  So far second only to Houseboy's college roommate in total number.  After I did it, so did Soda Pop, and she seemed to think that you're allowed to put a 0.5 next to things when you started reading them on my recommendation and then stopped halfway through and will tell people all the time about how much you hated it.  In that case, I should really get 53.5 because I tried reading the Bible once, and also I hear selections from it every Sunday when I'm paying attention.  But no, I'm not a cheater like that.  Anyway, the list is pretty much bogus, since there are overlaps and repetitions and also you only get one check for reading "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" and one for reading "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe," which is a great book, but only like 100 pages.  It fulfilled its purpose, though, as I feel smarter than almost everyone, except my Korean friend who read like 43, and should get double points since it's not her native language.

This same friend also once came to my house for Halloween, and we proceeded to get more than sloppy, and I will never ever recover from the amazement at her ability to continue to speak English as she passed out on our couch.

In other news, I did 20 crunches yesterday and today I can barely sit up.  I'm getting old, folks.  There was a time when I could do hundreds, and then go swim two miles and then run 10 miles and then wrestle a cougar.  Sadly, I killed all the cougars and now I'm out of shape.

Speaking of being old, I watched Garden State last night, which I own and I love, but has evolved over the last few years in how I relate to it.  When it came out I was about the age and life-stage of the characters, and I thought the Natalie Portman character was just about the coolest thing ever and I wanted to scream into the infinite abyss and all that.  Now when I watch it I get nostalgic for a time when I gave a shit about stuff, and I think the poor Natalie Portman character has a lot of issues she needs to work out, and I still want to scream into the infinite abyss, but it would probably be unseemly for a woman of my age and position.  

So, that's about all for the 100th blog of all time, here's hoping we make it to 101.

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Minnesotans Sure Know Noir

This weekend Houseboy and I watched "Lucky Number Slevin," recommended to our Netflix queue by Netflix buddy Soda Pop, who has an unhealthy obsession with Minnesota boy Josh Hartnett:

Ok, looking at that now, maybe it's not so unhealthy.  A hometown boy and graduate from South High School in Minneapolis (along with Rachel Leigh Cook and Carl Lumbly!)... I suppose it's ok to make secret plans to leave your high-powered DC lifestyle to cook and clean in the nude.  

Anyway, incitements to infidelity aside, this recommendation was a good one.  It could be described as a kind of "light-hearted noir" if that isn't a total oxymoron.  One of those more modern dark mystery pieces that nods towards its own outlandishness, rather than attempting to bury it in gore.  I'm not a student of the noir genre, exactly, but I've seen and read my fair share, and I'd argue that in the 1950's, when this was particularly popular, there was a certain humor to the situations, but also a certain unselfconsciousness that can only come from not having been done and redone eleventy hundred times.  When moviemakers dip into this pool these days, they're only too aware of the ridiculousness of the situations their characters end up in, and they really have only two choices: 1) distract us with a rising body count, eventually bordering on horror rather than mystery or 2) wink a bit at the camera, as Philip Marlowe might do.  

Lucky Number Slevin chooses the latter route, giving us the Lucy Liu character, who is an amateur detective and professional medical examiner, as well as the off-kilter charm of the Josh Hartnett character, who claims to have a mental disorder that does not allow him to feel fear, and results in him rather calmly making jokes when his life is in danger.  I think this approach is more in keeping with the original noir concept-- one in which we are all alone and the forces we fight can barely be contained, much less defeated, so why not throw in a wry comment between punches to the nose?  We know we cannot win the war, so we fight the battles with a certain freedom, humor and even affection.  By burying our self-awareness in sky-rocketing violence, the other "new noir" movies subvert this paradigm.

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If It's on a List, It's an Accomplishment

This is what I really love about Netflix... not the "convenience" of having movies delivered to my home or the cheapness of $17 a month or even those adorable little red envelopes.  It's the fact that when I watch a movie, I get to cross it off a list and that makes me a Good Person.  People who make lists and then accomplish what is on those lists are better than people who do not.  This has been proven by Science.  

So, I thought about telling you about the dream I had last night where Crissy from Crissy's Page was the guest priest at my church and kept showing us her butt and singing nonsense songs and then I got in trouble because I was sitting in another guy's seat and wearing my pajamas, including this Natalie Dee shirt:  

And plus I was at the church I grew up in, in Minnesota and about 400 miles from the Sunday School classroom I was supposed to be in.  

But I decided that was boring, so I'll tell you about the two movies I watched this weekend:

Don't they look good together?  The Fall came out recently... let's say "the other day" to be as unspecific as possible... and it's about a man in the hospital telling a little girl an "epic" so that she'll go get him morphine to kill himself.  Yay!  It's directed by Tarsem Singh, of The Cell fame, who has apparently become a one-name guy:  just TARSEM, if you're nasty.  

Anyway, I've heard that people thought The Cell made no sense and that this one hung together only slightly better.  Those people are not smart like me, and they probably don't even make lists, much less check things off of them.  This one did have a slightly stronger storyline, but much like The Cell it relies heavily on being gorgeous and on the fact that most of the gorgeous stuff takes place inside someone's head, so you really can't expect it to follow totally logically.  If you like pretty things and can understand that a story told in bits and pieces to a child might have logical leaps in it, then you'll like this movie.  Also, there are several men with very good abs who take off their shirts a lot.  

Asphalt Jungle, on the other hand, came out not recently.  Let's say "before I was born."  It has a very early appearance by Marilyn Monroe, who looks thin and young and not at all stoned, if that kind of thing gets you off.  Basically it's a heist movie, but most of the action is pre- and post-heist, as the heisters double- and triple-cross each other and get shot all over the place.  Houseboy and I enjoyed pretending that the mastermind was a Nazi doctor, because he had a German accent and a couple people called him "doctor."  We're imaginative like that.  

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Jerry Seinfeld Has an Agenda

I just wish I knew what it was.  I watched "Bee Movie" the other night, and usually I have my shit together enough to understand cartoons, I swear I do, but this one was beyond me.  It was either about veganism or communism or possibly our litigious culture and self-serving attitude.  Since I've been doing a lot of "thinking" lately about "big issues" in my "life" and whatnot, I pretty much shut my brain off and let Jerry the Bee tell me anything he wanted to about what I was doing wrong, but by the time it was over I wasn't sure if I was supposed to stop enslaving bees, or take advantage of the enslavement of bees to save the environment, or open a law office behind a florist shop in New York.  Usually these are not decisions I ponder while watching a bee in a sweater.  Usually in that case I think about how they made such a tiny sweater, and what material it's made of, and why all the bees only have four legs, and whether their extra two legs are under the sweater, and if so, how that can possibly be comfortable.  

Instead, now I'm sitting here with a cup of tea and an almost full bottle of honey (the kind in the bear, which [who knew?] is apparently the worst kind from a bee's perspective) and I can't decide whether I should use the honey or throw it out or donate it to Starving Africanized Honeybees, Incorporated.  And my tea is getting cold.

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I promise I like normal things too

And now, to prove that I am not actually mentally incompetant, I will tell you about a movie in which Sherilyn Fenn gets her limbs amputated that I did not like.  This movie is called Boxing Helena, and I actually never figured out what the boxing referred to, because he puts her in a little legless throne after he eventually gets around to torso-ing her, not a box.  I think I initially confused it with an episode of X-Files where they find the mother of an incestous family being kept under the bed in a box because she doesn't have arms or legs.  Man, I loved X-Files.

Anyway, Houseboy saw this movie shortly after it came out, because he had a little high school crush on Sherilyn Fenn and was probably in hog heaven for the first 45 minutes or so, which mostly consist of creepy surgeon dude watching her be naked with other guys.  Interspersed with saxophone-music-filled closeups of one of those marble statues with no arms and a parrot beating its wings against its cage walls.   That's what they call symbolism people.  And foreshadowing.  

Because later, she'll get hit by a car and have her leg crushed, and surgeon guy will get to cut off her legs and tend to her in bed while she throws things at him until he unceremoniously cuts of her arms too.  And I do mean unceremoniously.  Because we don't even get to see the surgery, folks.  I know, right?  Why watch a movie about a creepy dude cutting off body parts if there is no blood?  We don't even get to see the stumps: he dresses her in these flowy nightgown-like dresses and sets her on a throne where she continues to yell at and belittle him, just like his mother.  Oh yeah, that's the other theme: his mommy was not nice to him and walked around without a shirt on a lot.  

There is exactly ONE worthwhile scene in this entire movie, and that's when she is dramatically revealed for the first time with neither legs nor arms, in her little throne, set on a table and surrounded by funereal flowers.  The camera pans back as she begins to laugh.  And then laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs.  It's very creepy.  Unfortunately, the movie  continues for about an hour after that.  

Once again, if you have any intention of watching this movie, on account of thinking it sounds good even after my description above, I would recommend that you read no further, because I'm about to tell you how it ends.  Just as Dr. Awesome finally gets Helena to submit to a serious case of Stockholm Syndrome, and they're about to get all naked, her boyfriend finds them and raises holy hell, knocking out the doctor, who then wakes up in the hospital and realizes that it was all a dream.  I'm not flipping kidding.  Apparently somewhere along the way the writer decided to let a 4th grader finish the script for him, because not only do find out that it was all a dream, we are treated to about 20 minutes of explanation of exactly how it was a dream.  You see, when Helena was hit by the car, she was taken to the hospital, not back into the doctor's creepy old house.  And it turns out that all the parts where he pared her down until she was a loving torso were part of the dream.  But the parts where she had sex with other guys were not a dream.  Get it?  

So, yeah.  Get this from Netflix.  Because it's so bad it's bad. 

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Why don't you BLOG about it, geek?

So, I took Houseboy out for Part II of his birthweek celebration last night, and we went to see My Bloody Valentine: 3D, or as it said on the marquee, our tickets and outside the theater: "My Bloody D," which just sounds wrong.  Afterwards we went to dinner and spent way too much time talking about the role of horror movies in our society and what they teach us about what we value and who is "in" and who is "out" in our culture, given that the other thing we had to discuss was whether the writers actually put any thought into who was going to be the killer, or if they just decided to pick a name out of a hat after they'd written the whole thing.  

More or less, I choose to give the writers the benefit of the doubt or at least accept the assumption that horror movies will have a moral whether they like to or not, because they're part of a genre that doesn't need to work too hard at being original, they just have to help us have a cathartic experience and allow us to fortify the boundaries of our society so that we're more comfortable in having banished the unknowable.  That said, I had enough time to think during the movie in this case that I came up with my theory on what this one was "about" before it was actually over, but I think it still hangs together.  

The basic story is about the son of a mine-owner who works in that mine.  He makes a deadly mistake and there is an explosion and a cave-in and a bunch of miners are trapped.  To save himself, one of the miners takes his pickaxe to all the others and is eventually dragged out of the mine in a coma.  For some reason, when he wakes up from the coma a year later, he kills the shit out of absolutely everyone in the hospital and then heads back to the mine, where the mine-owner's son and his friends are partying in the closed mine shaft.  Coma guy of course finds his mining equipment somewhere, puts on a gas mask and overalls and kills all the teenagers he can with his pickaxe.  Mine-owner's son, his girlfriend, and his friend and the other girlfriend are the only ones to escape, as the cops shoot coma guy and a bunch of rocks collapse on him.  This is all in the first 10 minutes of the movie, so don't freak out that I forgot to say "spoiler alert" or whatever.  

Anyway, cut to 10 years later: mine-owner's son disappeared soon after this happened but is coming back in town because his dad died and he's selling the mine.  His girlfriend is now married to his friend and has a kid, and the other girlfriend is having lots of naked screen time right before she gets ripped to pieces in the same hotel in which the mine-owner's son is staying.  There's a lot more killing by a guy in overalls and a gas mask, who may or may not be the original coma dude, but either way it's pretty well targeted at the people who were there the first time around.  

So, somewhere between the naked screen time and the part where mine-owner's ex-girlfriend gives him a talking-to that more or less reinforces my upcoming points, I came up with my thesis.  This particular story is about how one small mistake can follow you for the rest of your life, and if you don't address it and find a way to deal with it, it will come back to destroy not only you, but all the people you love through you.  

Now, fitting this in with the overall "interstitial nature of horror" theory I've got going here, this makes this a very post-80's movie.  We're not banishing the powerful outsider ("Carrie") or fearing the societies that formed from those we banished ("Freaks," "Texas Chainsaw Massacre"), and we're not worried that our own steps over the boundaries we created will bring our civilization crashing down ("The Thing," "Alien," "28 Days Later").  Instead, we fear our own ability to control our emotions and our inner life.  

We believe we have harnessed our own inner power and controlled the things that attack us from within using therapy and medications and, of course, institutionalization.  No one is really "crazy" anymore, they have schizophrenia or dissociative identity disorder or bipolar disorder, and it can be managed.  But this movie proves that we don't really believe that; we still see our own minds as an enemy, our own experiences and feelings as dangerous and uncontrollable, and we really, really want to take a pickaxe to their faces.

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No Movies; Drugs

So, I had a lot of tv watching to do this week and didn't get around to seeing any movies, although Houseboy promised to take me to see "My Bloody Valentine" for his birthday because it's in 3-D and my favorite dimension is the third dimension.  If you're lucky, that might be your movie of next week.

For this week I would just like to share an awesome bathroom experience, because I know you all like poop humor.  Except this story doesn't actually involve poop.  But you can imagine people "reading a magazine"* while you hear this story if you like.  Anyway, yesterday I was at work (I know, right?  You're already fascinated), and I started to get a migraine.  (Oh horrors!  The drama!)  Since my little pink and red pills, I get these less than I used to, and they're not as bad or long-lasting, but I still don't like to try to think about racial gaps in standardized testing while there are moles eating my brain.  So, I went to the bathroom to take my old-new abortive medication (that sounds political, but it's not), which is being called Imitrex Nasal Spray (TM).  What I like about this drug is that it gets into your blood really fast and then makes its way to your brain really fast because that's near to where your nose is, and within minutes you don't feel like you'll probably die.  My only complaint (before yesterday) was that sometimes it runs down the back of your throat and tastes like dead monkey sweat, but compared to the brainplosion, it's totally worth it.  

The other downside I discovered yesterday is that if you go into a bathroom stall and make a loud and long snorting sound, and then come out sniffling and rubbing your nose, your coworkers will look at you askance and will definitely not at all think you're a cokehead from now on.  

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* This is the only episode of "How I Met Your Mother" that I've ever seen, but I will admit that I laughed.  NPH, what a mensch.  

Unmovie of the Week

I was going to tell you all about Slumdog Millionaire for the following reasons:

1) I watched it with my parents over the holidays, and my dad liked it so much, when he called me for my birthday he said "Go see 'Bolt!'  Oh, and this other movie we saw which was really great, and it's about India... Carolyn, Carolyn, what was the India movie?  Slumwhat?  Slumdog Millionaire, she says."  And I had to tell him I'd seen it with him and then remind him which daughter I am and where I live and all that stuff you have to do after your parents turn 50. 

2) Ever since watching it, Houseboy and I yell "Chaiwallah!!" and "Computerji!" at each other and try to do the cool dancing at the end, but end up looking like Mr F. 

3) It's the "Independent Movie" of the year, where everyone who considers themselves smart and cultured go see it, so if you don't you'll look stupid and uncultured.  Like butter.  

But instead, I'm going to tell you all about how none of you dumb gits* had better go see that piece of ass fuzz movie "Bride Wars."  Every time I see an ad for that movie I about have an aneurism and have to lecture Houseboy on the way society demeans women and encourages women to demean each other through the obsession with material possessions, while perpetuating the stereotype that we're all backstabbing canibalistic she-beasts and that that is cute and funny somehow.  

If you're in the mood for something a little wrong in a gratifying, "I'm better than them" kind of way, check out "Sex, Lies and Obsession," starring Mr. and Mrs. Echolls, aka Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna.  If you watch only the middle part, you get to see a lot of [implied] masturbation and [implied] sex with prostitutes and [actual] peep show action.  And then you can turn it off before the wife inevitably takes back her cheating std-having husband because, as Hedgehog and I nailed down while I watched this on my sick day on Monday, the moral of all Lifetime movies is that addictions and psychological abuse are forgiveable, physical abuse is not.  Take that reasoning to the bank and watch them stare at you funny and then ask if you have a deposit or if you need some other kind of help.  

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*I had to go look up "git" in the urban dictionary to make sure I wasn't saying something unintentionally racist or xenophobic, because you know how the English can be.  Word of the day from urbandictionary.com = sideboob.  Awesome.  

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Like Kurasawa I make mad films

Ok, I don't make films.  But if I did, they'd have a samurai.  And Brad Pitt.  And ideally a culminating scene with some sort of water dance by amphibious bunny rabbits set to Led Zeppelin music.  This might be why my screenplays never get picked up.

So, anyway, your Movie of the Week was going to be Rashomon, but then I didn't watch Rashomon, but accidentally sealed it up in its Netflix envelope anyway and had to carefully retrieve it without tearing the envelope because I don't have another one because I'm sending back Scratch and also the Pianist, even though I haven't watched it yet because I've decided I get the whole Holocaust thing.  Have you noticed that there are FOUR World War II movies out right now?  That seems excessive.

Anyway, instead you get to hear about a NEW movie, which is being called "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."  This is one of those movie theater type movies, which I got to see because it was my birthday yesterday, and Houseboy felt bad that I was thirty years old and still not best friends with Brad Pitt, even though that was on my "To Do Before I'm 30" list.  More on that list another time.

For now, you get a slightly obscure and subtle-ified review of Benjamin Button, because I don't want to have to do the "Spoiler Alert" nonsense.  So, it's a movie about how Brad Pitt is aging backwards and is star-crossed with Cate Blanchett, which I imagine Angelina Jolie is rather upset about.  As was revealed to me ahead of time, the old people makeup is really quite good, and I didn't spend very much time at all going "Wow that old people makeup looks good," because I just got used to it and paid attention to the actual movie.  What distracted me more actually, was the very young Brad Pitt, because dude is like 45 now, so other than the poor lighting I really have no idea how they made him look about 17 at one point.  I was also occasionally distracted when he rode his motorcycle or went sailing, and I blacked out because he's a hottie-cake.  

As to the actual plot and whathows of the movie, I give it about an 8 1/2 out of ten.  There was a particular part where I particularly disliked the way things went, and was pulled out of the suspension of disbelief that is obviously very important to a movie such as this.  But, other than that, I enjoyed it immensely.  I would agree with the director (where ever I saw that) that the actual premise of aging backwards isn't really the most interesting part of it, though that made it more than just another sweeping romantic epic like "The English Patient" or some other movie I haven't seen.  It gives it a little bit of a twist and an unusual edge, though not quite as much as, say "Lars and the Real Girl," which I have seen.  

Also, it's not giving TOO much away to say that I want to be buried with a jelly jar full of buttons.

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In Which I Pretend to be "Cool" and Learn about the Hips and the Hops

In this second installment of "Movie of the Week," you will join me on an adventure into the lifestyles of those more cool than us with the documentary "Scratch," recommended by Houseboy's brother, who IS cool and is in a hip hop band and everything.  He was the dj at our wedding and didn't even laugh at our music choices [much], so that also makes him "cool" in the mom sense, because he's nice to those less fortunate than him.

So, if you're like me, while watching this movie you'll be like "That's the guy from the Beastie Boys!" every time you see Mix Master Mike and be very proud of yourself and otherwise really enjoy the obvious talent it takes to "scratch" and be a "turntablist" and etc.  I was aware of the fact that this is a difficult thing to master and all, and I've heard a hip hop-ist or two in my time, so I had what I would consider a healthy appreciation of the art, but watching all the footage in "Scratch" really took it to the next level.  It's like the first time I heard Rahzel on Make the Music and I realized that beatboxing is a little more than just doing the "ksh ksht" noise like Theo on The Cosby Show.  If you haven't heard it, he does this thing where he does both the background music and the vocals at the same time.  See?  I'm cool.  I know stuff.

Anyway, watch it and be amazed and also enjoy making fun of the tuba salesmen at the music expo.  

Movie of the Week

I've decided to let up on you a little bit about the whole reading thing and let you watch movies too. You can have one movie a week if you promise to read one book a week. And eat all your vegetables. And clean your room. If you’re really good, maybe I’ll take you to the mall on Saturday and let you get your ears pierced by that disenchanted fake blonde who works at Claire’s and you think is so cool that you actually almost had an aneurism when she complimented the plastic necklace you picked out last week. We’ll see.

A nice movie for us to see while there might have been “Twilight,” but I went to see it without you last night. Because my life doesn’t revolve around you, missy, that’s why. Houseboy and I went to see it with Sonic and Hedgehog and ex-Roommate’s ex-Girlfriend (she needs a pithier nickname…) and my coworker, Hello Kitty. Yes, I work with Hello Kitty, my job rocks.

You’d think that six 25 to 35 year olds buying tickets to the pre-teen Movie of The Century would have looked odd, but no. It was a school night, people. We were in the theater with mostly middle aged and middle youth aged adult types and one baby who cried for about 1.5 seconds before its mother probably smothered it or something because Dramatic Things were happening on the screen.

But then Dramatic Things were always happening on the screen. This was a very Dramatic movie with lots of Dramatic Close-Ups that allowed me to really investigate these teenagers’ nonexistent skin issues. Hedgehog was the first one to laugh, I swear, but then after that the theater was a bit of a gigglefest every time Edward did his “Damnit I’m hot, but I’m either sad about it or angry or possibly hungry, which is like angry when you’re a vampire, and it’s hard to convey that all with my awkward teenage body” look. There was outright uproar when Jasper and Carlisle first appeared on screen, both overly powdered and (in Jasper’s case) apparently choking on a sour candy.

Having read all four of the books in pre-teen quivering anticipation, I have to say that I did expect the blatant sexual metaphor, as well as the (possibly unintentional) abusive relationship references and even a little bit of the crushing boring-osity of both of the main characters, when it comes right down to it. Somehow it was all more ridiculous on the big screen, though.

All that said, however, it was just too much fun to really dislike, and plus as Houseboy put it “We’re in it now,” so I’ll probably end up seeing every other one in theaters too.

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P.S. There was a real spider on my pillow in the middle of the night last night, putting all the horrifying nightmares into perspective. He tried to crawl in my ear, and I said “Watch out little spider, or I’ll roll over on you,” and then brushed him off the bed. He’ll probably be back for revenge with his enormous compadres in tow.