Celebrity Korner

Today's news: Steve Martin stuns guests with surprise wedding.

Gentle readers, I apologize for this, but - BLOODY BLOODY BUGGER.

Yes, I want Steve to be happy, but why can he not be happy with meeeee?? BUGGER! Sorry, Art Boy.

At least there is good news for Robin: Usher's wedding has been canceled, according to The Insider, which has the headline right under its story about Steveums. (Ha-ha, Usher!)

I was a child! I was in love!

Was quite bucked to learn this week that Karen Allen will be in "Indy 4." The film might just end up being a long sequence of allusions on the order of "The Simpsons Movie," but that's better than some alternatives. We could hardly expect another "Raiders," after all.

Rather wish I had arranged to attend Nerd Prom. Sounds like it would leave Fangoria in the dust... Perhaps next year.

Mouse call

Got a frantic email from my mom this afternoon (subject line "Help!"):

AT&T has redesigned my home page, and there is no line for entering a web address and going directly to it; I have to use Google, which sends me to all these unrelated things, and if I am lucky, one of them has the web address at the very end that I am looking for.

Being a good daughter, I called. "Oh, thank goodness. Hang on, let me switch phones," she said. It took longer for her to get settled with the downstairs extension by the computer than it did to talk her through switching the navigation toolbar back on. "Why, there it is!" she cried. "I can't believe it, I just can't believe it. You are worth a million dollars!"

If any of you could use an infusion of grateful Southern hosannas, I'd be more than happy to give her your number for next time.

Maj. Heyward will create a diversion

Ah, an evening at home, geeking out with my favorite movie. This is my first time watching the DVD on Art Boy's fancy TV with his fancy stereo system. Holy mackerel. To any of you readers who may have just moved in with art boys who have nice multimedia setups... take advantage of it and watch your favorite movies now. It was so much fun to hear the incidental dialogue ("I'm with you, Jack!") as well as the sound effects, from swelling music to snapping twig (as Mark Twain wrote, "Every time a [James Fenimore] Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig"). I have been having a ball. Art Boy went to bed hours ago.

I have spent much time in recent years ruminating over which is better - the theatrical-release edition, now only available on VHS, and the "director's expanded" edition, the only one available on DVD (unless you are Ardenstone). It may be Art Boy's nice speakers, but I am ready to weigh in on the director's side: the DVD is pretty gorgeous. Sound is lovely and the loss of the Clannad song is really rather a plus. The only problem is that three of the movie's best lines have been taken out, and in a movie with this little dialogue, that is no small problem. Still, nobody seems to have a choice in these dark days. And the new last lines spoken by Russell Means - "Once we were here" - give me a delicious frisson. (Also, once you notice the canvas covering the Chimney Rock graffiti in the climax, you absolutely cannot take your eyes off it. Editing it out for the DVD was smart.)

If anyone can find Colm Meaney in this movie - and I am assured he is in it, by both the end credits and IMDb - tell me where he pops up and I will buy you a beer. (Pete Postlethwaite, no small-name actor at the time, is in it and in one scene is completely obscured by the buttons on someone else's uniform. Michael Mann is crazy.)

Where the hell is Harry Potter?

If that little four-eyed bastard doesn't show up on our doorstep before I leave for work, I'm going to smash some Horcruxes. Or something. Art Boy ordered Book 7 from Amazon and we're going to spend the weekend playing tug-of-war.

Friday the 13th Part 3, in 3D

Oddly, three was really the charm for me with these movies. Part One was endearing and then genuinely scary, Part Two was goofy and then creepy. But the pacing of Part Three really, I don't know, rubbed me the right way. None of the back story makes an ounce of sense, but that's OK, because the movie that's in front of you holds together really well. You have your fake scares courtesy of the dorky boy that everyone hates; your real scares courtesy of the motorcycle gang who represent A Real-Life Peril (that of being approached in a store by ethnic minorities, apparently); and finally, your hardcore Jason-based scares. Why is he in a hockey mask? It doesn't matter. He's coming to kill you.

I just loved the prolonged final chase sequence of this movie. It's what these movies are all about: the nightmare that someone is chasing you and wants to kill you for no reason. His motives don't matter. You don't care about his mother. What's important is you need to get away.

The 3-D stuff is also quite entertaining. I asked Art Boy if any sequences would be as exciting as the 3-D ping-pong ball in the Vincent Price "House of Wax." He said no, but clearly he had forgotten the eyeball-flies-at-the-camera sequence. I can't be contemptuous of 3-D, even watching it years after its release in 2-D. If it was good enough for Vincent Price, it's good enough for me.

The ending was pretty stupid, though, I'll grant you.

Coda: Hey Ardenstone! You know the robe the girl is wearing in the hammock as she's flipping through Fangoria, and then her boyfriend's blood starts dripping on her? That is totally the robe you used to have in college!! Excerpt yours was navy blue.

The sequel

Yep, we watched Part 2 the other night, even though it was after midnight and therefore Saturday the 14th (a movie which Art Boy will not Netflick for me; he says he's allergic to Richard Benjamin). Very nice! The sequel doesn't really goof around with ominous locals or foreshadowing or anything - Ralph reappears but is dispatched fairly quickly, allowing the camera to spend more time on the counselors' short-shorts and precarious-looking half-shirts. In both these movies I am very impressed at how quickly the characters just start dying. I suppose they're each meant to be One Terror-Filled Night, but it all just seems to happen quickly.

Anyway, Part 2 is sort of more fun in that the killer mythology is much better set up. The kids are more aware that something horrible happened nearby a few years ago, and final girl Ginny has an interesting discussion in the bar about who Jason is and what he might want. As I understand this series, that's the closest anyone in the movies gets to analysis of the famous killer. The killings seem fairly rote - nothing can match Kevin Bacon's arrow-through-the-throat for sheer inventiveness - but Ginny's showdown in the creepy old shack is just fabulous. She is a final girl who really keeps it together. And I screamed out loud when Jason leaps through the window. But the end is pretty confusing... were the last few minutes a hallucination? Who-all is dead exactly? Ah, who cares?

We're watching Part 3 tonight. It's like eating potato chips.

"Hairstyles by Six Feet Under."

Very nice! We may watch #2 right away, but I will spare you people the updates. Have a nice evening.

To recap: We've been watching "Friday the Thirteenth," which I had never seen. At a tender age, I got in deep trouble with my mom after planning to go to a friend's house and watch, on video, all the F13 movies that had come out (perhaps five?). Mom found out about it and I wasn't allowed to go... so I have never seen any of these movies. But I love Halloween and Cabin Fever, among others, and today seems like as good a time as any to get caught up on this series with the help of my sardonic yet well informed Art Boy. He will chase away anything that comes to get me in the night, I am sure...

Alice surprises Mrs. V. with a frying pan. Honestly! Why can girls not fight with axes? Is there some kind of rule about that? Ah, here we go. Mrs. V. will strike a blow for women's lib. Oh my, and she bites too! But she's no match for the head-severing Alice.

And now what you want to do is take a boat onto the lake into the dead of night. Still, this next scene is pretty gorgeous, with the leaves and the water and all.

Art Boy, who is cool and remembers stuff, is describing everyone getting up, waiting for the credits, which are clearly about to roll. The movie is over. AAAIIIEEEEE!!!!

I knew it was going to happen, I'd even seen it, and it still made me scream.

This movie is fabulous.

Fight! Alice and Mrs. V. are bitch-slapping and throwing spools of thread at each other.

I like the visual parallel between the full moon in the upper right and Alice's blouse disappearing into the forest as she runs off.

Art Boy wants to know if he's the only person who can tolerate beer and chocolate together.

Horror movie rule: Never collapse in relief with your back to a door.

Mrs. Voorhees has arrived. "It's just this place and the storm, that's why you're upset!" God, I wish I could be surprised by the ending -- that would be quite a twist to feel.

Mrs. V. explains herself. Is this story an inverse "Psycho"?

Ack! "Don't let her get away, Mommy!" says Mrs. Voorhees. I've got my hands over my face. Gaaah! I cannot believe this movie is actually scaring me!

OK, I sort of zoned out for a minute. Alice is making a cup of coffee in what Art Boy describes as real time. "This is where I learned how to make coffee," he says. I completely love her old stove. ... it is a classic horror-movie-in-the-woods prop. Her coffee-making goes on and on and on! The tension is unbearable! She can't stand it anymore either and goes out calling for Bill, who has gone searching around in a red poncho. Uh-oh... there's the poncho... where's Bill?

AAAA! Bill is dead.

Alice is all that is left! She immediately figures out a smart way to barricade herself into the cabin. This is where, I think, the movie will start to get really interesting. All the death setpieces are fun, but knowing that she's going to have to actually battle whatever's out there, rather than just make a grieving face and die before it, is much more exciting.

AAIIEE! Here comes a body through the kitchen window! I actually just screamed out loud. Art Boy is laughing at me.

The sound in this movie is super-nice. I like how the swinging door sounds like a faint scream.

This movie makes me feel like an 11-year-old. I'm not sure if it's having wanted to see it at age 11 and having been thwarted, or the haircuts, or what. Or maybe it's the way it's perfectly designed for talking to your friends while it's going on, then looking up periodically to go "'AAAA! An axe!" or whatever. Its overall creepy mood is lovely but I'm not sure that it would reward close attention the way, say, Halloween does... Time for another beer!

Watching Steve's dinner in the diner. It's interesting to watch this movie make the occasional effort to establish where all its characters are, in case you were wondering if any of them were the killer. There seems to be no real motive for the killings so far, so how anyone could have a theory about the killer at this point is unclear.

Still, just the trappings of the woodsy setting, with the crappy old sinks and flimsy walls and dim lights, are super creepy.

Suddenly, we're in a vampire movie. A counselor is getting into bed with a single candle, wearing a long lacy nightgown, when suddenly she hears a child's voice crying outside in the rain. Brr! It's shameless genre-skipping, but who cares?

"Alice draws first blood." She's a ruthless strip-Monopoly player! This will aid her final survival.

We're trying without success to make out what the book is on Kevin Bacon's bedside table. Maybe we're missing the.... point? Wow. That is a very nice-looking death! You go, Tom Savini!

Now the ungallant killer is going after his girlfriend while she's having a wee. I point out the rudeness of this to Art Boy, who tells me we are playing dirty pool. I wish I had as much fun prancing around solitary restrooms in just my panties as she seems to be doing. AAA! Axe!

"Gonna tear down that valley like a son of a gun." What does that mean? Kevin Bacon is a poet. But he's not as cool as his blood-dreaming girlfriend.

I love any horror movie set in the woods -- creepy dark trees, moving shadows, old cabins with wood floors really get my horror-geek on. This movie gets an impressive amount of mileage out of the lake, though. Lakes are even scarier to me than forests, but I had never considered lake-horror as a separate genre. Hmm.

Sex scene with crisp white panties!

Guitar by the fire with thunder raging outside. Suddenly, "We're going to play strip Monopoly!" Art Boy: "The moral of this is, learn to play guitar."

Back to sex scene with unconvincing vocal enjoyment on the actors' part. AAAAA! A dead body!

"We ain't going to stand for no weirdness out here."

The creepy police officer swings by Camp Crystal Lake on his motorbike, convinced they're all doing drugs. It would be jarring if there were a tone to jar. Art Boy is convinced the creepy deputy from Cabin Fever is a direct reference to this guy.

Oh cool, Ralph is back. "You're doomed. You're all doomed!" Ralph and his little vest and hat are awesome. I want him at all my parties. His work done, Ralph pedals away into the forest. Alice, having thrust out her hip defiantly yet sexlessly, goes back inside.

"What's Vitamin C do?"
"I think it neutralizes the nitrites or something."
Art Boy: "This is just filler until the next death."

This k-k-k-k ha-ha-ha-ha business is very unsettling to the cats.

A symbolic snake is introduced into the Garden of Eden that is Camp Crystal Lake. "I can't sleep with a snake in here!" says sexless Alice. These guys are just hopeless battling this snake.

I like the moment when the snake is macheted and everyone looks horrified, the pillow feathers drifting slowly onto their heads.

Art Boy, rounding up incontinent housecat for trip to the litter box: "You're so easy to catch! You're worse than a camp counselor."

Girl running through the woods! Very Evil Dead. Nice Psycho-esque music. Why do girls running in the woods always twist their ankles?

I love the bird sound effects in this movie.

Graphic onscreen death! I like how her expression is that of profound grief, rather than, say, pain... so many years she could have spent with "kids" gone to waste.

Oh my God, the guy chopping wood is a Never-Nude! (Cutoff shorts.)

Alice, the Final Girl, is introduced. (Art Boy has already wrecked the movie for me by showing me the very last scene.) I posit that her Final Girl characteristics are her efficiency and her comparative sexlessness. I compare her high-waisted, form-fitting yet boyish trousers to those of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. Mike observes that Jamie's character in The Fog is, like Alice, an artist. Hmmm. Hmmmm.

The counselors are running around in short-shorts getting their foreplay on.

"You're an American original." That's for sure.

First ten minutes are pretty super. Snogging, homicide, a death curse, a ponderous silence from suspicious locals... Art Boy's favorite part is the music leading up to the shattering glass behind the title.

Art Boy: "It's like watching a template, isn't it?"

Sex is clearly all Kevin Bacon ever thinks about.

Just under the (garrote?) wire

In honor of the lovely Friday the 13th blogathon over at Final Girl, I am watching "Friday the 13th" for the first time and liveblogging! I do not know how much interest this will hold for anyone, but here we go....

11:00 p.m. "You're an American original." That's for sure.
First ten minutes are pretty super. Snogging, homicide, a death curse, a ponderous silence from suspicious locals... Art Boy's favorite part is the music leading up to the shattering glass behind the title.
Art Boy: "It's like watching a template, isn't it?"
Sex is clearly all Kevin Bacon ever thinks about.

11:02 p.m. Oh my God, the guy chopping wood is a Never-Nude! (Cutoff shorts.)
Alice, the Final Girl, is introduced. (Art Boy has already wrecked the movie for me by showing me the very last scene.) I posit that her Final Girl characteristics are her efficiency and her comparative sexlessness. I compare her high-waisted, form-fitting yet boyish trousers to those of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. Mike observes that Jamie's character in The Fog is, like Alice, an artist. Hmmm. Hmmmm.
The counselors are running around in short-shorts getting their foreplay on.

11:09 p.m. Girl running through the woods! Very Evil Dead. Nice Psycho-esque music. Why do girls running in the woods always twist their ankles?
I love the bird sound effects in this movie.
Graphic onscreen death! I like how her expression is that of profound grief, rather than, say, pain... so many years she could have spent with "kids" gone to waste.

11:13 p.m. "What's Vitamin C do?"
"I think it neutralizes the nitrites or something."
Art Boy: "This is just filler until the next death."
This k-k-k-k ha-ha-ha-ha business is very unsettling to the cats.
A symbolic snake is introduced into the Garden of Eden that is Camp Crystal Lake. "I can't sleep with a snake in here!" says sexless Alice. These guys are just hopeless battling this snake.
I like the moment when the snake is macheted and everyone looks horrified, the pillow feathers drifting slowly onto their heads.
Art Boy, rounding up incontinent housecat for trip to the litter box: "You're so easy to catch! You're worse than a camp counselor."

11:16 p.m. "We ain't going to stand for no weirdness out here."
The creepy police officer swings by Camp Crystal Lake on his motorbike, convinced they're all doing drugs. It would be jarring if there were a tone to jar. Art Boy is convinced the creepy deputy from Cabin Fever is a direct reference to this guy.
Oh cool, Ralph is back. "You're doomed. You're all doomed!" Ralph and his little vest and hat are awesome. I want him at all my parties. His work done, Ralph pedals away into the forest. Alice, having thrust out her hip defiantly yet sexlessly, goes back inside.

11:23 p.m. "Gonna tear down that valley like a son of a gun." What does that mean? Kevin Bacon is a poet. But he's not as cool as his blood-dreaming girlfriend.
I love any horror movie set in the woods -- creepy dark trees, moving shadows, old cabins with wood floors really get my horror-geek on. This movie gets an impressive amount of mileage out of the lake, though. Lakes are even scarier to me than forests, but I had never considered lake-horror as a separate genre. Hmm.
Sex scene with crisp white panties!
Guitar by the fire with thunder raging outside. Suddenly, "We're going to play strip Monopoly!" Art Boy: "The moral of this is, learn to play guitar."
Back to sex scene with unconvincing vocal enjoyment on the actors' part. AAAAA! A dead body!

11:29 p.m. "Alice draws first blood." She's a ruthless strip-Monopoly player! This will aid her final survival.
We're trying without success to make out what the book is on Kevin Bacon's bedside table. Maybe we're missing the.... point? Wow. That is a very nice-looking death! You go, Tom Savini!Now the ungallant killer is going after his girlfriend while she's having a wee. I point out the rudeness of this to Art Boy, who tells me we are playing dirty pool. I wish I had as much fun prancing around solitary restrooms in just my panties as she seems to be doing. AAA! Axe!

11:38 p.m. Watching Steve's dinner in the diner. It's interesting to watch this movie make the occasional effort to establish where all its characters are, in case you were wondering if any of them were the killer. There seems to be no real motive for the killings so far, so how anyone could have a theory about the killer at this point is unclear.
Still, just the trappings of the woodsy setting, with the crappy old sinks and flimsy walls and dim lights, are super creepy.
Suddenly, we're in a vampire movie. A counselor is getting into bed with a single candle, wearing a long lacy nightgown, when suddenly she hears a child's voice crying outside in the rain. Brr! It's shameless genre-skipping, but who cares?

11:45 p.m. The sound in this movie is super-nice. I like how the swinging door sounds like a faint scream.
This movie makes me feel like an 11-year-old. I'm not sure if it's having wanted to see it at age 11 and having been thwarted, or the haircuts, or what. Or maybe it's the way it's perfectly designed for talking to your friends while it's going on, then looking up periodically to go "'AAAA! An axe!" or whatever. Its overall creepy mood is lovely but I'm not sure that it would reward close attention the way, say, Halloween does... Time for another beer!

11:54 p.m. OK, I sort of zoned out for a minute. Alice is making a cup of coffee in what Art Boy describes as real time. "This is where I learned how to make coffee," he says. I completely love her old stove. ... it is a classic horror-movie-in-the-woods prop. Her coffee-making goes on and on and on! The tension is unbearable! She can't stand it anymore either and goes out calling for Bill, who has gone searching around in a red poncho. Uh-oh... there's the poncho... where's Bill?AAAA! Bill is dead.
Alice is all that is left! She immediately figures out a smart way to barricade herself into the cabin. This is where, I think, the movie will start to get really interesting. All the death setpieces are fun, but knowing that she's going to have to actually battle whatever's out there, rather than just make a grieving face and die before it, is much more exciting.
AAIIEE! Here comes a body through the kitchen window! I actually just screamed out loud. Art Boy is laughing at me.

12:02 a.m. Mrs. Voorhees has arrived. "It's just this place and the storm, that's why you're upset!" God, I wish I could be surprised by the ending -- that would be quite a twist to feel.Mrs. V. explains herself. Is this story an inverse "Psycho"?
Ack! "Don't let her get away, Mommy!" says Mrs. Voorhees. I've got my hands over my face. Gaaah! I cannot believe this movie is actually scaring me!

12:08 a.m. Fight! Alice and Mrs. V. are bitch-slapping and throwing spools of thread at each other.
I like the visual parallel between the full moon in the upper right and Alice's blouse disappearing into the forest as she runs off.
Art Boy wants to know if he's the only person who can tolerate beer and chocolate together.
Horror movie rule: Never collapse in relief with your back to a door.

12:14 a.m. Alice surprises Mrs. V. with a frying pan. Honestly! Why can girls not fight with axes? Is there some kind of rule about that? Ah, here we go. Mrs. V. will strike a blow for women's lib. Oh my, and she bites too! But she's no match for the head-severing Alice.
And now what you want to do is take a boat onto the lake into the dead of night. Still, this next scene is pretty gorgeous, with the leaves and the water and all.
Art Boy, who is cool and remembers stuff, is describing everyone getting up, waiting for the credits, which are clearly about to roll. The movie is over. AAAIIIEEEEE!!!!
I knew it was going to happen, I'd even seen it, and it still made me scream.
This movie is fabulous.

12:23 a.m. "Hairstyles by Six Feet Under."Very nice! We may watch #2 right away, but I will spare you people the updates. Have a nice evening.

To recap: We've been watching "Friday the Thirteenth," which I had never seen. At a tender age, I got in deep trouble with my mom after planning to go to a friend's house and watch, on video, all the F13 movies that had come out (perhaps five?). Mom found out about it and I wasn't allowed to go... so I have never seen any of these movies. But I love Halloween and Cabin Fever, among others, and today seems like as good a time as any to get caught up on this series with the help of my sardonic yet well informed Art Boy. He will chase away anything that comes to get me in the night, I am sure...

Harry Potter and the pubescent angst

Kelly's lovely OOtP rundown reminded me that I did not address the relative hotness of the maturing actors in my comments below. Briefly, then:

Neville, after showing great promise in the "Goblet of Fire" film, particularly with his sexy albeit plot-convenient interest in botany, got sort of relegated to being a dork again. I suppose there weren't any school dances here where he could show his stuff. The St. Mungo's scene would have been great for showcasing Vulnerable Neville who Knows Pain, but we must make do with his laconic discussion of his parents with Harry. This was sweet, but it felt a bit tacked on to me. Neville-wise, this movie is a wasted opportunity.

At least we have plenty of Fred and George, who have unfortunate new haircuts but are still completely hot. I should like to snog them both.

As for Draco, he's just not looking well. Puberty seems to have hollowed him out. I am dreading his big final scene in the next movie... he's just going to stand there looking scared, and not be all conflicted or anything I bet. Damn you, Canon Draco, for being so boring.

(Isn't this the book where Ginny dates everyone? I was all set to sing "Save Ginny Weasley from Dean Thomas." Oh well.)

You will lose everything

*blows dust off blog* Hello, gentle readers! Art Boy and I are just in from seeing "Order of the Phoenix." It was certainly not as much fun as seeing the "Goblet of Fire" late-night show wearing handmade shirts with Kelly and her gang, but it was still nice to see it with the kind of enthusiastic opening-night crowd that all goes "oooh!" during the kissing scene. Similarly, the movie's not the best in the series, but it definitely has its moments. Gary Oldman fangirls will enjoy all the beefed-up screentime he gets, more than making up for his criminal (ha! ha!) absence from the last movie. Sirius also gets to be a little more badass and less ineffectual than he was in the book, which is nice. His hair is lavishly curly and he gives Harry the barest wink a couple of times, which made me moan aloud. (Art Boy: "Oh GOD.") My favorite is when he sees Harry off at the train station (secretly, of course) and he's wearing a fur coat with no shirt underneath. Mrow! There's not enough Lupin/Tonks, but they'll get their time in the next movie. There is not much Draco either, but there's just enough Snape to satisfy. He gets some great dialogue, such as:
"I must penetrate your mind, Potter!"
and
Harry: "We've been at it for hours. Can't we rest?"
Snape: "Voldemort won't be resting!"
Also listen for his muttered "I may vomit" during a moving flashback. Much has been made of Imelda Staunton's performance as Dolores Umbridge, and she is quite magnificent. The movie does a nice job of balancing her bureaucratic nastiness with the threat of actual scary violence. And I must say, the wizarding duel at the end really kicks ass this time.

Surprisingly nice touches: the cool-looking thestrals; Luna Lovegood; the delightful absence of Rita Skeeter; and Helena Bonham Carter's predictably deranged but still fun performance as Bellatrix Lestrange, particularly the bit when she dances madly off down a hall singsonging "I killed Sirius Bla-ack!"

Yeah, I wore my Draco/Harry shirt.