Live free or die!

Bill Bryson once wrote that New Hampshire's state motto struck him as a little extreme; as a resident himself, he was not entirely comfortable with signing up for an implied life-or-death struggle. Anyway. Wasn't last night exciting? I'm trying to keep politics out of this blog for the most part but I am just having a ball with this campaign. It's all going to end after Feb. 5 so we should enjoy it while we can. I love that Hillary's win is being treated as a "comeback" when she's had the state in the bag for so long. What's real news is that Obama gave her such a close call there. It's slightly enraging too that both Iowa and New Hampshire have been treated as all-or-nothing wins and losses. You're not dealing with a single electorate that's changing its mind, after all. Art Boy pointed out that the campaign is being treated like a giant sports tournament, hence the wins/losses emphasis. I guess people are just excited, which is nice.

I'm not normally a fan of hers, but I just loved the Maureen Dowd column. Both Clintons are absolutely shameless. They'll do whatever it takes. People don't dislike Hillary because she's a woman; they dislike her because Americans want their leaders to become successful on their own terms, not because of who they're married to. (Sure, Bush was elected because of whose son he was, but I think that's part of why even Republicans are so contemptuous of the guy now.)

Anyway. Art Boy just wrote to say Netflix is sending us "Night of the Comet" and Dario Argento's "Inferno," so I'll be back to posting about zombies and fake blood shortly.

The new computer

So the below post was the first to be composed on the new computer... I have not given it a name yet, but it seems to run pretty smoothly. And it is so nice to be able to write in, say, Blogger or the upgraded Gmail without having to sit and wait for every letter I type to appear on the screen. And I can watch video without hiccups. That's pretty dang nice.

The only real downside is that the computer is very, very quiet. My old one, as visitors to my home will fondly recall, sounded something like an old refrigerator. In recent weeks, it had begun to do a sort of faint high-pitched scream (like Betsy's old screaming TV). This thing just purrs silently away. It's eerie. Eerie, I say.

No one cares for you a smidge

We went to see "The Orphanage" last night, and you'll forgive me if my review is a trifle disjointed; I slept very badly last night. My reaction to this film is probably best summed up, though, by Art Boy, who walked out of the theater rubbing his hand and said indignantly "You bit me!" I don't remember biting him, but I probably did. For most of the movie I wore a sweater over my face and chewed on the tag in the back. Brr. Brrrr.

I don't want to say too much about this movie. The plot concerns a woman, Laura, who moves back to the now-empty orphanage where she was raised, bringing along her husband and young son; they plan to reopen it as a home for disabled children. But there are strange noises at night, and a mysterious old woman prowling the grounds. Their son, who's always had imaginary friends, starts talking about a creepy-sounding new group of them. Then he disappears.

My instinct was to compare this movie to "The Others," but it's oddly more similar in spirit to the 1963 "The Haunting." The house itself has a secret, a mystery that needs solving before it will leave the inhabitants alone. My favorite element, though, was a subtext about telling children the truth, vs. the white lies we tell to reassure them. (Pulling the burlap over their eyes, as it were.) What happens when those stories go sour? "Is Father Christmas a lie too?" demands a child at one point, reminding me of Art Boy's holiday rant. Seriously, though, if you're a parent, you might find this movie too unsettling. It's pretty grim.

It is also adorably European. I love watching genre movies from other countries for how they violate the U.S. tropes. Bad things happen to kids. Months go by without action. In the climax, Laura swings into full-on ghost-chaser action-heroine mode, stripping down to her tank top and St. Anthony medal like a Spanish Ellen Ripley. Her husband is your classic Spanish male character, sitting back and grunting while his wife runs around solving problems. I just loved all that.

The L.A. Times has a nice review. The NYT has a clip here but I'm alone in the house and absolutely refuse to look at it, so if it's no good, sorry...

Golly jeepers

Art Boy and I ended up spending a good chunk of New Year's Eve watching "Creepshow." First we had to watch the ball drop, three hours later, since there is no West Coast equivalent of the ball dropping that we have been able to find. Then I got the remote back and flipped through channels.

"Doesn't that look like Stephen King?" I said.
"That is Stephen King," said Art Boy.

And so I was introduced to "Creepshow," the classic horror anthology film, the only collaboration so far between King and George A. Romero, and the perfect thing to watch after midnight with vodka-champagne martinis. This thing is just a blast. We tuned in for the second segment, a "Colour Out of Space"-inspired tale of a rural New England farmer (King) who finds a creepy meteor. The third involves Leslie Nielson burying Ted Danson up to his neck in sand, which somehow manages to be genuinely horrifying.

Art Boy thought the actress who plays Nielson's unfaithful wife might be Veronica Cartwright, which I thought would be the coolest thing ever until I looked it up and found who it really is. "MIKE," I screamed, swilling more champagne. "IT'S GAYLEN ROSS." The "Dawn of the Dead" star was in four movies and this is one of them. I thought that was pretty fabulous until we got to the fourth segment and it turned out to star Adrienne Barbeau.

Sometime before segment 5, which stars E.G. Marshall and features a Tom Savini cameo, I gently passed out on the couch, but Art Boy assures me it is very cool.

Over coffee and aspirin the next morning, Art Boy explained the frame story to me: a mean father (an uncredited Tom Atkins) takes a horror comic away from his son (played by a child who grew up to be horror novelist Joe Hill*). At the end the boy receives the voodoo doll he had ordered from an ad in the comic and uses it on Atkins. Ha!

Art Boy's breakfast conversation included a couple of vague anti-child remarks, and after the second one he said "I don't know what's gotten into me today." I told him he was being haunted by the movie because, being a secret Republican in his heart of hearts, he identifies with the dad. "You think children shouldn't have horror comics," I taunted. "You think they should be all repressed and stuff." He put down his newspaper and said "It's true. Look. One day, little Cindy Lou Who is going to be looking at Japanese tentacle porn, and you'll agree with me." I suppose he's right.

Anyway, the movie was super cool; if you like horror at all, it's heaps of fun. And champagne is great in vodka martinis. Just drink some water before bed.


*Also Stephen King's son.

Happy new year, lambs

I wish all of you a joyous 2008. May your final hours of 2007 be merry.

Be well.

Raise our hats to the strange 'Phenomena'

I love titling posts with obscure Kate Bush quotes. Anyway, last night it got into Art Boy and me to watch the 1985 Jennifer Connelly movie "Phenomena," directed by Dario Argento. From the opening credits this film was a revelation. On the soundtrack: Iron Maiden. Costumes: Giorgio Armani. Costarring: Donald Pleasence. By the time the action started, I had turned to Art Boy and said "Why does everyone not know about this movie?"

One reason might be that it was originally titled "Creepers" in the U.S., and preceded Jennifer Connelly's big break in "Labyrinth" by about a year. It was shot in English but features a largely Italian cast, many of whom re-dubbed their own English dialogue, so all the conversations sound incredibly stilted. For example:

Lady: This is a strange area. It's called the Transylvania of Switzerland.
Jennifer: Why is that?
Lady: I don't know. It just is.

You're left thinking "..." But fortunately, Dario Argento is in charge and the dreamlike horror sequences soon take over. Jennifer plays an American movie star's daughter sent to a Swiss boarding school, where everyone has been unnerved by a young girl's recent murder in the woods nearby. Fortunately, Jennifer can communicate telepathically with bugs -- a fact that impresses local entomologist Donald Pleasence -- and is able to find clues no one else can, such as a glove crawling with maggots. Which is good, because the killer appears to be striking again...

At first I thought the story would end up being secondary to the fabulous dream sequences, in which Jennifer sleepwalks down long hallways in her billowy Armani dresses while Iron Maiden plays. But then toward the end it becomes a pretty good mystery. Jennifer is preternaturally calm whether insects are crawling on her arms or whether she's sticking her finger down her own throat to make herself vomit. I adored this movie. Art Boy would probably appreciate my adding, however, that you'll want to finish eating beforehand.

I'm pretty stoked to watch Suspiria for the Final Girl Film Club. A copy is laid in and at the ready. We may however take a break and get a little more festive tonight... maybe some Arrested Development reruns or something crazy like that.

She's dead

That would be my PC Clarissa, who expired last night with a tremendous snap and smell of smoke. Some guy at Best Buy decided the power supply had exploded. My data should be salvageable, and hopefully in the next week I'll have a new computer that actually runs Blogger without complaining and I can update more regularly. Won't you all love that? So it is a blessing in disguise. Still, I mourn Clarissa, my first really-all-mine-and-not-just-borrowed computer. She was ramshackle but lovable.

RIP.

The annual smackdown

I came home the other night and Art Boy had put "It's a Wonderful Life" on. Yes, gentle readers, it was time once again for our recurring argument: Bedford Falls vs. Pottersville. It runs along these lines (and can be blamed in large part on Salon's marvelous article on this topic, which I read a couple of years ago and which completely horrified Art Boy):

Me: Pottersville rocks! Look at those great bars. Bedford Falls is full of nosy old biddies who are all up in your face all the time.

Art Boy: Pottersville is a city of the damned. Bedford Falls is great!

Me: I don't want to live in a city where I have to share a bartender with a doddering old guy who orders flaming rum punch. Look, wouldn't it be fun to go to one of those jitterbug places?

Art Boy: Bedford Falls is friendly. Pottersville is scary.

This year I got particularly worked up by the swimming-pool scene. "Bedford Falls," I ranted to Art Boy, "is the kind of city where the floor opens up underneath you and NOBODY SAYS ANYTHING. You just dance right toward the edge and everyone goes 'Oooh!' and nobody warns you." Art Boy ignored me and did his patented imitation of the school principal diving into the pool. I don't know, gentle readers. I might just not get this movie.

But I'm pretty sure Annie Korzen does. Merry Christmas, Annie! Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter! And Merry Christmas, gentle readers. Check out the gorgeous moon tonight, wherever you are, and don't miss Mars shining nearby. I hope you will all be safe, happy and well.

Separated at birth?

I don't know much about "Sweeney Todd." I'm sure it's lovely. But the posters just remind me of Count Olaf. I would be more excited about this movie, I think, if it weren't for "Sleepy Hollow" and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and the fact that Depp/Burton is just not a sure thing the way it was back in "Edward Scissorhands" days. Yeah, it's got Helena Bonham Carter, but so did Kenneth Branagh's "Frankenstein," you know? Sigh.

Oh, I'm probably just grouchy on account of Dan Fogelberg dying today. To find out if the encounter described in "Same Old Lang Syne" really happened*, go here.

*IT DID! Can you believe it! He had an awkward conversation with his high school girlfriend just like a regular person!! Except, as he reminds us in the song, he's famous. OMG.

One of those days

It's a very bright, clear day after several days of scattered clouds (and occasional, gasp, showers). A dry wind has picked up, playing havoc with my sinuses and filling the air with this electric energy. I feel very sort of nervous and lively; made lots of unwise lane changes on the drive to work, ran yellow lights, that sort of thing. Also, apparently this morning I was laughing in my sleep, multiple and prolonged times; I woke myself up doing it. I've never, ever done that. There's just something buzzing in the air today.

I thought maybe it was just me, but Veronique de Turenne at Here in Malibu waxes poetic about today's insanely bright light.

Visit to Ohio

Paid a visit back east last week. Got to see friends, have some excellent food and perform some Christmas shopping while actually wearing a coat. I spent two nights with Betsy & Mike in Dayton, snuggling with my favorite dog, and then one night with Jamie in Cincinnati, which included a night out at Plum Street Cafe with all the ink-stained wretches I used to work with. It was just lovely to be back.

Jamie and me the next morning

I also stopped by Mt. Lookout Square, noted with interest that the movie theater is now a nightclub and Sushi Ray is now some other sushi place with "wasabi" in the name (which is like having a coffeehouse with "java" in the name). But Zip's is still there, and The Dust Jacket, and Muz's, and that random cat store. I poked around my old garden, which was very poignant: it's just a mess. I had always imagined someone else would move in and enjoy the plants and take care of it. Heh. Beer bottles, dog mess, cigarette butts... actual trash, in my garden. I was kind of happy to leave.

Blurry

Met Jeff for lunch at JeanRo. Oh God I missed that place. It was great to see him and walk around downtown a little bit -- stop by the Mercantile Library, admire the new Fountain Square (don't make the Genius cry!), use the bathroom at the Tower Place food court, note the closure of the Federal Reserve bar and the opening of a new lounge by Pigall's. And then get in the car and drive away. The next day at the airport I walked to the terminal from the rental-car lot, took off my coat and packed it in my luggage before checking in. Won't need it again until my next visit.

Uh-oh

I just ate an entire tin of these at my desk. The whole thing. Christ.

I've long looked askance at them in grocery lines. They seem like a good idea, but the combination of chocolate and curiously strong mint reminds me of the scene in "American Psycho" where he gets the fancy restaurant to cover a urinal cake in chocolate and serve it to his girlfriend as a special dessert. And I hate even thinking about "American Psycho." But today, I don't know, the cinnamon one looked kind of good and sounded less urinal-cake-y. And now the entire tin is gone.

So be warned: These are kind of good.

Puffy sleeves

I am fairly indifferent to this new movie "Enchanted" but I am really enjoying the images of James Marsden in puffy sleeves, cf:



If I guess the plot correctly, his character will end up getting dumped for the guy from "Can't Buy Me Love." Summer before last, of course, he played one character who was murdered by his wife and another whose wife had borne Superman's son, and now he has to wear puffy sleeves on top of everything else. The poor guy cannot win.

Arf!

OK, I just have to say this. The tagline for Will Smith's upcoming "I Am Legend" -- "The last man on earth is not alone" -- is perfect. I like that it references the Vincent Price version, and it has just the right teasing note of mystery for a horror movie. But dammit, when they use the tagline on posters where Will Smith is walking along with his dog, it DOESN'T WORK. Of COURSE he's not alone. HE'S GOT A DOG. This has been making me crazy all week. The image turns it into a whole different movie, some kind of postapocalyptic "Because of Winn-Dixie": "It's the heartwarming 'tail' of the last man on earth -- and the last man's best friend! Together they formed a 'legendary' friendship!"

Warner Brothers, do something.

Highlights from home

A few highlights from my trip home last week...

- Trick-or-treating with my niece and nephew, who are not yet quite getting into making scary faces for the camera. (Since they are costumed as, respectively, a stormtrooper and Sleeping Beauty, I suppose they do not really need to be scary.)

- Getting an urgent phone call from my mom telling me to come down to the barn and look at a really big housecat. By the time I arrived, the cat was gone. But I did get to see the open grave for one of our horses, who evidently had a bad winter last year and was expected to die any day. She's feeling much better now, but they're leaving her grave open (with a fence around it) so when it's time to put her down, they can just lead her into it and shoot her. "That way we won't have to get the backhoe," Mom explained.

- Tennessee countryside in October. Oh my, it is beautiful; golden and hazy yet crisp. Took a couple of walks, seeing hawks, a great blue heron, bluebirds, and many cows. I did not however get to see our neighbor's Watusi cows, who had been moved between two fields through some of our land. "Their manure is right here," Mom pointed it out on one walk. "Hmm, it's dried out since yesterday."

Boooooo!

Happy Halloween, my little Internet pumpkins! I did not make my beloved severed-finger cookies (not beloved-severed-finger cookies) this year, which was a shame because Art Boy was out of town and would not have had to be horrified by them. However, I am visiting my parents and get to go trick-or-treating tonight with the niece and nephew. The last time I trick-or-treated was in high school when several of us tried to collect money for Unicef. It was not a success. Somehow having high school students show up at your door asking for money and candy does not inspire generosity in most suburban dwellers...

Anyway, enjoy your Halloweens! And if you need a movie to watch, try one of the "31 Flicks that Give You the Willies," popularly elected at Shoot the Projectionist. I did my best but was not able to get "Cabin Fever" on the list... oh well.

Update: Maggie made severed-finger cookies! They look fab. I was ridiculously excited to see her photos and might have to make some myself for Christmas. Elf fingers?

Fire!

Well, we appear to be in the midst of a natural disaster. Fun fun! First Malibu was on fire, just up the coast from us; we walked to the beach yesterday and admired the smoke in the distance. Now Ardenstone is surrounded by flames and thinking about whether he & Christy might need to evacuate. And new fires keep springing up around L.A. I am monitoring the situation with the help of my friendly neighborhood newspaper, which has some really amazing photos up - check them out - and local blogger Veronique de Turenne at Here in Malibu, who is also posting amazing photos.

Small disasters are lost every day in a city this size. This is a big disaster. Heck, we're even the main art on tomorrow's Washington Post. Thanks, guys.

Photo above by Don Kelsen, LAT

Professor Dumbledore is a great man

So J.K. Rowling is evidently doing a fancy U.S. tour and reading to huge groups of children, which she really seems to be enjoying now that they can no longer try to squeeze her for spoilers. Instead, they can receive refreshingly direct answers to their questions, as happened to some kid from Colorado who asked about Professor Dumbledore's love life. According to Bloomberg News, Rowling replied that "she always thought of Dumbledore 'as gay.' ... But things didn't turn out with Grindelwald, his mental equal, who died in 1945." What a nice validation for the fanfiction community! Although that community is young and hip and has completely moved on from Harry Potter by now.

(In an earlier chat on the Leaky Cauldron, she was asked if Dumbledore and McGonagall were in love, and she replied with an exasperated, "No. Really, everyone isn't in love with everyone else." Apparently she has mellowed.)

She is also dismissive of Draco fans: "No! No! Please don't pass for Draco. I've given you an array of pleasant characters.'' If you ask me, this reveals the woman's fundamental cluelessness about books. Pleasant characters do not make great fiction. People don't want to read books with titles like "The Pony Party!" Harry Potter is all well and good, but the resolution of the series bothered me immensely because it revealed its fundamental toothlessness. The books are nice yarns but are designed to be as inoffensive as possible (except to a few fundamentalist Christians, and most people enjoy offending those guys). Anyway, I haven't got time to rant about this right now, so will simply conclude that Draco is the best character in the series & his creator hasn't got the sense to see it. Still, it's nice that children are reading books instead of playing those awful video games.

Update: Slate, reminded of Tinky Winky by the whole affair, dredges up its favorite essay from those days "on the outing of fictional characters." I popped online here in order to look up and share my own favorite Tinky Winky essay, but cannot find it just now. Sorry!

Corn rigs are bonny!

Art Boy and I had a discussion long ago about the 1973 horror classic "The Wicker Man." He was interested in watching it. I had never heard of it, but protested, "Is it about someone getting burned to death in a giant basket? Why on earth would you want to watch that?" He was then annoyed with me for guessing the "surprise" ending. To my mind, this is not particularly surprising; why else would you build a wicker man, if not to put someone in it and light them on fire? I mean, honestly. Anyway, the very idea just chilled my blood, especially knowing that's the end of the movie. I disliked the notion of sitting there waiting and dreading, and then it happens, and you go home feeling sort of nasty. (This is why I also refuse to watch "Open Water," and why I was disappointed by "The Blair Witch Project.")

But that conversation was something like four years ago, and he's had plenty of time to wear me down, so this weekend into the DVD player it went. And much to my surprise, I absolutely loved it. It would probably achieve the original intended effect if you did not know what a wicker man was and did not know the ending (I can't imagine I've wrecked it for anyone this many years later; and anyway, the DVD cover and tacky animated menu give it away). But still, watching it unfold makes for a nice and weird little mystery. Devout Sgt. Howie (Ed Woodward) arrives at a remote Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. The locals are both unhelpful and extremely unsettling to him, with their bawdy pub songs and pagan practices and pickled rabbits (sorry, hares) in jars on counters. They're led by Christopher Lee, who brushes off Howie's concerns about the local children leaping naked over bonfires with "Well, naturally. It's much too dangerous to jump through fire with their clothes on." I was already in love with the movie by this point, but Lee's serene dementia just nailed it for me. He's charming, deranged and utterly placid about it -- sort of like a pagan Willy Wonka.

The atmosphere piles up with a series of unsettling images: a sweet-faced woman slicing a baby-shaped cake; a man in a fish mask; a coffin containing a dead rabbit; a second coffin sliding from a baker's oven with a man-sized pastry inside. And then, of course, you have Britt Ekland's famous naked dance, which is actually remarkably seductive, even to a heterosexual lady viewer. Plus there are songs, some pretty and some bawdy. This movie really has everything. The ending is profoundly unsettling, no matter how many times you have clicked through the tacky animated DVD menu. But it gives you that October chill really nicely.

We enjoyed the accompanying documentary, "The Wicker Man Enigma," quite a bit. Christopher Lee describes having been approached for the project and told what the title was. "Does it have anything to do with Druids and human sacrifice?" he recalls asking. The producer replied, "I hate you." For this reason, I am adding Mr. Lee to the list of gentlemen who may come to the house and carry me off if they wish. (Although I do not want to either injure Mr. Lee or discomfit Mrs. Lee, so I understand if he must regretfully decline.)

Braaains. No, wait, bloood. Oh, whichever

We watched 1964's "The Last Man on Earth," starring Vincent Price, this week. Vincent plays Robert Morgan, a brilliant scientist who also happens to be the only survivor of a plague that has turned everyone else in the world into zomb-- er, vampires. Every night a crowd of them staggers to his house and moans his name, calling him to come out, pounding on his boarded-up windows. Supposedly they inspired George A. Romero's treatment of his ghouls in "Night of the Living Dead," and they are certainly much more zombie than traditional vampire. They haven't got much intelligence, they have no visible fangs, and they seem more interested in sort of leaping on Morgan or pounding his windows than going for his jugular. Still, they are repelled by garlic, mirrors, crosses and sunlight, so vampires they are. I was surprised at how creepy this movie was. I'm adding it to my Willies List (which is not dirty) -- useful because mean Ed isn't letting me include "It" on account of "It"s being a TV movie.

At Borders the other week I got ahold of one of their last copies of "I Am Legend," on which this film is based, without the Will Smith movie cover. It's a spiffy short novel. I was inclined to agree with Dean Koontz's blurb on the back cover that it's the best vampire book since "Dracula," but then I thought of "'Salem's Lot." Still, pretty good, particularly if you're looking for something Halloweeny but don't have much time.