It's too bad she won't live. Then again, who does?

The LA Times has a nice story in this morning's paper about "Blade Runner," which is being released this fall in its third incarnation - I am a bit unclear on what is so new about this one except that it's remastered and just happens to be coming out on the film's 25th anniversary. Still, it means the movie will show for an entire month at a theater delightfully close to the house. Huzzah! How many showings can I cram in?

In the Times story, the reporter says this and drops the topic, without citing a source: "The paper unicorn shaped by Olmos' character, for instance, telegraphs to the audience a huge plot point: that Ford's character, Deckard, is himself an android." This prompted me to set down the paper and begin ranting to Art Boy about how sick and tired I am of all this "Deckard is a replicant" business. People think they're so smart because they thought of this cra-azy twist. What is the point of the movie if Deckard is a replicant? The entire film contrasts Deckard, with his crappy overcoat and nasty stubble and near-total lack of conscience, with the gorgeous and noble replicants. Our creations are more beautiful than we are, is the unsettling point of the film. If you take that central conflict away, the movie is pointless. It would be like (here I brandished a piece of bacon at Art Boy, who flinched) if you went around saying the real point of "Gone with the Wind" is that Scarlett was really a Yankee all along. It's just dumb.

Anyway, I got around later on to reading the other Times, which also has an article on the movie. And they address the Deckard-replicant issue head-on -- they even quote Ridley Scott saying, "Yes, he's a replicant. He was always a replicant." God-fucking-dammit. I hate being wrong.

Still... their explanation is actually fairly convincing. They make a good point that Deckard does show some flickers of conscience and is no more loathsome than the other human characters. I think my movie is better, though.

Do I like the movie less now? Hmm. Multiple viewings will be required to determine the answer to this question.

A good day

It is a good day when your yoga teacher - your yoga teacher! - advises you to put more butter on your food. According to her, this is a season where our joints feel creakier and our skin feels dryer. Eating more butter will help. Now that I can do. Namaste!

(She also advised that we bathe in sesame oil and chickpea flour. I wonder if she is trying to eat us.)

Splatter!

Happy autumnal equinox, ducklings! The tang of fall is in the air even in Southern California. We had rain for a day or so (I know, crazy) and it's washed away much of the summer's dusty haze, leaving a blistering blue sky and cool breeze. Fabulous. The Elvises in my neighbor's window are garlanded with harvest wreaths. I have, as usual, failed to harvest much of anything from my garden, but am nonetheless celebrating the season of the reaper with some lovely scary movies. (Art Boy: "But you always watch scary movies.")

First up was Final Girl's October Film Club Selection: "The Burning." Like the Friday the 13th films, it concerns a camp populated almost entirely with counselors, who are stalked by a vengeful killer. In this case, the killer is Cropsy, who is angry because a group of campers set him on fire. They didn't mean to, but Cropsy is angry all the same, and has taken up his trusty gardening shears to exact vengeance. Art Boy and I watched this last week (he wanted to Netflick it early & send it back so other FG readers could have at it; isn't he nice?) and enjoyed it tremendously. It opens with a group of boys at camp, whispering urgently above their flashlights, and the entire film retains the feel of a campfire ghost story. Yeah, it's got gore, it's got oversexed counselors, but it's genuinely creepy. (Except for Jason Alexander's scenes, in which he will not shut up. Art Boy and I imagined him constantly improvising on set, trying to take over each scene with his jovial banter, pissing his colleagues off. It's fun to see him, though. Holly Hunter's in it too, but is much quieter.) If you're hungry for a slasher set in the woods, this is a great bet.

As for the gore... this was the uncut version that's just been released on DVD, and my is it graphic. Cropsy's gardening shears slice merrily through foreheads, necks and limbs, all thanks to the wizardry of Tom Savini. It's lots of fun but the gory moments have sort of a similar feel to the ones Savini created for "Dawn of the Dead": the action almost seems to stop at each one, as if to allow the audience to go "Agggh!" It feels like a tiny interruption. After a while it almost feels like the movie has the hiccups.

I didn't give this a whole lot of thought until last night, when I settled down with Peter Jackson's classic splatterfest "Dead Alive," (Art Boy would not watch this with me), in which a young couple's burgeoning romance is hampered by a zombie plague. I knew it would be gross - I had seen the luncheon scene, with the custard, and I knew about the lawnmower finale. But oh my God. I was shocked. This movie is so tasteless, so over-the-top, so completely disgusting that I watched most of it with my fingers over my eyes going "Ugggh!" (This is different from going "Agggh!") Zombie baby in a Cuisinart, pus in the custard, writhing masses of reanimated intestines that are still passing gas... I can't believe I'm about to say this, but I absolutely adored it. For every "Ugggh!" something made me laugh out loud. (For example, the heroine's indignant shriek of "Your mother ate my dog!" and the sheepish retort "Not all of it.") It's funnier and better paced than "Evil Dead 2." It has a consistently beautiful look - it's set in 1957, and the sets, cars and costumes are gorgeous. Jackson uses color exquisitely: mostly red and green, often spewing out of a zombie or fresh victim. And the gore just... looks nice. It's seamlessly woven in with the action; this movie is sick, but it definitely has not got the hiccups. Sure, it could just be that the whole point is gore. I'm fine with that.

Out of town

Took myself to Joshua Tree National Park yesterday. Very hot, very beautiful, a very good trip. I listened to Boards of Canada & Neil Young, walked on hot rocks admiring prickly plants, drank lots of water, ate lots of Starbursts while driving (unwrapping them carefully with my teeth, as there was no Delicate Flower to do it for me), enjoyed the absolute silence. Photos here.

Madeleine

I know you darlings will all join me in mourning the passing of Madeleine L'Engle -- "Wrinkle in Time" author, thoughtful Christian, and tall lanky cutie. Her obit in the NYT is pretty nice, and I note with gratification that it's their most popular story today. I read a lot of Madeleine's memoirs around about middle school and found them hugely inspiring. She was a smart woman who never talked down to her readers and wasn't afraid to wrestle with her faith on the page. She also wrote directly about how awkward and clumsy she could be, which was a great thing for me at age 13.

Thinking about her oeuvre today, I realize how long it's been since I read anything of hers besides "Wrinkle," which stays on my shelf & gets reread occasionally. Madeleine could be all over the map - "A Wind in the Door" is particularly bizarre, and "Certain Women," one of her last adult novels, was a real snooze. But "The Small Rain" is just a lovely book, sort of a modern "Jane Eyre," and "The Other Side of the Sun" is a decent Southern racial drama. I also dig "A Swiftly Tilting Planet." The New Yorker had an interesting profile of her in 2004 - unfortunately it's not archived online - in which her family members are variously angry and dismissive about her memoirs. Still, she wrote great stuff. She was sensitive yet tough. She kicked ass and took names. I mourn her.

Yesterday a thoughtful colleague, with whom I had never discussed Madeleine's work, sent me a nice note with her condolences; she was sad about the news and knew I would be too. I just loved that.

My brother also tried to call me when he heard the news, but didn't realize I had changed my cellphone number (last year) and called some random guy in Ohio by mistake. The random guy's feelings on the passing of Madeleine L'Engle are not known.

Chomp.

A cure? For nail biting? Please. I have bitten my nails ever since I had teeth, and if I wanted to quit, I would have done it by now. (God knows my parents tried everything they could think of, bless them.) I don’t need to pay some damn Dutchman $670 for a mouth guard. It’s no wonder his customers were too embarrassed to be interviewed. These are probably the same people who buy those products advertised in the backs of teen magazines. (And if I were this reporter’s editor, I would have spiked this story. The damn Dutchman can buy his own ad in the back of the paper if he wants one.)

At least now I know the word for it: onychophagy. Sure, it’s not a clean habit. I do try to be vigilant about biting at work during flu season. And I consciously keep my nails from being too gross: they don’t bleed, they aren’t ragged; they’re just very, very short nails. I kind of like that I bite them. I enjoy it. It’s something I do while I’m thinking. (And hell yes, I bite my toenails. I am very bendy.)

The tone of this story is completely out of control. “Self-mutilation”? “Obsessive-compulsive disorder”? For Christ’s sake, we don’t have to diagnose and treat everything. People are untidy. We get sad; we eat too much sometimes; we bite our nails. If we had no flaws, we’d be boring. We’re beautiful as we are.

This violent reaction has nothing to do with having just watched “X-Men 3” again. Really.

The Devil's Eyes

Art Boy and I celebrated Labor Day by going to see the “Halloween” remake. We are both pretty big fans of the original (as we demonstrated with our South Pasadena field trip last fall; still pretty much the only movie-fan-type thing we have done in L.A. so far). Neither of us expected it to match the original; I think both of us were ready for an interesting exercise in “Halloween” fandom. And that is what we got. Would I recommend this? Not really. And yet it was interesting.

Rob Zombie takes John Carpenter’s beautifully spare slasher film and turns it into Act III of a psychological drama. Act I is young Michael Myers, unhappy in a rotten home, working up to the slaughter of his older sister that opens the original movie. Here we see him tormented by a dysfunctional family life and taking his pain out by torturing animals. I have not got much patience for this sort of thing. The very first image is Michael picking up a pet rat, so I spent the first five minutes of the “Halloween” remake with my eyes covered. Kind of a drag. But the look of Act I is absolutely gorgeous. Rob Zombie and his genius cinematographer have a beautiful white-trash sensibility - a filthy kitchen becomes a work of art in their hands. And young Michael is very creepy in his clown mask. There are some nice in-jokes, too: one of the first lines in the movie is a scream, from the baby who’ll grow up to be Laurie.

Act II is young Michael in the institution with Dr. Loomis. It’s just nothing like I imagined it from Donald Pleasence’s monologue in the first movie: “I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil.” The image that gives you is so chilling… and here we have Malcolm McDowell, sitting across from this blond kid who’s saying “Can I go home?” just like any kid would. This is the part that’s sort of a shame, I think. You don’t really see evil behind this kid’s eyes. If anyone’s creepy at all, it’s Dr. Loomis. But still, these scenes are just riveting, somehow. And the adult Michael coming out of his cell in his orange mask, oh my God. That’s new, and that’s scary.

Act III tries to tie all this together with the original storyline, and of course it doesn’t work. You don’t really worry about anyone or feel sorry for anyone, and it all happens so late that you don’t even really identify with the Laurie character the way you’re supposed to. I spent this whole segment completely distracted by the contrast between the 1970s teenagers and the girls from 2007. Annie and Lynda are so badass in the original. They say “shit”! They wear blush in straight lines across their cheekbones! I don’t know, these girls today are so sensitive, all falling over each other and calling each other “baby.” It really annoyed me when Lynda called Laurie and said “I care what you think.” They just don’t seem as cool. What does this mean? I’m not sure. It also bothered me that Annie’s fate is left a bit up in the air.

But again, the look of the first act is absolutely gorgeous – it’s like looking through your parents’ faded Polaroids, or listening to Boards of Canada. (I bet Rob Zombie hates Boards of Canada.) The moment when tiny Michael puts on his iconic William Shatner mask for the first time is pretty good – I love the image of him walking down the hallway, looking like a hideous dwarf version of the famous killer. You laugh but it gets under your skin. Rob Zombie’s cameos are pretty fun: here’s Brad Dourif! Here’s Dee Wallace from “The Howling”! Here’s, ah, Micky Dolenz! (I completely forgot that Adrienne Barbeau had a cameo and missed her. We are both still annoyed about this.) And, while the final showdown went on way too long, I loved the final shot of Laurie screaming and screaming. Not for Rob Zombie the fetching trickle of blood at the corner of the victim’s mouth: his stabbing victims are absolutely covered in gore. Laurie’s blood-drenched shrieks were operatic.

So yeah, we liked it. I’d watch parts of it again if it ever came on TV. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to anyone besides us, but as we expected, it’s an interesting exercise. I really can’t wait to see what RZ does next.

At the corner store

On impulse, I stopped in at the tiny liquor store & market on the way back from flamenco tonight. It was dark, Art Boy was still out and the fluorescent lights looked welcoming. Also, I needed bourbon. 

The first guy in line was buying lottery tickets. A ponytailed older gentleman, who looked not quite homeless but rather well-worn, was  next: he bought a pack of cigarettes and a lottery ticket. Behind me, a young teenager squeezed between the racks, his friend standing in the doorway with a leashed dog yelling "Get me a Sprite!" 

The teenager turned and yelled back, "Do you want anything else?"

"What?" his friend called. 

"Do you want anything else?"

"What?"

"Do you want anything else?"

It went on at least twice more. The friend finally said "Yeah, see if they have any Twinkies."

The ponytailed guy, now putting his change away, exchanged glances with me and we grinned. Behind the counter, the young South Asian proprietor asked me what I wanted. 

"Could I please get the large bottle of Wild Turkey?" I asked, pointing.

Ponytail guy and teenager both looked at me and said "Woo-hoo!"

"Wild Turkey!" continued the ponytail guy. "Wow. Now is that the 72 proof or the 101?"

"Ah. I'm not sure," I said. "I'm just taking what they've got." The selection here is small; it really is just a little storefront.

"What proof is that?" ponytail guy asked the proprietor, who gestured for him to move along. This agitated ponytail guy: "I'm just curious."

"It's 101," I said, looking at the bottle.

"Very good!" said ponytail guy. "Have a good night." He headed out. I paid and left without incident. Ponytail guy was headed up Lincoln past the Taco Bell. I turned left toward my house, went on in, and made myself a nice Manhattan. Cheers to ponytail guy, cautious proprietor, the two teenagers with Sprite and Twinkies (of course they have Twinkies!), and the cute dog who, if this were an English-class discussion, would be what the story was really about all along.

Out

Sorry for the lack of updates, people. I am about to completely not remedy the situation and go out of town for a few days. Will return with beach photos and many book reviews. Be nice to Art Boy while I'm gone.

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!