The Media Morgue

All right, after this I'll be all nice and caught up. Thank god.

Sunday: Mulan

This is probably one of my favorite Disney movies. I'm a sucker for an action heroine, especially when she can pull of the androgynous look.

Monday: Annie Hall

I've never seen a Woody Allen movie before so this was a real treat. He sometimes got a little cutesy on me but I have to say that Allen has a sense of humor that I can really appreciate. I'm looking forward to seeing more of his movies.

Tuesday: An American Tail: Fievel Goes West

There's some strange interspecies erotica going on in this one with the head bad cat and Fievel's older sister. Watch the movie and tell me I'm wrong.

Wednesday: Pulse

The ending was haunting and really worth the movie but it moved very slowly for me. I have no interest in seeing the American remake.

Thursday: Holiday in the Sun

All this movie made me want to do is go somewhere tropical. And avoid the Olsen twins while I'm there. Their tweeniness drove me crazy.

Friday: Silent Running

Environmental, hippie trip about a douchebag that killed his coworkers to save the last rainforest and then was too stupid to realize that trees need sunlight to live. Seriously.

Saturday: Foul Play

I adore Goldie Hawn and her precious little chipmunk face. And this movie was hilarious and actually a pretty good action flick with Chevy Chase doing a credible turn as a romantic lead. Yeah, I'm shocked too.

Sunday: Wedding Daze

This movie was really funny, no lie. I thought that it would be stupid and it was but it worked somehow. Maybe I was just in the right mood.

Monday: The Thief of Bagdad

Now this is why I watched all of these movies. For awesome shit like this. Unlike that endless silent version of the story, this movie was exciting and action-packed.

Tuesday: Domino

I have a sinking suspicion that nothing in this movie resembles the real story of Domino Harvey. However the movie is still cool and I guess I don't care much beyond that.

Wednesday: Bad Seed

That kid was so obnoxious. I mean, I know she was a murderer and that's worse but the little bitch got on my last nerve with all that kissy-huggy stuff.

Thursday: Red Planet Mars

World peace was achieved through Christianity. Which the Martians taught us. That's the plot of this movie. Now you don't have to see it.

Friday: Ninja Assassin

I thought this movie was going to be so kickass and it was so disappointing. The dialogue wasn't even bad enough to be funny and the fight scenes were neat, I guess, but nothing I haven't seen before.

Saturday: Tron

Tron does not age well. It's still a good movie but the technobabble is just laughable today. It just makes me want to watch ReBoot again. Does anybody else remember that show?

If you've never seen this Shortpacked! comic, you've lived an empty life. The best part of it is that it's so true.

I just spent most of the morning shoveling out my driveway and now you can't even tell. I am making such a sad face right now, you guys. Anyway this month's guide is The Rough Guide to Cult Fiction. Like most spawns of Satan it doesn't have an index (at least not one for the actual books) so I had to meticulously go through the whole damn thing looking for the books I own. There are some weird things on here.

Atonement, Ian McEwan
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde
Neuromancer, William Gibson
A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, James Joyce
Dubliners, James Joyce
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
Oblivion, David Foster Wallace
The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco

I don't know why The Da Vinci Code or Jule Verne is on this list. In what way do they qualify as cult fiction? Everybody's read them! Except me, I guess, because that's the point of this whole thing. Yeah.

Shit, I totally thought I had already done last month. Goodreads is ruining me. By the way that's my link for this month. I love that website like I love seasonal booze.

Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende

I'm a big fan of Allende's writing style even if she's a little too fond of showing off her research into historical periods. So I liked this book, I don't think it's her strongest one, but I certainly don't regret reading it. Of course I say that for every book I read, even the ones that I regret reading. Damn you, Bentley Little.

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis

British humor is funnier when you hear it versus reading it, I think. I mean, the book was funny and weirdly touching and all that but it really just made me want to watch A Big of Fry and Laurie again.

13 Ways of Looking at the Novel by Jane Smiley

I feel harshly towards this novel because it took me so long to read it. I started it three months ago and then finally forced my way through it in a few days a month ago. I didn't really like her literary theory portion because she seemed smug but I really liked her book reviews. So I guess the two parts cancel each other out and make this one a wash. I may try to reread it again next year to see if it was just my mood.

50 Gay and Lesbian Books Everybody Must Read edited by Richard Canning

The more I think about this book, the more annoyed I get. Fifty books? I think that Nancy Pearl has more LGBT-themed books in just one of her rec guides. And she doesn't go off on annoying tangents about her life when she talks about them. Here's a clue, essay writers, nobody gives a shit about your oh-so-interesting lives. We just want to know why we should read the book you love so much. Also if you're only going to cover fifty books, please be making sure that they're all actually books and not letters or poetry or random verses out of the Bible.

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

I don't think I've read Asimov before Foundation and I must say that he's way different than I thought he would be. I thought he would be all stiff and hard-sciencey but he actually writes pretty engaging characters. This is the first book in this series (I believe) so it suffers from having to sell me on the premise, but once he gets that out of the way it's pretty fun.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Kingsolver is a good writer and I am eager to read other books that she's written. I had issues with The Poisonwood Bible but I still can't decide if they're were issues with her issues or issues with her characterization. Certainly I wasn't sold on Leah's saintliness or Rachel's overall bitchiness. And I still don't know why the father was so crazy-crazy.

Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

This is the sequel to Foundation and it was even better than the first. I loved Bayta and the Mule and the plot finally settled on something that wasn't so ridiculous that I couldn't stand it.

I got nowhere this month, I swear. I like this guide though (Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide). It covers a wide range of genres, which is right up my alley. I can't wait to use it again.

Yeah, I got way behind in my movies these past two months. I'm mostly caught up now (and boy was that fun). So I'll catch myself up here in two posts of two weeks with one-line summaries so that it's not overwhelming. Oh, and did you guys notice the terrible joke I made about Patrick Swayze last time? I totally forgot that he had died this year. Ouch. I'm a whore.

Sunday: The Mission

The music was too overpowering for me. It was way more dramatic than the story, which was fine but nothing extraordinary.

Monday: Cabaret

God, Liza Minnelli is exhausting. I mean, she's a great performer but can you imagine trying to live with that? It would drive me batty.

Tuesday: The Maltese Falcon

This movie is incredible. I wanted to watch it three more times these past few weeks and had to stop myself. Bogart is a cool operator.

Wednesday: Hercules

The mythology in this is crazy if you know Greek mythology. But I actually really like the songs and the animation style.

Thursday: Peter Pan

Peter Pan is a dick. Seriously. He kidnaps children and bullies them into fighting adult pirates. It's obscene. And Tink is a bitch.

Friday: The Little Mermaid

I know the underlying message of this can be gross (give up your voice for legs to spread for your man) but I love The Little Mermaid.

Saturday: The Postman Always Rings Twice

Lana Turner is so amazing with that platinum hair and that scrunchy upset face she uses. And while this movie is absurd, I love it.

Sunday: The Bad and the Beautiful

It's weird to watch movies with the parents of famous contemporary actors in it. It's so disorienting. Kirk Douglas was good though.

Monday: The Fisher King

You see Robin Williams naked in this movie. Man, if I wasn't gay before, you know? This is a weird movie for Gilliam. So happy.

Tuesday: Bambi

Older Disney movies didn't have much plot, I realized. I mean the movie is basically Bambi is born, his mother dies, he gets a girl.

Wednesday: Care Bears II: A New Generation

This movie makes no sense. Everyone knows that the Care Bears and the Care Bear Cousins didn't meet until they were adults. Duh.

Thursday: New Moon

Oh man. I am now officially Team Alice because at least Bella seems to genuinely like her. And put your shirt on, Jacob, you show-off.

Friday: Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Flo is a magnificent woman. I'm so serious. I adore her and her filthy nonsensical sayings. How did they make a show out of this?

Saturday: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

Again, very little plot. It's mostly a series of skits. I don't really think that it ages well, honestly, except as a benchmark.

Christ, why did I let myself get so far behind? Now here's a link to my newest obsession, the List of Bests, a perfect place for obsessive list-making.

I'm getting so lazy about posting and I only have a month and a half to go.  Christ.

Sunday:  Drag Me to Hell

I saw the unrated version and it makes me curious about what was cut for the theatrical release.  Honestly I really enjoyed this movie, far more than anything that Raimi has done in the past few years, but I'm disappointed that the best parts of this movie were retreads of shit he did better decades ago.  Ignore me.  I'm an fan.  We're almost always bitchy about the things that we love.

Monday:  Grosse Pointe Blank

I'm in love with the concept of extraordinary people treating their bizarre jobs like they're commonplace so I was already pleasantly disposed towards this movie.  The best character was Dan Aykroyd as a jovial hitman looking to move up in the world at any cost.

Tuesday:  Rebel Without a Cause

This movie contains three actors that died tragically young, which is a shitty record no matter how you look at it.  Of course James Dean is usually considered the biggest loss, given how young he was, how little he'd done, and how talented he seemed to be.  And he was great in this movie, don't get me wrong, the man had charisma.  However I'm more sad about Natalie Wood because I think that she was mesmerizing.  She had this, I don't want to say aura because that's overdone, but she had this presence that made her so much more interesting than her looks alone would have inspired.  The movie's good too.

Wednesday:  The Ice Pirates

This is not a good movie but it is a fun movie.  If you've ever wanted to see great actors like Ron Perlman and Angelica Huston prance about in a B-movie about space pirates that save the day, then this is probably your only option.

Thursday:  The Devil's Backbone

Guillermo del Toro does amazing work and this movie is absolutely stellar.  Pan Labyrinth is more stylized but the stark realism in this movie mixed with the vengeful ghost (the effects on that thing) allows The Devil's Backbone to stand proudly next to anything else that del Toro might do.

Friday:  Corpse Bride

I actually liked this movie way more this second time versus when I saw it theaters.  The musical numbers are still pretty lackluster and it's way short for a full-length film, but the love triangle is touching.  Plus I'm a bit in love with stop-motion effects.

Saturday:  Point Break

Point Break is simultaneously the best movie about a surfing undercover agent (as played by Keanu Reeves) and the worst movie about a surfing undercover agent (as played by Keanu Reeves).  Reeves tries his damnedest to look upset throughout the movie but is thwarted by the fact that he is incapable of feeling sadness or anger.  Gary Busey plays himself if he was even remotely charming.  Patrick Swayze does whatever he does that makes people decide to keep putting him in movies.  And Lori Petty, the divine and sublime Lori Petty, is too damn good for this piece of shit movie.  Oh, and Dr. Cox is in this.  It's awesome.

Now here's a link to Item Not As Described, a blog about terrible ads.  It's fairly fantastic.

 

Thank the FSM that Horror Month is over.  A month of hit-or-miss in one genre is hard for even the most ardent fan to take.  Plus I'm getting tired of seeing pretty, skinny blondes getting axed in the face.

Sunday:  The Other

This was based off of the Thomas Tryon book of the same name.  He wrote the screenplay, if I remember correctly, and I think that it helped keep at leas the mood true to the book.  The book is better but I honestly think that we're all tired of hearing that about every damn book-to-movie adaptation.

Monday:  My Little Pony: The Movie

What?  You don't think this shit is scary?  Imagine, if you even can, that you are an adorable Little Pony (I bet you would be Shady, you complaining bastard) and your beautiful Dream Castle is being overrun by sludge created by witches that hate you.  If you don't think that that qualifies as horror, I don't want to know what kind of life you must lead.

Tuesday:  The House Bunny

What?  You don't think this shit is--okay, I can't do that for this one.  I just wanted to see Anna Faris naked and maybe indulge in my fantasy that Emma Stone and I are secretly dating and she's directing all of her growly-voiced statements right to me.  I needed a break, you guys.

Wednesday:  Return to House on Haunted Hill

This sequel makes the original (remake) look like it was written by Clive Barker while channeling the spirit of Lovecraft and then filmed by Sam Raimi and Wes Craven.  This movie sucks so hard that I feel like my brain is purposefully trying to forget every moment of it but can't because it was just that terrible.  I can't even have trauma-induced amnesia.

Thursday:  The Orphanage

Oh, this was good.  I feel like I should have a party for the first genuinely ace movie that I watched this week.  The atmosphere in this movie was incredible and I am very eager to see more from this director.

Friday:  Strange Behavior

Um, okay, maybe this movie caused trauma-induced amnesia because I don't remember very much of it.  There was this slasher and he killed a bunch of people.  I think that one guy got a pick through his brain.  I don't know.  

Saturday:  Misery

Amazing.  Just amazing.  Kathy Bates is probably one of the best actresses in the business.  The way that she could go from a sweet, motherly nurse (with some creepy undertones in all of her statements) to a psychotic bitch-monster in under a second, all without making you think that she was over-the-top or implausible, was just fantastic.  I love this movie (but the book was better).

Now here's a video of a guy playing a horrible ROM hack of Super Mario Brothers.  He gets so frustrated that it becomes hilarious.  I don't normally warn for swearing because I swear like a sailor but this guy says fuck after basically every word.  So be warned.

I took last month off of Project Feel Good in order to read some truly shitty horror novels (John Saul, just stop).  So now I'm refreshed and ready to tackle the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide (Seventh Edition).  There's a shit-ton here, folks.

Portrait in Sepia, Isabel Allende
Lucky Jim, Kingsley Amis
Foundation, Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire, Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation, Isaac Asimov
The Death of the Heart, Elizabeth Bowen
The Three Musketeers, Alexander Dumas
The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco
Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster
Neuromancer, William Gibson
Lady Chatterley's Lover, D.H. Lawrence
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce
Dubliners, James Joyce
Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling
The Diary of a Young Girl, Anne Frank
Atonement, Ian McEwan
Moby-Dick, Herman Melville
Paradise, Toni Morrison
The Shipping News, E. Annie Proulx
East of Eden, John Steinbeck
The Opposite of Fate, Amy Tan
The Hundred Secret Senses, Amy Tan
The Bonesetter's Daughter, Amy Tan
Vanity Fair, William Makepeace Thackeray
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jules Verne
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe

Yeah, I said that there was a shit-ton.  It's a big book.  If I had to venture a guess, I would say that I'll probably get to the Elizabeth Bowen one, maybe to The Three Musketeers.  Until then, here's a link to the Five Geek Social Fallacies, largely because I find it interesting.

Yeah, I totally forgot to post last Sunday and since then have kept forgetting with the the tenacity of a pitbull.  Oops.

Sunday:  Severance

I had heard good things about this movie for a couple of years but now that I've seen it, I don't know what the big deal is supposed to be.  It's pretty standard.  I mean, it's more self-aware than most horror movies and it's funny in parts, but it also doesn't make much sense.  I'm really a bit on the fence about it.

Monday:  Shrooms

I could brag and say that I saw the ending coming, but that's not saying much and also I knew the twist going into the movie.  Everybody keeps comparing the movie to High Tension but I think that's crap.  High Tension is magnificently nonsensical and vaguely offensive while Shrooms doesn't fuck around very much.  What's going on becomes pretty obvious in retrospect.  

Tuesday:  Organizm

Ah shit, here we go now.  This is a Sci-Fi (excuse me, SyFy) Channel original movie, which I didn't know when I started, and it is just terrible.  I don't even understand how their special effects can be so awful.  I'm pretty sure I could do better with some construction paper and glitter.

Wednesday:  Maniac Cop 2

I've never seen Maniac Cop 1 but it had Bruce Campbell in it so now I probably will.  The sequel here was recommended to me by Fangoria's 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen (it also recommended all of the Troma pictures I've been watching).  I'll admit, some of the scenes were pretty awesome (I don't think I've ever seen a woman try to steer a car downhill while on the outside of the car and attached to the steering wheel with handcuffs) and the relationship between the talkative serial killer and the killer cop was unique.  Not bad.

Thursday:  Christmas Evil

Now I've seen my fair share of Christmas-themed horror movies (Black Christmas is the best) but I have never seen one as bad as this.  I'll be honest, reader, I used fast-forward on the PS3, which moves at 1.5 the normal rate.  This is normally enough to make everybody's dialogue hilariously rushed (but understandable) and their movements super-jerky.  Not this piece of crap.  At 1.5 the normal speed the dialogue sounds perfectly normal and the main character still moves so slow that I thought that it might be a plot point.  It wasn't.  In the end he drives his Santa Van off of a bridge and flies into the night sky.  I am not joking.

Friday:  The Changeling

The only truly good movie I saw this week.  Changeling has beautiful cinematography (the house is both gorgeous and ominous in every shot) and the plot, while slow, is touching even when it's horrifying.  

Saturday:  Def by Temptation

I enjoyed this movie far more than I probably should have because it is undeniably funky and while I myself am not jive in any capacity, I do appreciate it in others.  Plus Temptation was a stone-cold fox and the main character gets points for not being a huge moron about her.

All right, I'm still trying to decide what movie to watch on Halloween (I'm stuck between the original Halloween, Poltergeist, or Misery).  While I ponder my dilemma, here's a link to my new favorite blog, E-Mails From Crazy People.  People so crazy.

Now this is what I'm talking about!  Horror month got a rousing kick in the ass this week with some gut-busting (literally) splatstick and the proper amount of gore (buckets).

Sunday:  Carrie

Here's a classic I've never seen before.  Although honestly I feel like I've seen just about every iconic scene in this movie, from the shower bit at the beginning to the big surprise at the end.  It's a great movie, suspenseful and occasionally touching, with some great acting from Sissy Spacek.  The acting from John Travolta is less admirable but the poor boy tries his best.

Monday:  From Beyond

I'm pretty sure that Lovecraft would never have envisioned that one of his works would be adapted into something so kinky, but he probably wouldn't have thought that the black character would be the smartest, best guy in the whole damn thing either (that racist master of the macabre).  He would have been shocked on both counts.  This movie is pretty damn kinky and it falls apart after Bubba dies (BUBBA!).  He gave his life so that less interesting people could live. 

Tuesday:  Zombieland

Awesome.  It's a pure balls-to-the-wall adrenaline-fest from beginning to end.  And it's hilarious.  Tallahassee brought new meaning (and a new picture) to the term Crazy Awesome.  Honestly the apocalypse has never looked like so much fun.

Wednesday:  Fido

Once again I am reminded that the only thing I love more than horror is horror mixed liberally with ridiculous comedy.  This is a movie about keeping a zombie as a pet and it is both hilarious and touching in a completely gross way (no matter how you dress it up, buddy, it's still necrophilia).  

Thursday:  The Blob

This is the second remake of the 50s classic.  The Blob (which I've heard people find impossible to move despite their best efforts) has gotten a face-lift and some ninja skills but it's still a giant pink glob of man-destroying goo.  Except this time it melts people and is fantastically disgusting.

Friday:  P2

I didn't think that I was going to like this movie very much.  It looked like a standard slasher (menacing jackass hunts down a pretty, bland blonde woman until she kills his ass) but I was pleasantly surprised.  The main character is pretty and blonde but she wasn't bland.  However what I really liked was that instead of the killer being a ginormous Jason rip-off, he was a much more unnerving Nice Guy.  This made the movie more unsettling for me than it would have been otherwise because it's way more true-to-life.

Saturday:  Teeth

I'm surprised that this movie has garnered so much controversy even among horror fans.  Is it sexist?  Well, it's a parody so I don't think it's as bad as people are making it out to be.  All the men in the movie are either rapists or weak but that's part of what makes it so ridiculous.  The end is a perfect example of how absurd and over-the-top this movie is supposed to be.  Is it distasteful?  Yeah, it really is.  But I did find it funny.  YMMV.

Now I have to show you the best video I've seen all week.  It's a musical remix of a William Shatner speech and it is epic.  By the end of it you will know why Captain Kirk was climbing a mountain.  ***Spoiler alert*** It was to make love to that mountain.

I went idly searching for Glee fanfic after seeing a whole bunch of the show all at once and I'm amazed at how much of it is Puck-centric.  Is it the fauxhawk?  I mean, I think he's a cool guy but I want see a little bit more epic Rachel/Quinn hateshipping going on.  Come on, people, we all know they don't really want Finn.  He's like a giant piece of cardboard.

Sunday:  I Still Know What You Did Last Summer

I love Jennifer Love Hewitt, okay, so when I say that I could barely finish watching this movie, I want that to tell you how terrible it was.  Also, why wasn't the bartender the fisherman's daughter?  Weren't they leading up to that?  I guess it was fake-out, but then where the hell is his daughter?  I refuse to believe that she's the sole non-psychopathic member of the family.

Monday:  Twilight Zone: The Movie

The best part is the beginning when they're arguing about whether or not something was a Twilight Zone episode or an Outer Limits episode.  Mostly because Outer Limits rocked and I wish that more people had watched it.

Tuesday:  Mother's Day

Ew, Troma movie.  It was actually not that bad for a Troma picture but that's not saying much.  The best movie they ever released was Cannibal: The Musical and that was because of the South Park guys.

Wednesday:  Body Snatchers

This was the only good movie I watched this week.  Honestly.  It wasn't even all that great (I've yet to see a Body Snatchers movie that I really love) but it was suspenseful and well-crafted.  I think that it helped that it dealt with an isolated family and really drove in how scary it would be to not be able to trust even the people that you know the best.

Thursday:  Asylum

I thought for sure that the movie was going to end on a lame twist ending where the Final Girl was actually crazy and committed in the asylum that she was trying to escape but the movie wasn't even clever enough for something that dumb.  What was the point of giving her a crazy father and a crazy brother and a serial killer that preys on your insecurities and then not doing anything with it? 

Friday:  Luther the Geek

The only movie you will ever watch in which the serial killer thinks that he's a chicken and the Final Girl saves herself by clucking at him until he's distracted enough (because he's having a chicken freak-out) that she can kill him.  Also a Troma picture.

Saturday:  Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary

Oh, I lied, this was also pretty good.  Except that it didn't really seem like a movie.  It didn't even really seem like the full ballet.  It was mostly all about the Lucy bits, which I do enjoy from the book, but I thought that it was a weird choice.

Horror month is exhausting.  I'm going to try and watch better horror movies this week, but until then here's The Misadventures of Hello Cthulhu.  The bow in his tentacles is absolutely precious.

I'm dying right now to eat the rest of the ice cream cake I have in my freezer.  I don't know that I'm strong enough to resist it.  It's Midnight Delight.  It has chocolate flakes in chocolate ice cream surrounding by chocolate cake and topped with a thick shell of chocolate chocolate.  I'm in agony.

Sunday:  Das Boot

Yeah, I finally finished the damn thing.  Three hours long.  Completely magnificent.  And then everybody dies in the end.  I mean, they were Nazis so if I go by Indiana Jones logic I should be happy, but it just made me so sad.

Monday:  Bullitt

Steve McQueen plays the original cop that doesn't play by the rules (but by God, he gets results).  I'm a big action movie fan so I enjoyed every minute of this thriller, including of course the iconic car chase.  Amazing.

Tuesday:  A Man for All Seasons

I'm a whore for period pieces.  I've seen Rob Roy probably fifty times (that sword-fighting scene in the end, people, Jesus).  So I was happy when this came up in the queue, especially since I love British period pieces most of all. 

Wednesday:  Heart and Souls

I've been wanting to rewatch this for a long time so I on a whim I decided to see if it was available to watch instantly and because Netflix is my secret lover it was.  Robert Downey Jr. looks so stoned this entire movie.  I don't know if he was heavy into the drug scene at that particular time but he certainly looked like it.  I love this movie though.  It tugs on my black heart.

Thursday:  The Evil Dead

I wanted to kick off the October month of horror with something fantastic so I decided to go with the first in Sam Raimi's Evil Dead trilogy.  I'm a bigger fan of the second movie because it mixes horror and comedy in just the right amount (unlike the third that goes overboard with the comedy), but I have a warm place in my heart for this first one.  Poor Ashley.

Friday:  The Frighteners

I decided to watch The Frighteners on my birthday because it's one of my favorites (shut up).  Michael J. Fox is funny, Peter Jackson doesn't go crazy with the special effects, and the murderous Johnny and Patricia are my favorite horror movie villains.  They're just so in love.  It's terrifying.

Saturday:  Arachnophobia

I guess I don't find spiders very scary because this was a little yawn-inducing.  I think that it was well-done, but the horror is mitigated by the fact that a hammer could solve everybody's problems.  It's like Child's Play.  Just stomp the damn thing.

Now I'm going to go play Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 in the hopes that it will distract me from that cake.  Oh, and here's a link to a failed wank on Fandom Wank.  When a wank is deemed unfunny (in this case one centering around LAMBDA changing their submission criteria so that straights can't win it), the members post recipes in retaliation.  I'm particularly intrigued by the one for pear ginger quickbread.  Yummy!

I did rather well this month as far getting through the list, even though I wasn't hugely impressed with anything that I read (with two exceptions).

Beowulf on the Beach by Jack Murnighan

It's fun to read other people's opinions on the classics and Murnighan was generally pretty spot-on in his observations.  We have some differences in taste but there's nothing wrong with that.  The only thing that I didn't get was his raging hate for the term magical realism.  I like it myself.

The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton

This was a truly fantastic book that was not on this month's reading guide but should have been because it was ten times better than most of the shit on there.  I felt a connection with all of the characters save for the wild child younger daughter and it was genuinely touching.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach

What a bunch of hippie/New Age bullshit this was.  The pictures were okay (but unnecessary), the story was inane, and the dialogue was watered-down Buddhism sent through a business training seminar.  Crap.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

I enjoyed this book enough that I want to read his other books but I do hope that they're better than this one.  He has a nice, smooth way of writing that I want to see more of but this felt like a short story that ran out of the author's control.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Initially I was annoyed at how this book just stops in its narrative (I've been told that there were other books that continued the story but I'm not that interested).  However the longer that I've sat on my feelings for Angelou's biography the more I'm impressed by how raw the whole thing was without being repulsive. 

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Atwood can be a little hit or miss sometimes and while I feel that this one is more hit than miss, I do wonder what this novel was all about.  I'm a sci-fi girl and I can usually figure out the underlying message of even the most complicated of stories, but this one seemed a little void of meaning.  She just told a story.  It took place in after the apocalypse.  If I tried, I'm sure I could cobble something together but I'm content to just enjoy it for what it was.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Hey, I got to it!  Yay!  Um, I can see why people were so into this book but I honestly didn't get very much out of it.  I thought that he tried a little too hard in places to make multicultural connections and at other times didn't try enough, but I liked it well enough.  It didn't change my life.

Ironically the only book that I read this month that even came close changing my life was Moonflower Vine and it wasn't on my list.  I don't think I'll be recommending this particular guide to anybody anytime soon.  It's definitely the weakest Bloomsbury guide I've used so far.  Now here's a link to Awkward Family Photos.  It's not bad.

I'm having a bad week, you guys.  RL is trying its very hardest to suck.  I can't wait until next month.

Sunday:  Sleepers

There were so many good actors in this movie that it was positively unreal.  That being said I didn't really like this one all that much.  I didn't know how I was supposed to feel about the mobsters or about the movie's final say on justice.  It all left a bad taste in my mouth that wouldn't really bother me (I don't have to agree with a movie's morality in order to like it) except that Sleepers claims to be based on a true story (hint, it probably isn't).

Monday:  Clueless

Emma is my second most favorite Jane Austen (after Northanger Abbey) and I'm a sucker for this contemporary version of the story.  Alicia Silverstone was completely charming and I really wish that Batman and Robin hadn't killed her career.

Tuesday:  All Dogs Go to Heaven

I enjoyed this one much more this time than I did when I was a kid.  I think that's the bad part about Bluth in that you really only appreciate his movies when you're an adult looking back on them.  It's not that they're more sophisticated than Disney movies--they're really not--but they generally have a darker atmosphere and I wasn't into that as a child.

Wednesday:  Ghost Rider.

...I have nothing.  Do I curse fucking Nicholas Cage's name once again?  Do I talk about how spectacularly shitty this movie was?  Do I talk about how spectacularly spectacular Eva's cleavage was?  All of these things won't make me feel better about what I saw.  No, not even the cleavage.  I'm too tired of this shit.

Thursday:  Swingers

Vince Vaughn is so young in this movie.  It's easier to see how he got away with being such a sleaze in the early days because at one point in time he didn't look like somebody's drunken, perverted uncle.

Friday:  FernGully:  The Last Rainforest

I don't why Tim Curry isn't the voice of every villain in every country in the world.  He should be.  And Robin Williams is so much more tolerable when he's an animated bat.  Except when he raps.  That's tragic.

Saturday:  Say Anything

I love, absolutely love, when Joan and John Cusack are in movies together.  I don't know why.  Maybe I love nepotism.  It just always makes me happy.

Now I'm going to look at pictures of cute animals being told their place at Fuck You, Penguin.  I urge you all to do the same.
 

I've decided to write my weekly reviews on Sunday because it's generally a more convenient day for me and also because after almost a year I've decided that it's silly to post a list every Sunday of movies I often end up not watching that week.  So there's that.

Sunday:  Love Actually

My favorite bits were between Liam Neeson and that adorable kid from Nanny McPhee.  Seriously that kid is so cute.  He made my maternal instincts rise up and bitch-slap my ovaries.  That analogy barely makes sense.  He's a cute kid.  Oh, the couple that met on the world's dirtiest classy movie were great too.

Monday:  Parasite Dolls

A fairly mediocre sci-fi anime movie about cops researching murders dealing with androids called Boomers.  It's got a bit of Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner but with more hooker robots.  The one part I did really like was the design for the Crusher robot.  It looked like if a giant metal dragonfly had a baby with a giant metal grasshopper.

Tuesday:  Kiss of Death

Richard Widmark is clearly the best part of this movie as the unbalanced mobster that giggles like a Batman villain.  Other than that Kiss of Death really dragged on for me.  I mean, obviously I'm biased in the favor of short movies at this point but a great movie can be as long as it wants.  Everything else should pick up the pace.

Wednesday:  The Seven Year Itch

I think that Billy Wilder was actually an angel and he came to us in order to show the world how good movies could be.  I've never seen a movie of his that I haven't instantly loved and having Marilyn Monroe as his baby-voiced, giggling leading lady only cemented the likelihood that this movie would be fantastic.

Thursday:  Zorro, the Gay Blade

This movie just wishes that it was as funny as The Seven Year Itch but I'll admit that I laughed.  The whole camp gay thing is not one of my favorite Hollywood styles of humor (I know, shocking), but the movie is not mean-spirited and, yeah, I thought that it was funny for the most part, although not always in the way the filmmakers probably intended it to be.

Friday:  Lupin the 3rd:  The Castle of Cagliostro

Miyazaki's movies always either make me feel happy (My Neighbor Totoro) or fill me with a vague sense of wonder (Spirited Away).  This movie definitely falls into the first category and is a gorgeous addition to the adventures of my favorite monkey-faced gentleman-thief.

Saturday:  Martian Succesor Nadesico: The Motion Picture: Prince of Darkness

I didn't know that there was a show that preceded this movie until it was too late and I'd watched too much to give it up.  I have no idea what was going on.  They were In Space! and there was a lot of shooting and I don't know.  I think that it would have actually been pretty good if I'd known who any of the characters were or what they were supposed to be doing.  Maybe I'm just dumb.

And because I haven't done it in long time, here's a link to a website celebrating the People of Walmart.  I laughed but I shop at Target so maybe I'm just an elitist bitch.

Hey, I forgot to post last Sunday!  And I'm not going to tomorrow because I'm going to Chicago.  Oh well, I suppose this late in the game I can be forgiven.

Sunday:  Untamed Heart

I do not believe that Christian Slater had an ape heart.  I also find it hard to believe that he could seduce the fantabulous Marisa Tomei with his creepy rapist face.  Other than that I thought the movie was okay.  I didn't like how it glamorized stalking (not to mention breaking and entering) but we weren't supposed to take it seriously so whatever.

Monday:  Time After Time

This was a movie in which Jack the Ripper used a time machine that his best friend H.G. Wells built and escaped from the authorities to the 1970s.  Of course Wells felt responsible, followed him, and proceeded to Learn Valuable Lessons from the future.  Played way more straight than I thought that it would be.

Tuesday:  The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

As the second of the drag road movies I saw this year, I have to say that I really prefer this one.  The characters in To Wong Fu were kind of asexual to be honest, like drag queen fairy godmothers, while Terence Stamp alone played a hard-drinking gal that really wants more class in her life and isn't finding it in her horny, giggling friends.  It's fun, a bit rough in parts, but the music and acting made me really enjoy the whole trip.

Wednesday:  Pretty Woman

I feel like I shouldn't like this movie because it does have some pretty icky implications going on under the surface but if you don't take it very seriously (and at this point, dolls, I'm not taking anything seriously), it's really a sexy contemporary fairy tale.  

Thursday:  Species II

I wanted to see Natasha Henstridge's breasts again.  What?  What do you want from me?

Friday:  The Iron Giant

Movies have been making me cry lately.  First Life as a House and then V for Vendetta and now this.  I think that this is a great kid's movie and it's a damn shame that it's not more well-known.

Saturday:  Batman Begins

My days of playing Batman: Arkham Asylum finally forced me to go back and watch this movie.  I have to admit that as much as I loved it when it came out, it's so obvious now that Iron Man is superior.  Poor Batman.  You're still a DC character.  Disney wants nothing to do with you.

Now I'm going to go play Prince of Persia because that's what cool kids do on Saturday nights.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is such a good game that it might be able to cure cancer.  At the very least it's curing my hatred of this year's video game selection.  That's almost exactly the same thing.

Sunday:  District 9

I was really impressed by this one.  It's obvious that it was a first movie from this director and there were definitely some things that I thought he should have done differently (some of his edits were baffling to watch), but overall this was an incredibly enjoyable science fiction movie about race and immigration.  And aliens that look like sea creatures.

Monday:  V for Vendetta

I feel like I liked this movie more when I saw it a few years ago.  I don't think that it's aged very well.  Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman do a fantastic job (in fact I think that all of the actors were great), but the story just doesn't have the same emotional impact that the comic did.  I mean, some parts do.  I start bawling near the beginning of the Valerie bit and don't stop until after Portman kisses her letter.  And it was very upsetting to see Stephen Fry get punched in the face (you bastards, he's a national treasure).  However I can kind of see where Alan Moore is coming from when he says that they missed the whole damn point of the story. 

Tuesday:  No Country for Old Men

I don't know how a movie this balls-to-the-wall awesome could have won an Oscar.  The Coen brothers fooled the country into thinking that they had to watch a violent (violent) thriller in order to get their yearly dose of culture and I love them for it.  It really made me want to read the book.

Wednesday:  Species

The blonde from Dawson's Creek played the alien babe as a young girl and it's weird to see her knowing that she'll tragically die (inspiring Joey to pick between Dawson and Pacey) and leave her baby for her gay best friend (and former boyfriend) to raise with his vaguely homophobic boyfriend.  For some reason I watched a lot of that show.  Oh, what did I think about the movie?  It was okay.  Remember when Jen had that weird hair?  What was up with that?

Thursday:  The Trip

This is by far the worst thing that Roger Corman and Jack Nicholson ever did.  If it one day came to light that the two of them used to kill babies and then sell their kidneys on the black market, it would perhaps be considered a blessing in disguise because then they would never accidentally watch this godawful movie.  I can forgive Peter Fonda his part in this because the big dummy probably didn't know any better (and has to live with the fact that he looks like a drag queen version of his sister) but Corman and Nicholson had talent.  They should have known better.

Friday:  Spaceballs

I really like Mel Brooks movies but I have to admit that I like them better the less he's in them.  Like Young Frankenstein.  He just grates on my nerves a little bit too much.

Saturday:  Lady Death

I wanted to watch a short movie and this technically was short in minutes.  However it was emotionally long due to how painfully average it was.  I don't know how you make the story of a busty (and how) warrior fighting Lucifer in the pits of hell so yawn-inducing but I honestly checked the clock every three minutes. 

Now that I've fulfilled my weekly obligation I am free to return to Arkham Asylum for some more Bat-fun.  God, I'm so ashamed of myself right now.

I can already tell you what I don't like about this month's reading guide (100 Must-Read Life-Changing Books).  It doesn't have an index.  I had to carefully flip through the whole thing looking for the words in bold in order to figure out which books I own.  Pain in the ass.

The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Symposium by Plato
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft
Lucky by Alice Sebold
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Paradise by Toni Morrison
The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

I hope I at least get to the Campbell one because I've wanted to read that for really long time.  The selection in this book is a little weird though.  Lucky is going to change my life?

I did not take full and tender advantage of Sci-Fi month.  I wanted to give it my all but I got loaned a copy of Public Enemies (so not science fiction) and by the time I realized that I just wasn't interested, most of the month was gone.  Next month I need to be more focused.

Tales of Mystery and the Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe

I'm struggling to remember the stories in this collection, but I am drawing a blank.  I mean, I know they were his most popular works and if I was in mortal peril unless I could describe them, I could probably do it, but it didn't really do it for me.  My favorite was the pendulum one because it was the most grotesque, but I think I'm too plebeian to really like the guy.

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson

In the BBC miniseries adaptation of the book the main character's name was changed so that it was my name, which was sort of weird.  Otherwise I thought this was pretty awesome.  Sexing the Cherry was better because it was crazy the entire time so you just concentrated on the words instead of the plot.  This one was autobiographical and it suffered from Winterson trying to contain her desire to make everything magically surrealistic.  

That's Not in My American History Book by Thomas Ayres

This was the other book I was borrowed and it started me not giving a shit this month.  It wasn't bad and I do like history but I wanted to read science fiction and this wasn't cutting it.

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

I like the movie better.  Sue me.  I mean, he does a whole bunch of cool stuff here and I actually like the ending better but the movie conveys the dirty flow of the plot so perfectly.  It also makes me care more about the characters.

Timescape by Gregory Benford

Timescape is a beautiful and shining example of hard science fiction told with wit, character, and style.  The usual distinction that I hear people make about the difference between hard and soft science fiction (other than the obvious) is that hard is about the science and soft is about characters and plot.  Benford showed that it's very possible to do both spectacularly and I refuse to hear anything different from now on.

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

I've read about three of Bradbury's other works and I have to say that this is the only one that I've really liked.  He's great at writing short stories (like in Dandelion Wine) and when you combine that with science fiction elements, he hits it out of the park.  Color me impressed.

I didn't use this guide like I should have but it's not its fault.  It was a great guide with some unique selections and I can't wait to get back to it again someday.   

I just got back from seeing District 9 and I absolutely recommend it.

Sunday:  District 9

Monday:  No Country for Old Men

Tuesday:  Species

Wednesday:  Priscilla, Queen of the Desert

Thursday:  Untamed Heart

Friday:  Pretty Woman

Saturday:  Spaceballs

Nothing to see here.  Move it along.

I didn't forget to update last Sunday.  My Internet tragically and spectacularly died and I just got it back late yesterday.  I ended up watching movies that I own that I either hadn't watched or hadn't seen in a long time.

Sunday:  Life as a House

Michelle lent me this one and I cried like a bitch.  I promised myself that I wouldn't cry because the movie was being manipulative and I wasn't going to fall for that but Kevin Kline is such a good actor.  Everybody is good in this.  I'm sniffling again.  It's just so sad! 

Monday:  Gas-s-s-s

A totally and completely fantastically awesome Roger Corman movie that nobody's seems to have heard of before.  To me this is his best movie because it's hilarious.  My favorite bit is the football team (the Warriors) that treat sacking each town they come across like it's the next big game.

Tuesday:  House of Flying Daggers

I bought this movie years ago and never watched it for some reason.  That was a mistake but not a terrible one.  The beginning is gorgeous and exciting but I feel that the whole thing goes on too long.

Wednesday:  Mary Poppins

I hadn't seen this since I was a pre-teen.  Julie Andrews is so magically delicious that it blows my mind.  I really wish that they had made more Mary Poppins movies.

Thursday:  Versus

This is such cheating because I watch this movie every year.  Even though I call myself a movie connoisseur (and then I laugh because WTF) I know that if I was going to be stuck on a desert island with just one movie I would pick this one over Casablanca or Citizen Kane or any of the other million actually good movies.  This movie is not really good but it is exciting and cool and I watched it just the right time in my life for it to be my favorite.  Plus it has zombies using handguns.  That's awesome.

Friday:  Titan A.E.

I feel like this movie has a bad rep.  I think that it's pretty decent.  I think that the issue is that it's not a very good kid movie and yet we don't really accept animated movies as being for teens or adults.  It's a perfectly serviceable science fiction movie that happens to be animated and I like it.  Shut up.

Saturday:  Batman

Jack Nicholson is such a hambone in this.  I'm sorry but the Joker will always be Mark Hamil to me so this whole Jack Nicholson versus Heath Ledger debate is lost on me, but if I have to pick sides I find Heath Ledger's Joker to be a genuinely chilling and realistic villain.  Jack Nicholson is just a clown.

Now here's a link to Anderson Cooper's critique of Heidi Montag's performance at the Miss Universe pageant.  I kind of love Cooper a whole bunch.  I feel that he and Tim Gunn should wed and explode the universe with their combined ability to snark everything that's ever been.  At the very least they should fight crime.