tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30492859535609423042024-02-06T21:00:18.045-06:00Erica's BlogMy industry is "Not Specified."Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comBlogger1010125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-26826467708869753372023-08-28T10:32:00.000-05:002023-08-28T10:32:22.261-05:00Hey! I moved!<p> I live here now! <a href="https://ericahuff.substack.com/">https://ericahuff.substack.com/</a></p>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-5833776813702376592023-02-24T08:03:00.001-06:002023-02-24T08:03:23.651-06:00Creep; Diner-Style Buttermilk Pancakes<p><b>Creep (2014)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Patrick Brice</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p>There are many morality tales about the importance of showing kindness to strangers--maybe that beggar in rags is secretly an angel, testing your generosity; maybe that hunched old woman is really a beautiful sorceress with a penchant for punishing superficiality. Maybe it's actually just a fellow human, down on their luck and deserving of care. But there is another, more popular category of story that serves as a warning--don't be so trusting, so agreeable, so<i> gullible</i> or it might spell your doom. So when someone asks you for help but you feel uneasy about it, it can be difficult to tell what exactly it is underlying your discomfort: is it selfishness, laziness, prejudice, callousness--or just a spark of self-preservation? </p><p><i>Creep</i> is a low-budget found-footage-style movie in a category that I would describe as "politeness horror," or more specifically in this case "<i>compassion</i> horror." I find this genre almost unbearably effective because it raises a question that I ask myself all the time, namely: How weird would things have to get before I overcame my anxiety about overreacting or hurting someone's feelings in order to extract myself from a bad situation? Could I inadvertently people-please my way into a cult or a serial killer's lair? If you have ever thought to yourself "Oh no I definitely would have helped Ted Bundy load that furniture" or "It's possible I would let myself get murdered out of fear of being called a Karen if I made a fuss," then you probably understand why watching someone else try to navigate these questions can be so compelling.</p><p>The navigator in this case is Aaron (Patrick Brice), a freelance videographer who is on his way to a vaguely-described but well-paying job that he found on Craigslist. One day of video services, $1000, "discretion appreciated." Maybe it's a lonely, sexy 40-something woman looking to have fun with a young videographer, he muses as he makes his way to the isolated cabin. Oh, buddy. That would be a <i>really </i>different movie. When he arrives, deep in the California woods, he knocks briskly on the door, to no response. Tries the doorbell. Calls the number listed in the ad. No answer, no voicemail. This is the first of a few significant potential off-ramps for Aaron, although of course he does not realize it yet and has no reason to think it's worth abandoning a potential payday. He decides to wait in the car, where he is soon startled by the very sudden appearance of Josef (Mark Duplass) at his window. When he gets out, Josef expresses immense enthusiasm for the day ahead of them and immediately gives Aaron a huge bear hug. "Let's just do this now, because at the end of the day, it's going to be so normal. Trust me, that's not...anything weird at all." Wildly reassuring, Joe. I should probably point out that this film, co-written/largely improvised by the two stars and directed by the man playing Aaron, started life as a psychological black comedy before being shaped into more of a horror narrative, and that comedy DNA is thankfully still apparent throughout.</p><p>Once in the house, Josef explains that he has been diagnosed with a brain tumor and given two to three months to live, and that his plan today is to record a video diary for his still-in-utero child. He mentions that the brain tumor has caused some "cognitive misfirings," low-key laying the groundwork for explaining away some of his oddity. Aaron, a nice person, of course agrees to help him and is immediately punished with another hug. He is also paid up front, in cash. I am not yet yelling "Aaron, no!" at the screen, but that time is nigh, my friends. Josef gives a little speech that makes him come across as a very earnest, somewhat socially awkward guy. He then gives Aaron a high five, says "Okay! I'm gonna go get in the tub," and dashes upstairs. And thus we have reached OFF-RAMP #2.</p><p>Here seems like a good time to talk about why the casting makes this movie work better than you might think from the bare outline of the story. The fact that Aaron and Josef are ostensibly on a level playing field in terms of power in this relationship--both white guys in their thirties, on the handsome side of average, seemingly physically fit--means there are almost no complicating factors beyond the basic question of social/moral/ethical pressure in an uncertain situation. Their only connection is a pretty casual verbal agreement for a minor, one-day job. There is some financial imbalance--the money is obviously why Aaron stays in the beginning, although at some point it moves well beyond that. But Patrick Brice absolutely towers over Mark Duplass, so in theory Aaron has the upper hand in terms of brute strength. (When I first saw this movie my takeaway was that Mark Duplass was shorter than I thought, but what I have discovered in today's research is that Patrick Brice is <i>six foot six</i>.) Which is all to say that while I, a not particularly strong middle-aged woman, would probably have drawn the line at this point because staying would clearly be more uncomfortable than leaving, I can accept that Aaron, a giant of a man in the prime of his life, follows him up the stairs. But I'm not happy about it.</p><p>There he finds Josef undressing and running a bath, explaining that when he was young he had "Tubby Time" with his father and he wants to recreate that experience for his unborn child since he won't have a chance to do it in person. Now, I know that what I just typed out is objectively demented. But you have to understand that Mark Duplass is absolutely incredible in this film at threading the needle between "sad person" and "dangerous person." The <i>entire movie</i> is a game of "sad person or dangerous person?" And because there are probably a lot more of the former in this world than the latter, I understand why Aaron consistently makes the empathetic judgment calls that he does. In this case, agreeing to film an absolutely excruciating edition of Tubby Time.</p><p>Things continue to alternate between bizarre and solemnly heartfelt--there is a very upsetting <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Forum-Novelties-59449-Night-Wolf/dp/B002MW2KFW/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8">wolf mask</a> called Peachfuzz that pairs with an incongruously happy story about childhood, then an overly long trek through the woods in search of a pool of "miracle water" said to have healing properties. At this point I was forced to ask myself if I would rather be lost in the woods with Josef or the Blair Witch and...it's a tough call but at least the Blair Witch doesn't seem like a hugger. At one point Josef carves J + A with a heart around it onto a rock. Then, at Josef's suggestion, they go to a diner called Billy Bear's, where Josef eats pancakes and pressures Aaron to tell him about something he's done that he's really ashamed of. Aaron, <i>the people-pleaser</i>, complies with a sympathy-inducing story about wetting his pants as a child. Josef reciprocates by showing Aaron a bunch of stealthy creep shots he took of him when he first arrived at the cabin. I'm going to call this OFF-RAMP #2.5 because Aaron is far away from his own vehicle but he is in a public place with phones and such.</p><p>When they return to the cabin, it is dark out, and Aaron says "I think...I think I'm gonna head back," because he recognizes that this is OFF-RAMP #3. He agreed to one day of video services, and he has gone above and beyond in providing such. But Josef wants Aaron to come back inside for a whiskey, "to commemorate our day." And after a little more wheedling, Aaron, the nice person, agrees.</p><p>There is almost half of the movie left at that point, and things...well, they don't go <i>uphill</i>. But for almost the entire runtime I truly did not know which direction things were going to go, overall. Don't creepy weirdos also deserve compassion? Aaron thinks so! And that's why Aaron is the best. He's such a sympathetic protagonist, even when you are yelling "NO!" at him--which, by the way, I highly recommend doing with company. The first time I saw this with my friend Alex we talked through each escalating scenario while also glancing nervously at the darkened windows around us and it was basically a perfect viewing experience. Which is why this write-up is in honor of her birthday, by request--a thing which, based on my average view counts, is probably a service that I can offer to any dedicated reader so...you know, hit me up.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"The...tub?"</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>In conclusion: </b>Happy birthday, Alex!</p><p><b>Diner-Style Buttermilk Pancakes</b> from <a href="https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/diner-style-buttermilk-pancakes">Epicurious</a></p><p>Just a warm stack of Billy Bear's famous pancakes, perfect for a chill hang with your best bud.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvGgnW86NUQ2IuA7QrnBTXNw9597hy1el1gan3VviIuXEIrw4zgIADjw6q6HGyKsJhG6dhZQwgP9AjkObmsgZ-yPBuCZU9rGme3b1UckSQm52ItYWpoTwbSGPv8rJklJoZT1Bh2Gb-AkbVW9VGImvLGWw7eD9BKt_9p9l6_H3tBRuv_tH1sK-uDF8/s4032/FA05066D-D6C1-4B74-A313-0D5CD72393BF_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDvGgnW86NUQ2IuA7QrnBTXNw9597hy1el1gan3VviIuXEIrw4zgIADjw6q6HGyKsJhG6dhZQwgP9AjkObmsgZ-yPBuCZU9rGme3b1UckSQm52ItYWpoTwbSGPv8rJklJoZT1Bh2Gb-AkbVW9VGImvLGWw7eD9BKt_9p9l6_H3tBRuv_tH1sK-uDF8/s320/FA05066D-D6C1-4B74-A313-0D5CD72393BF_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-90735638854095095042023-02-15T18:58:00.000-06:002023-02-15T18:58:57.053-06:00Now You See Me, Now You See Me 2; Macanese Minchee<p><b>Now You See Me (2013) and Now You See Me 2 (2016)</b></p><div><p><b>Directors:</b> Louis Leterrier; Jon M. Chu</p><p><b>Had I seen these before:</b> No</p><p>"The closer you look the less you'll see." This is the mantra of the first film in the <i>Now You See Me</i> series, a terrifically-premised couple of movies about magicians who use the tricks of the trade to Robin Hood money away from unsavory people and distribute it to those who have either been wronged financially or happen to be standing on the streets of London. The phrase opens the movie and is repeated a few times throughout. It's the kind of thing that sounds smart and mysterious, especially before the action gets going and you aren't quite sure yet how events are going illustrate this thesis. It's also the kind of thing that, when revisited at the end of the movie, made me wonder...are we sure this means anything at all? Or is it just the catchphrase equivalent of a sparkly outfit and a handful of flash paper, giving us <a href="https://youtu.be/YW3MIixEps4">the ol' razzle dazzle</a> so we don't notice the emptiness at its core? Is it, in fact, more of a plea--don't peek too closely at the impressive cast and stylish set pieces or you might realize it's just an old Kansan grifter pulling levers behind the curtain?</p><p>Each of these movies is, in fact, a pile of jumbled half-nonsense wearing the shiny costume of a clever movie, and here's the thing: I'm not mad about it. The fact that they manage to have the cadence of intelligent dialogue is its own impressive feat. I don't think these movies are <i>bad</i>, I just think they're kind of <i>dumb</i>, and also that there is a place for pleasantly dumb, glittery movies in a well-balanced cinema diet. I want to be absolutely clear that if they ever make <i>Now You See Me 3</i> I will be watching it, popcorn in my hands and sequins in my eyes. Things that I like: close-up magic, loud announcers letting me know that I am at an <i>event</i>, shiny things, spotlights, double crosses, secret identities, people faking their deaths, Lizzy Caplan, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13320622/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">movies where Daniel Radcliff is revealed to be a cheerfully insane villain</a>, being given the ol' hocus pocus, flim flam flummox, double whammy, and/or three-ring circus. Who needs coherence when you have all that?</p><p>My journey with the first movie is illustrated by the state of my notes, which started off fairly detailed and then dropped precipitously once I realized there was really no point in trying to track all the details. By the second movie I had adjusted my brain down to the correct level and was just swimming through a sea of pure abracadabra vibes, which is probably why I enjoyed the second movie a bit more despite the fact that it makes even less sense. Nevertheless, this means that I am able to give you the particulars of the opening of the first film, typed up intently with the confidence of someone who is absolutely certain that it will eventually all be falling into place like so many tumblers in a combination lock.</p><p>The movie opens with someone performing a card trick straight to camera, which is really effective--he hesitates a near-imperceptible amount of time on a certain card as he shuffles them all past you so that you, like the mark in the movie, have that card in mind for the rest of the trick. It's skillfully done and I am already <i>amped</i>. The character performing this is a David Blaine-style street magician played by Jesse Eisenberg, and by describing my notes as "fairly detailed" earlier I did not mean "including a single character's name," just to be clear. Eisenberg, smooth and snarky and kind of a dick, is playing against type here--haha, just kidding, this role is <i>platonically Eisenbergian</i>. Which, again, is fine with me, I kind of enjoy his whole deal--at one point in the film someone makes a crack about magicians not getting laid and he has a low-key "whatever you need to tell yourself dude" expression that is honestly very funny. He is starting to hook up with the woman on the other end of said card trick when he discovers a mysterious tarot card--The Lover--that doubles as an invitation. Hook up canceled! Secret magic society calling! Eisenberg snark on the way out the door! So far so good.</p><p>Okay, now to round up the other three. Woody Harrelson is performing as a hypnotist for tourists at what seems to be some sort of resort. His actual grift is blackmailing a cheating husband by revealing compromising information to his hypnotized wife and then promising to wipe her memory if he pays up. Ethically....uh....pretty gray area with this one. Also, Harrelson's main skill--hypnosis--is basically superpower-level, which is something you just have to get on board with or these movies are truly untenable. He receives a card similar to Eisenberg's, except his is The Hermit. He was just performing in a very public place, but okay. Different kind of hermit, maybe. Next up, Dave Franco is on a ferry bending spoons but actually stealing wallets. For some reason this bothers me less than Harrelson's thing. He gets the Death card. We don't know it yet but his main skill is throwing playing cards really really hard. No I am not kidding. Last but not least is Isla Fisher, performing a Houdini-type water escape <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/isla-fisher-almost-drowned_n_3360776">that almost killed her in real life</a>. Knowing that story before watching this scene made it incredibly stressful. She gets The Priestess, because she is a girl.</p><p>The four meet up as per the instructions on their cards at a sort of magic-booby-trapped location and then we fast forward to the future, where they are performing together in Vegas under the name The Four Horsemen, to a huge and boisterous crowd. The name of the group is another example of something that sounds sort of good on first blush but actually doesn't mean anything, other than the fact that there are four of them. They are neither equestrians nor apocalyptic entities, at least in the first two movies. There are just...four of them. One of whom is not a man. (One of the reasons I like the second movie is that Lizzy Caplan, who replaces Isla Fisher, gets some fun meta lines like the deadpan "I'm the girl Horseman.") Michael Caine is there, I believe in a bankrolling capacity. They perform a trick that involves stealing money from a Parisian bank vault and scattering in amongst the Las Vegas audience. At this point, the presence of both seemingly impossible magic and Michael Caine forces one to ask, is this a<i> Prestige</i> situation where there is something that is not an illusion but is in fact deeply messed up happening? But it is not, at least not regarding this specific trick, although the question of whether there is real magic in this universe is...frankly unclear to me to this day.</p><p>They are soon joined by Morgan Freeman, playing a famous debunker, and Mark Ruffalo, playing a deeply incompetent FBI agent. OR ARE THEY? These movies have a lot of twists and reveals and I will just say that the first big reveal in Movie One made me frown and say "Sure...I guess?" and then every subsequent reveal, once the crucial brain-adjusting had taken place, engendered a calm "why not" sort of nod. I was at peace with the reveals. I was one with the twists. "Show me more tricks with pigeons," I would say serenely. </p><p>Anyway. My pitch for the second movie is that Dan Radcliff says "You may not be having fun but I am" and I think he is literally talking to the audience, and that Woody Harrelson plays his own twin brother by wearing a wig and bright white teeth and doing an Owen Wilson impression. The MacGuffin in that one is basically the same as the one in <i>Sneakers</i>, a legitimately good movie that is mostly cogent. No one is who you think they are, except some people, who are.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself and will likely try to use in the future: </b>"Was that an act of God? No, that was an act...of <i>me</i>."</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> The first one is just under, the second just over</p><p><b>Did I understand the plan: </b>Absolutely not and I hope I never will</p><p><b>Easy Macanese Minchee</b> from <a href="https://whattocooktoday.com/macanese-minchee.html">What to Cook Today</a></p><p>Okay to be fully honest the only reason I watched the second movie was that no one eats anything in the first movie and I could not come up with any magic-themed food. No one really eats in the second movie either, but lucky for me The Four Horsepeople do slide down a long tube and get dumped in a restaurant in Macau, from whence this minchee recipe originates.</p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRVXolpmvVQG7KqaicRtcz99rlKMbTxmD5Vpibm_0NMEFz3B3YE2qUaP6QoyavRgUo97FSv3VtbZVuAoNN-pmAw29-X1f4htb7yYdx0j6n1lM217Ny9kc5qylY4mnqlcYcvw3_-kYCxOFjPQdvl1RAYKjxDVT7sGEO6t78q040_Q3yeFzg0nDo6EBX/s4032/9CC21DCC-1DE4-4ECD-957B-886B5C97C2FC_1_201_a.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRVXolpmvVQG7KqaicRtcz99rlKMbTxmD5Vpibm_0NMEFz3B3YE2qUaP6QoyavRgUo97FSv3VtbZVuAoNN-pmAw29-X1f4htb7yYdx0j6n1lM217Ny9kc5qylY4mnqlcYcvw3_-kYCxOFjPQdvl1RAYKjxDVT7sGEO6t78q040_Q3yeFzg0nDo6EBX/s320/9CC21DCC-1DE4-4ECD-957B-886B5C97C2FC_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br />.<p></p><p><b>Up next:</b> A birthday special request which is not a heist movie, unless you consider Mark Duplass craftily stealing my full attention for 77 minutes a heist</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-5062644493069128272023-02-08T10:42:00.002-06:002023-02-08T10:49:37.797-06:00The Thomas Crown Affair; Pan-Seared Fish with Tomatoes and Capers over Rice Pilaf<p><b>The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> John McTiernan</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> No</p><p>The biggest advantage to creating content that no one asked for is probably the ability to surrender to the occasional bout of Pierce Brosnan-induced writers block without fear of consequence. There is, unfortunately, no one to fire me from this gig. I can't even figure out how to get comments to work on here, which means you would have to go to the trouble of contacting me through a different medium in order to tell me to either work harder or to quit entirely, a degree of effort beyond the motivation level of either my supporters or my haters. All of which means that I watched the 1999 remake of <i>The Thomas Crown Affair</i> about a month ago, made a somewhat elaborate meal to accompany it, then abandoned the blinking cursor because for whatever reason I didn't feel like writing about this movie. And, judging by this opening paragraph of feet draggery, I still don't.</p><p>Thomas Crown is a very handsome and wealthy man who is bored by what an alpha he is. I believe he has more or less the same job as Richard Gere in <i>Pretty Woman</i>, except here we are meant to be impressed rather than repulsed by its heartless capitalist nature. His bottomless resource pool means that he has access to the type of equipment that essentially makes him Batman, but instead of fighting crime in a legally/ethically murky fashion, he uses it to waste everyone else's time because that is fun for him, as a sociopath. We the audience are rooting for him because he is played by Pierce Brosnan and the movie keeps indicating that we should be doing so. Also, our alternative is Dennis Leary.</p><p>Obviously what has happened here is that I made the fatal mistake of approaching a 24-year-old movie with a great deal of confidence that I would enjoy it. I know better than to do this! And yet. Here is a movie that I certainly would have liked at the time of its release but find to have aged a bit sourly, the <i>exact feeling </i>I was braced for when watching <i>The Italian Job</i> and surprised not to find therein. And now I've taken this slightly soured film out of storage and left it on the counter of my brain for multiple weeks, where it has started to grow mold and give off a sort of...odor.</p><p>The actual heisting elements of the film are pretty good. It's fun to use a Trojan horse to sneak into a building, although I worry about the educational level of the American public if <i>anyone</i> working at <i>any</i> building is like "sure, I'll sign for this giant horse no one ordered." Doomed to repeat, etc. It's amusing to watch what are clearly enormous hired thugs pretend to be docents. It's <i>interesting</i> to observe Thomas Crown interrupting the heist that <i>he staged</i> with his own secret mini-heist, although I believe this was also the point of no return in terms of my ability to overlook his many glaring personality flaws. It's one thing to be a soulless, bloodsucking captain of whatever in the normal course of the late-90s finance industry, but here he has hired undocumented laborers under false pretenses for the sole purpose of setting them up to get arrested and remove attention from himself. That sucks! I know they are throw-away movie thugs, but it genuinely sucks! It is, however, undeniably impressive that as someone my exact current age he manages to drop to the floor and wriggle underneath a metal barrier without drawing a lot of attention to himself, a feat I am certainly not capable of at this time. Apparently I am in my prime heisting years and didn't even realize it. (Also my prime having sex on a large marble staircase years, but sneaking through museum security looked significantly more comfortable if I'm being honest.)</p><p>Crown is being pursued sort of listlessly by the police, represented by Dennis Leary and Frankie Faison, who is playing the only character I liked in this movie. He's a cop and he's not really doing his job especially well, but he's so <i>cheerful</i> in every scene. Crown is being pursued much more aggressively by Rene Russo, who, I feel I should point out, <i>I absolutely love</i>, playing a character who is a Late 90s Sexy Woman. Her hair is always artfully hovering 3/4 of an inch away from her scalp, as dictated by the gravity of the era. She wears tight clothes and is an ambitious, tough talking business dealer. She only consumes green juice and Pepsi One. She is thrilled by the hunt but also inexplicably intrigued by the fact that Pierce Brosnan destroys a sailboat for laughs. This is appealing, to Late 90s Sexy Woman. She values a man who has money and refuses to do anything even remotely useful with it. It's the late 90s, baby! The end of history!</p><p>The middle part of the movie has far too much sexy saxophone and yelling and crying and not nearly enough planning and heisting. Eventually, we get to the end, which goes pretty hard and almost makes up for the fact that the hero of this film might be <i>actually evil. </i>The climactic set piece involves lots of fellas in hats, being confusing in a museum. I like it. I do not like that the Dennis Leary monologue meant to make him sympathetic involves him beating a suspect unconscious because he was sad, but it just wouldn't be a <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/12/die-hard-twinkies.html">McTiernan joint</a> without that shit. John McTiernan has never met a cop abusing their power who he didn't feel sorry for. Anyway, Frankie Faison would never. Too cheerful.</p><p>Y'all know me. I desperately want to root for the heisters if at all possible. I managed to root for <i><a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-italian-job-venetian-risotto.html">Mark Wahlberg</a></i> with very little friction. I approach every film absolutely desperate to be charmed. And I certainly understand why people liked this movie so much, although I do sort of wonder how much Rene Russo being topless a lot ran up the numbers there. Or hairy-chested, dad-jeans-wearing Brosnan for that matter. Or, you know...Dennis Leary, I guess. The world is a wide and varied place.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: "</b>Oh....Renoir"</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>Did I understand the plan: </b>The plan? Yes. The point of the plan? Not especially.</p><p><b>Pan-Seared Halibut</b> from <a href="https://amediterraneangourmet.com/pan-seared-halibut-with-tomato-caper-sauce/">A Mediterranean Gourmet</a> and <b>Easy Rice Pilaf </b>from <a href="https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/rice_pilaf/">Simply Recipes</a></p><p>At one point they namecheck <a href="https://www.cipriani.com/us/">Cipriani</a>, where Rene Russo generically orders "the fish." We don't actually see her eat "the fish," because, as previously noted, I am almost positive her character has an eating disorder and only consumes green juice and Pepsi One. Nevertheless, there is some sort of pan-seared fish over rice pilaf on their menu, so, here we are. Or, here we were several weeks ago. I think this was fine.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKfGRurl-0yGkoRTD7tPSG68mXOZoH6OXZVNVU-nucQ59qr4smpAne0YdjrHFbXB0tISXauJDvyoQJzuSsplbocbE6vzQiQ5tos8Qyv-vKYBOl_3unrnal2EAlBGElyvVAB39lPp2TUEtgjrOMncYkIYT4OqRmcywfd2hWJbxxbuGGFZhhqDkCAijE/s3202/8899B0E0-A81F-43E1-A09F-9F573D7581DC_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3202" data-original-width="2787" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKfGRurl-0yGkoRTD7tPSG68mXOZoH6OXZVNVU-nucQ59qr4smpAne0YdjrHFbXB0tISXauJDvyoQJzuSsplbocbE6vzQiQ5tos8Qyv-vKYBOl_3unrnal2EAlBGElyvVAB39lPp2TUEtgjrOMncYkIYT4OqRmcywfd2hWJbxxbuGGFZhhqDkCAijE/s320/8899B0E0-A81F-43E1-A09F-9F573D7581DC_1_201_a.heic" width="279" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> <i>Illusion</i>, Michael</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-610379812590141852023-01-12T15:02:00.000-06:002023-01-12T15:02:51.925-06:00The Italian Job; Venetian Risotto <p><b>The Italian Job (2003)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> F. Gary Gray</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> No</p><p>So, first of all, I really thought this movie was about stealing cars, which (spoiler) it is not. It is, however, very much about <i>driving</i> matching cars in exciting and coordinated ways. Now, I have seen the original version of this film starring Michael Caine and the only thing I remember about it is that Michael Caine is in it and he steals cars, the latter half of which I am now really starting to question. Is it possible that no Italian Job in history has ever been about car theft? I guess I'll never know.</p><p>Second of all, I was wholly prepared for this movie, like many popular movies that came out twenty years ago, to have aged in a way that would make me think "oh well, I probably would have liked this in 2003," but guess what? Aside from the expected shimmer of sexism on several of the jokes, I in fact liked this very much right here in 2023, which is a nice surprise. I've actually had such good luck with these first two heist entries that my spirits are dangerously high and I am considering attempting another half hour of <i>Heat</i> just to even things out a bit.</p><p>The opening credits are promising-- they're giving detailed plans, maps, teamwork, and exotic locales. Notes, measurements, distances, I truly cannot get enough <i>planning</i>. Did I get a look at one of those opening maps and excitedly think to myself "oh, that’s Italy!" for one second before remembering the title of the film? I certainly did, and I want you to keep that in mind lest you ever mistakenly come to believe that I am in any way smarter than any of the movies I watch. Especially when it comes to heists, I'm just along for the ride, baby! You might notice that this genre brings out a much softer side of my internal film critic, one who has a fairly high tolerance for not-great dialogue as long as it isn't actively terrible or distracting or annoying or overly self-serious—and this bad boy’s got tolerably not-great dialogue for daaaaaays. If anything, this streamlines the whole process, because there aren't too many effective emotional beats getting in the way of the <i>planning and teamwork and matching cars</i>.</p><p>We open on the titular Italian job (I personally already knew it would take place in Italy, due to my earlier map analysis) with the team in place. Mark Wahlberg plays Charlie Croker, whose job is to be handsome and keep a cool head and also mastermind cinematically elaborate European heists. And look, Wahlberg at this point comes with some baggage, both as a human and as an actor, but I was impressed with how low-key he kept it in this and it's hard to complain about this bit of casting. He was in fact handsome and cool-headed, I don't know what to say. ALSO HARD TO COMPLAIN ABOUT: Donald Sutherland as John Bridger, the mastermind mentor, tagging along for one last job which is how you know that he will definitely die in the process; Jason Statham as a driver named Handsome Rob; Seth Green as Lyle, the computer guy who does a very funny imitation of Handsome Rob in a later scene; Yasiin Bey aka Mos Def as Left Ear, the guy who blows things up; and Edward Norton as Steve, the guy who has a mustache and looks like he is only here out of contractual obligation.</p><p>The heist itself is both interesting and easy to follow and frankly I think more movies should open with someone blowing a rectangle out of two floors of a building so that a safe will drop neatly through into a Venetian canal where scuba-clad divers then crack it and extract $35 million worth of Balinese-dancer-stamped gold bricks and escape on motor boats while the Italian boat police and the protectors of said gold bricks chase them. Like, if we're worried about the state of the theatrical model of movie releases, I'm just saying, it's right there. The people want canal chases!</p><p>The people also want victory toasts in the snowy Dolemites while everyone congratulates themselves for being geniuses and not needing guns (I genuinely appreciated the not needing guns aspect) and prematurely gushes about what expensive item they will be purchasing with their cut. Everyone, that is, except mustachioed Steve, who has no original ideas of his own, and is also debating whether the deal that got him his breakout role in <i>Primal Fear </i>was worth being coerced into standing here right now.</p><p>Well, curse Steve's sudden but inevitable betrayal, because that's right--it's a double-cross. THE PEOPLE WANT A DOUBLE-CROSS. Steve and his Italian minions shoot Donald Sutherland and attempt to shoot everyone else, but by that point they're all underwater and sharing an oxygen tank and he can't see them so eventually when no one else surfaces he gives up. This part, to me, was pretty funny because when you're talking $35 million I would maybe wait a full oxygen tank's worth of time just to make sure that the group of people I just screwed over and left for dead were actually dead. Not Steve! Steve doesn't even want to be here! Do you know how heavy $35 million worth of gold bricks are? This whole thing is, frankly, a huge hassle for Steve.</p><p>Anyway, all of this happens before Charlize Theron as Stella Bridger, the deceased John Bridger's daughter, even gets involved. That's how hard this movie goes. The one-last-job heist is just a <i>set-up for the revenge heist</i>. I will not detail every step of the revenge heist plot, but Charlize gets to pretend to be a cable technician or something, which is hilarious, because...as much as the movie tries to lampshade it, the idea of <i>Charlize Theron</i> walking into your house because your television stopped working is so preposterous that no reasonable human would accept it. You would just greet her at the front door and shake your head in confusion until she left. Good thing Steve <i>doesn't care about anything</i>.</p><p>This movie has aged much better than I expected, but there are some 2003 signifiers: Charlize's thin eyebrows, hiding a spy cam in an American flag pin as though that's a normal accessory, Seth Green typing furiously into a Dell and claiming to have invented Napster, Ed Norton thinking he is too good for this good-ass movie.</p><p>Also, there is a helicopter vs. car chase that is honestly amazing. The helicopter swings into a parking garage like it's the freaking Predator or something. To me, that's cinema.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>[Left Ear, in response to hearing that the tiles in Steve's house are imported from a monastery] "Monastery for punk-ass creeps."</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>Did I understand the plan: </b>I did not understand any of the specifics of the computer hacking aspect, but I also did not try to do so. Sometimes when they are explaining things in these movies my brain sort of zones out so that it will be more surprising when I watch it happen later. I did understand all the moving pieces and the general goal.</p><p><b>Risi e Bisi</b> from <a href="https://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/risi_e_bisi_italian_rice_and_peas/">Simply Recipes</a></p><p>Ugh, no one eats in heist movies. They're too busy heisting and swigging victory champagne. I guess this risotto is something that other, non-heist-related people might have been eating in Venice as several boats flew by them at alarming speeds.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXgoWsVlvGCqHvlyKV2SoMb9qEMIKWm2qjOqk8rbpN8EIDdyIvW3ax0IEUwSvR7t54d24C2Dd88mwO2mAFQi11m2DhXtn1avrSOmrI07OPxD5N3NaOhvGqC_5DSkvevHgVjgxCleyWA66gvF4AjXVXhU3Kf0Qs8XwHgYnNAoDRVfMkeO_lyPCkgReM/s4032/DCFC2B59-CD0D-4651-82FE-FC27E1EE690D.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXgoWsVlvGCqHvlyKV2SoMb9qEMIKWm2qjOqk8rbpN8EIDdyIvW3ax0IEUwSvR7t54d24C2Dd88mwO2mAFQi11m2DhXtn1avrSOmrI07OPxD5N3NaOhvGqC_5DSkvevHgVjgxCleyWA66gvF4AjXVXhU3Kf0Qs8XwHgYnNAoDRVfMkeO_lyPCkgReM/s320/DCFC2B59-CD0D-4651-82FE-FC27E1EE690D.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> I'm going out of town next week, definitely not to steal anything in a manner that involves a group of wisecracking characters with different skillsets and a lot of maps and diagrams, so I'm not sure yet. </p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-60780276989435476932023-01-05T16:50:00.001-06:002023-01-05T16:55:11.008-06:00The Taking of Pelham One Two Three; Subway Sandwich<p><b>The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Joseph Sargent</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> No</p><p>As a New Year's treat to myself I have decided to embark on one of my favorite film genres, the heist movie. As a New Year's <i>resolution-ish edification endeavor</i>, I'm gong to try to cover at least a few examples of the genre that I have never seen. Now, you should know that my very first attempt at this was a failure, as I got about 31 minutes into the 170 minutes of Michael Mann's <i>Heat</i> before accepting that I have been correct all these years in assuming that the work of Michael Mann is powerfully, almost elementally, Not For Me. Because I do not want to feel like I wasted 31 minutes of my time, I am now going to waste even more of my time and also some of yours with a mini-review of the first half-hour of <i>Heat</i>. This is the energy I am taking into 2023, i.e., the same energy I have always had about everything.</p><p>At the time of this blog post, <i>Heat </i>is streaming on Hulu, which I mention only because I would genuinely appreciate any fellow Hulu subscribers searching for the movie <i>Heat</i> and then letting me know what film or films are listed for you under the "You May Also Like" tag. Because there is exactly one movie in that category when I personally pull up <i>Heat </i>and that is the 1995 Liv Tyler classic <i>Empire Records</i>. I have many, many questions about this, including 1) Am I the only one who sees this? 2) Is the single common link between these two films that they are 1995 movies about white people? 3) If I had gotten more than half an hour into <i>Heat</i> would it have eventually developed some unexpected Rex Manning energy? 4) Does Robert De Niro yell "Damn the man, save the Empire!" at any point? 5) Does Hulu's algorithm believe that Warren's foiled shoplifting attempt makes <i>Empire Records</i> a crime movie? I need answers.</p><p><i>Heat</i> is a serious movie about serious men who know that both crime and anti-crime pursuits are serious and manly. They like to wear chunky gold rings and have sex with beautiful women but they <i>do not like</i> when beautiful women are annoyed with them for coming home very late and missing dinner. Beautiful women do not understand the seriousness of the serious jobs they have. They says things like "drop of a hat, these guys will rock 'n roll" about a brutal triple homicide and do not mean it to be remotely humorous, because things are not funny in the serious man crime game. Humor is for other people, possibly the beautiful women although I doubt it. I highly recommend this film if you like any of the above elements or if you enjoy the ecstatic sense of freedom that comes with abandoning a piece of art that is making you very weary. Alternatively, you can simply do what I did at the recommendation of my brother, which is <a href="https://youtu.be/mfT-UZCA6Tg">watch Tom Hiddleston perform the diner scene to the mild amusement of Robert De Niro on the Graham Norton Show</a>.</p><p>Now, lest you think I have a blanket aversion to manly men, let me go ahead and introduce you to one tall, rumpled drink of water named Walter Matthau, aka NYC transit cop Lt. Garber. Garber has a brightly colored plaid shirt, the yellowest necktie on God's green earth, a boring job, and borderline-worthless colleagues. The subway train leaving Pelham Station at 1:23 is there for the taking. It's the 1970s, baby! And it's dirtbags all the way down. Everyone involved on both sides of this crime is a little schlubby in the best, most multiple-shades-of-brown sort of way. The hottest person in this movie is Hector Elizando, maybe tied with the guy who played Wilson on <i>Home Improvement</i>. You need some more guys? How about Jerry Stiller as a transit employee who truly does not care about doing his job in any respect? Or maybe I can interest you in Martin Balsam, best known to me as the detective from <i>Psycho</i>, sneezing his way through this movie as one of the hostage-takers? Or the lead hostage-taker, Mr. Robert Shaw, lending the perfect amount of calm British psychopathy to the proceedings? That enough masculinity for ya? There's even plenty of sexism and some truly unfortunate hard-r racism in the mix here--it's just that the 99% of the movie surrounding those elements is extremely well-constructed and fun.</p><p>The first ten minutes or so of the film gives us our entire setup in a satisfyingly economical way, not to mention some banging 70s horns. We see a man in a hat, glasses, a mustache, and a trench coat board a subway train--is he suspicious or is it just the 1970s? But then we see an identically outfitted man board, then another--there are, in total, four men in glasses and mustaches and hats and coats and you know what? They look great. What a team. One of them is sneezing a lot. I think this guy's cold really resonated with me because here in Austin we are currently in <strike>hell</strike> cedar fever season. As this is happening, we also see that one of the train conductors is new at the job, as evidenced by the fact that he is walking through all the steps he needs to do and saying them out loud to the guy training him. We also see the diverse group of soon-to-be-kidnapped passengers boarding the train. At this point did I realize that my beloved <i>Speed </i>contains a lot of Pelham DNA? Oh, you bet I did.</p><p>We are also being introduced to Lt. Garber at this time--he's been tasked with giving a tour of the transit police operation to a group of Japanese executives from the Tokyo metro, which is both an amusing, effective bit of exposition and also the source of most of the movie's racism, so....uh, mixed bag there. The transit office is not exactly a bustling and efficient hive of activity--the general vibe of the entire building is "eh, whaddya want" in a New York accent. The degree to which absolutely no one here is prepared to or has any interest in dealing with any sort of crisis is outstanding.</p><p>But also, you know, <i>bad</i>, because a crisis they soon have--four bespectacled gentlemen have taken a subway car hostage and are demanding one meeeellion dollars within the hour or they will start killing one hostage per minute. As things progress, two mysteries develop: how do the bad guys plan to get away and who is the plainclothes undercover officer amongst the passengers? Meanwhile, the not-very-beloved mayor is sick in bed with the flu (sick to the point that we see a nurse taking his temperature...not orally) and just wants to be left alone to watch The Newlywed Game.</p><p>This movie is so much funnier than I expected, one of the villains goes out in a way that I have absolutely never seen in any other film, Robert Shaw's steely British pronunciation of "Left-tenant" is wonderful, the final shot of the film is a gem, and Matthau just absolutely rules in this. He's slumping, he's skulking, he's mumbling, he's frustrated, he's explaining how subway trains work to me by saying things like "there's a little gizmo known as a dead man's feature." I watched this entire film in less than the time that it would have taken for me to finish <i>Heat</i> yet I could have listened to Walter Matthau explain little gizmos to me all day long.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"Turn this thing around and burn rubber!"</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>Did I understand the plan: </b>Yes, mostly, although I have to admit I actually dropped the ball slightly on what was going on with the little gizmo.</p><p><b>Copycat Subway Cold Cut Combo</b> from <a href="https://recipes.net/main-dish/sandwich/copycat-subway-cold-cut-combo-recipe/">Recipes.net</a></p><p>The only sustenance any of the passengers brought on board was a sneaky bottle of purse booze, so we gotta make do with a thematic sandwich.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGlyaC7-jzoOq-JeaP1Mh9r_dp0Ps04uGqkyP5FuQJiCDS0X14SI9FzFd1zGhJoFzjONA4-QlrWLW7klcDG9wC5lx1m23T3UfKrTGBMZFvjt--UwHPtp3IekpxEtDfDBLvfswXNxrCXcArWcH7_AJgqz2FQGF7B0zW10yO4JPG1J71vKekVlA5bcY6/s4032/EBC12026-3503-49D7-B893-B67DDD462199_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGlyaC7-jzoOq-JeaP1Mh9r_dp0Ps04uGqkyP5FuQJiCDS0X14SI9FzFd1zGhJoFzjONA4-QlrWLW7klcDG9wC5lx1m23T3UfKrTGBMZFvjt--UwHPtp3IekpxEtDfDBLvfswXNxrCXcArWcH7_AJgqz2FQGF7B0zW10yO4JPG1J71vKekVlA5bcY6/s320/EBC12026-3503-49D7-B893-B67DDD462199_1_201_a.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> A remake of a stylish 1960s movie that I believe is about cars and/or how attractive Charlize Theron is</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-56946148802023225592022-12-29T19:46:00.000-06:002022-12-29T19:46:47.487-06:00About a Boy; Nut Loaf with Parsnip Gravy<p><b>About a Boy (2002)</b></p><div><p><b>Directors:</b> Chris and Paul Weitz</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> No</p><p>December absolutely got away from me this year, which is surprising because after twenty Decembers in a row getting away from me I really thought this was the year I would have it under control. But here we are, and my tree is still up, which means it's still The Holidays and therefore plenty of time to slide another non-Christmas Christmas movie into your stocking where it will go unnoticed and get packed up to the attic until next year because who adds things to stockings on December 29th?</p><p>I wonder if this is a movie that I would have lingering fondness for if I had first seen it twenty years ago, the way I do, say, <i>Bridget Jones's Diary</i>, because it is not entirely devoid of charm and it is very much in the category of British dram-com that I sometimes have a soft spot for. Even now it's pretty <i>watchable</i> and moves from scene to scene quickly enough that it's easy to not overthink things when you're in the midst of it. But I can't say time has been especially kind to this one, and I suspect time has not been especially kind to Nick Hornby properties in general if you happen to be someone who considers women full-fledged humans and not just sexy irritants buzzing around insufferable man-children, who are the real heroes at the end of the day.</p><p><i>About a Boy</i> is basically a sitcom plot stretched out to 101 minutes and spiked with weirdly heavy drama and era-appropriate rampant sexism. Hugh Grant plays Will Freeman (get it? he is a <i>free man</i>), a middle-aged playboy who has never had a job because he lives on the royalties from a Christmas song that his father wrote in the 1950s. He is sad about this. He is happy, however, about his lifestyle, which involves owning and doing anything he wants all the time and trying various proto-pick-up-artist techniques to sleep with beautiful women. One of my main issues with this film is the fact that it never succeeds in making Will's life seem in any way unappealing, no matter how many two-dimensional female characters abrasively harp on him about its meaninglessness. If I could live in a nice London flat with a top-dollar espresso maker and smoke cigarettes all day while I watched British game shows and shopped for CDs (I am also being transported back to 2002 in this scenario) and ate out at restaurants every night, would I really need the loving stability of substantial emotional connections? (This is 100% a failure of the film's storytelling and not of my own moral weakness in the face of on-demand espresso drinks.)</p><p>Through a series of cynical lies in which Will passes himself off as a single father in order to sleep with all the single mothers in the area (haha, just kidding--not the sad average-looking ones, as indicated by a jokey smash cut), he is introduced to Marcus, played by little baby-faced Nicholas Hoult, a 12-year-old outcast whose social crimes include having a bad haircut and an offbeat wardrobe and a mom who is depressed. The degree to which he is bullied for these things gives me real concerns about the British secondary schools of 2002. Said sad mom is Fiona, played by Toni Collette in a role so thankless that the subtle in-movie reference to <i>The Sixth Sense</i> in which she plays an emotionally compelling character feels <i>offensive</i>. We know that Fiona is depressed because she cries all the time, famously the only way major depression manifests in real life. She is also a touchy-feely hippie who earnestly sings Roberta Flack with her middle-school-aged son. The movie genuinely hates all this about her. The movie hates <i>her</i>. Just, so much! Toni Collette does have a very appealing pixie cut in this, and that's the only nice thing I have to say about the rendering of Fiona.</p><p>The film plays out in the most obvious way, which is that Will and Marcus discover that they both needed each other in their lives, but there are just so many strangely mean-spirited stops along the way to this destination. I know I indicated earlier that I did not hate watching this in the moment, which you might be starting to question at this point, but the fact is, Hoult and Grant's chemistry and individual charisma sort of paper over a lot of weak spots. Anna spent some time working out her feelings about Hugh Grant, whom she has previously only seen in Paddington 2 and a very quick cameo in a recent popular movie that I will not spoil: "I'm only rooting for this guy because his face...it's not<i> kind</i>, but it is interesting." "Maybe he has the hair of a jerk and the face of a nice guy. But with a jerk expression." Which is basically this whole movie in a nutshell: the face of a nice guy with a jerk expression.</p><p><b><strike>Line I repeated quietly to myself</strike> Exchange that made my eyebrows go the highest, like almost all the way off of my head: </b>Ellie: You like rap? Marcus: A little. It's by black people mostly. And they're pretty angry most of the time. But sometimes they just want to have sex.</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>Is it actually a Christmas movie: </b>Two Christmases briefly occur in this film, including the final scene, and the protagonist (?) is hilariously haunted by a novelty Christmas song that only serves to remind him what a piece of shit he is. The lessons about needing other people are vaguely Christmasy, but overall the Christmasness of it makes up a very tiny percentage of the movie. 3/10</p><p><b>Classic Vegetarian Nut Loaf</b> from <a href="https://www.thekitchn.com/winter-recipe-classic-vegetarian-nut-loaf-102222">The Kitchn</a> with <b>Parsnip Gravy </b>from <a href="https://affairsofliving.com/blog/2009/11/22/gluten-free-holiday-recipes-wild-lentil-loaf-parsnip-gravy-a.html">Affairs of Living</a></p><p>When Will attends Christmas festivities at Marcus and Fiona's house, he is served nut loaf with parsnip gravy. This is very funny to us, the audience, because Fiona's vegetarianism is one of the ways that we are alerted to the fact that she is a crazy person and possibly also a bad mother. Lol hippies and their plant-based diets!! She probably has some sort of ethical and/or ecological basis for her life choices, what a <i>loser</i>. Anyway, now that I know that this meal took two and a half hours of work not counting the amount of time I spent trying to find parsnips at my grocery store, I am even more mad about it. Good thing I have a tasty nut loaf to soothe me.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMIaWgvDdW86YiZ8WF0alXzFspXNaPdhnLWTymMq9e0h-Eu0sK3ZPhPrNUycWClUVZYce8pLYJIO5EcbInAB7Dx7IOehVhyiWsnirB2Q8gZyXYVBzGMGMlklqrioeRoWqer0iHAMCxRK9ZBp3dFKkWX1JiXwl78qHkfQm8kaWtAj3V-tdUYFD6HYX3/s4032/442AD862-0FDE-4ED5-85B8-946DA76DCD29_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMIaWgvDdW86YiZ8WF0alXzFspXNaPdhnLWTymMq9e0h-Eu0sK3ZPhPrNUycWClUVZYce8pLYJIO5EcbInAB7Dx7IOehVhyiWsnirB2Q8gZyXYVBzGMGMlklqrioeRoWqer0iHAMCxRK9ZBp3dFKkWX1JiXwl78qHkfQm8kaWtAj3V-tdUYFD6HYX3/s320/442AD862-0FDE-4ED5-85B8-946DA76DCD29_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> Anybody's guess!</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-25398972330165778432022-12-14T15:25:00.000-06:002022-12-14T15:25:43.045-06:00Catch Me if You Can; Chopped Salad with a chilled fork<p><b>Catch Me if You Can (2002)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Steven Spielberg</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p>'Tis the season for everyone to give the beleaguered FBI agent for whom you have a complicated mix of adversarial and filial feelings in your life a quick phone check-in! That's right, Christmastime is here and, as we all remember, that's when our beautiful scamming boy Frank Abagnale Jr. touches base with lovably gruff fed Carl Hanratty, year after year. Or maybe if you, like me, had not seen this movie in a long time, you <i>don't</i> actually remember the Christmas motif that runs through it--maybe you just remember Leonardo DiCaprio in the pilot uniform, surrounded by grinning flight attendants, with Tom Hanks closing in on him in a way that somehow seems as friendly as possible. If you're lucky, what you remember is the <a href="https://youtu.be/gaLDyrun_Cc">superlative opening credits sequence</a>, a combination of Saul Bass-inspired animation, a jazzy 60s John Williams score, and a minimalist recreation of the plot of the movie that lights up the reward center in my brain so aggressively I'm afraid to revisit it too many times for fear of burning out my dopamine production. But whether you recall it or not, this is in fact a film in which Christmas seems to roll around every 20 minutes or so, and that's why we're here.</p><p>It's interesting that this movie opens with not one but <i>two </i>flash-forward scenes: first, here is Frank appearing on an episode of <i>To Tell the Truth</i>, introduced as one of three potential Franks, looking spiffy and enigmatic and being grilled by Kitty Carlisle. Next, we go backward from there to a dire Christmas Eve when Hanratty arrives to take Frank from the French prison where he is in very rough shape and makes one last escape attempt before collapsing. So when we zip back several years to a 16-year-old Frank picking up his first lessons in mild con artistry from Frank Sr., played by Christopher Walken, we as an audience already know two things about his impending schemes: 1) they end badly; but 2) maybe not all that badly in the long run. It's like if<i> Double Indemnity</i> had an extra scene in the beginning where Walter recovers from his wounds and ends up on television where a celebrity panel is fascinated by his exploits. And that's because <i>Catch Me if You Can</i> is no <i>noir</i>, it's Steven Spielberg in fine crowd-pleasing form, and Stevie knows that unless the crowd is made up entirely of 2016 Oscar voters, they are probably not all that interested in watching Leonardo DiCaprio suffer too brutally.</p><p>I think the structure of this film gives us permission to root for both Frank and Hanratty at the same time, because on some level we know that they both come out of this thing winners. It also makes it all feel more like a game, which is a quality that I consistently enjoy in movies. When Hanratty first tracks down Frank in a Miami hotel room filled with check counterfeiting equipment, the question is not whether Frank is going to jail at that moment, because <i>we know for a fact </i>that it's simply too early in the story for that to happen. The questions is, instead, how on earth is he going to get out of this situation? And the answer is as delightful as it is unlikely--he just talks his way out. It's more thrilling than any shootout, more satisfying than any car chase. When Frank is successful in his lies, it's sublime; when he is less successful it's often funny. As a person who is abysmal at lying or making phone calls or talking to strangers or doing very detailed paper-and-glue crafts, I watch Leo's performance as Frank the same way I would any other of Spielberg's alien movies, such is the vast and mysterious distance I feel from such a creature. And I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but Spielberg is <i>great </i>at making alien movies.</p><p>Some other big director trademarks make an appearance here, likely highlighted for me on this watch by virtue of having recently seen <i>The Fabelmans</i>--we've got a teenage boy distressed by his mother's infidelity, we've got divorce, we've got Sad Dad<i> and</i> complicated Father Figure. When teenaged Frank is confronted with his parents' divorce and asked to choose which one to live with, his reaction is to literally run away--to <i>run</i>, as fast as he can, down the street and away from his problems. I found the childishness of it all very touching on this watch, and still felt the sort of visceral appeal of it--what if you could just sprint away from your difficult choices instead of making them? Of course, escape is never really that easy, and Frank spends the rest of the movie frantically trying to glue his family back together with his ill-gotten gains. It's a string of glamorous adventures--pretending to be a pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, and (briefly) James Bond--punctuated by lonely Christmases, filled with longing and frustration and usually a phone call with Tom Hanks.</p><p>If you've never seen this movie you should watch it, if it's been a while you should rewatch it. Everyone should go watch the opening credits immediately. No one should inform me that the real Frank made up most of the stuff in his book because I could not care less. Merry Christmas to all and to all the agents on your tails.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"You're not a Lutheran?"</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Nope</p><p><b>Is it actually a Christmas movie: </b>*Slaps the roof of this film* this bad boy can fit so many Christmases in it! I wouldn't say this movie leans into any particularly holiday-related feelings other than melancholy, but it does contain: Nat King Cole's "The Christmas Song," "Mele Kalikimaka," Leo wearing a Christmas sweater, and <i>several</i> chyrons informing us that it is either Christmas or Christmas Eve. 5/10</p><p><b>Steakhouse Chopped Salad</b> from <a href="https://thedefineddish.com/steak-house-chopped-salad/">The Defined Dish</a></p><p>At his first reunion lunch with his father after leaving home, Frank Jr. has to inform him that the cold salad forks are intentionally chilled because it's a <i>fancy </i>restaurant. Frank Sr. seems uncomfortable, we assume for class-related reasons, but as my children can now tell you, it may have been entirely because chilled forks are actually very unpleasant.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtfzWM-fixsDcQM_zbHOHSonSaPYWrnc5y0tJS7_XFQoiGMQTCC1uLSwsno4gusSsbd-BGldHcVFmN7IhXS1gt2GHzivgs4tdOllLWiKazSJ2hvV5-369UNHufy58zqzaFibdfLklTP5B0hMq35DDOjibTYmETke96p40R6EiBlY3Tx9HuOQ4_ZeMz/s4032/C75DE08B-A450-4E79-9301-D99AD800D71A_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtfzWM-fixsDcQM_zbHOHSonSaPYWrnc5y0tJS7_XFQoiGMQTCC1uLSwsno4gusSsbd-BGldHcVFmN7IhXS1gt2GHzivgs4tdOllLWiKazSJ2hvV5-369UNHufy58zqzaFibdfLklTP5B0hMq35DDOjibTYmETke96p40R6EiBlY3Tx9HuOQ4_ZeMz/s320/C75DE08B-A450-4E79-9301-D99AD800D71A_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> I don't know yet because blog planning has slipped way down my to-do list this month, so it will be a somewhat Christmas-adjacent surprise!</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-7862641116308988272022-12-06T14:49:00.001-06:002022-12-06T14:49:57.756-06:00Die Hard; Twinkies<p><b>Die Hard (1988)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> John McTiernan</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p>I can't say with certainty where we are in the "<i>Die Hard</i> is a Christmas movie" discourse at the moment. It started as a lightly amusing observation--a sort of "huh yeah I guess so" passing thought--then due to the nature of the internet became a deeply annoying and weirdly combative stance, asserted with increasingly irritating confidence. But then, like many annoying internet things, it shifted into a sort of ironic "I'm saying the annoying thing but I'm winking" bit, and I suspect we may even be past <i>that </i>now--if anything we may have all memed it into the actual holiday canon. So I guess...good job, everyone. At any rate, here I am, bringing up the rear on this fading cultural quirk, ready to spend the month diving into films that are not necessarily traditional but do involve some level of Christmas ornamentation.</p><p>I feel like I should explain that I had seen <i>Die Hard </i>before this viewing but it had been a long time and it was never one of my go-to movies. My inordinate affection in this genre is reserved almost entirely for 1994's <i>Speed</i>, and usually all I have left to give other movies of its ilk is muted appreciation. Now, <i>Speed </i>director Jan de Bont was the cinematographer for this movie, which does give it a slight edge, because visually, the L.A. of <i>Die Hard</i> is 100% the same as the L.A. of <i>Speed</i>, so I am immediately in a comforting and familiar environment. You know who is not in a comforting or familiar environment? John McClane, who is looking pretty tense on an airplane, prompting the man next to him to give him some unsolicited post-flight relaxation advice: ditch the shoes and socks and "make fists with your toes" in the rug. Little does this anonymous frequent flyer know, he has just single-handedly bumped this film from very good to iconic, because Bruce Willis's bare feet are about to be the real star of this show.</p><p>One of my thoughts in the first few minutes of this movie was that it was surprisingly absent of any real 80s signifiers--the clothes are pretty muted, the plane just looks like a plane, the airport looks like an airport--and then about one second after my synapses had floated that idea, McClane lights up the first of I want to say 273 or so cigarettes right there at baggage claim. John McClane smokes more cigarettes in this movie than any of last month's <i>noir</i> characters ever dreamed<i> </i>of. This is fundamentally a movie about a man whose lungs exist outside any understanding of modern science. McClane, who is carrying a comically large teddy bear, is greeted by his limo driver, the enchantingly-named Argyle. We learn that John is a New York cop, here in L.A. to see his estranged wife and kids for Christmas, and hoping to salvage his marriage. First stop: said wife's company holiday party at Nakatomi Plaza.</p><p>Of course, McClane is only at the party long enough to be annoyed by everyone there and California in general, squabble with said estranged wife, and dig those feet into the carpet before the building is taken over by ostensibly German but uhhhh let's say "European" thieves who are preposterously well-supplied and prepared and led by one of the decade's great villains, Hans Gruber. One of the reasons this movie works is that it is smart enough to know when to just let us look at Alan Rickman's face for a minute. You're never going to go wrong letting an audience look at Alan Rickman's face. John, however, cannot see Alan Rickman's face because he was not with the rest of the party-goers when it became a hostage situation, so he is loose in the building and ready to cause some trouble for the bad guys, in between cigarettes.</p><p>Most of the rest of the movie is some fun cat-and-mouse stuff, a lot <i>and I mean a lot</i> of gunfire, things exploding, the LAPD being worthless, the Feds being straight up evil, the media being parasitic, and John McClane finding superhuman strength through the nourishing power of nicotine. I wasn't kidding about the bare feet being the elevating factor here--the jokes really hit and the action is, you know, actiony, but Bruce Willis'<i> look </i>is really the thing that makes this movie a classic. Being shoeless and having only an undershirt makes McClane more vulnerable but also more stealthy, and offers up an easily-assembled Halloween costume, which is a boon to any film's longevity. </p><p>It's also not quite the copaganda situation I was dreading, it's really only about one resourceful and slightly insane man running up and down flights of stairs while breathing smoke like a dragon. As much as I rolled my eyes at John's whole bit in the beginning where he's like "I had to stay in NYC because I'm a <i>New York cop</i>, can't be supporting my wife's apparently very very successful career on the west coast," once you are actually introduced to how the LAPD operates in this movie, I have to say, I sort of understood what he meant. Is it partly just that the guy in charge of the scene is the "mess with the bull get the horns" principal from <i>The Breakfast Club</i>? Well, it doesn't help. There is of course one LA cop we are rooting for here, Reginald VelJohnson's Al, who is in communication with and supportive of McClane from the ground, and whom first we meet buying just a <i>remarkable</i> haul of Twinkies. I personally am a child of the golden era of ABC's TGIF programming, and therefore have a warm and nostalgic reaction to RVJ's face, so it was especially jarring to be reminded that his character arc is "cop we feel sorry for because shooting a 13-year-old caused him to not want to shoot people anymore" to "cop who overcomes his past trauma of shooting a child in order to triumphantly start shooting people again." So..a lot of high highs and a few pretty low lows in this one, but sometimes with movies of a certain age you just have to dig your toes into the carpet and get through it.</p><p>Odds and ends: most of the actors playing the "terrorists" are not actually German, but <i>Bruce Willis </i>was born in Germany; one of the thugs reminded me of a big angry version of James van der Beek; gas cost 75 cents a gallon in 1988; knowing how gray sweatsuit guy is going to end up does take some of the tension out of his scene; the "yippee kay yay motherfucker" line is tossed off much more casually and amusingly than I remembered; my favorite character bit is Bruce Willis admonishing himself with increasing volume to "think, THINK" throughout the movie; I would like Reginald VelJohnson to tell me to hang in there.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"I am an exceptional thief, Mrs. McClane."</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> No</p><p><b>Is it actually a Christmas movie: </b>Just one long holiday party, when you think about it! It can be argued that McClane's major motivation, aside from saving innocent people, is to get back to his wife so that their argument isn't the last exchange they ever have, which could be categorized as an "importance of family" sort of lesson. 7/10</p><p><b>Homemade Twinkies</b> from <a href="https://www.browneyedbaker.com/homemade-hostess-twinkies-recipe/">Brown Eyed Baker</a></p><p>Although Hans is hilariously munching on some party appetizers at one point in the hostage-taking, it was impossible to get a good look at what he had on his plate, so Sgt. Al's Twinkies it is. Please know that I <i>individually crafted these cake molds from aluminum foil</i>, in case you were worried that I had lost my ability to sacrifice significant amounts of time at the altar of deeply unnecessary blog posts.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVijfss60_nNi26EaS_3kkdXncjD-q9S0qj4Mw3SF_qFT5g_eel5bp89mmMunS8py81HofSLpbq8G2GLF0Z1RObqw6ZS7hvSqke2PTN9q-FwtQJLQFVTb_QkHxAiYPJOsz4Oq1gpGwWo86gD_9My4jM1j_yjdBEIcIOKWP8QNOH9btnRl2vSpa03jn/s4032/97AAB72C-3412-41A4-B14C-6F1B5E083080_1_201_a.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVijfss60_nNi26EaS_3kkdXncjD-q9S0qj4Mw3SF_qFT5g_eel5bp89mmMunS8py81HofSLpbq8G2GLF0Z1RObqw6ZS7hvSqke2PTN9q-FwtQJLQFVTb_QkHxAiYPJOsz4Oq1gpGwWo86gD_9My4jM1j_yjdBEIcIOKWP8QNOH9btnRl2vSpa03jn/s320/97AAB72C-3412-41A4-B14C-6F1B5E083080_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> He can learn to pass as a pilot, a lawyer, and a doctor, but can he learn the true meaning of Christmas?</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-10168123798898330792022-11-29T15:54:00.000-06:002022-11-29T15:54:50.182-06:00Les Diaboliques; Fish with vinegar and onions<p><b>Les Diaboliques (1955)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Henri-Georges Clouzot</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p>And now we say <i>au revoir </i>to Noirvember with a movie that is probably more accurately classified as a thriller-bordering-on-horror than a strict noir, but it <i>is </i>in black and white and involves an impressively dispassionate murder and some excellent cat-and-mouse shenanigans and a <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/pin/511440101410444981/">Citroën 2CV Fourgonnette</a> <a href="http://www.themoviedistrict.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/diabolique01A.jpg">that I am <i>obsessed</i> with</a>, and it is French and I love it. I am hesitant to go all-out on selling this movie to you because I really believe the fact that I went into it the first time with basically no expectations enhanced my experience tremendously, therefore I am going to do my best cold, calculating, noir-heroine impression and simply give you the facts. Not to mention that it ends with a title screen admonishing you not to spoil the movie for others, <i>in French</i>, and I do not want this movie to be mad at me.</p><p>The film opens with my favorite character, the Citroën Fourgonnette delivery van, pulling up to the gates of a boys boarding school outside of Paris. To my 21st century American eyes, this little fella looks like a delivery van for ants. It's the cutest, funniest vehicle possible to exist at the center of an extremely dark story, and I want one very badly. I would be <i>so good </i>at parking a Fourgonnette. Making my little deliveries. Anyway, the person driving it in this case is not a jaunty delivery person, as one would hope, but rather the principal of the aforementioned boarding school, Michel Delassalle. Michel is not jaunty. He's a huge jerk. He does not deserve this charming vehicle. He does not deserve the staff he treats poorly, or the students he terrorizes, or the wife <i>and</i> mistress he abuses physically and emotionally. He is sadistic and appalling and frankly, with all due respect to actor Paul Meurisse, he is simply not handsome enough to pull off this level of assholery.</p><p>Michel's long-suffering wife, Christina, is styled like Dorothy Gale--gingham and twin brunette braids--and presented as a worryingly delicate due to an oft-referenced heart condition. Michel's mistress, Nicole, is a surly blonde with a take-charge demeanor who is styled like Rizzo from <i>Grease</i>. Both of these women work at the school with Michel and apparently everyone in the building is fully aware of their tangled relationship. This situation is a real mess. <i>Très</i> unprofessional. Nicole sulks in to work one morning wearing shades, which are hiding not a hangover (well, not <i>just </i>a hangover) but a bruise. Christina consoles her. The staff shakes their head in bewilderment. But Nicole is fed up--Michel has to die, and she has a plan. Christina, who is not only very delicate but also very religious and jumpy and superstitious, takes some convincing, but is eventually onboard.</p><p>Now, I am going to spoil some things up to a point and then I am going to slowly lower my shades and walk away. The first half of this movie is probably the most noir-ish. The two ladies have a plan, and we watch them unspool it. They lure Michel out to Nicole's family home in western France, where they put sedatives in his whiskey and drown him in the bathtub. Christina almost can't go through with it, but Michel just manages to be <i>that much of a dick </i>that she gathers all of her homicidal strength. Once the deed is done, the tension shifts to whether they can move the body undetected from Nicole's house back to the boarding school, where they intend to stage it as an accidental drowning in the neglected campus pool. There are several close calls and many tense discussions in the cab of the most adorable van to ever transport a human corpse in a giant wicker trunk. But they do make it back to the school, where in the middle of the night they unceremoniously dump the remains of this horrible man into the murky water.</p><p>The next day, both ladies eye the still, dark surface of the pool with mounting anxiety, until eventually Nicole "accidentally" drops her keys, requiring that they drain the pool to find them. So drain the pool they do, and there at the bottom are...the keys. And nothing else. Needless to say, this is a concerning development for our murderesses, who are now missing a corpse. Things very soon go from bad to worse when the dry cleaners deliver the suit that Michel was murdered in, freshly pressed. *Slowly lowers shades.*</p><p>This is the point where the movie really gets cooking and I am doing my best not to over-hype it, but a sort of proto-Columbo rumpled ex-detective gets into the mix and the mind games get intense and the first time I watched it I almost covered my eyes with my hands in the last ten minutes, which is an <i>incredible </i>achievement in tension for an almost 70-year-old movie. Alfred Hitchcock was a fan, and Hitch had a lot of issues but he did know from building tension. Anyway, this is probably the last black-and-white French film I will attempt to entice you into watching until this time next year, but if I have led you to discover any midcentury gems in the past month and you are absolutely brimming with gratitude, I will point out that <a href="https://jalopnik.com/the-citroen-berlingo-2cv-fourgonnette-is-the-best-kind-1849574490">there is now an all-electric version of the Citroën Berlingo 2CV Fourgonnette</a> available and I'm almost certain it would fit snuggly under my Christmas tree.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>One of the troublemaking students is ordered to write on the blackboard 20 times "I provoke my comrades' frivolity with my absurd comments," which I is something I personally aspire to with every blog post.</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> By <i>un cheveu</i></p><p><b>How fatale are les femmes: </b>Well, they don't smoke much, but the movie is called "The Devils" for a reason. 8/10</p><p><b>Apple Cider Vinegar sauce</b> from <a href="https://www.bigoven.com/recipe/apple-cider-fish-with-asparagus/2494843">Big Oven</a> <b>on cod over onions</b></p><p>One of the more stomach-churningly villainous scenes for Principal Delassalle is early in the movie, when it becomes clear that not only is he feeding everyone fish that is past its prime (half-heartedly disguised by vinegar and onions), he humiliates Christina in front of everyone when she struggles to swallow the rancid seafood. I promise I used perfectly good fish here and hardly had to threaten anyone at all.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD-pRg3YxfPQnVy9lkUxsNgEyT9tpHa_AAQ7-YP1zVGalsM4g40QqmFjii3dXgOU66SolOK2sV5QV7ABfMkaQys3p6gSiuHu_G6eGLBhaPR79v5XSRg-dcjO0wtIh0mTRdVKFzxDX2FA8vUe-AMIUYMuC4o8TqYpwLisrlKCF3Px5RSpSbJ29q70fZ/s4032/D29AA902-1EB8-4BAE-84B7-B523BE213E30_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD-pRg3YxfPQnVy9lkUxsNgEyT9tpHa_AAQ7-YP1zVGalsM4g40QqmFjii3dXgOU66SolOK2sV5QV7ABfMkaQys3p6gSiuHu_G6eGLBhaPR79v5XSRg-dcjO0wtIh0mTRdVKFzxDX2FA8vUe-AMIUYMuC4o8TqYpwLisrlKCF3Px5RSpSbJ29q70fZ/s320/D29AA902-1EB8-4BAE-84B7-B523BE213E30_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> I don't know if you realize this but it's actually a Christmas movie</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-24114342652362225042022-11-22T08:40:00.001-06:002022-11-22T08:47:54.933-06:00The Third Man; Sacher Torte<p><b>The Third Man (1949)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Carol Reed</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p>I want to quickly point out--and I don't know whether this is a brag or a sheepish admission--that this is the 1000th entry I have posted here since 2010, and furthermore, I'm going to kick it off by discussing <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zither">the zither</a></i>.</p><p>Your relationship to the sound of the zither will go a long way in determining your relationship to the 1949 film <i>The Third Man</i>. Personally, I enjoy it (although perhaps not as much as mid-century Britain, who collectively went so wild for Anton Karas's bouncy score that he became a top-selling musician of the era, then opened a nightclub called The Third Man which he ran for the rest of his life). <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opiaGrRLtQ4">As the opening credits roll and the strings of the zither sing</a>, I feel that I am being promised pleasant and lively European vacation. It isn't at all ominous, like the opening notes of many <i>noirs</i>, but it is appropriate. For as much as this film is about dark opportunism and elastic morality, the structure holding it all together--essentially the main character of the movie--is post-war Vienna itself, with its 18th century busts and paintings and marble and tight spiral staircases and rainy cobblestone streets, all in various states ranging from timeless elegance to age-worn disrepair to literal piles of rubble. The juxtaposition of the shady dealings of a desperate post-war population and the towering Old World grandeur surrounding them gives the movie its vibrant tension, and the cheerful strings contribute to the sense that no matter what becomes of any of these people, Vienna will go on, shimmering and zithering far into the future.</p><p>It also serves as a constant reminder that if you weren't mixed up in some nefarious nonsense--the "you" in this case being Joseph Cotton's dime novelist Holly Martins--you could simply take one step to the side into <i>das Cafe</i> and have a lovely evening. In fact, various characters spend the movie encouraging Martins to forget about his concerns and go back home, which emphasizes the degree to which he truly is not as trapped as anyone around him, until of course he is. But it's also hard to blame the guy--he shows up in Vienna looking for his dear old friend Harry Lime, who theoretically has a job lined up for him there, only to discover--hat and coat still on and suitcase still in hand--that his dear old friend Harry Lime has very recently been struck by a car and killed. So recently, in fact, that Martins goes directly to Lime's funeral--suitcase very much still in hand--and stoically dumps a scoop of dirt onto his casket.</p><p>One would think that Martins would find himself utterly alone in this foreign city, with his one friend unexpectedly deceased and his prospects apparently vaporized, but one would be wrong. By the end of his first day in town, he has been given a lift and treated to a perhaps inadvisable amount of alcohol by a British police officer, been both punched in the face <i>and</i> complimented on his writing by another officer, been offered a guest lecturer gig by the concerningly-titled head of cultural reeducation, and received a phone call from a baron friend of Harry's. He has also started to notice that not all of the pieces of what happened to Harry add up in a satisfying way, and that different people seem to have different versions of what occurred. Is <i>anything</i> as it seems? Generally not, in this genre. The police have strongly indicated to him that Harry was mixed up in some sketchy business and it's better for everyone that he's gone; Harry's friend the baron calmly responds to this by informing Martins that "everyone in Vienna is--we all sell cigarettes and that kind of a thing." </p><p>Martins soon connects with Harry's grieving girlfriend Anna, a stage comedienne with a fake passport, a preposterously beautiful apartment, and a landlady who is, for me, the most relatable character in the film--just showing up to yell in irritated German about the cops and so forth trampling through her building, always wrapped head to toe in what can only be described as a large duvet (I don't want you to picture a regular blanket here, this thing has some real heft). Who hasn't wanted to scold annoying people while wearing a full set of bedding? Anna seems sad but also stoic and world-weary, one of several people to tell Martins "You shouldn't get mixed up in this." What Martins soon <i>wants</i> to get mixed up in is Anna herself but she politely declines his advances, sadly and stoically throughout, even when he drunkenly tries to engage with a cat in a manner that is, to me, extremely charming.</p><p>The Vienna of <i>The Third Man </i>is a city where everyone is a little suspicious but almost no one is directly menacing. As Martins begins to tie some of the various threads together, the action naturally picks up, including a chase scene through the bombed remains of buildings, another through the intricate underground sewer system, a very tense conversation on a moving Ferris wheel car, an absolute crash and burn stint as a guest lecturer, and one of the greatest character introduction shots in all of cinema. Dutch angles abound. The rumor that both the producer and director of this film were on a great deal of speed at the time is interesting, because I don't find anything particularly frantic about the pace of the film--if anything, as I said, there is almost a sort of amused detachment from the frenzied goings on of the tiny humans and their wee dramas--but maybe operating on two hours of sleep a night is sometimes what it takes to make a movie this good. Come for the cobblestones and the high ceilings and the gleaming marble, stay for Orson Welles pronouncing the phrase "cuckoo clock." You won't be disappointed.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"I don't want another murder in this case and you were born to be murdered so you're going to hear the facts."</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>How fatale is la femme: </b>Poor Anna is not a femme fatale, she's just a pretty lady with questionable taste in men, trying to get by in a city back on its heels and minding her own business. No scheming, no double-crossing, not a single corpse to her name, but she does make cigarettes look very appealing and if she ever had a mind to start causing the downfall of greedy saps I really believe she could do it. 2/10</p><p><b>Sacher Torte</b> from <a href="https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/sacher-torte-recipe">King Arthur Baking</a></p><p>Martins mostly--say it with me now--smokes and drinks. But one of the buildings prominently featured in this film is the Sacher Hotel, as it served as the British headquarters during Vienna's occupation. Aside from being a world-renowned luxury hotel, it is primarily known for producing the <i>Sachertorte</i>, an apricot-filled dark chocolate cake and one of Austria's most famous exports. Between this movie and this cake, the fact that I have never been to Vienna grows increasingly distressing by the second.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpoL1i2wPx4YaFhXePTSydtceOowkBrjqvrVMTN8KjzBZi4U3tJNmhvyhGAth49HkT2PZU7PNwx3Vs72N-AZn-VP89Dm_JHIS8RxjY0AZI-n22B7q5naWZJRzJOovnDVJQcmBc7-_V9befLJm2VJVdDpsrJHdrEG54jkCor37JGkBSpiZValPDe10p/s4032/4E426DAA-FE89-4B22-BE2D-17FD7497DA64_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpoL1i2wPx4YaFhXePTSydtceOowkBrjqvrVMTN8KjzBZi4U3tJNmhvyhGAth49HkT2PZU7PNwx3Vs72N-AZn-VP89Dm_JHIS8RxjY0AZI-n22B7q5naWZJRzJOovnDVJQcmBc7-_V9befLJm2VJVdDpsrJHdrEG54jkCor37JGkBSpiZValPDe10p/s320/4E426DAA-FE89-4B22-BE2D-17FD7497DA64_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> Some French ladies getting up to no good</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-21118824880076442122022-11-15T10:25:00.000-06:002022-11-15T10:25:47.836-06:00Double Indemnity; Chicken Enchiladas<p><b>Double Indemnity (1944)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Billy Wilder</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p>I don't know about y'all, but to my mind, this is probably one of the most entertaining films ever named after a semi-obscure insurance policy clause. Director Billy Wilder and novelist Raymond Chandler, who apparently <i>detested</i> working together, nevertheless combined forces to adapt James M. Cain's 1943 crime novella into a crackling, propulsive screenplay with a dynamite cast. My favorite thread running through the trivia for this movie is the open disgust with which Chandler constantly referred to Cain's work--he's quoted as saying that "everything he touches smells like billygoat," not an insult you hear every day--while Cain loved the film adaptation and saw it multiple times. Anyway, I know which guy I would rather chain-smoke in a dramatically-lit room with, discussing how great this movie is even if one of the screenwriters was sort of a jerk.</p><p>The opening credits are full of menacing music and a shadowy figure on crutches, inching ominously toward the camera. Already I'm hooked--who is this hobbled man and what does he want with me? Answers come quickly, as Wilder gives us the end of the story at the beginning (a trick he would use again a few years later in <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043014/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">one of my all-time favorite movies</a>), opening with insurance agent Walter Neff stumbling into his near-empty office building and sweatily starting to unload a murder confession into his dictaphone. Worth noting that even in this entirely wretched state--we learn up top that this man has done unthinkable things for "money, and a woman...and I didn't get the money and I didn't get the woman"--he still can't help being <i>low-key pleased with himself </i>as he unravels the sordid tale. Walter is another classic 1940s American white man for our cinematic collection, less guileless than <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/10/cat-people-apple-pie.html">Oliver "I Don't Understand The Concept of Unhappiness" Reed</a>, but just as accustomed to things going his way. The difference is, Oliver credits his charmed life to luck, whereas Walter undoubtedly credits his to his own cleverness. This aspect of the character, and the way Fred MacMurray strides through every scene with six feet and three inches worth of pure self-confidence, makes for an excellent <i>noir </i>antihero whose dramatic fall we are instantly excited to see unfold.</p><p>This downfall, is of course, precipitated by a dame. And listen--unlike <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-maltese-falcon-pork-chops-and.html">Mary Astor's chilly villainess</a>, Barbara Stanwyck comes in <i>hot </i>as Phyllis Dietrichson. I mean, she literally enters this movie <a href="data:image/jpeg;base64,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">wearing a towel</a> and a mischievous expression (and, it must be said, <a href="data:image/jpeg;base64,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">a real beast of a blonde wig</a>, with which she must spend the entire movie capably and impressively wrestling for control of each scene). Her voice is husky and her flirt game is lightning-quick, and sure she's unhappily married but she's only interested in taking out a great deal of insurance on her oil-industry husband because she's <i>so worried</i> about potential accidents, not that she <i>wants </i>something bad to happen to him, what are you even <i>suggesting</i>, Walter?? I'm not saying this specific performance rises <i>quite</i> to the level of <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/04/whats-up-doc-roast-beef-sandwich-and.html">Judy Maxwell please ruin my life</a> for me, but I am saying...I get it. Walter is very clearly outmatched here, and I wouldn't give myself great odds in the ring with this one either.</p><p>He might have a better shot at keeping a clear head if he didn't have a classic <i>noir</i> appetite for booze--especially noticeable if you are aware that one of the reasons Wilder did not like collaborating with Chandler was that he was <i>allegedly</i> quite frequently drunk and <i>allegedly</i> inspired Wilder's next film <i>The Lost Weekend</i>. (In comparison, Chandler's complaints about Wilder included that he <i>allegedly </i>spoke too fast and <i>allegedly </i>wore a baseball cap indoors.) When Walter visits Phyllis in the early afternoon, he asks for a beer, settles for an iced tea, then casually muses "Wonder if a little rum would get this up on its feet?" A perfect line in a movie full of perfect lines, and a character trait that perhaps contributes to some slight shoddiness in their intricate scheme.</p><p>Rounding out the main cast is Edward G. Robinson, playing Walter's boss Keyes, the man to whom the voice-over murder confession is addressed. Robinson was a pint-sized actor, especially next to the towering MacMurray, but a huge presence on screen--probably best remembered for his singular voice and accent, most familiar to people my age as the inspiration for The Simpsons' Chief Wiggum. In this movie, his character is a pretty straightforward one--just an insurance manager with a strong gut instinct regarding fraud, but everything about him pops in in a very amusing way. He's forever patting down his pockets for a book of matches that aren't there and talking about the "concrete" he gets in his stomach when something isn't right. In some ways Keyes is the main antagonist for our leads, as he's the one closest to the case and closest to sniffing them out. But in a different framing he is, of course, the hero, and the only one with the correct take on our leading man--"You're not smarter, Walter, you're just a little bit taller."</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>The dialogue in this movie is so delightfully constructed and delivered that I repeated many, many lines out loud just to hear the sound of them again. I think the one that made me laugh the most was when Walter hands Phyllis a drink in the kitchen and then, for absolutely no reason, says "See if you can carry this as far as the living room."</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>How fatale is la femme: </b>Can't say enough good things about the bad Mrs. Dietrichson. Seductive, dangerous, plausibly convincing, great legs, amazing wardrobe, killer line delivery. This lady murdered her way <i>into</i> and <i>out of </i>the same relationship, you have to respect it. Slight deduction for failing to get off that second shot at the end. 9/10</p><p><b>Chicken Enchiladas</b> inspired by <a href="https://www.elpaseoinn.com/lunch-dinner-menu">The El Paseo Inn</a> and <b>Mexican Rice</b> from <a href="https://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-mexican-rice-recipes-from-the-kitchn-198867">The Kitchn</a></p><p>You will not be shocked to hear that Walter does not eat, Walter only drinks and smokes, but at one point he does take Phyllis's stepdaughter out to a "Mexican restaurant on Olvera Street." The El Paseo Inn on Olvera Street in Los Angeles has been in operation since 1930, so I figure there's a decent chance that was the spot. I attempted to recreate the Avila Adobe Enchiladas from their menu, and I can't say whether they're accurate, but I can say they garnered enthusiasm from every member of my family, which is not...usually how dinner goes.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz9pN-bbE-OSQYgaFC0YisPImm0zcOUY8_w5qVdnV6gDyQvcaQiSYCtvmifO4tuVLu1RUxRHfJZnUKtslgXmxWfD41pzyH9sYyiiScKjxH_iwUMQTLj2gXEVhlsDwjxLL7i3vxofFXlUganCb23UtTJRf8mqUFb4HcIDtHqGHPXVoTsLUscoE2OGsd/s4032/5B5AEA9D-57C2-40B6-83BC-E1AC04BFBC4D_1_201_a.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz9pN-bbE-OSQYgaFC0YisPImm0zcOUY8_w5qVdnV6gDyQvcaQiSYCtvmifO4tuVLu1RUxRHfJZnUKtslgXmxWfD41pzyH9sYyiiScKjxH_iwUMQTLj2gXEVhlsDwjxLL7i3vxofFXlUganCb23UtTJRf8mqUFb4HcIDtHqGHPXVoTsLUscoE2OGsd/s320/5B5AEA9D-57C2-40B6-83BC-E1AC04BFBC4D_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> What if there were...a <i>third</i> man? </p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-35384095975570031622022-11-08T08:19:00.000-06:002022-11-08T08:19:10.965-06:00The Maltese Falcon; Pork Chops and Sliced Tomatoes<p><b>The Maltese Falcon (1941)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> John Huston</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p>Welcome to <i>Noirvember</i>, where we are kicking things off with one of the true classics of the genre, John Huston's directorial debut <i>The Maltese Falcon</i>. Now, John Huston is one of my personal most-watched directors (is a phrase that I could leave alone if I wanted you to infer that I have spent a great deal of time considering celebrated and influential films such as <i>Key Largo, The Asphalt Jungle, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen</i>, or <i>The Night of the Iguana </i>when in fact it is) because I have seen his 1982 Albert Finney-starring adaptation of <i>Annie</i> approaching somewhere around 2,000 times in my life. So it's of course exciting for me to discover what he can do outside of the musical theater realm.</p><p><i>Picture it: Malta, 1539</i>. Thus beseeches our opening crawl, an exciting tale of ancient Knights Templar and a lost, unimaginably valuable treasure in the form of a bird statue. I would estimate that 95% of the times I have referenced this film in my life have been in order to provide an example of a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGuffin">MacGuffin</a>--it's possibly the most important unimportant item in 20th century film. A real slippery fellow, that falcon. Nearly as slippery is the beautiful Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor), who slides into the San Francisco office of detective Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) with a fake name, a suspicious story about a missing sister, and an even more suspicious amount of money to throw at the problem. The cigarette smoke is drifting, the blinds are slanted, the characters are clever but wary--we're really noiring it up, right out of the gate. Spade's partner Archer goes to stake out the situation and is shot dead in the process, at which point we are made aware of several things at once--Spade does not seem especially alarmed at the news, indicating that he did not like his partner all that much and is not easily excitable in the face of danger, oh <i>and also by the way</i> he was having an affair with Archer's wife. I appreciated the efficiency of establishing this character, who could perhaps have been mistaken for more of a straight-ahead good guy in the opening scene with Brigid, as the anti-hero that he is. No soft-boiled guy, this. When they boiled Sam Spade they boiled him <i>hard</i>.</p><p>He also talks to his loyal secretary Effie as though she is a golden retriever--"good girl, angel, darling, sweetheart, precious," etc.--and when he reports the news of Archer's death, he sternly admonishes her "now, don't get excited." To be clear, Effie <i>rules</i> in this movie--she's one of those pleasantly competent side characters who enhances every scene she's in. She manages to put up with a man who is perhaps a good detective but is, I'm sorry, a very bad boss, and never breaks a sweat. More than once my notes for this movie indicate that whatever Sam is paying Effie is certainly not enough. Now, to be fair, calling his 40-year-old employee "precious" is actually one of the less condescending tones he takes with other characters. He is amusingly dismissive, for example, of the cops, who <i>again to be fair</i>, are sort of whinily asking him for help most of the time.</p><p>Obviously the situation with Brigid and the dead partner and the unsubtle guy tailing Spade spins out of control, as these things are wont to do. The movie doesn't really start cooking until my two MVPs show up--Peter Lorre, my favorite bug-eyed Hungarian as Joel Cairo, a character we are meant to understand is a homosexual because this is the 1940s and his business cards <i>smell like gardenias</i>; and stage actor Sydney Greenstreet in his film debut, the inspiration for the <a href="https://frinkiac.com/meme/S07E15/329095/m/IEkgY2VydGFpbmx5IHNob3VsZG4ndAogaGF2ZSBzYWlkIGl0IHdhcyBpbGxlZ2FsLgogQWguIEl0J3MgdG9vIGhvdCB0b2RheS4=">"It's too hot today" Simpsons meme</a> and (truly, I say this with nothing but respect and awe) an <i>absolute unit</i> of a man. I genuinely appreciate the way his physical presence is used here--the other character refer to him as the Fat Man, but he never seems like the butt of a joke. It adds to his gravitas as an unpredictable villain. His character is wonderful to watch, lightly amused by even the most threatening of Spade's jabs, dangerous but charismatic, focused and not at all easily deterred.</p><p>If I'm being completely honest, I don't love Bogart as Sam Spade--I know that's probably approaching blasphemy for the TCM set, but to my eye his energy never quite settles into the character in a satisfying manner. The way he grins like he's an animal barring its teeth makes him a little too unsettling and distant, not nearly as magnetic as the strange and compelling Lorre or Greenstreet. I think he's better suited to something like <i>Casablanca</i>, where he is just as world-weary but less sharp, or <i>The</i> <i>Treasure of the Sierra Madre</i>, where is allowed to go Full Dirtbag. And I never really buy the chemistry between him and Mary Astor, which is unfortunately a pretty crucial element of the story. I never feel any heat there at all, just strangled breathiness and coldly arched eyebrows.</p><p>That's not to say that this movie isn't well worth your time, of course--the dialogue is snappy and the air is smoky and the villain is oddly enchanting. Everyone is wearing hats. When the cops want to haul a bunch of people down to the station they bark "Get your hats!" Wonderful stuff. The violence is realistically random and almost comical--a wild kick, a punch in a mouth. The lit up San Francisco skyline behind Spade's office is intoxicating. The moment when Effie the competent secretary arrives with a priceless treasure bundled in newspaper and calmly hands it off to a room full of people who are all half-insane with greed and paranoia as though she's fulfilling a grocery order is deeply satisfying. The fact that they keep referring to a gunman who is clearly nearing 40 as "boy" and "kid" is charmingly inexplicable. And that maddening bird--the stuff that dreams are made of--is always in the wind.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"Our private conversations have been not been such that I am anxious to continue them."</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>How fatale is la femme: </b>Mary Astor's take on the duplicitous Brigid O'Shaughnessy is more on the flustered, breathy, buttoned-up side than anything approaching a smoky siren. This is, of course, part of her character's act, but I never feel like she makes a turn into convincingly calculating trickster--she's all hats and stoles and ruffles for days and "ah, oh no, ah, oh my"s. Such long skirts that we never even <i>see</i> the gams. 4/10</p><p><b>Garlic Butter Pork Chops</b> from <a href="https://theforkedspoon.com/pork-chop-recipe/">The Forked Spoon</a></p><p>Food tie-ins are going to require a little more stretching this month, as the only substances consumed in most noirs are cigarettes, whiskey, and black coffee. In this case, as in <i>The Haunting</i>, I had to reach for the source novel, wherein we find Sam Spade dining on "chops, baked potatoes, and sliced tomatoes." I did not include any greenery on the plate, not even a sprig of parsley, because Sam Spade is too hard-boiled for that sort of nonsense. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh402Nqa_J4CsRdTqFR2FYQGC0UOixXLwHKDYQNg15UZk2XvLGFS05yHdxkbTlb-gzN8KAWF43cfS3iC0hj486xsLqmpCM6TL3f2AvACzr2Jxq7ABta5iJtTC7gPVVnH9M3kIiY4-Tk2o4h2BhnIGdS1O_v7u9tBiAtQu5h0gK1B12H05yiQBoJVHJK/s4032/BB96BE32-8B07-4F97-90EE-44272235F864_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh402Nqa_J4CsRdTqFR2FYQGC0UOixXLwHKDYQNg15UZk2XvLGFS05yHdxkbTlb-gzN8KAWF43cfS3iC0hj486xsLqmpCM6TL3f2AvACzr2Jxq7ABta5iJtTC7gPVVnH9M3kIiY4-Tk2o4h2BhnIGdS1O_v7u9tBiAtQu5h0gK1B12H05yiQBoJVHJK/s320/BB96BE32-8B07-4F97-90EE-44272235F864_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> Time to closely examine the terms of that life insurance policy</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-52307638487624179992022-10-31T09:11:00.004-05:002022-10-31T10:08:18.361-05:00Bram Stoker's Dracula; Garlic Knots<p><b>Dracula (1992)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Francis Ford Coppola</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p>I first saw Coppola's <i>Dracula</i> as a young teen, at which point I believed with 100% certainty that it was a Good Movie made by a Serious Director, a notion that I had no reason to question for a long time. Eventually it came to my attention that perhaps<i> </i>not everyone was on board with that read, but by the time I revisited it this week (in the theater for its 30th anniversary!) I became aware that there was some vague murmur in the culture about reclaiming it as Actually Maybe Good. Which took the wind out of my sails a bit, as I was ready to stand before you, wooden stakes ablazin', declaring this property as iconic and beautifully over-the-top, a maximalist fever dream of Gothic melodramatics, but I guess people are already out there doing the work. And having now<i> actually </i>rewatched it as a middle-aged person and not an adolescent, I can admit that those who said this is a Bad movie....may have some points. And those who complain that no one make horny movies anymore (everyone has muscles, no one has sex, etc.) <i>certainly</i> have some points, because you simply cannot find a film packed with so much writhing per square inch as this one these days. There is a <i>nearly inconceivable</i> amount writhing and moaning, particularly in drapey fabrics with exactly one breast exposed.</p><p>You know what else this movie has that you rarely see anymore? Wall-to-wall practical effects. Aside from one (unnecessary, imo) ring of blue flames near the beginning of the film, everything in the movie was done in-camera. PAs just milling around with buckets of fake blood as far as the eye can see, one imagines. Beheadings and stake-driving and insect-eating and succubi appearing from under the dang floor and monstrous transformations and shadows moving about independently of their casters and growling wolves and <i>a tower of rats</i>--none of it CGI. It's all old-fashioned movie-making, for which I have an inordinate amount of affection. And the costumes, I mean--<i>these costumes</i>. Apparently Coppola initially wanted to have extremely sparse, impressionistic sets using mostly shadow and light in order to <i>spend more of the budget on costumes</i>. This is the kind of prioritizing I personally would like to see more of in filmmakers. Take a tiny fraction of the "things blowing up" budget in Hollywood to put Gary Oldman in <a href="https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/dracula/images/2/2c/58a46839612600a7577cb4a483b3d126.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20200113055418">twenty layers of gray and little round blue glasses</a>, I'm begging you. Quibble with the acting, the accents, the story--when newly-undead Sadie Frost waltzes back into her crypt carrying a screaming child and wearing <a href="https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0103874/mediaviewer/rm3259577344/">the most gorgeously demented burial outfit in history</a>, it's positively mesmerizing. It's <a href="https://nineteeneightyeight.com/products/brooke-wagstaff-the-costumes-of-bram-stokers-dracula-print?variant=41713272258758">literally art</a>, the entire spread.</p><p>Because I watched this in a movie theater and am a courteous cinema attendee, I did not take notes on my phone like I usually do, so am left with only general impressions and not a beat for beat recap. I will reiterate <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/05/point-break-shrimp-and-fries.html">my previous point</a> that I no longer believe there is "good" or "bad" when it comes to Keanu Reeves, there is only Keanu, and you can either get on board with it or you cannot. I know that this film and <i>The Devil's Advocate</i> are often cited as proof of Keanu's exceedingly loose grip on accent work, but I swear to you every time he responded with a surprised "Oh" and it was the most chill surfer Keanu-sounding "Oh" that could possibly exist, it only endeared him to me more. Your mileage may vary on that front. Also throwing his generously-budgeted, period-appropriate hat into the accent arena is Sir Anthony Hopkins, one year out from absolutely terrifying the entire world as Hannibal Lecter, loosely committed to being Dutch but fully committed to having the best time of his life as Van Helsing. I <i>dare </i>you to not enjoy any scene that Hopkins bulldozes his way through, hollering about the devil's concubine and so forth. Honorable accent mention to Billy Campbell, one year out from delighting me personally in <i>The Rocketeer,</i> who aims for Texan but hits The South, but is too adorable to be held accountable for this in any way.</p><p>You know I appreciate a director who makes <i>choices</i> and this film is like the director choice-pocalypse. We're cutting, we're fading, we're zooming, we're showing you three things happening in different places at once, we're using a Pathé camera from the Silent Era to introduce young-looking Vlad in the streets of Victorian London, we're seeing pulsing red blood inside of living bodies, we're tracking characters on novel-esque maps. At the end of the day I feel like my eyeballs were simply too <i>busy</i> to stop and register any complaints in a meaningful way. "Wait that's silly--" I would start to think and then, wham--Gary Oldman is collecting Winona's tears in his hand, where they turn into diamonds, and I am leaning forward in my seat.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself unironically because even the corny emotional beats of this movie work for me: </b>"I have crossed oceans of time to find you."</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Look, you can't be expected to contain this story in 120 minutes, what part of "oceans of time" didn't you understand</p><p><b>Thing that I will now be avoiding; for safety: </b>International real estate transactions</p><p><b>Garlic Knots</b> from <a href="https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/garlic-knots">Bon Appétit</a></p><p>The human characters do eat some roast chicken and potatoes and such, but, come on. It's clearly garlic time. "Oh, thaaaaat's the problem with being a vampire," Anna noted, "no garlic bread."</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Oa0I6aH0sNxCaOiA9bqKhuOlkS9rzLZlX64n52A8qlhMYHI8pic2cSu_SPLdZtqUStsJF3CMYdrezXGyGUtK9JhEX_Gtbf9FVVsMdBPztdMGxNplkYwP7L511951YK_Qt766e8M7yi8pDfToP1Q5MULF4jqyDIeKsygKhEc1_lmZa5eSfLADJ_B4/s4032/988684C0-62D8-42F6-BF01-4C3A50AA73E6.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Oa0I6aH0sNxCaOiA9bqKhuOlkS9rzLZlX64n52A8qlhMYHI8pic2cSu_SPLdZtqUStsJF3CMYdrezXGyGUtK9JhEX_Gtbf9FVVsMdBPztdMGxNplkYwP7L511951YK_Qt766e8M7yi8pDfToP1Q5MULF4jqyDIeKsygKhEc1_lmZa5eSfLADJ_B4/s320/988684C0-62D8-42F6-BF01-4C3A50AA73E6.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> Grab your rye whisky and your cynical outlook, <i>Noirvember </i>is coming!</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-11314771973550082722022-10-26T14:26:00.001-05:002022-10-26T14:26:48.869-05:00Cat People; Apple Pie<p><b>Cat People (1942)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Jacques Tourneur</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> No</p><p>Before you get <i>too</i> excited by the title of this film (I assume everyone reading this has the same level of obsession regarding felinity as my daughters) I should warn you that this is really only a movie about a singular cat <i>person</i>. Or is it?? No, it is. She's a cat person. But if you ask me, she's also a grand gal who gets railroaded by the Hays Code. Railroaded, I say!</p><p>We open on an attractive woman at a zoo, sketching a black leopard. There is an element of Kelly Clarkson in her face and I immediately love her. She crumples up her sketch and tosses it in the general direction of a trash can but misses by, I'm sorry to report, a pretty significant margin. A tall, bland slice of white bread in a hat picks it up and disposes of it before pointing to a sign--the only reason I have related the opening moments of this film in such detail, because it is a delightfully 1940s sort of sign--which reads <i>Let no one say, and say it to your shame, That all was beauty here, until you came.</i> I'm talking hand-painted on wood. I want one of these for every room in my house. Litterers are getting absolutely <i>roasted</i> out here. Anyway, this is what passes for a meet-cute between Irena, our main character, and Oliver, the worthless man she is going to marry. This may already be apparent, but I am fully on Irena's side for the duration of this movie and blame her for absolutely nothing other than a tendency to be careless with her trash. </p><p>We soon learn that Irena is a Serbian immigrant who believes that she is a victim of a mysterious curse passed down from wicked ancestors in her village. She also riles up the pets at the pet store something fierce (one of the best things about this film is the little asides from random characters, like the sweet old pet shop lady who reports that animals are quite psychic, and while she has nothing against her sister-in-law, for example, the cats can tell something isn't right with her), but I ask you--is it worse to have an aura that distresses a room full of birds or to have bought someone a whole entire kitten after a first date, requiring it to be returned to said pet store, <i>Oliver</i>? Anyway, Oliver dismisses her concerns as backwoods fairy tales and in the same breath describes himself as a "good plain Americano." Ugh, Oliver.</p><p>Despite Irena's reservations, Oliver eventually convinces her to marry him, but she is still afraid to be physically intimate with him--even kiss--due to the curse that she believes will turn her into a killer cat if her passion is aroused. When, on their wedding night, she asks him to be patient with her, he says "Darling, you can have all the time there is in the world if you want it." Hoo boy, start that timer! He arranges for her to start seeing a psychiatrist who is significantly more horrible than Oliver himself--his general advice is "stop believing what you believe" and also "consider kissing me instead?" THE WORST. When this therapeutic technique somehow doesn't immediately fix her problems, Oliver becomes frustrated and confides to his beautiful coworker Alice, verbatim: "You know what's a funny thing? I've never been unhappy before. Things have always gone swell for me. I had a grand time as a kid, lots of fun at school, and now at the office with you and Commodore and Doc. That's why I don't know what to do about all this! I've just never been unhappy." Oliver...I absolutely believe you and also this is a hilarious thing for a grown person to say. Being a white man in America in 1942, <i>whew.</i></p><p>Less hilarious is that Alice sees an opening and is immediately like "well guess what, now that you mention it, <i>I'm</i> in love with you and I'm a good plain Americano as well!" Lady, they just got married! What is <i>wrong</i> with all of these people? Before long Oliver and Alice are discussing lawyers and such with Dr. Unprofessional and the fact that "you can't divorce an insane person" which--is that true? I thought mental illness was historically <i>grounds</i> for divorce? Anyway, I will tell you that one of these four people gets what is coming to them one of them gets what is not coming to them and that is because <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hays_Code">certain things had to be punished in American motion pictures in the year 1942</a>, regardless of whether they were that character's fault or if she had literally spent the entire film being like "I'm <i>trying </i>to <i>tell</i> y'all."</p><p>Despite all that, I found this to be a tremendously enjoyable film with some very striking and suspenseful scenes, and if you enjoy movies of this era I highly recommend it. It's even credited with establishing the horror movie trope of the jump scare that turns out to be something benign, which means that roughly one million movies owe some credit to <i>Cat People</i>. And in the end, all I will say is: <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1737557/">Dynamite</a> the black leopard innocent!</i></p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"Things have always gone swell for me."</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Mister, it's barely over <i>one</i> hour</p><p><b>Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: </b>The Motion Picture Production Code of 1934</p><p><b>Perfect Apple Pie</b> from <a href="https://www.pillsbury.com/recipes/perfect-apple-pie/1fc2b60f-0a4f-441e-ad93-8bbd00fe5334">Pillsbury</a></p><p>Oliver's only redeeming quality is that when he is upset, his instinct is to go to a diner and order a coffee and a slice of apple pie, seemingly for breakfast. A good plain Americano indeed.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNn62gVNHE5p8JnwJTHdE60gpoTRkwS11lhSfQ_cZfnzcjbNHOq6DDsLN39rfj5siEvycV1CGux-jqBh4Akr_McZ4hfCouGBk-h4x6IhBQDHfNGLHS4S6EVJeIEQlzbDwrk0jcPi3T0KFFVHKP9IPFNyjz2albf0sftj8sJOG-kkRhfCggbvKZWQ-e/s4032/CB69A07C-4A40-4D27-A893-BCAD4955AE44_1_201_a.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNn62gVNHE5p8JnwJTHdE60gpoTRkwS11lhSfQ_cZfnzcjbNHOq6DDsLN39rfj5siEvycV1CGux-jqBh4Akr_McZ4hfCouGBk-h4x6IhBQDHfNGLHS4S6EVJeIEQlzbDwrk0jcPi3T0KFFVHKP9IPFNyjz2albf0sftj8sJOG-kkRhfCggbvKZWQ-e/s320/CB69A07C-4A40-4D27-A893-BCAD4955AE44_1_201_a.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> Can't wrap up spooky season without a single vampire, that would be spooky malpractice</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-14755602426893979262022-10-19T15:55:00.001-05:002022-10-19T15:55:40.719-05:00The Ring; PB&J<p><b>The Ring (2002)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Gore Verbinski</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p><i>The Ring</i> is a 2002 American remake of a 1998 Japanese horror movie about a very creepy VHS tape that wants to kill you. <i>You</i>, specifically. I mean, also me. This tape is pretty indiscriminate, it's really a chain-letter sort of deal. Anyway, this means <i>The Ring</i> deserves most of the credit for ushering in the J-horror trend in the U.S. and also the blame for the many inferior knockoffs that followed. I recently watched <i>The Cabin in the Woods </i>with the 13-year-old and didn't have to explain very many of the references, but when they threw to the situation in Japan, I was like "ah, right--J-horror has a lot of spirits and creepy children and everything is sort of bluish green," which I now realize was just me describing this movie specifically, despite having seen many actual Japanese films in the intervening years. It makes an impression, is what I'm saying.</p><p>We open with one of my favorite things, which is: a gimmick. The FBI warning glitches, everything glitches, we're entering a theme park and the theme is <i>glitchy tech. </i>Two high school girls are chatting and watching TV and the conversation turns to an urban legend going around about a cursed tape that kills you seven days after you watch it. One of the girls confesses that she <i>did </i>see a tape like that..................seven days ago!!!!! Oh no! It was at this point that I gently warned Anna that Amber Tamblyn was<i> </i>not going to be a Final Girl and she said "No, she is a what's-her-name from <i>Scream</i>." I did <i>not</i> point out that Amber Tamblyn in 2002 was nowhere near as famous as Drew Barrymore in 1996 and therefore it is an imperfect comparison because the audience expectations are very different in those two instances, but rather said "Yes, she's a Casey." Sorry, I know it's annoying when people low-key brag about their parenting.</p><p>At any rate, Amber Tamblyn gets good and Casey'd but we don't really see what happens--one of the things I appreciate about this movie is how it selectively hides the ball from the audience and then BAM whips the ball right at your face when you aren't expecting it. For the most part it is a pretty standard modern mainstream horror movie with a lot of familiar beats, but it does subvert expectations a couple of times in the way it tells the story. In this case, you escape that opening scene thinking "well that wasn't so bad" because everything scary was implied rather than shown, and then a couple of scenes later in the middle of what feels like a very safe, daytime scene between two characters talking in a kitchen you get a quick flashback to what Amber Tamblyn's corpse looked like when they discovered her and it is <i>straight up horrifying</i>. My guard? Well, it sure was down. So kudos to Gore Verbinski for that one.</p><p>Cursed tape established, we meet our main characters, Rachel (played by Naomi Watts) and the young son she displays absolutely zero interest in parenting, Aidan. Turns out Amber Tamblyn was Aidan's cousin and they were very close and he's having a tough time. Rachel does not seem particularly concerned about this or about the tragic and inexplicable death of her 16-year-old niece but she is <i>very intrigued</i> when some teens at the funeral describe the cursed tape rumor, because she is...........an investigative journalist!!!!! She excitedly tells her editor "I'm cooking up too good a story" with absolutely no hint of grief for her extremely dead niece at the center of it. This is because work is her life and Aidan is just her sad little burden who distresses his teacher with his death-related drawings and makes his own lunch and walks himself to school and, spoiler, selects his own filmed entertainment because no one is ever supervising him. </p><p>Rachel watches the tape. It is basically the scary boat ride scene from <i>Willy Wonka</i> but in black and white. She enlists the help of her ex, Noah, another hot person who absolutely does not want to be a parent, which is a shame because he is Aidan's father. They spend <i>so much time</i> together not parenting their shared eight-year-old. At least we see at one point that Aidan has a babysitter, who reports that he was very good and easy to take care of, like, maybe you should try it sometime, <i>Rachel or Noah</i>. They can't though, because they are busy investigating. Eventually Aidan watches a copy of the tape that Rachel brought home and just left sitting there for him I guess. She pays some lip service to the fact that she's really gotta figure this thing out now that her kid is in danger, but I gotta say, you do not really see the hustle on the screen.</p><p>Several horror tropes come at you pretty fast: people affected by the tape show up blurry in photos and security cameras; multiple people have nosebleeds that indicate, I dunno, something scary; a patient in a mental institution is cryptic rather than helpful; animals act strangely. At one point Rachel is on a ferry and tries to pet a horse (?) that is also riding the ferry (?) and the horse is like "no thank you" but <i>she keeps trying</i> for reasons that I absolutely do not understand. When a horse says no, it means no, Rachel! So she's shushing it and shushing it and <i>still trying to touch it</i> and eventually it fully loses its mind, breaks out of its little cage, jumps off the dang ferry, and gets chopped up by the propellers. It's a genuinely shocking and awful scene and also is 100% Rachel's fault.</p><p>Eventually the pieces of the puzzle start coming together and it is a satisfying sort of mystery with nicely creepy clues. The fact that they have this physical object--a tape--and a bunch of equipment to science it with is pretty great. I'm not going to explain everything that happens in the back half because despite my personal reservations about the character of Rachel as a human I do recommend that you watch this if you haven't seen it. But I will say there is a terrific rug pull near the end of the film that elevates it above a lot of other things in the genre--this movie basically lulls you into thinking you're at the happy ending and then puts <i>all of its actual scary shit after that</i>. Respect.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"I'm sure it's a lot scarier at night."</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety:</b><b> </b>Low-rise jeans</p><p><b>Simply Sandwich Bread</b> with Peanut Butter and Jelly from <a href="https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/sandwich-bread/">Simply Recipes</a></p><p>No one in this movie eats anything (except that one horse who ate some ferry propeller sorry sorry sorry it really did upset me <i>so much</i>) but as mentioned above we do watch Aidan the parentless child make and pack his own little lunch complete with peanut butter and jelly on white bread.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPdAsOzfs9hUBkDydg_zrdfg4D5LtV-v4qNS1ga-TW3KTht7NW43ykDFK_2-4OMlE2A5yMnDroCP-2rSDeorvsnRRdBICNiOjaHdV-uk6J6hsGqAH_y_D__wHgJCgIXL0T-iBdoAyA5e3VraqZx6-zmT_H266a0E1WZmQkNnfo0Xn0URjU4JQOKJqu/s4032/F3D90631-CFCC-411A-94CE-798DF319F5C6_1_201_a.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPdAsOzfs9hUBkDydg_zrdfg4D5LtV-v4qNS1ga-TW3KTht7NW43ykDFK_2-4OMlE2A5yMnDroCP-2rSDeorvsnRRdBICNiOjaHdV-uk6J6hsGqAH_y_D__wHgJCgIXL0T-iBdoAyA5e3VraqZx6-zmT_H266a0E1WZmQkNnfo0Xn0URjU4JQOKJqu/s320/F3D90631-CFCC-411A-94CE-798DF319F5C6_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> A rousing 1940s game of <i>Cursed or Neurotic?</i></p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-70348072771740706282022-10-11T08:35:00.000-05:002022-10-11T08:35:28.281-05:00Paranormal Activity; Butter Chicken with Naan<p><b>Paranormal Activity (2007)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Oren Peli</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> No</p><p>One of the things I touched on in my <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-blair-witch-project-marshmallows.html"><i>Blair Witch</i> post</a> was the movie's funny-in-hindsight hyperbolic marketing which implied that the events in the movie <i>might</i> be real and also that the terror of seeing them <i>might </i>be fatal. But of course I am now a seasoned consumer of both cinematic horror content and cinematic horror advertising, a worldly and skeptical sort, not some nervous teen. And it is with that worldly and skeptical voice that I say to you now <i>aaaaaaauuuuuugggggghhhhhh you guys.</i> I can't believe I fell for this movie's over-the-top marketing for <i>so many years</i>. I was genuinely afraid to watch this film, which as it turns out is mostly about an annoying boyfriend and a door that swings open or shut once in a while, neither of which are the kind of thing that keeps me up at night.*</p><p>Released in 2007, <i>Paranormal Activity</i> took up <i>The Blair Witch</i>'s found-footage torch in a major way, spawned seven sequels and counting, and kick-started a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blumhouse_Productions">low-budget horror empire</a>. It borrows a lot from its spiritual predecessor, including a chyron at the top of the film thanking the families of of Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat (the actors' real names), setting up the idea that this video footage was turned over to the filmmakers by the victims' families. (The fact that the last shot in this movie--spoiler spoiler spoiler obviouslyyyyyyyyyy--is of Katie's face morphing into a literal demon, makes that idea is very funny to me, like their families saw that, shrugged, and were like "well here you go I guess.") And like <i>Blair Witch</i>, it involves far more scenes of scared people arguing with each other than it does of scary things happening. </p><p>It also thoroughly convinced me that it was too frightening for me, a suburbia-dweller who is often alone in my house, as the premise seemed to be "your suburban house is constantly doing weird stuff when you're not looking and probably wants to eat you." In that sense it is also continuing a different legacy, that of John Carpenter's <i>Halloween</i>, which spends a shocking amount of its fairly short runtime on various characters just walking down the sidewalk through a quiet neighborhood in order to impress upon you that your nice suburban neighborhood might be harboring dark things, such as an inexplicable gentleman in a Star Trek mask. The dark thing in this case is not a seemingly motiveless knife-wielding maniac, but rather a demon who is attached not to the house itself but to the main character Katie. When I thought we might be dealing with a ghost, I was interested, because I find ghosts to be compelling and scary and good vehicles for storytelling because there are all <i>manner </i>of things that a ghost might want from you and figuring what that is can be pretty fun as a viewer. I have absolutely no use, on the other hand, for cinematic demons. Demons in movies are almost all the same, just raging asshole bullies who are overly attached to Latin. And like human asshole bullies, they are very <i>boring </i>to me. What does a demon want? To make you unhappy and cause pain. But...making someone unhappy is the easiest thing in the world! That's not narratively intriguing at all! Like, try tip-toeing through life trying <i>not</i> to cause other people pain if you want a real challenge, <i>demons</i>.</p><p>Anyway. This particular demon spends the days sleeping I guess (?) and the nights just sort of wandering around Katie and Micah's big ugly house, so Micah buys a video camera to try to record the goings-on. Now, I am personally in possession of one (1) camera-adoring husband, so I do have some immediate empathy for Katie on this front, but I want to point out that Dan is nowhere near as annoying as Micah is with that thing. I guess this is in the grand tradition of characters in horror movies being irritating so you don't mind later when a demon stabs them (spoiler), but ugh. For reasons knows only to the entity itself, it does a lot of things that don't wake up the house's residents but do look spooky when played back on a laptop screen. So is it just showing off for the camera? At one point it moves a planchette around a Ouiji board and then lights it on fire, but there is no one in the room when that happens. What was that for?? If you were trying to get a message across, why not do it when someone is looking? This demon is a bully <i>and</i> a weird show-off. YouTube was a brand new platform when this movie was shot, but it seems like it might have been a natural home for Katie's entity, a true stunt queen.</p><p>Anyway. The funniest character in the movie is the paranormal expert who comes over twice and <i>both times </i>is like "sorry, I do ghosts not demons, I'm getting out of here." Same, man. Same. And the most inexplicable decision made by the main characters is to pull the very cozy-looking comforter off their bed every night and just sleep under a flat sheet. <i>Upsetting</i>.</p><p>*The kind of thing that keeps me up at night: Victorian children, ventriloquist dummies, bad things happening to eyeballs</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"Knock it off Micah" (I might have improvised this line)</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety:</b><b> </b>San Diego</p><p><b>Butter Chicken</b> from <a href="https://whatsgabycooking.com/butter-chicken/#recipeJump">What's Gaby Cooking</a></p><p>At least Katie and Micah eat one solid meal before things really go sideways, and that meal looks to be some very tasty Indian food.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyecxZRrSobnNPv1KO0DKS9zTFz0HIlJ6CNKQm_L5IKg2eKhQ13gyyzv8Z4ercw59XTAXeLKdPPC1nktWypHrH1R_0gbc4wUq7wUni-ugCgJCGPTFztz4Wb56efcYASQopxT9mZHvDi02Ahy2fctSEJutukRYK8DtWtBch78J3Xvh4HuPK1w6OVI4Z/s4032/0A61E4C3-884C-4BCD-8D66-8616B424D0BB_1_201_a.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyecxZRrSobnNPv1KO0DKS9zTFz0HIlJ6CNKQm_L5IKg2eKhQ13gyyzv8Z4ercw59XTAXeLKdPPC1nktWypHrH1R_0gbc4wUq7wUni-ugCgJCGPTFztz4Wb56efcYASQopxT9mZHvDi02Ahy2fctSEJutukRYK8DtWtBch78J3Xvh4HuPK1w6OVI4Z/s320/0A61E4C3-884C-4BCD-8D66-8616B424D0BB_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> Gonna watch this VHS tape I found and hope nothing horrifying happens seven days from now</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-19848660077072893572022-10-07T10:43:00.001-05:002022-10-07T10:43:28.012-05:00Over the Garden Wall; Potatoes and Molasses<p><b>Over the Garden Wall (2014)</b></p><div><p><b>Creator:</b> Patrick McHale</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p><i>Over the Garden Wall</i> is an animated miniseries that first aired on Cartoon Network in 2014, but that I personally discovered last year with an overwhelming sense of <i>why didn't anyone tell me this existed</i>? So here I am, telling you that this exists, trying to spread the autumnal vibes as far and wide as possible. This show is everything I want in the month of October: funny, spooky but not terrifying, full of pumpkins and crunchy leaves and trails of candy, safe for (older) kids but still entertaining to adults, or at least this specific adult. I have indicated that I consume a lot of "horror" content, which is true, but I should clarify that I am very picky about what<i> kind </i>of scared<i> </i>I prefer to be, which is: <i>quietly unsettled</i> and is not: <i>grossed out </i>or<i> depressed. </i>I like mysteries and cobwebs and nice wool coats and creaky floorboards. I do not like viscera. Think British people in drafty old houses looking mildly alarmed, not maniacs with masks and chainsaws. Somehow this cartoon fits essentially all the things I like into ten 11-minute episodes and still has time for <i>several</i> musical numbers.</p><p>The story follows two brothers, serious teen Wirt and his hijinks-inclined little brother Greg. We meet them wandering through a perfect set of breezy fall woods--Wirt is wearing a tall conical red hat and an old-fashioned button-down cape (nice wool coat <i>check</i>) and Greg is, for reasons that will become apparent late in the series in my favorite reveal of the whole show, wearing an upside-down teapot on his head. He also has a pet frog whose name changes frequently, my favorite of the list being Dr. Cucumber. They are joined by a cagey talking bird who is clearly harboring secret motivations of her own. It is soon apparent that they are lost and attempting to get home, but they will first have to make their way through various places that range from slightly strange to deeply creepy. There is a gruff woodsman, a mysterious beast, a town of dancing pumpkins, a child-eating witch, an eccentric old tea baron in a labyrinthine mansion, an archetype-populated tavern, and a ferry filled to the brim with anthropomorphic frogs. There are clear references to Disney's <i>The Legend of Sleepy Hollow</i>, <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>, and <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>, as well as a lot of general visual throwback to cartoons from the early 20th century. All of those allusions combined with the simple but lovely 2D-animation style manages to create the feeling that you are watching something old and comfortingly familiar, but fresh and interesting at the same time. It's like taking a bath in a giant mug of apple cider. </p><p>Here are some of the voice actors that appear in this series: Elijah Wood, Melanie Lynskey, Christopher Lloyd, John Cleese, Shirley Jones, Chris Isaak, Bebe Neuwirth, and Tim Curry. Even though this blog is an avowed spoilers-whenever-I-feel-like-it zone I don't really want to give away any of the secrets of this show, but I will tell you that the character Tim Curry voices is named Auntie Whispers. So I assume with that information you either know for sure that this is not something you're interested in or there is already a you-shaped hole in the wall left behind in your pursuit of watching it.</p><p><br /></p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>I've been singing the "Potatoes and Molasses" song (see below) to myself for daaaaaaaaaays</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes, even all added up</p><p><b>Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety:</b><b> </b>Expressing my feelings via mix-tape</p><p><b>Perfect Mashed Potatoes</b> from <a href="https://www.favfamilyrecipes.com/perfect-mashed-potatoes/">Favorite Family Recipes</a> (and Molasses)</p><div style="text-align: left;">Oh, potatoes and molasses</div><div style="text-align: left;">If you want some, oh just ask us</div><div style="text-align: left;">They're warm and soft like puppies in socks</div><div style="text-align: left;">Filled with cream and candy rocks</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Oh, potatoes and molasses</div><div style="text-align: left;">They're so much sweeter than algebra class</div><div style="text-align: left;">If your stomach is grumblin'</div><div style="text-align: left;">and your mouth starts a mumblin'</div><div style="text-align: left;">There's only one thing to keep your brain from crumblin'</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Oh, potatoes and molasses</div><div style="text-align: left;">If you can't see 'em put on your glasses</div><div style="text-align: left;">They're shiny and large </div><div style="text-align: left;">like a fisherman's barge</div><div style="text-align: left;">You know you've eat enough when you start seeing stars</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Oh, potatoes and molasses</div><div style="text-align: left;">It's the only thing left on your task list</div><div style="text-align: left;">They're short and stout</div><div style="text-align: left;">To make everyone shout</div><div style="text-align: left;">For potatoes and molasses</div><p>This is a "Big Top Candy Mountain"-esque song performed by Greg in an old-timey schoolhouse full of animal students while an escaped gorilla rampages outside. I really don't know how else to sell you on this show.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEingp1cCtP_4TB8swFjfoLD7RHVn9i6ctWRJjwLsPUGVykZkzW3BXQi9hmOq-lX3xp1yjNu8UMJquTFLGEb1onBfXW81aulBBS0LCcoa12tUGo_6-aYS2lZgI8P-0Vj_q5Em08N8N-7MkU_PVBiSgoArXLfQH2PF5uKuJhDT7S29IDQ8d1sfhLC1KW6/s4032/94BDAD57-60B7-4BDB-9D42-87646596B775_1_201_a.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEingp1cCtP_4TB8swFjfoLD7RHVn9i6ctWRJjwLsPUGVykZkzW3BXQi9hmOq-lX3xp1yjNu8UMJquTFLGEb1onBfXW81aulBBS0LCcoa12tUGo_6-aYS2lZgI8P-0Vj_q5Em08N8N-7MkU_PVBiSgoArXLfQH2PF5uKuJhDT7S29IDQ8d1sfhLC1KW6/s320/94BDAD57-60B7-4BDB-9D42-87646596B775_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> A movie I have actually been too scared to watch until now; if there are no further entries you should assume that I simply failed to work up the nerve</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-79946976900826605652022-10-03T11:10:00.000-05:002022-10-03T11:10:14.349-05:00The Haunting; Plum Jam and Hard-Boiled Eggs<p><b>The Haunting (1963)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Robert Wise</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> No</p><p>First, I would like to point out that there is a fun-bad <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-blair-witch-project-marshmallows.html">1999</a> <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171363/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_5">adaptation</a> of this same novel that I saw in the theater starring Catherine Zeta-Jones as the arch and smoldering Theo and yet I chose not to revisit it here. Please clap. Second, said novel--Shirley Jackson's <i>The Haunting of Hill House</i>--is one that I enjoyed a great deal but do not remember every specific detail from at this point, so this will not be a comparison of novel to movie, but rather a look at this movie on its own terms. Being assigned Jackson's short story "The Lottery" in middle school probably shaped my eventual tastes more than I realized at the time, and I sort of doubt any visual adaptation can scratch the same itch for me as her prose, so it seems unfair to expect it to. Plus I am too lazy to re-read it, as I am already very busy not reading this month's <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49504061-the-once-and-future-witches">book club book</a>. At any rate, I was curious to check out the contemporary adaptation of the 1959 novel and <i>especially</i> curious to check out the movie that director Robert Wise made in between making a couple of tiny films that you've probably never heard of called <i>West Side Story</i> and <i>The Sound of Music</i>.</p><p>The movie opens with a voiceover from "scientist" Dr. Markway explaining the tragic history of a 90-year-old New England mansion known as Hill House with unsettling glee. I scare-quoted his credentials in the previous sentence because although I was excited for a round of "let's apply science to ghosts," I would find, to my disappointment, that his methods were decidedly imprecise and mostly consisted of saying "mmm, yes, interesting" and "just as I expected." I'm not saying I need a bunch of spectrometers everywhere, but I did think he should at least be <i>taking notes</i>. I noticed that the doctor's name was the only one changed from the novel, where it was Montague, and then was changed again in the 1999 film, where it was Marrow. All of the other main character's names stayed consistent, so I'm not sure what the deal is with everyone trying to pin down this slippery doctor. I did like that this version of him reminded me a bit of John Astin's Gomez Addams, although probably 80% of that can be attributed to the mustache. The best thing about the doctor is his wife, who shows up late in the movie and makes fun of everyone at Hill House for being scared.</p><p>The Mysterious Doctor M is assembling a team of paranormal investigators to get to the bottom of Hill House's alleged haunting, again using methods that I neither understand nor approve of, but I'm not the one running the show here. He ends up with three assistants: Luke Sanderson, who has no interest in the paranormal and is only there because he is in line to inherit the estate; Theodora, allegedly a psychic and subtly--<i>1963 subtly</i>--a lesbian; and our heroine Eleanor "Nell" Lance, an anxious, lonely woman whose life was dedicated to caring for her invalid mother until her very recent passing. This movie is about the relationship between the house and Eleanor's persistent grief and guilt and stress and yearning to belong somewhere, so although it is not one of those "everything is happening in her mind" situations--all the characters very much experience haunting--it <i>is</i> closely echoing the pre-existing issues in Eleanor's life. That doesn't explain why she was selected for this job, but I guess it worked out.</p><p>Now, here's the thing about this version of Eleanor--she is a tough hang. She is rude to the servants who work on the grounds (more on them in a second!), she lashes out at everyone around her in a childish way when she is upset or overwhelmed, she refers to Theo as a mistake of nature in the movie's <i>least</i> thinly-veiled reference to her sexuality, and is generally just pretty unpleasant. In case we didn't get what her hangup is about, she starts almost every sentence with "My mother..." and often that is the entirety of the sentence. It made it slightly difficult for me to be scared for her because she seemed very determined to become a part of the house and frankly as far as I was concerned, the house could have her.</p><p>I'm pretty sure that's how the Hill House staff felt about the situation, too. When she arrives at Hill House she encounters a locked front gate and an admittedly unhelpful Mr. Dudley, the groundskeeper, who informs her that no one else is there and she shouldn't be there either. Now, Eleanor has taken the car that she shares with her sister without permission and is all wound up and very desperate to embark on this independent project and I understand that this obstacle is a frustration; I also know that if Eleanor was born in 1925, as the actress playing her was, then the name <a href="https://www.babycenter.com/baby-names/details/karen-2451">Karen only accounted for 0.0004% of the population</a> of women her age. But her reaction is very much "I am going to escalate this situation to your manager, how <i>dare</i> you" and Dudley is like "....fine." Once she's in, she encounters Mrs. Dudley, who keeps up the usually-empty house, and they have the following exchange, which I'm including in full because it was my favorite part of the movie (transcription courtesy of IMDb):</p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mrs. Dudley: [<i>Eleanor has just been shown her room after she arrives</i>] I can't keep the rooms the way I'd like, but there's no one else they could get that would help me.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Eleanor Lance: How very nice.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mrs. Dudley: I set dinner on the dining room sideboard at six. I clear up in the morning. I have breakfast for you at nine. I don't wait on people. I don't stay after I set out the dinner, not after it begins to get dark. I leave before the dark.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Eleanor Lance: Your husband?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mrs. Dudley: We live over in town, miles away.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Eleanor Lance: Yes.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mrs. Dudley: So there won't be anyone around if you need help.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Eleanor Lance: I understand.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mrs. Dudley: We couldn't hear you. In the night.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Eleanor Lance: Do you have any idea when Dr. Markway--</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mrs. Dudley: [<i>cuts her off</i>] No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one will come any nearer than that.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Eleanor Lance: I know.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mrs. Dudley: In the night. In the dark. [<i>Mrs. Dudley grins and leaves</i>]</span></p><p><br /></p><p>Now <i>that's</i> a harbinger!</p><p>So, it's not like Eleanor didn't know what she was getting into. I did find some of the effects nicely spooky--loud banging in the middle of the night, for example, is incredibly scary! When a doorknob seems to twist a bit a the behest of some unknown but potentially malevolent hand, it helps that it already has a creepy face carved into it. A rickety staircase of questionable design makes for a tense set piece. The house having endless halls full of confusingly identical closed doors where everything is just slightly tilted is effectively disorienting. Being trapped with strangers who you feel are being mean to you is a true nightmare.</p><p>Overall, I'm not sure this is as iconic a work from Robert Wise as the two musicals bookending it, but it does have one thing those don't and that's Mrs. Dudley <i>grinning and leaving</i>.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>[<i>cuts her off</i>]</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety:</b><b> </b>Questionably pedigreed scientists</p><p><b>Hard-Boiled Eggs and Plum Jam</b> from <a href="https://www.abakershouse.com/plum-jam/">A Baker's House</a></p><p>Okay, I genuinely did try not to refer back to the novel too much in this post but when it came to food there was none that I noticed in the film and plenty that I remembered in the book. Fortunately, <a href="https://www.inliterature.net/food-in-literature/2017/10/the-haunting-of-hill-house-menu.html">the most helpful website I've ever seen</a> gave me a list and I just grabbed a couple of appealing items.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYKHxUj9OLZ9dPL5-lPEbgzVKu2BjxPdc4PxP4qVu3rIF5YPnnJcDzPxwY28ryOzhzy_j7wx67sWE3yegJMQP0ADRtodC0EDa08KJFyrkW91BJBi7P6o8v9iVsHs8yxkurP6GqsZDQL7mI2b9X2rDym_QE2SCcD3d9i94vkwBNKRgHah2Kx73L4kFP/s4032/6AE66CE2-2DF7-46E2-B4D0-80AEA233AF2E_1_201_a.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYKHxUj9OLZ9dPL5-lPEbgzVKu2BjxPdc4PxP4qVu3rIF5YPnnJcDzPxwY28ryOzhzy_j7wx67sWE3yegJMQP0ADRtodC0EDa08KJFyrkW91BJBi7P6o8v9iVsHs8yxkurP6GqsZDQL7mI2b9X2rDym_QE2SCcD3d9i94vkwBNKRgHah2Kx73L4kFP/s320/6AE66CE2-2DF7-46E2-B4D0-80AEA233AF2E_1_201_a.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> Over the garden wall we go</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-79530315985165123212022-09-27T08:15:00.002-05:002022-09-27T08:15:27.222-05:00BBC Ghostwatch and WNUF Halloween Special; Caramel Apples<p><b>Ghostwatch (1992); WNUF Halloween Special (2013)</b></p><div><p><b>Directors:</b> Rich Lawden; Chris LaMartina</p><p><b>Had I seen these before:</b> No</p><p>Since re-watching <i>The Blair Witch Project</i>, I've been thinking a lot about the legacy of Orson Welles's 1938 <i>The War of the Worlds</i> radio broadcast and how the (likely exaggerated) legend of its unexpected power over the populace has shaped modern attempts to thrill and chill. There is something almost admirably devious about sneaking a scary story into people's attention using straight-faced news as a Trojan horse, especially at a time when "the news" was something that the vast majority of the intended audience accepted as a reliable, categorically <i>un</i>-devious source of information. I had seen reference to the BBC's 1992 <i>Ghostwatch</i> program a few times, and understood it to be a a sort of Wellesian event wherein regular news anchors participated in a scripted story about a haunted house investigation that was presented as a non-fiction Halloween special. (One recent program that was obviously influenced by it is the very fun episode "Dead Line" from series five of <i>Inside No. 9</i>. And yes this is the second post in a row wherein I recommend a delightful BBC horror comedy to you, <i>you are most welcome</i>.) I had also seen reference to the idea that the British population <i>absolutely freaked out </i>about this fake demon house. Having not personally been a viewer of BBC in the early 90s, I'll never know for sure what it was like on the ground that night, but I suspect that, as with <i>The War of the Worlds</i>, the mythology of the event's impact does not entirely match with the reality of the reaction. Regardless, I wanted to see this creepy crawly betrayal of the public trust for myself.</p><p>Before I get into the details, I just want to say: I found this entire enterprise extremely charming, and I'm not sure I can even fully explain why. I think it's easy to get bogged down with how wretched everything seems to be and how unthinkably vile humans often are toward one another, especially if you spend too much time online (hello there, if you have found your way to this blog you are more likely than not Too Online). Obviously humans also do unbelievably generous and selfless things all the time as well, but if anything that often just makes me even <i>more </i>distressed that I am failing to rise to those lofty standards. But for whatever reason, <i>this sort of endeavor</i> is exactly the kind of thing that acts as a counterbalance to my more hopeless feelings about humanity--this silly little production where normally-earnest newscasters tell us a made up story and play pretend just for entertainments' sake, just to keep the actual darkness at bay for a while. I genuinely love that humans do that. Just a bit o' fun, innit? </p><p>Of course, there can be a pretty wide gulf between finding something oddly life-affirming and finding it...scary. One of the most notable visuals is the main presenter's absolutely enormous hair bow, a trend which I had fully blocked from my mind until seeing it pop up on Jeanne Triplehorn in a rewatch of <i>The Client </i>a year or two ago. Do you remember when very serious grown-up ladies wore foot-long bows on their heads as part of a classy, professional look? This fact alone contributes a great deal to my emergent theory that the early 90s are one of the least gritty historical time periods, at least aesthetically. There is also the fact that this program relies very heavily on child actors--I don't want to be mean, they are <i>fine</i>, but they're not "I'm afraid this is really happening" good. <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/09/the-sixth-sense-vegetable-noodle-soup.html">They're no Osments</a>, is all I'm saying. And then, perhaps most crucially, the participants continually refer to a scary space underneath the stairs as the "glory hole." Just...so many times. Is that not a slang term in Britain? I guess there wasn't an Urban Dictionary to check these things against in 1992? And while the sinister presence--an entity referred to as "Mr. Pipes"--is effectively creepy in the beginning, the lore spins out a bit too far by the end and is more confusing than anything else. At any rate, I thought <i>Ghostwatch</i> was a generally entertaining but not especially bone-chilling outing and I hope it made Halloween 1992 a memorable one for some Brits.</p><p>Now, if I found it slightly difficult to describe exactly what <i>Ghostwatch</i> is, it will be even harder to explain <i>WNUF Halloween Special</i>. It's a fictional movie from 2013, but it presents as a VHS tape of a Halloween night on local news in 1987--and when I say that's how it presents, I mean in every way possible. It's shot on vintage tape stock and includes numerous commercial breaks, including the bumpers with the station logo and announcement that you are watching the Halloween Special. (<i>Ghostwatch's </i>bumpers were also excellent.) It follows a similar plot to <i>Ghostwatch</i> (it even has one of its reporters joke about contacting Elvis, which is lifted directly from it), involving their reporters and a couple of "psychics" investigating a supposedly haunted house. It's a comedy, sort of, and horror, sort of, but more than either of those it's just a very historically accurate love letter to 1980s public access. Most of the commercials are played so straight that out of context it would be hard to tell they weren't real, although the cumulative effect is humorous. I wasn't exactly laughing but I was sort of <i>mesmerized</i> by the whole thing, and when I discovered that there was a sequel of sorts out this year, I was excited.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"She's in the glory hole"</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes and yes</p><p><b>Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety:</b><b> </b>Local news</p><p><b>Caramel Apples</b> from <a href="https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/21130/caramel-apples/">All Recipes</a></p><p>Not a lot of food in these programs, so I just went with a treat to match the feeling of excitement and nervous anticipation of a classic Halloween night. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJLedwNva5WlB23blR0WfAYy1nHO2YR7eELbG2QJvukDmyQkSjDyLdbFj-r-tT3hu1Nr-HUDBIHCRuTvU9wrbeSnkLTHrXI0_-MgzHknlzydwgw0RHw97k6lOfCu0-0GMro-OOJ7xrIcrEh3UTsOEdexTWZMtcdk_EfFHjHp-Obezp7LE82-sccDw0/s4032/D438702C-E2F9-4419-914B-5936C13EE843.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJLedwNva5WlB23blR0WfAYy1nHO2YR7eELbG2QJvukDmyQkSjDyLdbFj-r-tT3hu1Nr-HUDBIHCRuTvU9wrbeSnkLTHrXI0_-MgzHknlzydwgw0RHw97k6lOfCu0-0GMro-OOJ7xrIcrEh3UTsOEdexTWZMtcdk_EfFHjHp-Obezp7LE82-sccDw0/s320/D438702C-E2F9-4419-914B-5936C13EE843.heic" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next: </b>The eternal question: is this house haunted or are you just having a mental breakdown?</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-51966908025370427162022-09-20T10:15:00.001-05:002022-09-20T10:15:39.733-05:00The Sixth Sense; Vegetable Noodle Soup<p><b>The Sixth Sense (1999)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> M. Night Shyamalan</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes</p><p>A few things up top: 1) I did see this movie pretty soon after it came out, but not soon enough to not have the ending spoiled for me, so I've only ever watched it with an eye toward whether the setup works; 2) it does; 3) despite the marketing, this is not actually a horror movie, it's a weepy family drama with a couple of jump scares; 4) if you have a chance to watch this with a 13-year-old who doesn't know anything about it, I can't recommend highly enough that you do that, it was truly one of the most fun movie-watching experiences of my adult life.</p><p>I think for those of us who are not adolescents it can be hard to approach this movie without being weighed down by a couple of decades of pop-culture and director-nonsense baggage surrounding it. If you have seen Shyamalan indulge his worst impulses in later films, you can see the warning signs in some places here--a little treacly, a little melodramatic, musical stings a little too obvious, a lack of subtlety with some plot gear-churning, some <i>almost</i>-clunky color symbolism. And the most famous scene--Haley Joel Osment tearfully whispering that he sees dead people--has at this point been parodied six ways to Sunday, which I thought would make it impossible to take seriously. But here's the thing: <i>that scene is really great</i>. Osment and Bruce Willis are both doing terrific work and Shyamalan has done a good job of building slowly to this reveal <i>while also</i> toying with the reveal to come. And in my experience this time around, the whole movie plays like that--I'll be tempted to start rolling my eyes a bit at something and then <i>boom</i> it pulls me right back in, because the real twist if you are a skeptical over-consumer of culture is that this is an amazingly effective movie and a near-unparalleled cinematic magic trick.</p><p>I think it's likely that a less-good version of this particular plot setup would still have been successful upon release, but I can't overstate how much the re-watch value depends on the stellar performances from the main cast. Bruce Willis lends Malcom his natural genial cockiness, which is both sort of funny and sort of comforting in the beginning of the movie when the audience is still getting their bearings in this very haunted version of Philadelphia. In his interactions with Osment's Cole, he's believable first as someone who has a lot of experience talking to children in a professional capacity and later as someone who is slowly realizing that he's in over his head in some significant ways. There is also a lot of pathos in his attempts to charm his way through what he believes is a rough patch in his marriage. Toni Collette as Cole's beleaguered mom is the emotional heart of the movie and I think her part might be the hardest to pull off because it requires a range of emotions that could easily veer into the cheesy in less capable hands. The most tear-jerking scene of the movie--when Cole confesses his ghost-seeing secret to her in the car and relays a message to her from her mother--requires her to go from mildly frustrated at being stuck behind a wreck to confused about what Cole is trying to tell her to quietly but intensely alarmed that he is hearing voices that tell him to do things (you can see the words "specialist" and "medication" and "insurance" swimming in her eyes at this point) to shocked and overwhelmed and relieved and sad and happy and grieving all in the space of a few minutes and as far as I'm concerned, <i>she does it</i>. I think "mom with a spooky kid" can be a thankless type of role but everything about her character really works for me, and Collette does a great job establishing her as the third important character in the mix rather than just a foil for Cole's strangeness. </p><p>But of course the film largely rests on the wee shoulders of Haley Joel Osment, and <i>boy </i>would this be a tough watch with a less talented kid actor. On first pass, he is successful at selling fear and vulnerability and earned distrustfulness <i>and also</i> a degree of off-putting weirdness that makes you understand, even as you feel sorry for him, why this character doesn't have any friends his age. But watching his performance when you are aware of all the dynamics at play, you realize that what originally seemed like nervous stand-offishness in his face is actually a weary pity for Malcom, and then later a sort of resignation and acceptance that this guy isn't going to leave him alone. And he does that layered bit <i>so well</i> that you don't even know what it was until it's all over. Plus, his delivery of the line "I didn't know you were funny" when Malcom performs an intentionally bad magic trick is truly aces.</p><p>I've established my policy on pedantically overthinking movies that involve fantastical elements, which is: I do it when I feel like it. And as much as I really did enjoy the experience of just being on this particular roller-coaster, this is a movie that is deeply aware of its own cleverness and practically begs one, <i>double-dog-dares</i> one to overthink it. So while I believe the Big Twist is solid--I would say one scene edges right up next to a cheat but never crosses the line--there are a couple of bits and bobs that I'm less sure about. For example: the Mischa Barton ghost, who has been poisoned by her own mother, wants Cole to find a video tape under her bed that contains proof of this and show it to her father. So did alive Mischa know that 1) her mother was poisoning her and 2) she had video proof of it? Why wouldn't she have...maybe mentioned that to her father while she was still alive instead of squirreling the tape away in a box under her bed? Is it only because her ghost pushing the box at Cole from under the bed is very spooky? Because it is very spooky! But quietly allowing oneself to be murdered is a <i>pretty significant</i> commitment to the craft of ghosting, especially for an adolescent. I would happily accept that her ghost had access to information that her living brain had been unaware of, and belatedly realized that one of her many puppet show recordings contained evidence of a crime, but this tape was clearly treated differently by her corporeal form. Anyway. The part where she barfs in Cole's tent is a real <i>yeeeeesh</i> moment, I'm not actually complaining about this subplot, not even the very dramatic and unrealistic confrontation at the memorial service. It's all perfect, don't change a thing.</p><p>I'm not actually complaining about this next bit either, which is in the <i>so how does this work exactly</i> category re: ghosts in this universe, I'm just wondering. Cole says that all these dead people are wandering around and they don't see each other and they don't realize they're dead ***pointed look at scene partner*** but what about those poor dudes hanging from the rafters of the schoolhouse? Are they conscious and aware like all the other ghosts but like...stuck up there? When Cole sees them they are just looking at him mournfully but I feel like I would be asking if he had any idea how I could get down, just a quick "yooooo can you give me a hand?" And wouldn't "being stuck in a noose for decades" be a strong tip-off that you have died? Listen, I also had this issue with the charming BBC series <i>Ghosts</i> which is basically a workplace comedy about the spirits who are jointly haunting a manor house, as well the two living residents of said manor house, one of whom can see and talk to them and one of whom cannot. When the living couple go to tour other potential domiciles, the wife can still see the various ghosts haunting all of them and it's a very good gag that I enjoyed a lot except in the instance of the two dead German pilots who apparently crash landed in a tree outside the window of one place and just...like, live in the plane? The existential implications of retaining conscious awareness but losing all mobility, like, forever--especially when you are trapped right next to one or two other conscious, aware beings--is almost more than I can take. You should watch <i>Ghosts</i>, though. Try to just hum cheerily through the German pilots, close your eyes, think of England, etc.</p><p>And how did Cole know about Stuttering Stanley? He doesn't <i>read minds</i>. That scene implies that someone who knew his teacher as a kid 1) died and 2) made it a priority to find Cole and, instead of addressing whatever unfinished business had tethered their soul to earth, tell him that his teacher had a stutter when he was a kid. Which is a pretty funny, petty thing for a ghost to do actually, so again, I'll allow it. In other questionable ghost behavior, why does his grandmother keep getting him in trouble? She needs to move that bumblebee pendant so badly that she doesn't care that Cole is getting blamed for it? Like, I am also particular about where my things go, but <i>dang </i>Grandma, the kid already has a lot on his plate! Ice cold.</p><p>Stray thoughts: 1) I would not go in a church that had a door <i>that </i>red, sorry. Can't be good news in there. 2) I hope that when I have nightmares I say out loud the exact things that are stressing me out in my waking life so that my family members are made aware of where I'm coming from. 3) At one point Malcom is telling a self-deprecating story that involves "I threw up chili cheese fries all over this male nurse" and I don't know why I thought that was such a funny thing to say, but I really did. This <i>male </i>nurse. Not some regular nurse! I threw up <i>on a boy.</i></p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"Keep moving, cheese dick"</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>Did the twist work: </b>I have known how this movie ends for 23 years and my scalp still got all tingly when that "wait a minute" realization music kicked in </p><p><b>Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety:</b><b> </b>Working with children</p><p><b>Vegetable Noodle Soup</b> from <a href="https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/vegetable-noodle-soup-recipe-1928029">The Food Network</a></p><p>Now, I am not a Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy expert, but I like to think that if I were slowly poisoning <i>anyone</i>, I would add the Pine Sol to the soup <i>before </i>I walked in to their room, not just waltz in with it right on the tray and theatrically turn my back to the victim to pour it. I'm just a <i>planner </i>that way. In any case, Anna was pretty adamant about watching me make this soup for some reason.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2yUS5V5EAdxOYw2bnNlromgoi_5jsUgllQeGEiCCpk72EngBBPzfFjko35MvlrdifjZLBHsvJtEMZZtkKZYczEUNt5HSOrYb_8lx_WXspCI9-wo484swRkJZg2hY6OuUlhQ-AzY1QHRwO422Ym6l2LQm3IAHjAQNL7Ib9l-VkVbOu779Nlvxv4EiF/s4032/2881C994-EBE4-4AD4-8E7D-0CCFFFB49DD4.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2yUS5V5EAdxOYw2bnNlromgoi_5jsUgllQeGEiCCpk72EngBBPzfFjko35MvlrdifjZLBHsvJtEMZZtkKZYczEUNt5HSOrYb_8lx_WXspCI9-wo484swRkJZg2hY6OuUlhQ-AzY1QHRwO422Ym6l2LQm3IAHjAQNL7Ib9l-VkVbOu779Nlvxv4EiF/s320/2881C994-EBE4-4AD4-8E7D-0CCFFFB49DD4.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> Newscasts gone wild</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-22430482760575009972022-09-15T07:20:00.000-05:002022-09-15T07:20:29.306-05:00The Blair Witch Project; Marshmallows<p><b>The Blair Witch Project (1999)</b></p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes, somewhat against my will due to peer pressure from my 17-year-old co-worker at the mall coffee shop, what's up Kellan hope you're thriving</p><p>Hello and welcome to the time of year when I try to compensate for my utter exhaustion with summer by forcibly instilling my favorite of autumnal feelings: pleasantly creeping dread. I'm almost certain <i>The Blair Witch Project</i> was the first movie I went to see in the theater despite being absolutely terrified to do so--I'm not sure when I crossed the line from saying "I don't like horror movies, too scary" to "oh actually horror is one of those counterintuitive balms for my personal type of anxiety, like giving stimulants to people with ADHD," but 1999 was firmly in the prior segment. (Side note: I realize I have been spending a lot of time in or around 1999 in this space lately and I just want to say no <i>you're</i> having an extremely quiet and unobtrusive midlife crisis.) The thing is, the 1999 of it all is important context for this movie in particular, because the viral marketing strategy combined with the little baby internet really made it seem like this was going to be the scariest film ever presented to audiences. Like, there would definitely be people (maybe you!!) throwing up from fear at your screening. Maybe you would <i>die</i>. Of being <i>scared</i>.</p><p>Fortunately (for us all, am I right?) my attendance at that screening of <i>The Blair Witch Project</i> in the summer of 1999 did not prove fatal, nor even especially scarring. I did find it scary, and I before revisiting it I did still remember a couple of especially creepy bits (the teeth!), and I'm pretty sure at the time I played up the fact that afterward I had to drive home in the dark by myself through <i>a few miles of slightly rural area, can you even imagine</i>. Watching it now as a--I don't want to say jaded, but certainly more horror-experienced--adult, I do still think it achieves its goals as a tiny-budgeted little twig-wrapped package of creepiness. But I am also sympathetic to those whose reaction to watching it now is "this movie is not scary, nothing happens, it's just three idiots in the woods yelling at each other." I could counter that what those people fail to understand is that making a mistake and consequently being yelled at is the scariest scenario of all, but I really do see where they're coming from.</p><p>I can't say I personally knew anyone who was convinced that the movie and the people in it were all real, but that was certainly the winky winky impression that the marketing was going for at the time. I was about to blame the fact that the internet debunking machine wasn't as lightning-fast as it is today, but then I spent .000001 seconds thinking about the general fate of false information disseminated online today and you know what maybe we were better off when everything was just a matter of checking <a href="https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-blair-witch-hunt/">Snopes</a>, actually. At any rate, the whole <i>point</i> of found footage is to create the sense that everything happening on screen is real, documentary-style--no score, no obviously scripted conversations, no tidy plot mechanics. Just some unknown people stumbling into a bad situation. And having, in the intervening years, seen <i>many</i> low-budget found footage movies, I think <i>Blair Witch</i> does a better job than most of its descendants in terms of following its own rules and creating at least a semi-reasonable excuse for questionable behavior. </p><p>The main plausibility hurdles in found footage tend to be: 1) who is filming this and 2) why are they <i>still</i> filming this? The answer to #1 in almost every case is that someone is making a documentary, but lesser films usually fail to answer why anyone would continue bothering to film things once they turn horrific. One of the smartest things this movie does, once things are very tense but not yet completely unbearable, is have Mike accuse Heather of using the camera as a sort of filter so that she can put some distance between herself and the real world and doesn't have to fully experience how bad their situation is. If you, as an audience member, buy that explanation, then the fact that the camera stays on until the bitter end makes internal sense. (They also make a more half-hearted gesture in the beginning of the movie toward how much back-up battery power they have, presumably in order to stave off complaints that the video camera should be long past dead by the end, but frankly I'm usually happy to have technology work or not work depending on what the scariness of the scene calls for.)</p><p>Anyway, you know what's scary? The freaking woods. You know who thinks so? Most humans who have lived in the vicinity of densely-wooded areas since the beginning of time. See also: all fairy tales. It's easy to get lost and gets very dark at night and you're far away from help and there's a bunch of stuff out there that probably wants to eat you or poison you or at <i>least </i>poke or scratch or sting you. The idea to just film some random people being scared (and querulous) in the woods turned out to be such a good one that they made $250 million on a $60k budget and the thing is...that's tough to argue with.</p><p>Some stray thoughts: Heather's serious documentary voice in the beginning veers slightly into Catherine O'Hara territory and did take me out of the moment a bit; I appreciated the 90s dirtbag vibe wherein characters could all wear flannel and smoke cigarettes without it being any sort of specific character choice; this is the second 90s movie I've rewatched recently (the other being <i>Dazed and Confused</i>) where characters have an extended conversation about <i>Gilligan's Island</i>, a reference which is fully lost on my children; for me the most relatable moment in this movie is when one of the characters, awake in the middle of the night, hopes out loud that it's at least 5:00 or something and then swears in frustration to discover that it's 3:00 am.</p><p>Comments from the 13-year-old: First, she said that YouTube apologizers should take notes from Heather's tearful apology to everyone's mother because "she seems really sincere." Second, she noted that the lack of music in the end credits really leaves you with that sinking feeling long after the movie stops, and compared it to the lack of music over the end credits of <i>Cabaret</i>. Was that my proudest moment as a movie-loving parent? Maybe not? But...maybe! And finally, this was, in her opinion, the scariest movie we have watched together so far. </p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: "</b>What the fuck is that?!?"</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> One of the greatest strengths of this sub-genre is that it tends to keep it tight--this one is a lean and mean 81 minutes, only 55 or so of which is people fighting about a map</p><p><b>Thing that I will now be avoiding, for safety: </b>Spending time outdoors</p><p><b>Homemade Marshmallows</b> from <a href="https://www.marthastewart.com/333974/homemade-marshmallows">Martha Stewart</a></p><p>One of my hesitations with doing horror for the blog was that I was worried everyone would be too busy running from their certain doom to bother thinking about food, but not only do the characters in this movie make a point of showing off their pre-journey grocery haul (complete with an extended marshmallow close-up), they spend so much of their time growing increasingly hungry while lost in the woods that they do talk about food quite a bit. So I had several options but I thought for this one I'd go with the campfire classic.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwdfI7XvNILIJBUO69lj-b0Co7UNyJyH8QEGzZknwZUz-ieD887owNfkEIkUDKEz3Tv6kRhGDb9Fvqf0fiaR0R5mBDvYcM4Ajy3Z-ef97hPXeStO_k9w9aQS9Ty-PUarIdwNoIu2DB6SyE_jDKe3Bt8AZZjezjfzTszD-W1D2i3_FUNW_7UIDm6_dR/s4032/EA5050E9-9ACB-479F-A6F3-F20A71639306_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwdfI7XvNILIJBUO69lj-b0Co7UNyJyH8QEGzZknwZUz-ieD887owNfkEIkUDKEz3Tv6kRhGDb9Fvqf0fiaR0R5mBDvYcM4Ajy3Z-ef97hPXeStO_k9w9aQS9Ty-PUarIdwNoIu2DB6SyE_jDKe3Bt8AZZjezjfzTszD-W1D2i3_FUNW_7UIDm6_dR/s320/EA5050E9-9ACB-479F-A6F3-F20A71639306_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p>Anyway, I hope one or two of you are excited to join me on this Spooky Season journey or at least let out a less audible groan than my mother did!</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2MlAY50f12iLULEeTaXqhKuccJvi8S7szA5hZLCZRTrl1YrrvPWW4D7vpr0KxwICNVtN2_6XyYSjc2zxFybBWPV6zb0c7YUJIz0UET8_Hpfe5BvX-DrEJnFsJC4BUue6f1RuuSDaZsJaUc87Hx1uodJ2ZFoonYYO2ZNF6M_C2cMK8LMCg8eujyp-G/s4032/50FFD928-BB3B-4CE0-961C-BFB6D79317B7.heic" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2MlAY50f12iLULEeTaXqhKuccJvi8S7szA5hZLCZRTrl1YrrvPWW4D7vpr0KxwICNVtN2_6XyYSjc2zxFybBWPV6zb0c7YUJIz0UET8_Hpfe5BvX-DrEJnFsJC4BUue6f1RuuSDaZsJaUc87Hx1uodJ2ZFoonYYO2ZNF6M_C2cMK8LMCg8eujyp-G/s320/50FFD928-BB3B-4CE0-961C-BFB6D79317B7.heic" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>Up next:</b> Turns out I'm STILL not ready to leave 1999 and neither is the puking ghost of Mischa Barton</div><br /><p><br /></p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-84338150322686378732022-09-12T07:21:00.000-05:002022-09-12T07:21:09.014-05:00Easy A; Lobster Shack Biscuits<p><b>Easy A (2010)</b></p><p><b>Loosely based on themes from: </b>The Scarlet Letter (1850)</p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Will Gluck</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> No</p><p><i>Easy A </i>is one of those movies that could also fit in another category I have occasionally contemplated, which is: I've Heard That's Surprisingly Good. There are so many movies that have pretty solid word-of-mouth or even cult-status followings that I just haven't gotten around to for whatever reason, and until this week, this was one of them. I imagine I missed it initially because it came out when I was 30 and had an infant and the only state of being further removed from high school shenanigans than <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/08/10-things-i-hate-about-you-bratwurst.html">18-year-old-second-semester-college-freshman</a> is 30-year-old-new-mom. But now I'm ready. I've been positively marinating in the cinematic high school experience for several weeks, and--game recognize game--this movie has also been marinating in the cinematic high school experience. It's time to get highly referential!</p><p>I think this is a good movie to end this school theme on, since it seems to have swallowed and digested every other teen movie ever made. There are either direct references or sideways allusions or similar vibes to <i>Say Anything, Can't Buy Me Love, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Clueless</i> (impossible to hear someone lob "You're a virgin" as an insult without filling in "who can't drive"), <i>10 Things I Hate About You, Heathers</i>, and <i>Grease</i>. I'm not mad about it. I often reference these things myself. It's tempting to point out that it's harder to establish oneself as an iconic movie when one is so preoccupied with previous iconic movies, but <i>Sleepless in Seattl</i>e does it with <i>An Affair to Remember</i> and I am not here today to argue that <i>Sleepless in Seattle</i> is not an iconic movie, so. Carry on, <i>Easy A</i>.</p><p>I can see why this earned the reputation (sorry) that it did--the script is full of actual jokes and more of them land than don't, Emma Stone as Olive is an unsurprisingly winning lead, the premise is clever-<i>ish</i> and the adults? Are good. I did not love it the way I was hoping to, but I do think it's a pretty entertaining little thing, which puts it ahead of many, many, many films. I know that these teen versions of old stories--in this case kinda sorta <i>The Scarlet Letter</i>, although it's by far the loosest connection to the source material of the movies I've covered--can have a bit of clunkiness in the translation, but I really had a hard time with the initial setup, which somehow made even less sense to me than the <i>10 Things</i> "everybody dates or nobody dates rule," which in itself already made 100 points of negative sense. Now, this is not a gotcha or anything but I see in the trivia that the writer was homeschooled, which maybe goes some distance in explaining his very odd idea of how a 21st century public high school might function. It actually explains...almost all of my issues with the script, which seems<i> very much</i> like it was written by a person who has only seen movies about public high school but never been to one. With all apologies to the reputations of my lovely high school classmates, the idea that a rumor that one 17-year-old girl had non-"deviant," age-appropriate sex <i>once</i> would blow the entire student body's collective mind and turn the social ecosystem on its head is...genuinely so bizarre? Like, I'll give you the Amanda Bynes-led crusading soul-savers, <i>maybe</i>, but I just can't believe this would even be a blip on any other student's radar.</p><p>Now, this issue more or less resolves itself as the situation evolves into Olive taking gift card bribes to lie about hooking up with various students in order to give them cover (from homophobia) or cred (to feel up other girls). Once it's really rolling, everyone's behavior makes a little more sense. Although I do have to ask, how much money do we think Olive spent on her "Suddenly Slutty" wardrobe? Because by the looks of it, it's more than I have spent on clothes in the past 20 years. Multiple pairs of boots! One hundred different corset tops! I feel you could have made the point with like...<i>two</i> corset tops, Olive. You can't use your AutoZone gift cards for this stuff!</p><p>Beyond the precipitating incident, there were a few minor things that don't make sense to me. 1) Olive's relationship with her "best" friend--does she actually have any friends other than her parents? 2) Olive and Todd's years-long mutually-requited-but-unacted-upon crush--I just think that if Penn Badgley and Emma Stone wanted to kiss each other they would have figured out a way to make that happen long before the events of this film. 3) Using Bender from <i>The Breakfast Club</i> as an example of "lost chivalry"--I mean. Maybe <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/08/the-breakfast-club-sack-lunch.html">give that one a rewatch</a>, I really dunno. </p><p>This is a teen movie that truly lives and dies by its Good Adults, which, as you know, goes a long way with me. Thomas Hayden Church is a realistically low-key jokey English teacher and this house we stan a dry delivery. And of course there are Stanley Tucci (of note: <a href="https://reductress.com/post/i-lived-it-i-was-more-attracted-to-stanley-tucci-than-penn-badgley-when-re-watching-easy-a-as-an-adult/">a recent Reductress post</a>) and Patricia Clarkson as Olive's parents, who are laying it on <i>almost too thick</i> but in a way that I liked. (This is probably helped by the fact that Patricia Clarkson might be in my top five performers in terms of how ferociously I enjoy every second they are on screen, please check out her scene in <i>Shutter Island</i> if you want to experience some <i>cinema</i>.) Fred Armisen is an unamused pastor and if you are a certain type of person (me) that tells you everything you need to know.</p><p>My favorite funny bits in this funnier-than-you-might-expect movie: the whole "Pocketful of Sunshine" running gag, Olive's parents trying to figure out what swear word starts with "t," Fred Armisen describing hell as being located "right above The Orient," Emma Stone's delivery of the line "Dyed in the wool homosexual, that boy is."</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"Not now, Quizno's!"</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>In conclusion: </b>I believe this is the first film made from a <a href="https://blcklst.com/about/">Black List</a> script that I've written about, so it seems like the right time to brag that I went to summer camp with The Black List founder Franklin Leonard and am clearly way more of an industry insider than you ever imagined, just in case you are ever tempted to question my movie takes.</p><p><b>Red Lobster Cheddar Bay Biscuits</b> from <a href="https://damndelicious.net/2014/02/03/red-lobster-cheddar-bay-biscuits/">Damn Delicious</a></p><p>There is a quickly-abandoned date at a Red Lobster stand-in wherein a large plate of food is very enthusiastically received and then not eaten. As <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2012/07/check-kill-some-stuff-off-summer-fun.html">my lobster-dealing days</a> are a full decade (!!!!!!!!!!!) behind me, I went with the chain's celebrated biscuits, which I assume were populating the untouched basket on the table. For what it's worth, the effort-to-results ratio on these, especially when compared to lobster, is highly favorable.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy8QqiQcDxHI3QVjEdFO4v0d39iOZtF5cfCU6d_F1uzxR5nFnVfAAmkBN06EqiJRu6eToI7ML4Z37PTE8rwKZr6v_myS3QxMb3IV4LTawL6PhZA1xq7QO1nxoO60665sNPikWt9QT1p-Y-daNpmaGnObatQQZ3oFplMXL9coJoI59k3nunED4VeJo-/s4032/63ECF106-5DEA-40B5-8660-A5D2367253C7.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy8QqiQcDxHI3QVjEdFO4v0d39iOZtF5cfCU6d_F1uzxR5nFnVfAAmkBN06EqiJRu6eToI7ML4Z37PTE8rwKZr6v_myS3QxMb3IV4LTawL6PhZA1xq7QO1nxoO60665sNPikWt9QT1p-Y-daNpmaGnObatQQZ3oFplMXL9coJoI59k3nunED4VeJo-/s320/63ECF106-5DEA-40B5-8660-A5D2367253C7.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> As I indicated above, judging by the way this theme has begun limping along, I think it's time to put Back to School out of its misery and--if my neighbor's cobweb-covered yard is any indication--jump directly into Spooky Season.</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-27070816299629837872022-09-05T07:29:00.000-05:002022-09-05T07:29:17.883-05:00Clueless; Asparagus and Breadsticks<p><b>Clueless (1995)</b></p><p><b>Based on: </b>Emma (1815)</p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Amy Heckerling</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> So many times</p><p>Sometimes the more deeply ingrained a movie is in my brain, the worse my blinking cursor paralysis becomes--if I hadn't already boxed myself in by saying that I was going to cover four high school versions of classic stories (legally binding!!) I would have finished this movie, thought to myself "Ah, well, I have nothing to say about that," and moved right along. But obviously I <i>must</i> cover four movies in this category, and what am I supposed do as an alternative, follow Julia Stiles and Andrew Keegan into what seem like much trickier <a href="https://unemployedlawyermom.blogspot.com/2022/08/10-things-i-hate-about-you-bratwurst.html">Shakespearean waters</a> with <i><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0184791/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2">O</a> </i>or something? I don't think so.</p><p><i>Clueless</i> is an imperfect but better-than-average high school movie from 1995 that is elevated by several very funny performances and a classic soundtrack from the era when movie soundtracks used to <i>mean</i> something. (We used to be a country, a proper country, etc.) It tracks more closely than you might guess with the Jane Austen novel <i>Emma</i>. I would argue that this is one of its greatest strengths when compared to the other films in this mini-category--the story of <i>Emma</i> actually works quite well in the context of a wealthy high school without having to twist itself into any knots. It came out when I was 15, the same age as the characters (although not the actors, in some cases by a long shot), which means when I call it "imperfect" I am using my grown-up powers of analysis but I don't actually believe it in my heart.</p><p>There was no reason, then or now, for me to relate to any of the characters in this movie (outside of maybe Brittany Murphy's at the outset--I wasn't a stoner but I did wear flannel and dye my hair purplish-red and may have found Breckin Meyer cute, who's to say). I've never been rich or cared about designer clothes or felt moved to play matchmaker and I was a generally well-prepared student who would not have had need to argue my way out of any Cs. So how did Cher Horowitz manage to win me over so thoroughly? For one thing, I think Cher, like Emma before her, is basically an anti-hero--she's privileged and selfish and vapid and doesn't seem to have any problems that aren't her own doing--but she's also nurturing and generally well-meaning and charming and fun to root for. She's a <i>benign</i> schemer. And there just weren't that many adolescent female protagonists who were a mixed bag like that--teenage girls at that point were almost always a <i>victim</i> of something or someone, and Cher really isn't. She's just a sort of unfettered force of nature. And Alicia Silverstone brings that combination of frustrating and appealing to life in such a believable way that you understand why people in her life are often exasperated by Cher, but never <i>really mad</i> at her. </p><p>She also looks like a teenager but older than her actual character, which is fine with me because one of the handful of things in this movie that I don't especially want to think/write about is the legally questionable age difference between Cher and Josh (I could, in the spirit of this movie, argue that pairings involving Paul Rudd should get a pass due to his unsettling agelessness anyway). Most of the main high school cast were between 18-21 when this movie came out, with the notable exception of Stacey Dash, who nearly 30--but they all gel pretty well visually as being believably in the same cohort. (Fun fact, Stacey Dash is older than Molly Ringwald, who was playing characters the same age a decade earlier.)</p><p>I would say this has aged <i>okay</i> overall, there are certainly some insults that would be worded differently now, and the touchstones for heartthrobs sort of jump out in an unpleasant way (Mel Gibson and the Baldwins, yeesh). Also, I forgot how many times they say the phrase "Marky Mark" in this movie, I was afraid they were going to summon some ancient force. I appreciated that the movie's one gay character is just treated as another goofy rich teenager--there are a lot of opportunities for homophobia but the movie is just busy making fun of him for his chosen affect ("What's with you, kid? You think the death of Sammy Davis left an opening in the Rat Pack?"), or making fun of Cher for being oblivious to his orientation.</p><p>Good grown-ups check: why yes, there's Dan Hedaya, the gruff but proud father, laying the groundwork for Larry Miller's threatening-but-in-a-funny-way <i>10 Things</i> performance ("I got a .45 and a shovel, I doubt anyone would miss you"). I know it's a necessary plot device to keep Josh around, but I always found it sweet that he has a continuing positive relationship with his ex-stepson because "you divorce wives, not children." And hey look, there's Wallace Shawn, playing the teacher who is most hard-nosed about grades but exceptionally laid back as a personality. I laugh every time he reacts to something like Breckin Meyer's acceptance speech for having the most tardies in class with light bafflement and amusement. I find his character <i>so</i> comforting, probably because being yelled at is my greatest fear in life and I am confident that the most aggressive response I could elicit from Mr. Hall would be a head tilt and a brow scrunched in confusion.</p><p>Some feedback from the 8th grader: "Who is...Nine in Snails?" Hahahaha sigh. She also noted, after watching Brittany Murphy sing the entire Mentos commercial (one of the movie's most perfectly delightful moments, I really think Brittany Murphy has a strong case for MVP of this film) "ahhh, that's why you're like that," meaning, <i>I think</i>, that she has accepted that knowing a lot of lyrics to jingles is a generational condition and not a personal flaw of mine.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"Yeah, I hope not sporadically."</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>In conclusion: </b>It took me seven days to write this lmao</p><p><b>Asparagus and Almost Famous Breadsticks </b>from <a href="https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchen/almost-famous-breadsticks-recipe-1972945">The Food Network</a></p><p>The characters eat in almost every scene of this movie--mostly a realistic collection of teenage junk food, but a lot of proper sit-down stuff too. Since I had such a bounty to choose from, I picked the two items that Cher picks up and uses to articulate her points in a couple of different scenes: mall breadsticks and asparagus (steamed, for dad's cholesterol). </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS9b3mpcG-IshFFHUehe4WWMW9y6oROo9OftTlD2C-p2sF2oHRmUq9GiZnyv0gPwlp9IzaYNY1TT2G7oeF5JQEOA9Ng2AIamT_J0PjpNAkMJIZanErZff_8ILEQTkXMQK2v89C7ZjaUxRE3dKY1vnzPuNpK2Rj5zrq4Zi98T70fre8qniFLOE-jwSd/s4032/C36EF147-6EF5-410D-BE45-EF664BDE5327_1_201_a.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS9b3mpcG-IshFFHUehe4WWMW9y6oROo9OftTlD2C-p2sF2oHRmUq9GiZnyv0gPwlp9IzaYNY1TT2G7oeF5JQEOA9Ng2AIamT_J0PjpNAkMJIZanErZff_8ILEQTkXMQK2v89C7ZjaUxRE3dKY1vnzPuNpK2Rj5zrq4Zi98T70fre8qniFLOE-jwSd/s320/C36EF147-6EF5-410D-BE45-EF664BDE5327_1_201_a.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> A teen take on a classic tale (4/4) because my word is gold!!</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3049285953560942304.post-75333810324434821602022-08-30T07:24:00.000-05:002022-08-30T07:24:19.924-05:00Cruel Intentions; Exotic Fruit Picnic<p><b>Cruel Intentions (1999)</b></p><p><b>Based on: </b>Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782)</p><div><p><b>Director:</b> Roger Kumble</p><p><b>Had I seen this before:</b> Yes, a long time ago</p><p>One of the problems with doing several high school movies in a row is that they have a tendency to register somewhere on the "funny and/or charming" scale, and after a bit I start to worry that it's all getting a little too same-y. So I thought I would pivot and throw in a film that I find neither funny nor charming, just to change things up--in fact, this one isn't even really a <i>school</i> movie, just for good measure. (Listen, they talk about school a lot and Sarah Michelle Gellar wears her school uniform in the last scene and I don't want to have rewatched it for no reason, so <i>we're doing this</i>.) I did glance at the Letterboxd page for this film just to get the temperature over there and it seems like this is one of those things that a certain age group mistakenly remembers as being good or at least fun, so I'm going to re-issue my perennial disclaimer: it's okay to like bad movies! I personally do it all the time. And also, my bona fides: I watched several seasons of the original run of <i>Gossip Girl</i>, so I don't want it to seem like I think I'm <i>above</i> this genre. I just wanted it to be better!</p><p>The real problem with this movie for me is that I was the sort of <strike>insufferable</strike> cinephile teenager who already had a very positive relationship with the 1988 Stephen Frears film <i>Dangerous Liaisons</i> by the time this movie came out and I absolutely did not understand the point of making a worse version, with children. Glenn Close and John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves had already <i>put in the work</i>, that's not enough for you people? You need Ryan Phillippe with his Justin Timberlake hair and Joker smile to retread this ground? You think because Glenn Close keeps having near-misses with Oscar she needs to be updated as a coked-up Sarah Michelle Gellar yelling increasingly absurd things? (The fact that this movie is tagged as "Cerebral" on Amazon really sent me down a certain kind of path with it, I implore you to watch this and ask yourself whether the dialogue is engaging your cerebrum in a complex manner.) You had a luminous and enchanting 18-year-old Uma Thurman playing the innocent music student who is very understandably pining for her teacher Keanu Reeves and thought "what if this situation, but it's 27-year-old Selma Blair and we instruct her to dress and emote as though she is a petulant kindergartener"? (I know there are a lot of things in this movie that are <i>supposed</i> to be upsetting, but the fact that multiple people were trying to romance this character that clearly has a mental age well below ten was <i>actually</i> upsetting.) Reese? Reese is fine. I appreciated that <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001221/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Nurse Ratched</a> was there to keep the vibes a little weird. And shout out to Swoozie Kurtz, who I believe is the only person to appear in both films. You get that bag, Swoozie. </p><p>Mostly this movie just left me with a lot of questions. For example, I was not very familiar with the concept of revenge porn in the late 90s, did it generally take the form of a tasteful nude photo that does <i>not</i> show anything explicit but <i>does</i> have the word "slut" flashing in bright blue while the You've Got Mail voice says "slut" over and over? How can Sebastian's alcoholic father be both impotent <i>and</i> diddling the maid? When Sebastian mentions his journal and Katherine asks "could you <i>be</i> more queer" like an even more homophobic Chandler Bing, is that...a thing? Fellas, is it gay to write things down? Was Samuel Pepys gay? (Samuel Pepys might have been gay, I do not know anything about his personal life, pretty ironic when you think about it!) Sebastian also indicates that email is "for geeks and pedophiles," and I guess I probably qualify as one of those things, but I'm almost sure by 1999 I was using email for official school-type communications, so was my school more technologically advanced than the fancy Manhattan prep school that has incubated all these monsters or did Sebastian just never bother registering an address? And do you think Katherine ever thinks back to that conversation as a middle-aged lady who definitely spends her days spamming her MLM downline? And finally, where in the timeline from targeting Annette for seduction, making a wager regarding said seduction, falling in love with her, refusing to sleep with her, sleeping with her, breaking up with her, getting slapped, chasing after her to win her back, then dying suddenly and unexpectedly, did Sebastian take the time to amend his will in order to bequeath his cool car to her? Frankly it's the most responsible and forward-thinking move his character makes in the entire film, I just would have liked to see the scene in his attorney's office where he is like "if I get in a sex-related fist-fight and fall into traffic very soon, make sure Annette gets my wheels." Or do we think Annette just fully broke bad at the end and <i>stole the Jag</i>?</p><p>Anyway. Let's end on a nice note with some things that I liked. I had a very intense attachment to the Counting Crows song "Colorblind" in the early 2000s, so its presence did cause me to feel some emotions in the <i>midst</i> of this movie, although not <i>about</i> this movie, per se. When the teens volunteer at a nursing home, they walk by an old lady who is repeatedly spraying a parrot with water as the parrot says "Stop it" over and over. This is by far the best part of the movie. Sebastian started to grow on me a little once he got sad and started dressing like a vampire. It's sort of interesting to watch the earnest scenes between Reese and Ryan knowing that they would get married a couple of months later and eventually have two children who look exactly like them and then get divorced and then Reese would get drunk and yell "I'M A U.S. CITIZEN" at a cop <a href="https://youtu.be/6MCXfJ5vBRM">during a traffic stop</a> (that last bit isn't really relevant, it just still makes me laugh). Finally, all the slow-motion, disapproving head-shaking in the last scene as Katherine's many crimes are made public and her special cocaine cross necklace is revealed for all the world to see is extremely amusing.</p><p><b>Line I repeated quietly to myself: </b>"Why should I care?"</p><p><b>Is it under two hours:</b> Yes</p><p><b>In conclusion: </b>Again, I'm so sorry, but the more movies I cover the more I am just not convinced that Regina George is even that mean at all? She what, kept a <i>private</i> burn book? Please.</p><p><b><br /></b></p><p><b>A Pile of Exotic Fruits Next to a Bottle of Mineral Water</b> from <a href="https://www.heb.com">H-E-B</a></p><p>No one really eats in this movie, probably because of all the coke, but the most iconic scene--Sarah Michelle Gellar teaching (<i>27-year-old</i>) Selma Blair how to kiss--did have an artfully arranged stack of exotic fruits next to a bottle of mineral water. I couldn't find a star fruit and I recently discovered that <a href="https://animals.howstuffworks.com/insects/fig-wasp2.htm">I don't like figs</a>, so this lot will have to do.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikYSPpYpLpLKmnTRKmcDC31kqJdYqmIm5rC5jwnvu2b3yTadiHlf7Q6tL8ao3HOIhPnxhML9aLwyvKMSxGa_aow4WOwmmSBpJR2yPBZCHqJYn8ZeZjsx-fgS45_Ub95_PLxYDIrZy6wnhUd9CpsNKcsxf-OFBmRfgET9Ceus0Y1o2vkQVpQgFq5Ya0/s4032/A213B55B-9462-48CF-A9C4-3E279AFFDC75.heic" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4032" data-original-width="3024" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikYSPpYpLpLKmnTRKmcDC31kqJdYqmIm5rC5jwnvu2b3yTadiHlf7Q6tL8ao3HOIhPnxhML9aLwyvKMSxGa_aow4WOwmmSBpJR2yPBZCHqJYn8ZeZjsx-fgS45_Ub95_PLxYDIrZy6wnhUd9CpsNKcsxf-OFBmRfgET9Ceus0Y1o2vkQVpQgFq5Ya0/s320/A213B55B-9462-48CF-A9C4-3E279AFFDC75.heic" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><b>Up next:</b> A teen take on a classic tale (3/4)</p></div>Ericahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06780230371031450476noreply@blogger.com