Category Archives: movies

everything old is new again

I’ve isolated some of the problems I had with Neil Gaiman’s book, American Gods. Throughout the whole book I pictured the hero, Shadow, as Tony Curtis, his deceased wife as Susan Strasberg, and Wednesday as Burgess Meredith. It took me quite a while to realize I was even doing it. Once I came to that realization, it didn’t take long to figure out why. I was relating the book to a decades old movie with a strikingly similar plot. In The Manitou the Manitous of the old religions and the Manitous of the new technologies have a show-down in an icy alternative universe. Poor Tony Curtis, who heretofore thought he was only a magician and con-man finds himself playing the role of savior of the world, or at least of Susan Strasberg, who has sprouted a 4,000 year old Medicine Man from her back. Okay, so I’m not saying The Manitou was a good movie, as it most assuredly was not. In fact, it’s Bad in that delightfully mindbending way that makes it hard to describe. Unfortunately, reading American Gods makes me want to fish the tape out and watch the damn thing again.

As for American Gods, I think it could most definitely have benefited from another draft to craft some of the clunkier sections. The heavy-handed foreshadowing could have been fine-tuned too, so that maybe the ending could have been smoother, or at least made less of a dull thud. Nonetheless, it was nice escapism.

spicy suction cups

Just wanted to say “spicy suction cups.”

for the love of god

Please please please let this just be an idle rumor. If Sandra Bullock is really going to play Wonder Woman in a big screen remake I simply don’t know what I’m going to do. This is a concept that upsets me no end. I don’t have anything against Sandra, but damnit she is not Wonder Woman.

If I ruled the world (and someone put a gun to my head and forced me to do a wonder woman remake) I’d cast Sigourney Weaver. She kicks ass. And don’t give me that “she’s too old” crap because Wonder Woman is 3,000 years old. She’s an amazon, remember? As long as you’re indulging me in this sick little fantasy let me add that I’d cast Janeane Garofalo as Wonder Girl.

No, actually, I want Gina Torres to be Wonder Woman and that’s all there is to it. Problem. Solved.

They’d have better chemistry than Weaver had with Winona Ryder in Alien Resurrection, that’s for sure.

I….have….a…..problem

I’ve come to the realization that I have a problem. Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward recovery, right? Well here goes…

I was very nearly late for work today because I got sucked into a movie on TV. Not an edgy new Film by an edgy new director on the Sundance channel. Not even a poignant and witty (and edited for TV, I hate that) Film on Bravo. No. This was a movie. A plain old, theatrically-released movie.

Deep breath. I can do this.

I was nearly late for work this morning because I had trouble tearing myself away from BLACK SHEEP. I was sitting on my couch, drinking coffee, and laughing at a movie that starred Chris Farley and David Spade.

Okay. Now this is the part where you all gather tearfully around me and embrace me and tell me everything is going to be o-kay, right?

Wait! Where are you going? Why are you backing away? Come back! You must embrace me! I’ve admitted I have a problem. It’s time for our Tearful Moment Together.

That didn’t go so well, did it? I guess I’ll just finish my lunch break and slink on back to work.

If they make it, I will watch

I enjoyed the Jaws reissue on DVD so much the other night that I felt compelled to watch the Jaws 2 reissue. I rented this one, I did not buy it. Let’s be clear – I may be crazy but I’m not stupid.

Jaws 2 was pretty awful. I knew it was bad going in, but I really didn’t remember it being this, well, awful.

There’s a fine line between bad and awful. But if you can transcend mere awfulness, you can reach the sublime state of Bad, which is more good than bad, really.

I believe I’ve explained all this to you before. My problem was that I had 4 mixed up with Jaws 3/3-D (the one at Sea World) which was was a bad/good interlude bordering on Bad before the franchise descended into bad/awful territory in Jaws 4D, wherein our hero pursues Brody’s widow and a drunk pilot played by Michael Caine to the ends of the earth.

You think the shark isn’t our hero? Oh baby, you haven’t seen all 4 of these in a row in a while have you? Yikes.

This took a deeper toll on me than the time we watched all of the Planet of the Apes movies – in their entirety – more than once over the course of one weekend. I thought I was made of stronger stuff but clearly I was mistaken. How do I know this? Because after I finished viewing Jaws 2 I got it into my head that watching a series of inferior sequels in one stretch was a good idea.

I not only watched Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, but I laughed. I didn’t laugh nearly as hard at Ace as I did at my next selection, the unintentionally hilarious Halloween 2.

I swear to you Donald Pleasance is method acting and has apparently been given the instruction to feel the pain of Cornelius in Escape from the Planet the Apes. He delivers a line and then shuffles off in this lurching way I can’t describe. Why does he walk that way? We never see his feet, maybe he’s wearing McDowell’s Ape-suit feet, necessitating the otherwise illogical loping/shuffling gait but still not explaining why he swings his arms that way. I simply don’t get it. Neither does Jamie Lee Curtis, which may be why her character spends the whole film hiding not only from her brother, but everyone else in the cast.

Do not try this at home, that’s all I have to say.

The Plague

Not the book, the disease. I’m like an old lady in West Palm. Let me tell you about my aches and pains.

It was, to say the least, an unproductive weekend. Still sick. TV viewing choices spiralling into a black hole. At one point Saturday I even watched Lifetime. Yes, Lifetime. Lifetime: television for women. Television for women who find sexist crap “empowering.” We tried to watch some crappy Made For TV movie starring Shannon “Don’t Call Me Brenda” Doherty and Kevin “I’m Not Matt” Dillon.

Sadly, it was merely crappy and not, as I’d hoped, truly craptacular. It was called Gone in the Night and let me tell you it should have been. It was one of those missing-children movies. We had to turn it off after Husband turned to me and said “I don’t even have kids and this crap stresses me out. Why do people watch this junk?”

Thankfully, we were able to tune into HBO, which was showing Arlington Road, a good old-fashioned “your neighbors are terrorists” movie that the whole family could enjoy.

Sunday, we spied on the neighbors. They seem to buy a lot of charcoal. And they sing show tunes in their backyard. We’ll be keeping an eye on this.

Last night we were able to pull ourselves up out of bad-TV hell by popping in the special edition DVD of Jaws. Isn’t it amazing? That movie doesn’t have a single flashy actor in it and yet it’s one of the greatest movies of all time. Go figure.