Opens today
Getting some good reviews.
I missed the whole contemporary horror/comedy thing (though I have Shaun of the Dead lying around upstairs somewhere waiting to be watched). Problem is, I’ve seen so few horror movies in the last twenty years, I don’t think I’d get half the jokes.
Still, it seems pretty unlikely I’d miss the punchline of this one, doesn’t it?
Thanks for the wecommendation, Wabbit. (Heyyyy, you’ve got an URRRRL again. You want some link, or are you traveling incognito? Which I think is Portuguese for “bombed out of your skull…”?).
June 22, 2007 — 4:51 pm
Comments: 38
Five centuries of faces
Click the image to see this great YouTube, 500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art.
The guy has taken a series of portrait paintings in chronological order and morphed between them. Ho-hum, right? Yes, but he’s done a fantastic job choosing the right examples so that the sequence looks less like morphs between disparate images, and more like one continuous animation of a single woman’s face.
I started watching with the expectation that I would see the standard of feminine beauty shift continually and noticeably over time, but it doesn’t. Well, it does really, but not in this film. The particular faces he’s chosen are more alike than different and all would be recognizably beautiful to everyone in the time span. (Until, of course, we get to the puddle of sick that is ‘modern’ art).
Anyhow, I wrote to the guy who posted it to make sure he was the actual creator. He is (sign your stuff, man! Cast your bread upon the waters and the ducks will eat it). Check out eggman913. He does nice work.
June 4, 2007 — 1:13 am
Comments: 7
What Easter means to me
That’s right. It means the Wizard of Oz on television again.
My original interpretation of the afterlife was eternity in a large, barn-like structure with picnic tables inside, where I hung out with my grandmother and ate icecream. That’s the best infant me could work out the “heaven” concept.
Then I saw the Wizard of Oz and instantly recognized it as the afterlife; it was a dangerous, sparkly place full of scary midgets and wingèd monkeys and evil green ladies in striped socks. Oh, it’s so obvious: Oz was in color, Kansas was in black and white. Dorothy gets smacked on the head, falls into a coma and is transported to a beautiful, horrible place. When she wakes up back home, Uncle Henry says, “we thought we would lose you.” Ergo, Oz is where you go when you go. Plus, they put it on at Easter (“…and on the third day, Dorothy arose crying, ‘verily, there is no place like unto home!’…”).
I never missed it. Never. Not once. It’s hard to remember the sense of specialness movies had in the days before VCR’s and DVD players. Most movies came around once a year. Some less. But Oz was a unique occasion, a religious holiday. I never got over a sense of trascendant awe on WoO day. I’m no friend of Dorothy, I’m an acolyte.
In college one Spring, I decided to treat my friends to an evening of Oz and LSD. Yes. That was every bit as bad an idea as it sounds.
Oh, Oz went fine. It was afterward that the flying monkeys truly arrived. I knew my party wasn’t going well when the girl from downstairs stood up and declared, “welp, I’m going to go nail myself into my room now.” Then we heard the sound of her footsteps and nails being driven into the doorframe.
Hoping to lighten the mood, I put on the soundtrack to the Sound of Music. For, like, eight straight hours. I’m pretty sure there are one or two people who still haven’t forgiven me for that inspired act of cruelty.
The hills. The hills are alive, man.
I permanently ruined recreational drug use for myself that night, but I didn’t ruin Wizard of Oz. Once, not long after, I even saw it on the big screen; a brand new print that had arrived at the theater that afternoon. It was amazing: you could see the strings holding up the Lion’s tail and those odd bird creatures in the background and everything. It was only when we got to the end that the projectionist realized the last reel was missing. Crucifixion without resurrection. Oz interruptus.
I kept up my annual pilgrimage to the Merry Olde Land faithfully for another five years, until I got my first VCR. Then, somehow…once I had it on tape, I never watched it again. It didn’t seem right that I could watch it any time I wanted to. It was subversive and dangerous. Once I had the lightning in a bottle, I was afraid of it. Afraid I’d wear it out. Afraid I’d hear the overture and not get all chuffed. If ever that happens to me, the last vestiges of my spirituality will be swept away forever.
So it is a Very Big Deal that I ordered the (three volume collector’s) DVD this morning. It’s been almost 25 years. I’m bringing Xanax. And a hanky.
April 10, 2007 — 12:13 pm
Comments: 10
Men from small towns are dumb
No, no…that’s the title of a pop song by Vaiko Eplik that’s taking Estonia by storm. In fact, he has a whole album about it.
Seems Estonia is having a bit of a redneck problem. Or, as they have it, a rullnokk problem (it doesn’t literally mean redneck, it’s a reference to the baseball caps they wear). They also pimp out their BMW’s, eat hamburgers, drink vodka, use vile language and cruise around looking for “hairies” to beat up.
Vaiko had a little trouble with them after his performance in the Eurovision competition. “I had a few incidents with rullnokks after Eurovision. I got punched a couple of times by these types of people after I didn’t do so well in the competition,” Eplik says.
“This subculture was born when I was in school. When I was 14 I almost became one of them. I thought it was pretty cool to go around drinking gin out of a plastic bottle, wearing these kinds of clothes. But thankfully my dad told me to get my ass back into line and go to singing lessons.”
Singing lessons. Hm. Yes. Watson, I may have deduced the reason rednecks beat this young man to a howling pulp.
You can hear Vaiko’s music (not sung by him) here. I haven’t made up my mind whether its funny bad or just bad. I know badness is part of the experience.
Which brings us to a short film about the rullnokk that’s become a viral hit. It’s called Tulnukas (Alien). It’s about an Estonian dude who gets smacked on the head with a shovel and wakes up with amnesia. His homeys try to re-explain The Life to him.
This one is almost funny enough to connect outside Estonia. I don’t know if you’ll think it’s worth twenty minutes of your life, but you can watch it in three parts (with English subtitles) here, here, and here. Extremely not safe for work, if your boss is Estonian. At the very least, if you listen closely, you can learn some wicked vile language in a foreign tongue. Which — who knows? — might come in handy some day.
Did “Tulnukas” hit its target? Would a rullnokk change his ways after watching the film? Probably not, muses Merivoo [the filmmaker], because the humor goes over their heads. “They don’t understand that they are watching themselves when they watch my movie. The laugh at the jokes and the things the characters do, but they don’t realize that it is about what’s wrong with them.”
Or maybe they do and they simply don’t care if some camera-waving artard looks down on their entertainments. Dudes! That’s us! Pass me a hamburger and some gin…
April 6, 2007 — 5:19 pm
Comments: 6
Curse of the Cat People
Not Cat People. You’ve probably heard of that one, mostly because of the 1982 (sort of) remake. Curse of the Cat People is a (sort of) sequel. It’s a movie I caught once, a thousand years ago on the Late, Late Movie and never forgot. Now, thanks to the Miracle of Amazon I own a copy. Boy, was I not disappointed.
This movie is beautiful to look at, particularly in this clean, silky DVD version. I’ve watched it three times (including the commentary version. I’m a little sorry about that. It explained some things about the plot that I think I liked better unexplained). It’s odd and sweet and really should have been released with a different title.
It’s the story of a dreamy, strange little girl. I mean, strange. None of the kids will play with her and her dad punishes her for playing alone. So she gets an imaginary friend, who turns out to be her dad’s dead first wife (the Cat People lady). Yes. This movie made me go “wait…what?” a lot.
One of the best films I’ve ever seen for capturing the scary, hallucinatory feel of childhood. It’s just too weird and messy to have attained “beloved classic” status. Commentary Guy said people who like this movie really, really like this movie. I guess that’s me. For less than ten bucks on Amazon’s Born Again, you can find out if it’s you.
March 1, 2007 — 6:45 pm
Comments: 4