Tag: horror movies

SHOCKtober 2012 – Day 2: Let the Right One In (2008)

Random Thoughts, Reviews

Let the Right One In is the heartwarming tale about a vampire that teaches a young boy how to deal with bullies.

Okay, not really. But it totally is.

In my experience, there are two major types of horror movies. On one side you have the films that are aiming directly at you. They jump and they scare. They throw things as the camera or they toss the camera into things. People are stabbed and gashed and eaten. Blood spurts in slow motion. Then on the other side there are films that tell you a story, slowing revealing details and most of the time they are trying to lure you in to believing that everything is fine or that maybe the little bits of evil you are seeing are justifiable. And then they pull the rug out and show you the monster standing next to you.

This is the point where I say that you should probably stop reading if you are averse to spoilers, because I am about to spoil the shit out of this movie.

“Forewarned is forearmed.” -Peter Vincent

Oskar is just your average kid being beat up by bullies. Chances are you either were that kid, knew that kid, or you used to beat up that kid. He’s a little sad, and a little pathetic. Eli is a strange little girl who likes to hang out at the playground in the middle of the night and has the windows in her apartment boarded up. They meet, they talk, Oskar shows her his Rubik’s Cube (and that’s not a euphemism), and she tells him he needs to hit back when the bullies pick on him.

Oh, and Eli lives with a dude who isn’t her father, who we see killing a random guy on the street and stringing him up to drain him of blood. She might be a little odd, but he’s totally a secret serial killer or something. Only, it’s her who is upset that he didn’t get the blood.

Anyway, she remains being creepy, but she’s nice to Oskar, and we like Oskar, we root for Oskar, we want him to kick some bully ass! And then she kills a guy. But Oskar is totally becoming a stronger better person, so we’ll overlook that little transgression.

Bit by bit we, the audience, gets pulled along… her protector guy gets caught, pours acid on himself and then leaps out a hospital window after she drinks his blood. But, you know, Oskar! He hits the bully with a stick and he’s started working out to get muscles and confidence. Go Oskar! Eli accidentally turns a woman into a vampire, but she explodes in flames when a nurse opens the window to let the sun in… but before that the woman is attacked by a whole mess of cats in a scene right out of Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers (written directly for the scream screen!). Anyway, Oskar finally finds out that she’s a vampire, they dance to music and then he takes a peek at her naked body while she’s getting changed.

Time out a second here… You see, I saw the remake, Let Me In, first. And it pretty much cloned the original almost shot for shot. Except for this scene, which is not in the remake at all. I’m not a perv, because my wife was totally in the room, but I had to watch that scene twice because I wasn’t sure what I saw. Earlier, in both versions, there is this scene where the vampire girl and the normal boy are hanging out in his bed and he asks her to go steady and she says, “I’m not a little girl”, which I totally took to mean “I’m a vampire” or “I’m a monster” but in this, the original… did I just get Crying Gamed? Is Eli actually a little boy who had his junk cut off? What the hell is going on here? And now I’m recalling the scene where Eli is puking after eating the candy, and she asks if he likes her and he says yeah and she asks “Would you like me if I was a boy?” and he says “Sure.” I totally just got Crying Gamed!

I just Googled it, the movie and the book. Mind. Blown. That’ll teach me to watch remakes!

Anyway… so Eli kills another guy, and this time Oskar watches. Eli leaves, like, for good. Then the bullies trick Oskar into coming back to the fitness program and they are in the process of possibly drowning him when Eli shows up and kills everyone. Cut to train, Oskar looks out the window, we hear a tapping and Oskar smiles. He taps out a reply on the large trunk that accompanies him.

So, back to where I started… two types of horror films, one where the monster leaps right out and one where the monster sneaks up on you. Let the Right One In is definitely the latter, and while I’d classify the movie as a horror film I wouldn’t call it a scary film. It’s practically a romance. Although, knowing what I know now, maybe it’s a bromance.

Peace out… I’m off to write some scorpion/frog slash-fic.

Be sure to keep an eye on Final Girl and the rest of SHOCKtober.

UPDATE: Check out other participants – Final Girl, Life Between Frames, Blog @ Rotten Cotton, Money and a Half, Thrill Me!

SHOCKtober 2012 – Day 1: Sunshine (2007)

Random Thoughts, Reviews

I first saw Sunshine in 2008 after the DVD released in the United States. I really wanted to see it in the theater, but never quite found the opportunity to do it. I mean, it was a no brainer, right? I think the conversation should have gone something like this:

Marketing: From the director of 28 Days Later…
Me: Oh?
Marketing: …starring the guy from 28 Days Later…
Me: Sold.
Marketing: …comes Sunshine, a movie about
Me: Yeah, you can stop now. I’m in.
Marketing: You don’t want to know what it’s about?
Me: No, just tell me when I can see it.

However, somewhere between knowing that I was going to see this film and when it stopped showing in local theaters, I didn’t manage to find any other people who also wanted to go see it, and since going to the movies alone isn’t something I normally do (though I am not opposed to it) and so, I didn’t. Not until about a year later.

But that’s neither here nor there, nor on the surface of the sun. The basic plot is this: for some reason, which I don’t recall even after rewatching it, the Sun is going out and the world is going to freeze, but there is a plan – to fire a giant bomb into the Sun and reignite it. I looked up some stuff on wikipedia and saw there was apparently some back story about a Q-ball or something causing the Sun to expend energy faster than it should. Anyway, there was a previous mission which after passing into the dead zone – where they can communicate back to Earth because of the radiation interference of the Sun – it didn’t appear to complete its mission. So now we are on mission two, the final mission, because it took everything the Earth had to make these two bombs. And they fly toward the Sun, and they approach Mercury, and discover the first ship, hanging in orbit around the Sun.

Of course, they decide to investigate…

I think what I love most about this movie is that there is a lot of science in it, but a bunch of it is junk science – science that makes sense in its pieces and parts but not in the manner in which the movie lumps them together. And it’s got that whole race to save humanity element. But another strong element is that I think, at least emotionally and in some ways stylistically, it parallels another movie that I love: The Black Hole.

You got ships sitting on the brink of oblivion and men who have lost their sanity and an ending that leaves open a lot to interpretation because it goes for art rather than solid facts.

When I saw it then and now as I watched it again, I know this is supposed to be a horror film, but it doesn’t scare me at all until the boogeyman shows up. Until that point, the movie is just science, logic and hard but inevitable choices clouded with a little bit of human curiosity and compassion. Seriously, until the sun scarred former captain arrives and starts stomping around the ship killing people in the last act of the film all of the horror is based on preying on the primal fears of uncertainty and helplessness in the face of nature and science we don’t fully understand – which doesn’t scare me.

I also think the movie tried to do something it didn’t succeed at. It’s a brilliant idea, to tell a scary story that normally relies on shadows and darkness but do it in full light. And if this movie had done that, it would have been awesome, but when the captain shows up the first thing he does is kill the computer and turn off the lights. We are plunged back into darkness, the very familiar darkness. It also doesn’t help that Danny Boyle went with an artistic style when showing us the captain and his skewed perspective of his environment. He’s a shaky blur rather than a solid figure, and it robs him of some of the terror he might have caused. If they’d kept the lights on, gave us a clear view of the captain and had him speaking logically and passionately about how the mission had to be stopped while relentlessly hunting the crew – perhaps using things he’d learned in the last seven years trapped on his identical ship.

And yet, despite that, I do still love the movie. It helps, I guess, that the final act is so short. Once it’s over, we spend a beautiful moment with Cillian Murphy, experiencing the strangeness of the uncertain warpings of time and reality that occur in the heart of the Sun, standing before a wall of fire for an eternity even though from the outside he probably vanished in a flash of fire nearly instantaneously.

The sacrifice is made. The Sun reignited. The Earth is saved. Humanity lives on. And Sunshine ends.

Be sure to keep an eye on Final Girl and the rest of SHOCKtober.

UPDATE: Check out other participants – Final Girl, Life Between Frames, Blog @ Rotten Cotton, Money and a Half, Into the Mirror

SHOCKtober 2012: Prelude

Random Thoughts, Reviews

So, there is this blog I read, Final Girl, that is all about horror films, and for the month of October she is doing a thing she calls SHOCKtober, which is basically a movie a day. The idea is to spur discussion and thought about horror films and I intend to participate. For the next 31 days, assuming I can get access to every movie through my collection, Netflix, Amazon, Redbox, and… more nefarious means, I will be posting something each day relating to the movie in question. Many of them will probably be reviews, but perhaps not all of them. We’ll have to see what each movie inspires.

In any event, I hope it is an enjoyable ride.

In the meantime, go check out Stacie Ponder’s Final Girl blog. Read back through the archives, there are quite a few gems in there well worth reading.

UPDATE: Adding links to this post.

  1. Sunshine (2007)
  2. Let the Right One In (2008)
  3. The Haunting of Julia (1977)
  4. Audition (1999)
  5. Nosferatu (1922) / (1979)
  6. Slither (2006)
  7. Cat People (1942)
  8. Tenebre (1982)
  9. Dead Alive (1992)
  10. Possession (1981)
  11. Pulse (2001)
  12. Shivers (1975)
  13. Left Bank (2008)
  14. Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (1973)
  15. A Nightmare on Elm Street Part 4 (1988)
  16. Hour of the Wolf (1968)
  17. The Tenant (1976)
  18. Santa Sangre (1989)
  19. I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
  20. And Soon the Darkness (1970)
  21. Battle Royale (2000)
  22. Who Can Kill a Child? (1976)
  23. The Mothman Prophecies (2002)
  24. Tombs of the Blind Dead (1971)
  25. Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)
  26. Triangle (2009)
  27. Calvaire (2004)
  28. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
  29. The Horde (2009)
  30. Planet of the Vampires (1965)
  31. Martyrs (2008)

It Has To Happen Fast

Random Thoughts

As much as I love the zombie apocalypse genre, it has one glaring major flaw: in a world where horror movies, and specifically zombie movies, exist a zombie apocalypse isn’t likely to happen.  If you were to ask ten random people on the street how to kill a zombie, nine and a half of them will probably know how – aim for the head, destroy the brain, etc.  This, in fact, is one of the things I tend to hate most about various zombie stories.  The movie Scream was fantastic because it subverted the genre of horror films by allowing its character to know about horror films when the norm is for people to wander around in the dark by themselves even after discovering that other people have been killed while wandering around in the dark by themselves.

Unwillingness to Kill

The primary crutch that most zombie stories rely on is the reluctance of people to kill other people, especially friends and family members.  I’m fairly certain most of my friends and family are aware that if they become infected, I might keep them around as long as they are useful but once they turn I’m going to put a spike through their brain.  And while I know there are people out there who would be all protective of their recently dead loved ones, I think the education provided by the cautionary tales of zombie films would be enough to make that rare.

Of course, the real obstacle is a well prepared military.  If the world were to suddenly have pockets of zombies crop up, squads of the National Guard (assuming they aren’t in the Middle East) would be dispatched to deal with the situation.  At the very least they would round-up and contain the undead while researchers worked on possible solutions.  In fact, the real threat here is political, as people in Washington jockey for position concerning the rights of Undead Americans and slow down the response and effectiveness of those trained to deal with situations of a violent nature.

Spread of Infection

Depending on the source, another hill for a zombie apocalypse to shamble over is the nature of the infection.  Traditionally, after the initial turning of corpses or people into flesh-eating monsters, the zombification spreads through bite.  In most stories, the initial cause is a localized accident, either a chemical spill or natural event.  From there and moving to a pass-through-bite scenario, suddenly it seems kind of silly that an apocalypse is even possible.  An event of that sort should take a couple of hours to clean up, maybe a day.

Other stories are more ambitious and use either a specific global event (pass through the tail of a comet) or just go with a generic “the dead started getting up everywhere, all at once, and we don’t know why” nebulous unknown source.  This, at least, has potential.  If you get dozens, hundreds or even thousands of locations with zombies simultaneously, you begin to plausibly stress the available response resources.  You also gain the ability to have pockets of infection go unnoticed and get out of control.

How Would I Do It*

I’ve thought about it a lot.  Obviously, I mean, the title of my blog is “Aim for the Head” and the logo is a zombie.  And as the title of this post says, it has to happen fast.  In my version, the infection that causes the zombies happens in stages.  The first is a virus, the most contagious ever seen.  It’s airborne, it’s in the water, passed by contact and blood.  It is literally everywhere, and it kills 10% of those infected.  Literally a decimation of the world population.  However, those who don’t die appear to be immune to further infection.  That fact, combined with the contagion level of the virus, leads to the decision to stop trying to stop it and instead simply to allow everyone to get infected, killing one out of ten people but leaving the remaining nine immune.

Years later, when people are finally beginning to forget the horror of the Decimation Virus, people start dropping dead.  It’s just like before, people panic that the Decimation is back, everything goes nuts, and in the confusion, people don’t notice right away that the people who died aren’t staying dead.  Within hours, approximately one tenth of the world’s population is one of the walking dead, and that percentage is rising.

The point is, it has to be everywhere, all at once, with relatively high-speed in order to outstrip the ability to respond, so that bolting the front door and staying inside is the smartest decision that too many people will not make.  It has to happen fast.

* If you decide to steal this idea, let me know, perhaps we can collaborate, or maybe we can settle on you just giving me some credit.

Movie Round-Up: August 7th, 2009

Reviews

A Perfect Getaway:

I like horror movies, and this one looks to be a pretty suspenseful tale about people hiking through the jungle with some other people who might be killers.  I’m sure there will be a twist.  As always, I’m not sure I’d spend my hard earned $10 on it, but it might merit a matinee, and at the very least a priority spot on my rental list.

Julie & Julia:

Would it be gay to admit that I kinda want to see this?  Could I make up for it by saying that its mostly because I really like Amy Adams?  In any event, this looks to be a fairly decent girly flick about someone getting their groove back or something like that.  I imagine theaters across the country will be packed with groups of women out to get their girl power on.

G.I.Joe: The Rise of Cobra:

Meanwhile, next door to Julie & Julia is where you will find all the guys this weekend.  I mean, its G.I.Joe.  It doesn’t even have to be good to make a truck load of money.  Any guy who ever owned some of the action figures will no doubt be willing to part with $10 to see it on the big screen.  And what guy doesn’t want to see Scarlett, Cover Girl and The Baroness in the flesh?  I got a chance to see a screening of this one, and it didn’t disappoint from that perspective.  This film has so much fan service, with characters and vehicles and lines and back story elements, that they almost forgot to have a plot.  Its there, but its pretty blatant, with no real twists or turns, this movie telegraphs its punches all the way through.  Still, it is an enjoyable ride.  Better than Transformers, in my opinion.  I just wish they’d chosen to focus on a smaller set of characters and one strong story with one or two subplots instead of trying to cram in everything.  But hey, if you are a fan, go see it.

Movie Round-Up: July 31st, 2009

Reviews

Aliens in the Attic:

Looks like good family fun.  Not something I’d pay $10 to see in the theater, but I can imagine plenty of worse ways to spend two hours at the movies.

Funny People:

I want to see this film, but I’m not sure I’m going to make it.  It will definitely find a place near the top of my Netflix queue when its available if I don’t.  If you haven’t seen the RAAAAAAAANDY clips, do yourself a favor and watch them.

The Collector:

Did you see Saw?  Yes?  Then you’ve pretty much seen this.  Sure, its not exactly the same, but this movie isn’t much more than elaborate MacGyver like traps that hurt and/or kill people all designed by a faceless nameless villain whose motives we never learn and *SPOILER ALERT* who wins.  It would be nice to see more horror movies that aren’t just an introduction to a series of low budget ultimately high grossing pieces of crap.  But its show business; as long as people keep paying for this junk, they’ll keep making it.  I wouldn’t pay for this even if it were the only way out of one of this guy’s traps.

Adam:

All I really knew about this film before seeing it was that it was about a guy with Asperger’s Syndrome.  Its only open in four theaters at this point, but it may show up in more and if you look you might still find screenings of this in some markets, and it is worth seeing.  I think it really depicts quite well people with this illness and how they and their loved ones come to cope with it and make it part of their lives, working with the illness instead of railing against it.  A warm, funny, touching film that I really enjoyed watching.

1408

Reviews

Last night I went and saw a screening of the new Stephen King movie 1408.

It stars John Cusack as a writer who does books on haunted places, mostly going to them and talking about the history and story, but debunking the actual haunting. He gets a postcard telling him not to check in to room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel in New York. So, of course, he goes. The rest of the movie deals with him getting the room and what happens inside.

All in all, it was a very well done movie. I don’t jump alot at horror movies, but this one got me about four times. John and Samuel L. Jackson are very believable in their roles. As with many horror movies, there comes a point where the scares stop and the resolution of the film begins, and as with many horror movies this is 1408’s weakest point. The ending doesn’t suck, but it is definitely lower key that the rest of the film.

Still, a good movie, and worth it if you like movies about hauntings.

4 October 1999

Random Thoughts

First, let me say, no… she didn’t turn out to be some kind of psycho and kill me. I just missed a day.
Actually, she turned out to be quite nice… delightfully pleasant in fact. We saw a movie, Stir of Echoes, and I even put a short review of it up.
The movie is the real meat of this .plan. That and a conversation my new friend and I had.
Horror movies.
This year I’ve seen a bunch of them, The Haunting, The Sixth Sense, Stigmata, Stir of Echoes, and The Blair Witch Project. And I’m looking forward to End of Days, Lost Souls, The Bone Collector, and Sleepy Hollow.
Of the ones I’ve seen this year, only The Haunting left me unsatisfied. In my opinion it just didn’t have the weight that the others did. The story lacked, and it really never made you jump. Never really scared you.
The others, with the possible exception of Stigmata to a degree, all did make you jump and, more importantly, left you thinking. Now I’m not going to ruin any of those movies and tell their secrets, but I want to mention that almost without fail often the scariest parts of some of those movies were when they didn’t show you anything. No blood, no grizzly murder. I’ll admit there were a few things that were a little bloody or shocking, but the good ones knew how to build a story. How to keep you interested, on the edge of your seat while simultaneously making you squirm to the back your seat trying to hide. To make you want to slam your eyes shut, but you don’t because you don’t want to miss a single scene.
Someone obviously passed out the “How to write successful horror” handbook this year in Hollywood. And the year isn’t even over yet.
But we also talked about the movies of the past, Poltergeist and The Exorcist being the top two of course. Then the first Friday the 13th (which she had never seen any of, if you can believe that) and the second one too (the rest are funnier than they are scary). Then the first two Halloween movies, and even 4, 5, and 6 weren’t bad. And of course, the king of series bad guys, Freddy in the first Nightmare on Elm Street and the third. Each of those had a good story and in most of them the directors knew how to film a scene for suspense to tense you up before dropping the hammer.
The bad movies are too numerous to name… but we can start with Leprachaun, every movie of a series named above that wasn’t listed as a good one.
Even movies that I might consider ‘good’ movies, meaning that I enjoyed watching them, I wouldn’t really call good ‘horror’ movies. Maybe call them ‘splatter flicks’ or something, like the Hellraiser series, I like ’em, but they mostly shock, not scare.
Where am I going with this? I have no idea. Not a clue. But I like horror movies, so this year I’ve been a happy camper at the theater… it’s when I get home and try to go to sleep that I’m a little uneasy. But that’s what good horror movies do.

1 July 1998

Random Thoughts

There are 2 things I want to talk about here in my .plan, but one will have to wait until tomorrow (or the next update).
As happens often, my judgement of “good” movies has been called into question. Mostly this time it was triggered by an offhand comment about my selecting Outland as a movie to go rent, and how I was full of it. So I decided that maybe I should fill people in on how it is that I judge movies.
First, never have any expectations. That’s my #1 rule because I find that if I believe the hype of a movie I am ALWAYS let down. The only times the hype ever helped a movie in my opinion were Batman and Independence Day. If you remember the commercials and previews for those movies, they gave absolutely nothing away. Hell, the Batman promos were just the Bat Symbol and the date it was coming out. Only later did they actually show you what Batman or the Joker looked like. The way they handled it, you were salivating whenever you saw a commercial because they new you already wanted to see it (I mean, who didn’t want to see Batman) all they had to do what make you NEED to see it. ID4 did the same thing by never showing the aliens, by only showing fast moving and fleeting shots of the alien crafts. Both movies promos made you feel like you needed to see the movie and kept enough from you that they delivered. Sure you can drive trucks through the plot holes in ID4 but who cares, you were on the edge of your seat anyway eyes plastered wide open. Jurassic Park is one I waffle on in this category because they showed a little more in the previews and commercials, but the fact that most theaters sold 7-day advance tickets for it shows that the campaign worked. A bad example of this, although I liked the movie, Deep Impact. About 80% of the movie was revealed in the trailer, so there wasn’t much to surprise me, I saw it all coming, but this is part of it. I prefer it if I don’t KNOW what the movie is going to tell me before I see it, but even if I know every step they will take I can still enjoy the movie. So to recap this, never have any expectations, or just have them low enough that the movie will exceed (i.e. – if you went to Godzilla looking for a monster to tear up New York, you were happy… if you were looking for an emotional struggle of the people who’s lives were affected by the destruction of the city, you were insanely stupid and hated the movie). I guess the true guide is, go in with basics, not specifics.
Second, don’t think. This one is where people get stuck. Most people have no problem with setting aside expectations of a film, it’s not hard. But to ask them not to think is hard. Now I need to explain myself. A movie is entertainment. Sure, it can contain a deep meaning and be socially important, but there IS a difference between a documentary and a movie. A movies is not just presented facts, it’s a story. I like to think of it as a ride. Let me give you a human example of what I mean. One of my friends, Joel, is a movie-thinker. It’s all he does. He wants to be challenged by a movie. We went and saw The Usual Suspects and The Game. He loved both of them for one reason, they beat him. He couldn’t out-think those movies. They took turns he didn’t expect and they gave him an ending he didn’t see coming and he applauded the movies for doing that. Now, I’ll admit, I’m being hard on him. For romance movies or for “classics” he suspends the “challenge me” attitude. And once a movie beats him once, he always respects it, so seeing The Game again wouldn’t make him hate it since he knows what’s going to happen now, he’ll remember that at one time it did win. My attitude is that the story unfolds as they tell it. I watch, I pay attention. I take notes of things, “He just put the knife in his own pocket and not the desk drawer”. But I don’t try to stay a step ahead, mostly because (to toot my own horn) I’m a smart guy, and I’d win too often if I tried to out-think a movie. The only thing that can ruin a movie for me storywise is if they say “Ah, remember! I put the knife in my pocket!” but they never showed it, either because it was edited or because it was left out on purpose (because otherwise you would have figured it out). Other than that though, I sit back at let the movie pull me along at its pace. That’s what I mean by “don’t think”. Don’t try to win. Let the movie tell you its story.
Third, it’s all you. By this I mean that there are some movies you are just not going to like. If you hate horror movies then don’t go see H2O when it comes out (Halloween: 20 years later, for those not in the know). If you hate disaster films, don’t see Armageddon. Remember what you like and don’t like, and choose accordingly. And if friends are going to see a movie of a type you don’t normally like, tell them, or get them to pay (there is nothing better than being able to say “Well, that movie sucked. At least I didn’t pay for it.”), or just bear it for one of 2 reasons. 1, tastes change, you may like something you previously didn’t. And 2, related to the hype thing, some movies get billed wrong (i.e. – If you saw Event Horizon what you saw was a haunted house movie in space, but all the commercials were pushing it as a SCI-FI suspense thriller, email me if you still don’t get the distinction and I’ll explain, I guess a better choice would have been to fine one of those “screwball comedies” that make you cry when you see them cause there are only like 2 jokes in the whole movie). So to sum up this one, keep in mind who you are.
Fourth and finally, opinions and assholes. Like the old saying goes, everybody has one. Remember that. You hate a movie, fine, that’s cool, say it, say it all you want. But don’t try to tell me, or anyone else, the I didn’t like it either. I say I like it, that means I like it. If you care and ask I’ll be more than happy to tell you why I liked it (I watch a movie called The Stoned Age once every couple of weeks cause, damn, that movie is just funny as shit). And I’ll be sure to ask you why you hated it. But never, ever presume that you can change my mind by repeatedly saying “That movie blew! It sucked ass!” or even “That was the best movie ever!”, the only way you can move me is to show me why I should move and allow me to move on my own, pushing just makes me push back (and most people are the same way).
That’s it… the “Jason Pace Patented Movie Viewing Policies”… Don’t expect more than the basics, don’t try to out-think the movie, remember who you are, and that your view is your “opinion”. And keep in mind throughout all of this, it’s just a movie. If you rent a movie I recommend and hate it, email me and tell me why you didn’t like it, but don’t expect a refund.
I guess I should also throw in as an after note, that some movies are viewed with a purpose, to see one scene or for a particular special effect or for an overall mood and not a specific story, and that should also be kept in mind in reading my recommendations.
Another long one… told you it would happen again… and I’ve got another that it in the wings…
—–
Today’s Song: anything by Seven Mary Three. That’s not a song, take it literally. I’ve got both American Standard and Rock Crown in the player today and I stop every 2 hours to hear the local radio station play the new one (if you know when the release date is, email me). They rock… they roll… they are damn good… every albums gets better. I should also say, I guess, that I feel the same way about Better Than Ezra as I’ve got Deluxe and Friction, Baby in the player as well. I think SMT is coming to town soon, gotta check the TicketMaster page (all venues in Atlanta are TM venues).
—–
Today’s Movie: Dogfight. I forgot how good this movie is. I watched Nick of Time again because I was feeling like it, and then decided to take on something a little more dramatic, so I popped in Dogfight. If you haven’t seen it, here’s the lowdown. River Phoenix plays a marine who is about to ship out to Japan right near the beginning of Vietnam (the real fighting hasn’t started yet, it’s still just “military assistance”). He and his buddies have what is called a Dogfight. It’s a party where everyone throws $50 into the pot, the dance hall, food and drinks are paid for out of that and the winner gets the rest ($100). What’s the contest, bring the ugliest date. River was always good in his roles, even the cheesy ones like in The Explorers, and Lili Taylor does a great job as the woman he gets involved with. Damn good movie. Go see it.