Boogla !! Boogla!!

Every year for my birthday I want a scary movie marathon. I'm no horror buff...but I do think certain horror movies are fun. Anything from the 50s thru the 80s is fun. Nothing really in the 90s appeals to me, and modern horror...now that that "torture-porn" style is so chic...ugh, I can't stand any o' that.

This year, Laura promised me pizza & Halloween movie marathon. I'm pretty easy to please...that's all I really want.

OK..degree of difficulty..this was something my 12 yr old niece wanted to be in on. And she is a wuss about scary movies. I thought maybe we could ease her into it with some light horror. But Laura said the first night she isn't able to sleep I was gonna be called in the middle of the night to go fetch her. So that wouldn't *really* happen but I got the general message-- put the scare in Chloe and suffer the wrath of her mum!!

I brought my whole selection of Halloweenish movies--scary and otherwise. I brought:
1. Ravenous
2. The Evil Dead
3. Shaun of the Dead
4. Suspira
5.Mad Monster Party (Rankin-Bass movie)
6. Halloween II
7. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (not entirely sure why I brought this one. Hardly fits the theme...)
8. 20 Blood Curdling Horror Classics ( cheap-o set that I got--20 movies on 6 DVDs: Maniac / Little Shop of Horrors / Moon of the Wolf / House on Haunted Hill / Creature from the Haunted Sea/ Tormented/ Dementia 13/ The Galaxy Invader/ Phantom of 10,000 Leagues /Attack of the Monsters/Blood Tide/The Terror /Laser Mission /The Astral Factor /They Came from Beyond Space/ The Last Man on Earth / Gamera the Invincible/ Snowbeast /Night of the Living Dead / War of the Planets)
9. April Fool's Day
10. Poltergeist
11.Young Frankenstein
12. The Tingler
13. Amityville Horror (the 2005 remake)

I thought maybe I could get Chloe to watch Poltergeist...I just looove that one and ultimately it's not that scary..after all, nobody dies in it. And even though I don't think it's all that scary, I hadn't realized (until perusing the DVD case today) the movie has actually got a PG rating. But she wasn't quite bold enough for that. But of that list there were a good deal I hadn't actually seen (#s 13, 12, 6, 4, 1 &none of the movies in the 20 movie collection *except* The Last Man on Earth) so I was good with seeing any of those. Ultimately, we ended up watching "The Tingler' only after I reassured Chloe that scary movies of the 50s just are not scary at all to a modern audience. And that movie proved that assertion true. Not only was there a lot of laughable hammy acting, but the villain-critter of the piece, meant to strike fear into the hearts of moviegoers--it's a rubbery looking centipede-lobster tail mash-up and it's called...THE TINGLER. Not overly terrifying, that moniker. Sounds like a bit of battery powered fun, really.
Then we watched Beetlejuice (one that our friend Kristi brought) And then Chloe and Kristi (mostly Kristi) got all in to watching the Halloween ep of Ghost Hunters (which I thought was BOOOO-RING!! Is that show always so dull??)
Right now as I type this I'm watching Suspira. Getting near the end now. It's pretty good, but I don't know that I'd dub it "One of the Scariest Movies of all Time" (as Entertainment Weekly reportedly called it, according to the Suspira DVD case copy) I find, above all, it's a stylish horror film. I think a lot of times, when review calls a movie "stylish" they actually use that adjective to describe the plot or writing. But I mean it in the purest aesthetic sense of the word. The costumes are lovely..the set design gorrrgeous. The movie's a little gory, but I think the fact that all the blood is super technicolor vermillion --resembling hoochie nail polish more than anything else--squelches some of the gore-induced terror.

chortles

looking for that Tom-Bosley-on-a-train clip I found this Family Guy clip that effing CRACKS ME UP. I don't know how I coulda forgotten about this..

'Kay, now for s'more YouTubey goodness I have unearthed... there was a link to a Peter Serafinowicz interview on HuffPost. I recognized him as starring on the excellent Look Around You (which I'd watched a coupla times on Adult Swim) but had not previously realized that he co-created that show. The write-up that accompanied the interview hailed Serafinowicz as, like, the UK's next great comic genius. After thoroughly pillaging YouTube looking for his work, I am inclined to agree. I am uhhh, mildly obsessed w/ the guy now. Anywhooo, here be a coupla my faves---

this one is wonderfully weird. And even better--it's a bizarro Brit-lit brand of weird. And I love that sad face he makes at the end...

AWWWWW, SAD DICKENS!!!

I think this was a side project and not a part of The Peter Serafinowicz Show. I fecking LOVE it.. it's brill.

R.I.P. Mr C.

How sad that Tom Bosley died.

The sad news immediately called to mind this scene...which is maybe a little irreverant of me, but I do so love it... sorry for the shit quality...

Lessons from the movies...

CINEMATIC WISDOM #508*-- When you are asked to please pass the butter, and you are not at the dining table, during mealtime....just..just...BE WARY. I'm not saying don't go get the butter, just make sure intentions are explicitly communicated. You're apt to be thinking, "Mmm..toast." whereas he's possibly thinking "Huzzah!! Sodomy!" It's best that you be on the same page.

I was puttering around Hulu last night and I saw they offer "LAST TANGO IN PARIS" Not the indie dance flick I was expecting...let me forewarn y'all that "tango" is employed euphemistically in this instance. Haa..ok, I jest. No I hadn't seen it before but I knew of it, and knew it was hardly a precursor to today's "Step-Up" series. I knew the movie's rep, and so I was kinda curious to see it. Well, firstly, I was a bit surprised to see it crop up on **hulu** of all places. I thought, well, if it’s on hulu, probably it’s not as wicked as all that. I mean, after all, it was directed by Bernard Bertolucci not the Marquis de Sade. And overall, it wasn’t as wicked as all that (though the butter scene rather earned its infamy) . If anything, there was some dialogue that I found objectionable.

Well, here’s a few things that are new since I last posted (been a smidge negligent--forgive me?) Not new & exciting…just new. In traditional journalistic fashion, I lead with the exciting stuff (Monsieur Butterfingers) this is the region of the text where you dump extraneous boring albeit factual shit. Here goes…

I took my car in for inspection (am no longer driving the sloppy jalopy BTW) and needed 4 new tires to pass. So that sucked away a chunk of my Saturday & approx $300 .

Out of the blue today, one of my coworkers said to me - “Sandra, ARE YOU OK?” in this tone of heightened concern. Normally that sort of thing is merely annoying, but when you work in an office full of nurses, it gets you effing paranoid! Or, at least it did me. I hope it wasn’t her trained eye alighting on something drastically awry …I mean I was SOOOO tired and I did look fairly hagged out today. The wardrobe pick du jour was moderately fetching, but I didn’t do a thing vis a vis hair & makeup. And I even have 2 wee blemishes I didn’t even bother to spackle o’er.

I learned today that I no longer like lox. I used to, and now I don’t. Not earth-shattering news that, as tastes do change, of course. But that’s just kind of a switcheroo for me…I more often find ,as I age, that I like things now that I never did before.. .. Like Lionel Ritchie…and beets.

* Lest you go searching for 507 prior nuggets of Cinematic Wisdom, I should point out that #508 was picked arbitrarily

celebrities I link together in my head for no good reason..Part I

1. Rachel Bilson & Mila Kunis

2. Philip Seymour Hoffman & Paul Giamatti

3. Kurt Russell & Jeff Bridges [though it should be noted here that Bridges has the advantage of 7 trillion awesome points for being Lebowski. I definitely like him best and think really the only thing that links him to Russell in my mind is that they have matching swoopy brown coiffures)

4. Bill Paxton & Bill Pullman

5. Albert Finney & George Segal

out of the mouths of babes...

I sometimes take a dry paintbrush (no paint on it) and make-believe paint moustaches on my nieces. Well the young ones, (5 &7) not my eldest niece (12). It amuses all of us, not that I can really explain why that is. I ask them , "What kind of moustache do you want? The Villain? The French Villain? The Surly Cowboy?" So they tell me what kind they'd like, and I "paint" it on, and they giggle and then usually give me a moustache. So the other night when I babysat, I put them to bed, and then I came back up and said "I FORGOT!! You guys need bedtime moustaches!!" So I gave Lucy a "fancy French" 'stache and Sadie got "The Pepere" and then Lucy is play-painting on my face and she sez " But Auntie you already have a moustache, kind of."

Yeeeowch...time to get the Sally Hansen Cream Hair Remover outta the medicine cabinet. Yes, I do have some..I was not previously oblivious to my she-stache. It's a very faint little peach fuzz stache--I guess I have the "Martin Mull". But I'd just procrastinated tending to it for a while, telling myself-- OK, sure, it is glaringly obvious to me when staring in the 200X magnifying makeup mirror (those things are damned BRUTAL by the way...don't mess with them unless you have mighty monster self confidence) but nobody looks *that* closely at my face. It would seem I've been too lax in the face-scaping. Sure, Lucy was staring at my face, and concentrating right on the upper lip region, but still... People do stare other people hard in the face. I dunno what I was thinking. I mean...fer instance... I work with this lady named Ricky. She is an RN so it rather shocks me that she seems to not realize the detriments of using mascara that you've kept since 1974. Maybe it's not old mascara, maybe it's really bad, cheap mascara. But I presumed it was old mascara, because I often buy cheap-ish mascara and I've never had a problem with my lashes ending up clumpy & looking like fat SPIDER LEGS like hers do. So consequently, everytime she talks to me, my peepers unavoidably lock onto hers. So why would I be immune to scrutiny of countenance--particularly if I has some 'stache action going on?? I wouldn't be. I was just making excuses.
So, epilogue...I have rid myself of my Martin Mull-ness. Will need to tweeze the brows pretty soon though..