Month: April 2006

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Instant Review: Wolf Creek

Shelly

I spent most of the weekend doing manual labor. As a reward, I dangled a few fil-ums in front of myself. One of them was Wolf Creek. Holy crap! I’m a huge fan of horror movies. It takes a fair amount to gross me out and even more to truly scare me. This one did both. In fact, I had to watch it in three sittings, because it creeped me out that badly. The creepiness started with the juxtaposition of the wild and gorgeous and completely unforgiving landscape with the “happy kids on holiday.” It was just three college students and the Australian Outback, where there’s nothing but sand and rock and sky and wildlife, as far as the eye can see. That isolation created a sense of disquiet that continued to build, unrelieved, throughout the film. I think the tension, as much as the actual “gore” scenes, was what made the film so frightening.

It was “based on a true story” in the same way that Fargo was. In other words, not so much. There are several murder cases that it is said to be based on, but none of them are a good match. I think linking it to actual events was nothing but creative marketing. It didn’t hurt that it was written, acted, and filmed in a hyper-realistic manner. There is a true crime feel to to the movie that adds to the uber-creep factor.

Basically, three college students go on a backpacking trek across Australia. They decide to buy a car and drive to Wolf(e) Creek Crater, which is in the middle of nowhere. While there, their car dies mysteriously. Just as mysteriously, a Crocodile Dundee-type stranger appears and offers to tow their car to his camp, where he says he can fix it for them. Having never seen a horror movie and therefore unaware that strangers are Very Bad News, they stupidly take him up on his offer. They drive and drive and drive and drive and drive until they reach his camp, at which point offers them drug-laced water and much awfulness ensues. I shall spare you the truly gory details.

I will say, though, that while it scared the hell out of me, I don’t see the point of some critics who thought the movie went overboard. It’s a horror film. It’s supposed to gross you out and/or scare the pee out of you. Yes, some of it is in really, really bad taste. Again, it’s a horror movie. It’s not supposed to be in good taste. Duh.

On a technical note, it was shot in hi-definition video. Wow! The nature/landscape sequences, including one of an eclipse, are stunning. The cinematographer has done a lot of documentary work, and his skills are put to good use here. The Outback is truly one of the stars of the movie.

Ladybusiness, News & Politics

Culture of Control

Shelly

First, South Dakota outlaws abortion of any sort, though there may be exceptions for those who have been Napolied.

Next, Missouri attempted to cease funding for birth control for the poor. The legislation would have also prohibited state-funded agencies from referring those women to programs that could help them. Culture of life, my ass.

Now, Ohio would like to get in on the action. Rep. Tim Brinkman, bless his vile little heart, has introduced a bill that would make it a felony for a woman to obtain an abortion, or to leave the state to obtain one. Further, anyone who helped her obtain an abortion, or leave the state to obtain one, could be charged as well.

Even if such legislation is ultimately voted down, the mere fact that someone actually thought it might be a good idea is pretty damned disturbing. Folks like Mr. Brinkman and Mr. Napoli almost make me wish I believed in Hell.

Crankypantsing, Ladybusiness, News & Politics

Linkidinks and Bogglement

Shelly

First, the Linkidinks:

  • What every well dressed tank is wearing this spring: a tank cozy. (That’s for D, onna counta her post on subversive knitting projects.)
  • Also, the Crochet Hyperbolic Coral Reef Project.
  • For Ms. Lea, who ties funny knots.
  • Halliburton is given yet another contract, this one for $385 million, to waste building immigrant detention centers in the US. Read it and weep. From Halliburton’s website (in pdf format):

    • The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States, or to support the rapid development of new programs.

    What “new programs” are they preparing to rapidly develop? Creepy!

  • Via D, this most excellent reworking of I Am the Walrus, koo-koo-ka-chu.
  • Ramen taste test.
  • From the surreal files, a Yahoo news story about the role Yahoo has played in the jailing of Chinese dissidents. M’kaythen.
  • From the Department of Duh, high gas prices are the result of corporate greed, not the price of crude oil.
  • YouTube video of Indian street traffic. Amazing. It’s like anarchist ballet with cars. And, am I smoking crack, or is India where all good Festivas go to die?
  • Does becoming involved in the Goth subculture protect kids from harm? Interesting, and not at all surprising. I just have to quote this bit, because it makes me all kinds of happy:

    It is a strongly non-violent and accepting subculture.

    Crazy and dysfunctional, yes, but not violent and not unaccepting. I think that was one of the most important parts of self-identifying as a freak when I was in high school and college. The freaks take all comers and have a live and let live philosophy. There’s a lot to be said for that.

  • Lots of things bother me about Tom Cruise, but I’m amused that Katie took pain killers during the delivery.
  • Speaking of The Tom, I’m thoroughly creeped out by the baby’s epithet “TomKitten.” It’s as if the wee one burst forth from her father’s forehead, fully armored. I believe the myth goes: It was prophesied that any child of The Tom’s would overshadow him, so when Katie became pregnant, The Tom ate her. Or maybe it was just the placenta. Anyway, he then got a thumping headache, and asked his publicist to cleave his skull in twain with an axe. Out popped baby Suri. Et voila, The Tom achieves solo male birth.
  • More creepiness. I’ve long been bothered by the tone BushCo has been taking on the subject of Iran. I do not find this admission to be comforting.

Second, the Bogglement:

And then there’s this little gem from Slate, on The Medical Institute for Sexual Health. The Med Institute has received a $200,000 grant from the CDC to create a program to teach medical students about sexual health. Sounds innocuous enough, right? Only, the guy who heads the Med Institute is W. David Hager, a misogynist who raped and abused his wife. He was also the author of the report that is implicated in the FDA’s decision to not give OTC status to emergency contraception. Nice guy, eh?

Anyway, according to Hager’s Med Institute’s mission statement, they believe that “the behavior choices necessary for optimal health are sexual abstinence for unmarried individuals and faithfulness within marriage.” Now, I realize that Our Malevolent Leader is all for keeping it in your pants unless you’re one of God’s chosen people, which is problematic on about a zillion levels. However, spewing ridiculous tripe like the above is not the way to bolster one’s position. Fortunately for Our Malevolent Leader, who had the foresight to leave nearly every child behind, they aren’t teaching logic in schools these days. If they were, then it would be patently obvious that married folk do not have a monopoly on faithfulness. The existence of a piece of paper, or lack thereof, cannot predict whether or not a person will screw around.

And don’t get me started on the “nonmarital pregnancy epidemic.” My ass. Again, a little piece of paper cannot predict whether or not someone will make a good parent. I realize they’d like us to think they’re referring to teen pregnancy, but if that was their true intent, they’d’ve said so. No, they mean exactly what they say. They don’t like uppity wimmins having babies on their own, onna counta we’ve got eeevil uteri and cannot be trusted with their operation.

The CDC has no business funding this sort of crap. Then again, we’re talking about a government that thinks that only married folks should be having Teh Sex. According to its new abstinence education guidelines, in order to be eligible for government grants, the group in question must teach that:

“Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage. Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse. […] Throughout the entire curriculum, the term ‘marriage’ must be defined as ‘only a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.'”

What that means is that they must teach kids that they shouldn’t have sex until they are married, and that only God’s Chosen People (those who aren’t Teh Gay), will be allowed to marry. If you are gay, too bad, so sad, no sex for you. I really cannot see why on earth our government should be allowed to pursue such an agenda. If they want to disseminate abstinence only information, fine. It isn’t an effective way to achieve their supposed goal, but in and of itself, it’s not a big deal. However, when it is used as a framework for teaching kids that there is something wrong with being not-straight, that’s another kettle of fishes.

Crankypantsing

On Cars and Driving

Shelly

What started out as a stormy day (5″ of rain in 90 minutes!) has turned quite beautiful, if a little warmer than I’d prefer. I took the back way home, so that I could look at all the baby cowlets. Oh. My. Gawd. but the wee babies are some serious kind of cute. I nearly went off the road while driving past the cute little farm on Woodyard. They have bitty newborns that are so cute it hurts.

And, it must have been the day for moving hay. I passed two farmers hauling flatbeds piled high with round bales. I assume they’re rotating stock, as it’ll soon be time for the first cutting. Out with the old, in with the new.

The point, though, is that I had an ancient gold pick-up truck behind me. It reminded me of the truck we had when I was a kid. Oh my. For a long time, it was the only “running” vehicle we had. And, I use that term euphemistically. The steering column was literally (and I use that term literally) held together with baling wire. The gear shift was a flat-head screw driver. The best part, though, was that it would not stay in low gear without help. Whenever we needed to go uphill, my step-dad would have to get out of the truck, climb underneath it, and use a set of vice grips to clamp it in low gear. Now that is what I’d call manual transmission. At the top of the hill, the little ritual was repeated in reverse. Très amusant, non? I haven’t gotten to the good part, though. Those of you who are familiar with southern Indiana will see why this is especially problematic. For those who are not, have you seen Breaking Away? We have a few hills down here. Actually, our hills have a few hills. And those hills are on top of yet more hills. Basically, this is not the place for a vehicle with a b0rkened transmission. The mind wobbles.

However, the icing on the cake was that my step-dad was an auto mechanic. No, really. Can you believe that? I won’t bore you with tales of the VW Beetle that had no reverse gear. Or the VW Squareback that had a broken driver’s seat and no alternator. And then there was the VW Microbus that, like all VWs, had no heat. Instead, it had a kerosene space heater. Talk about a death wagon on wheels!

It is for to weep.

Anyway, this might explain why I have such deep and abiding love for my little Tracker. Unless you’ve grown up with junkyard rejects, you have no idea how nice it is to be able to decide, at 3:00 on a Saturday afternoon, to just drop everything and go on a road trip.

Art, Ladybusiness, Photography

All Your Art are Belong to Us

Shelly

I belong to several art-related mail lists. Occasionally a topic will come up that makes my head spin. Today has been a head-spinning day, I guess. In one group, while discussing the various technical details of setting up an art challenge, it was suggested that judging be done via eBay. The idea being that the challenge winner would be decided by the piece with the highest bid. That’s problematic for all kinds of reasons, the first of which being that there is no accounting for some of the crap folks will–of their own free will!–bid on, and for the ludicrous amounts of money they’ll fork over for the pleasure. So, that was, I think, 86’d.

Then, someone piped up that she couldn’t sell her work anyway, because it all belonged to her husband. Because, you know, he’s the one with the job and he’s the one who paid for her art supplies, so he gets to control her actions and what she does with the fruits of his earnings. I managed to keep from vomiting, but only just. I’m sorry, but is he her life partner or her father? Hard to believe, I know, but they aren’t the same thing. The problem is that there is no equality when one person has that sort of control over the other, regardless of whether that control is gained by force or is willingly conferred by the controlee. I found the whole thing disturbing and creepy. Sad, too, in that she seemed perfectly brainwashed by happy about the arrangement. O ick.

And now, a chaser: I call this one Tableau with Bird Feeder, Forsythia, and Apple Tree, with a Side of Dandelions.

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Photography

Before and After

Shelly

I’ve mentioned how much I love old buildings, especially houses? Especially when they’re half falling down? In the mid-’80s my family moved (again!), and across the street from the new house was an enormous Queen Anne house that looked like it might disintegrate at any moment. It was the quintessential haunted house, dilapidated with rotted curtains hanging in random windows. The interior had once been broken up into small apartments, but it has sat empty for a good number of years. I was always fascinated by that house, and torn between enjoyment of its decayed aspect and hope that it would one day find an owner who would renovate it.

It was finally bought a few years ago, and the new owners completely rehabbed it. Over the course of a couple of years, they replaced the roof and stripped the remnants of paint from the exterior, including the stripping and/or replacement of about a million pieces of gingerbread. You cannot imagine how excited I was to finally get a tour of the interior! It’s been beautifully restored and decorated inside, with new plaster, new floors, and rich fabrics papering the walls. It’s absolutely gorgeous.

Pink House
Before

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After

Art, Paintings

Three Paintings

Shelly

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Funnel Cloud, oil on canvas

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Vessels, oil on canvas

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Maps IV, oil on canvas

These are all paintings that now live at my mom’s house. I’ve been meaning to photograph them for quite awhile, but never managed to get to it. Easter was a perfect opportunity, though. It was overcast, which I think is the best time to take outdoor photos. Bright sunlight may seem nice, but it washes out color and flattens everything. Overcast days enhance the saturation of color, so if you’re going to photograph artwork outdoors (and outdoors is far preferable to indoors, with flash), it’s best to do it outdoors on a cloudy day.

The top one and bottom paintings I’m still pretty happy with. I like the middle one, but it has some spacial issues. I’m thinking about having another go at the idea, just so that I can fix the things that now bug me. We’ll see if I ever get around to it.

The third painting belongs to my youngest brother. It was part of the Maps series. I love the underwatery feel of it. The top painting began as part of the same series, but it ended up going in an entirely different direction. I still wasn’t using much white at that point, which is what accounts for the weird, tornado-y glow in that and a few other paintings, like this one.

Greenhouse
Greenhouse, oil on canvas

Photography

Efflorescence of a Sunset

Shelly

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Eastern Glow at Sunset, 14 April 2006

I took this last Friday evening. I’d been standing outside, talking with my neighbor across the gate (like ya’ do). I was facing west, and had been lamenting internally that the sunset was non-existant. One minute it was hovering boringly above the horizon, then “plop” it sank. Nary a hint of pink or orange or purple or anything at all. Hrmph.

Then, as she was leaving, I turned to go back inside. Oh my. The entire eastern sky was glowing a soft pink. It was kind of subtle, so I didn’t think it would show up well in a picture. I intended to just hang out and enjoy it while it lasted, but then Harriet decided it was time to eat rightthisninute. I took her inside to feed her, then went back outside to do some more sky watching. In the few moments I was indoors, the pink had deepened and intensified. I got my camera and took a few pictures.