Tag: movies

Letters to Esther

Old Boy

Shelly

I was stuck at home today, onna counta my car needed some TLC. The engine was making an odd ticking noise this morning. Boys and Girls, lemme just tell you that it’s probably a good idea to get your oil changed more frequently than every 10,000 miles. I’m just sayin’…

Anyway, because I was waiting on the mechanic to call me back, I couldn’t even play on-line. I had a pile o’ Netflix, though, so I entertained myself by watching fil-ums.

Instant Review: Old Boy

Wow!

First, the default setting was for dubbed audio, so make sure you change it to Korean with the appropriate subtitles. Second, there is a good bit of gratuitous violence, but it was the slow, prolonged gross bits that squicked me out. If watching people having their teeth pulled with a claw hammer makes you feel a little ill, I recommend looking away. (Oh, hey, I think I have to pet the dog rightthisveryminute.) Thankfully, those scenes are set up in such a way that it is easy to anticipate and avoid them.

The basic story line involves kidnapping, imprisonment, Revenge-with-a-capital-R, and all manner of things that would be right at home in something wrought by Aeschylus or Euripides. But the story was not merely lifted from a Greek drama. It’s full of inventive twists and turns and back-trackings, so that, while you may identify the lynch-pin before it comes into view, you aren’t disappointed by having figured it out. There are still plenty of WTF moments to keep your internal “I knew that” voice quiet.

Rating: * * * * *

Instant Review: House

Dear lord, where to begin? I have no idea what the hell I was thinking when I put this movie in my Netflix queueueueueue. I’m sure I thought it’d be good for a laugh, but it was all around pretty horrific, and not in a good way. The cast included (and no, I am not making this up):

  • The Greatest American Hero / Paul Drake from 1980s vintage Perry Mason
  • Bull from Night Court
  • Bubba from In the Heat of the Night
  • Norm from Cheers

Are you scared, yet? Cuz, you really should be.

I won’t bother to describe the horribleness of the plot, the special effects, the acting, or the writing. Let’s just say that it’s quite possibly one of the worst movies I’ve watched in my entire life, m’kay? I ought to be embarrassed to admit that I saw it, but in my defense, I’ll just state that I was working on the computer while the movie was playing, so it’s not like I actually sat down and watched it. About the only good thing I can say about it is that it was mercifully short and it came from Netflix, so it was almost like free.

Rating: * * * * * (It gets one star just for the sheer absurdity of THAT CAST.)

In other news, I finally managed to make a poached egg without burning myself. Oh joy.

I also filled in a huge amount of genealogical data for Esther. I’ve got most of her ahnentafel finished through the 6th generation, with surprisingly few gaps. I found that she was descended from a niece of John Morton. I don’t think that’s particularly surprising, though, as anyone who can trace their family back that far is likely to be descended from Somebody. I haven’t really started on the 7th generation, and I don’t know if I will, as that will require identifying eleventy-six people, which seems like a humense amount of work.

I will say that the LDS databases are truly wondrous, though. Just be careful, as a lot of the info is not even a little bit accurate. If you have access to a library with a gov docs department, and you are interested in genealogy, you might consider volunteering to transcribe census data. The ultimate goal is to get that data on-line so that it can be accessible. As it stands now, the on-line availability of census data is spotty at best, which means that anyone doing serious research (as opposed to my strictly non-serious research) will likely have to travel in order to view those records. Travel = Bad! Sitting on butt in front of computer = Good!

And, my apologies for boring everyone with the Esther-talk, but that’s where my OCD Bliss is taking me these days.

Crankypantsing

Linky Monday

Shelly

First, I bring you these fun filled time wasters:

  • Cats in Sinks. Yes, that’s right, pictures of Cats! In! Sinks! Rory would approve, I think.
  • Stuff on My Cat. Have you ever felt the need to pile stuff on top of your cat? Well, you are not alone.
  • My Cat Hates You. Some cats are bad seeds. Other cats are really bad seeds.

Happy Monday! It was a pretty useless weekend, so I didn’t bother to bore y’all with the details. Some highlights, though: I went to see The Libertine on Saturday. Johnny Depp does not disappoint. And, who knew he’d look so good with ’80s heavy aluminum hair? Then, I spent most of yesterday on the couch, watching fil-ums: The Road to God Knows Where (Nick Cave, like Mr. Depp, rarely disappoints), House of 1000 Corpses (revolting), and The Craft (I finally got around to watching it; not bad. At least I now know why Charmed insists on ruining The Smith’s How Soon is Now.).

At one point yesterday, the cat and the dog–who were lazing on the couch with me–started to yawn at the same time that I did. Now, that’s when you know you’ve achieved ultimate uselessness. I’m blaming it on the weather. I always get sleepy when it rains for days on end.

There’s not much to report from the Department of Arting. I didn’t finish anything over the weekend, but I did some preliminary work. I coffee-stained three pairs of toddler’s tights and a baby’s dress, which means my hands smell like coffee. I’d bought them–the tights and dress, not the hands–ages ago for a series of paintings, but they were so starkly white that I didn’t end up using them. I also primed several largish sheets of paper, which means I have a layer of gesso perm-a-bonded to my coffee scented cuticles. Because, you know, I apparently can’t apply anything even vaguely paint-like without using my hands.

While watching movies, I went through a pile of magazines, cutting out junk to use for collage work. Which reminded me of a tip from Andy. You can erase the clay-coat printing from magazine pages. A regular old eraser will work (but is a bit tedious). I found that a foam sanding block or super fine grit sand paper works great, too. Here’s the fun part, though: you can place objects, like coins, keys, or buttons, under the magazine page, then erase/sand over them, leaving a reverse rubbing of the object. Pretty cool, eh? You can do the same thing with larger patterns. The planking on my deck is old and weathered, with a raised grain that would lend itself well to this sort of thing. Many old buildings have interesting wrought iron grille work that might make nice reverse rubbings, as well. I don’t recommend doing any sort of rubbings of grave markers, though, because no matter how gentle you are, it deteriorates the stone. Sad but true. The kindest thing to do with grave markers is to take photos instead of doing rubbings.

And now, the inevitable crankypantsing: While upgrading some of the software on my computer, I decided to give iTunes a try. Boy, was that ever a mistake! For some reason, it doesn’t work on my system. I don’t know why, and I really don’t care enough to figure it out. I tried uninstalling it, redownloading it, and reinstalling it, and that’s as much effort as I’m willing to invest in it. The problem is that the audio is garbled. I assume it’s a compatibility issue. I can play music just fine with other programs, so I know my sound card is not faulty. I think I’ll stick to my old copy of MusicMatch Jukebox, thankyouverymuch. It’s not perfect, but it works well enough.

Ladybusiness, News & Politics

Instant Review: Iron Jawed Angels

Shelly

The author of one of the blogs I regularly read–I can’t remember which one–recently mentioned watching Iron Jawed Angels. I immediately put it at the top of my Netflix queue and watched it last night.

First, Hilary Swank is amazing. I don’t know why that always surprises me, because she’s consistently good. Maybe it’s that I can’t get over that she was on Beverly Hills 90210? In any event, her portrayal of Alice Paul was most excellent.

Alice Paul
Alice Paul, 1919
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/hec2008008828/

I’m not going to give a synopsis of the movie or the historical events it’s based on. Better ones are available on-line. A couple of things leapt out at me, though, because of things that are happening in the world right now.

First, the illegalization of abortion in South Dakota (the governor signed the bill into law yesterday, and it will go into effect on July 1). Eighty-five years after women won the right to vote, we’re still being treated like chattel. You can watch or listen[1] to a clip of SD Senator Napoli, a creepy man who spends way too much time fantasizing about virgins, rape, sodomy, and shot-gun weddings, wax poetically about the good ol’ days when women knew their places.

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

If you are a woman and you live in South Dakota and you are raped and you become pregnant, you’d better be a god fearing virgin. You must also prove that you had a particularly brutal rape, as explicitly defined by Napoli (that’s right, you don’t get to decide whether or not your particular rape was brutal). Otherwise, you’ll be forced to carry the baby to term. Worse, Sen. Napoli also wants to force you to marry your attacker.

BILL NAPOLI: When I was growing up here in the wild west, if a young man got a girl pregnant out of wedlock, they got married, and the whole darned neighborhood was involved in that wedding. I mean, you just didn’t allow that sort of thing to happen, you know? I mean, they wanted that child to be brought up in a home with two parents, you know, that whole story. And so I happen to believe that can happen again.

And that’s just rape victims. Those brazen hussies who have the temerity to have unsanctioned sex (you know, the kind that occurs out of wedlock), and who become pregnant, will have no option but to go out of state for an abortion or to carry the pregnancy to term. If folks like Sen. Napoli get their way, those women might also be forced to marry the men they had sex with, whether or not that’s in their long-range plans or even in their best interests.

What it boils down to is control. Women should be virginal and angelic. If they are not, they should be punished. Otherwise, why on earth would the chastity of the victim or the brutality of the rape be a consideration in whether or not a resultant pregnancy can be aborted? If women’s wants and needs were of importance, wouldn’t the law treat all pregnancies that result from coerced sex equally? Not that I believe there ought to be any moral strictures on whether or not a pregnancy can be aborted. If women were truly autonomous, and not just incubators, then we’d be trusted to make those decisions for ourselves. It’s not like you can walk up to someone on the street and demand their blood, kidney, or bone marrow. And those things would potentially save a human being that is here, now. Why should we value a bundle of cells more highly than we do adult lives?

Second, hunger strikes. This is also a control issue. Hunger strikes are a last resort for those who have no voice. The thought that even that would be taken away, in an effort to halt criticism of the way the US is dealing with prisoners (sorry, “enemy combattants”), is gut-wrenching. Even though force feeding is physically and mentally tortuous, hunger strikers at Guantanamo are routinely force fed. The only means of protest those prisoners have is being taken away from them by the US government, in an effort to control them. Onna count of we don’t want our public image damaged. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it’s a little late for that. The time for protecting the country’s public image was back before it started rounding up everyone and his brother for looking, or being accused of looking, suspicious.

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[1] The relevant portion is about 2/3 into the stream, but don’t watch/listen unless you’ve got a strong stomach, because the way he gets off on describing his ideal of the perfect brutal rape is just plain squicky.

Art

Instant Reviews

Shelly

Instant Review #1: Brokeback Mountain

I haven’t, as yet, seen it, but I’m happy to report that my word-challenged friend really enjoyed it. She pronounced it “a little slow, but very, very good.”

Instant Review #2: Some Art by Some Dead Guy Named Odilon Redon

Red Boat with Blue Sail
Red Boat with Blue Sail, Odilon Redon, circa 1907, oil on canvas

My boss just returned to work after having surgery. She received a gorgeous bouquet of flowers, which reminded me of how much I adore Odilon Redon’s work. If you aren’t familiar with it, I recommend checking it out. His still lifes are beautiful. He painted more than still lifes, though. His Red Boat with Blue Sail is one of my absolute favorite paintings in the entire world. His portraits are lovely, too. They remind me of Medieval icons.

Instant Review #3: The Kumars at No. 42

I’m not even sure how to describe this gem. It’s part scripted sit-com, part ad-libbed talk show, and 100% hilarity. Sanjeev Kumar lives at home with his parents and grandmother. They’ve converted their back garden into a television studio, where they interview celebrity guests (Minnie Driver and Grant E. Lee, among others) for their chat show. Dear God, is it ever funny.

Instant Review #4: The Iron Giant

An animated film about a boy and his giant robot from outer space, set in the 1950s. It’s truly beautiful–funny and sweet and sad, and it made me cry, all without being at all sappy or over done. Now that’s entertainment.

Uncategorized

FlambĂ© is NOT the Answer!

Shelly

Squick Alert!

I watched Cabin Fever last night. Which was probably not a good idea. Not that the movie isn’t good. It is! It’s Friday the 13th meets Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with David Lynch-style surreality and Troma-style absurdity. It’s funny, smart, and creepy as hell. It’s one of the very best horror movies I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of horror movies.

Anyway, I suspect that’s what lead to a night of strange dreams.

I had some weird-assed dreams last night. In one of them, I was hanging out with a group of friends near the loading dock of one of the buildings on campus. There was another group of students across the parking lot from us, with two Husky puppies, which were playing. One of my friends dropped a piece of sausage from his sandwich. I could tell that the puppy saw the food fall, but he was too interested in playing to come get it just yet. Eventually, he trotted across the parking lot to get the sausage, but a guy suddenly appeared from behind a delivery truck, reaching out and grabbing the dog. He swung the dog around in circles on the end of a leash. Where the leash (or the guy!) came from, I haven’t a clue. C’est la logic of dreams. When the dog hit maximum velocity, the guy let go of the leash, catapulting the dog out of scene. My friends and I were both seriously creeped out and royally pissed off. Realizing that the guy was a dangerous psychopath, we decided to leave. On the way, one of my friends doused the guy with lighter fluid (again, where on earth did it come from?) and set him on fire. My response was, “Dude, flambĂ© is NOT the answer!”

And then, of course, I woke up.

Art

The Raising of an Old Hope

Shelly

Vessels: The Raising of an Old Hope
Vessels: The Raising of an Old Hope
oil pastel on 90lb Stonehenge paper with bones, hair, brass brads, and copper wire
11 1/4 x 9 1/2 inches

I meant to play around with making a pinhole lens for my 35mm camera, but I didn’t end up getting to it. The weather turned kind of gross–cold and grey and snowy–so I stayed inside and made art. Not that it was terrible out or anything, not like what the east coast is experiencing (25 inches of snow?!), but I just didn’t feel like doing much of anything. Instead, I spent the day drawing while watching some awful movie about a 16th century Venetian courtesan on WB (ah, apparently it was called Dangerous Beauty) and a biography of Anne Boleyn on PBS. That was an odd juxtaposition!

And, now, the weekend is over. Hrmph. They always speed by too quickly, and there is never enough to show for the time spent.

Photography

Stop Grovelling!*

Shelly

100_1232

I took this photo last Wednesday. It’d been gross and cloudy, but the clouds started to break up right around sunset, producing some nice crepuscular ray action.

Also called Buddha’s Fingers, Sun Drawing Water, and Ropes of Maui, crepuscular rays occur when an object (building, cloud, tree, etc.) interrupts the sun’s light, casting shadows and creating rays. The same phenomenon can occur when something blocks a portion of a car’s headlights. If you’ve ever been in a forest and seen rays of light streaming through the trees, those, also, are crepuscular rays.

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*(Pardon me while I have a Monty Python moment. Crepuscular rays have that effect on me.)

Art

Lord of the Rings

Shelly

I went to Indy yesterday to see the Lord of the Rings exhibit at the Indiana State Museum. Oh my! It was absolutely geek-tacular. I hadn’t been planning on going, because it was my last day of vacation and I had a bunch of things I wanted to get done, but there was an extra ticket, so I decided to be an irresponsible five-year-old. I’m glad I did, because it was the last day of the exhibit, and it won’t be travelling or be shown again.

First, the bigatures. Wow! The attention to detail on every level was stunning. One of the models was of the ruined Hobbiton mill. It gets about three seconds of screen time, during a “flash forward” sequence, and took three months to make. The commitment to getting every detail correct is clearly present in the movies, but to see it first-hand made it even more impressive. I think the set and costume designers were in many ways the real stars of the LotR movies, so I was glad to have an opportunity to show support for the folks behind the scenes.

Second, the costumes.

  • I had no idea Liv Tyler was so itty bitty!
  • Aragorn’s costume was beautifully worn.
  • Galadriel’s gown had about eleventy billion little crystals sewn into it.
  • Sauron’s costume was ginormous. I hadn’t realized that there is engraved knot-work on just about every single square inch of it, literally from the tips of his crown to the tips of his toes.
  • Much of the accumulated dirt and muck seemed to be left in place. I noticed a big splack of mud on a saddle blanket.
  • The tack and armor from the Nazgul horses was un-freaking-believable. Oh my.
  • There was a gallery with nothing but battle armor from the different types of characters (Rohirrim, Elves, Orcs, Uruk-hai, Gobblins, Harad, etc.). Again, the attention to detail was staggering.
  • There was a small model of a Mumakil, complete with war tower. Very cool!

When I grow up, I want to have a job making scrolls and books for movies. There was a display of tchotchkes and ephemera, including mountains of texts, that made my mouth water so much my salivary glands got cramps. Mmmm.

After we got out of the LotR show, we decided to take a look at some of the permanent collections. I hadn’t been there since they reopened after remodelling and extending. On our way, we ran into the world’s most bestest kid, Piper, and her parents. ‘Tis a very small world. They had 4:00 tickets to the LotR show, and were killing time before-hand, so they went through some of the permanent collection with us. Mostly, that entailed me playing with and being led around by Piper, which was entertaining. For some incomprehensible reason, Piper decided that I was her extra special bestest friend. I am so not worthy. She got all excited when she realized I was there, and immediately attached herself to me. She is Teh Cute. What a sunny, happy kid! After three hours of walking around milling crowds of people, I was starting to get strung-out and cranky. Piper was happy as a clam, though.

Crankypantsing, News & Politics, Pets

A Gallimaufry

Shelly
  • The good news is that drilling in ANWR is on hold, at least for the time being. The bad news is that senators who supported Arctic drilling are pissed off about it, and decided to vent their spleens at the folks who can literally least afford it. What kind of mental disconnect are they suffering from, that allows them to cut US$2 billion in home heating relief for low-income families, all onna counta they didn’t get what they wanted? Waaah!
  • From the Things That Make You Go Wha…? File: If you have early stage Parkinson’s, are having trouble walking, and you live alone, you probably shouldn’t consider getting a high octane dog, like a Husky x German Shepherd Dog. I’m just sayin’. Also, just because a dog sits quietly in its pen at the animal shelter does not, not, not mean that it’ll be mellow at home. Worse, just because it’s mellow at home for the first few days, or even weeks, does not mean that it’ll continue that way. There’s a honeymoon period, in which dogs settle into their new homes. After that period of acclimation, the dog’s behavior can change pretty significantly. Your perfectly behaved dog may suddenly decide that she really needs to investigate what’s on top of the fridge. (No, I am not making this up.)
  • Also, why anyone would find it remarkable that the new King Kong is found battling dinosaurs is beyond me. I mean, does King Kong vs. Godzilla not ring any bells?
  • I’ve developed an odd sleep pattern lately, wherein I go to sleep fairly early, have lots of peculiar dreams, wake up for a couple of hours, then fall back asleep. It’s useful, though, because some of the mind-wandering that occurs after waking up from those weird dreams is artistically productive. Last night, for example, I woke up and realized that I had the image of a new painting in my head. I guess that late-night programming can be good?
Crankypantsing, Meta

Turkey Week (US) Randomness

Shelly

First, I did some redecorating over the weekend. For those of you who stopped by while things were in a state of flux, my apologies on the intermittent ugliness. There is a law of coding that states that, when you fix a problem that occurs in one browser, it breaks something of equal importance in another. Ye, verily, it is true, and I proved it over and over and over again. I don’t have Netscape (nor a connection hearty enough to download it), so I can’t check for problems there. When I get a chance, I’ll make sure things look okay in Opera. For now, though, everything seems to be working properly in Firefox and IE. According to Sitemeter, those are the two browsers most visitors are using, so that takes care of the majority of y’all. If anyone is having problems, just let me know. Problems with the new blog template, that is. For everything else, you’re on your own.

In driving news, it’s official: I am an asswagon magnet. I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about shithead drivers. Surely, there can’t be that many of them on the road? I’ve been doing a lot of carpooling lately with my neighbor, though, so I’ve got an independent a witness. And, it’s true! I am an asswagon magnet. Yesterday, she even commented on it, though she thought that, perhaps, she might be the magnet. I assured her that it was not her fault. I just have a knack for getting behind and/or in front of some spectacularly awful people.

It happened again. I was driving through Ellettsville, when I saw a bunch of emergency lights in the distance. I pulled over and stopped, right before an intersection with a stop light. As the emergency vehicles approached, a car stopped at the crossroad decided it would be a good time to make a left-hand turn, right into the path of what turned out to be three ambulances and a state trooper. WTF?! And, the jerk didn’t even have a green light–I did! I really wonder what the hell is wrong with some people.

I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire over the weekend (fear not, I won’t spoil it for you). It was good, but very different in feel than the previous films. Visually, it was much cleaner and streamlined, I think, but the contrast was not so great that it was distracting. For example, the architecture was more Neogothic than moldering Romanesque, and so the old moving staircases were replaced by spiral stone and wrought iron stairs. Hogwarts seems to have grown considerably in size, as well.

I was worried about how the story would be adapted. The book is long, with a lot of detail that does not lend itself readily to being translated to a visual medium. A good deal of the story–especially toward the beginning–was cut out. Other parts were changed. On the whole, I think those decisions were good. I’ve read some criticism of the romantic content of the movie. I don’t think it was at all out of place, though. First, the kids are growing up, so this is a natural progression. Second, the story is becoming darker, so I think the romantic sub-plot provides a necessary contrast. This is true in the books, but I especially noticed it in the new film. A story that continues to build and build and build in intensity will not be as enjoyable as one that builds, then releases, then builds.

Lastly, I was kind of “meh” about the idea of Ralph Fiennes playing Voldemort. He was great in Spider, but then there’s the inexplicable Maid in Manhattan. But, oh my! He was, I think, a most excellent Voldemort. I was impressed with his makeup, as well. His skin had the sort of translucent cream cheese quality I’d imagined, and the reptilian nose was spot-on. The proto-Voldemort was pretty damned cool, too, though his resemblance to Aylmer made me laugh.

I’ve got more thinking to do on some of the changes, and I’ll have to see it again to be absolutely sure, but my first impression is that the new one is the best of the lot. Well done!

Next, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I have high hopes for it. Hopefully the Christian themes won’t be handled with fists-of-ham. Obviously, they’re present in the story, and they shouldn’t be omitted (not that I think they could be), but I think subtleness is called for. We’ll find out in three weeks!