Cinema Paradisi-(Annoyed Grunt)

Went to see The Simpsons yesterday with Zoe and Eric. It was good--much funnier than the show has been for years. And yes, you get to see Bart's dangle. I was surprised when we weren't immediately raptured out of the theatre...aren't animated penises one of the signs of the end times?

There was a series of dreeeeeadful previews: Rush Hour and Alvin and the Chipmunks stood out as profoundly bad. Sadly, no preview of Who's Your Caddy.

~*~

No box office news yet for LiLo's I Know Who Killed Me. (Who knew her career wrote its own screenplay?) This Movie Consensus from Rotten Tomatoes seems to sum it all up:

Distasteful and ludicrously plotted, I Know Who Killed Me is a career nadir for all involved.

Still Love You Like That, Da Da Da Da

Finally we've gotten a few rains. Huzzah. No need to keep lugging around the portable sprayer. The downside is I've found myself wandering about the house singing "Here Comes the Rain Again" to myself in my best Elmer Fudd voice (which, honestly, is not that good.)

~*~

Went to see Knocked Up with my friend Eric yesterday. Funny flick. Well, there was one bit that I had to cover my eyes for. Some great ad-libbed bits between Seth Rogan and Paul Rudd (not as funny as the "You know how I know you're gay" bits from 40 Year Old Virgin but funny.) Equally funny was the senior couple who were at the end of our row. It's a little odd listening to a man old enough to be your grandfather explaining what a "BJ" is to a woman old enough to be your grandmother. Funny enough that I wasn't pissed at them for being loud.

~*~

One batch of poems submitted this weekend. Hoping to get the next batch out by the end of the week. The long poem has a title (which will most likely be changed by the time it's finished) and is proceeding...slowly.

~*~

Have decided to gird up my loins and battle the slugs this summer. They're always about but I usually leave them be. They seem really plentiful this year and are wreaking havoc in all my beds. Basil leaves like swiss cheese and all my hosta transplants look rasped. It also makes walking barefoot a dangerous prospect.

I'm trying to figure out the least harmful way to kill them...I don't want to kill any of the other beneficial critters who live in the beds, but surely, the slugs must die. I went to a couple of the garden centers looking for bait, killers, whatever so I could price them and see if they'd do the job just not kill everything else. In the midst of the search I found this:

I love it, Geta. Not Getr but the more urban Geta. Though I think it should be spelled "Getta." I started singing the Ini Kamoze song "Here Comes the Hotstepper" to myself in Lowe's but reworked it to being about killing slugs "Here Comes the BugGeta, murderer/ I'm the gastropod gangster, murderer" etc, etc.

Sometimes I'm too geeky to be around people.

Junk Drawer

Last night I woke up about 2:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. Flipped through channels trying to find anything that might be watchable. VH-1 Classic had a Siouxsie and the Banshees video. I enjoyed it, but it seemed to unsettle the cats. Click. Switched to the menu function to see if there was anything that caught my eye. FMC was showing The Gay Deception. That almost seemed promising...but instead it's some movie from 1935 about a woman who comes into a lot of money; not about Ted Haggard or others like him. No Star Trek or any National Geographic or History Channel documentaries that I wanted to watch. So I ended up on MSNBC watching Alexandra Pelosi's (daughter of "San Francisco Liberal Values" Speaker of the House Nancy (who happens to have a street near the Inner Harbor in Baltimore named for her)) Journeys With George, her documentary about travelling with W. during the 2000 election. It was startling in a lot of ways. I reccomend it, though sometimes I found myself getting pissy and flipping back to music videos.

I finally saw the Beyonce & Shakira video. Amazing how effortless it seems for Shakira to be sexy and in control of her own body. Beyonce just worked so hard. Even with a wind machine blowing her to hell and back she didn't pull it off. If she screws like she dances I pity Jay Z--especially if that's her "sexy" face. I need the Shakira album.

At some point I fell asleep. Dreamed (twice !) about being at a prom-like function. I wasn't in formal wear but a blazer, a baggy madras plaid shirt, slacks and (big gay inhale) sandals! I kept running into the daughter of a former coworker and said the same thing each time: "I haven't seen you in ages." She had on too much eyeliner (which only accentuates her lazy eye) and a fuschia sequined gown with assymetrical shoulders. The left shoulder was a mass of dyed-to-match maribou and feathers. It resembled nothing so much as tumorous cotton candy.

~*~

My thighs hurt like hell. It's deceptively sunny out. Chilly. This is just not cricket. Sunny means warm, dammit.

~*~

Poems have been coming but then stalling out about 8 lines in. I'm leaving them in the cannibal file and hoping that I can go back and work with them. They feel promising when I'm drafting but aside from the initial flash, there's nothing. Distressing.

But Think of the Chiiiiiildren!

Lord. There's going to be a full length Simpson's movie...of course I figure most of you know that. Apparently, there's a brief bit where quelle horreur Bart Simpson is naked! Right wing folks are upset about this. See more here. Americablog has video as well.

Can we bring Dan Quayle back to discuss how naked cartoon boys are setting a bad example?

Thrilled for a Friend

My friend Minda, who honestly is more of a little sister than anything, just emailed me with some fantabulous news from Pittsburgh. She's okayed the sharing, so here goes.

She just finished a 12-hour shoot on the new John Leguizamo/Donnie Wahlberg tv series, The Kill Point. Here's her dispatch from the set:

Unfortunately, I only saw John L. for a couple seconds as he was getting into his car. Donnie (New Kids On The Block) Wahlberg played the old 'tap on the shoulder and walk away' game with me on set...the first time I looked at the person I was talking to and asked, 'Did Donnie Wahlberg just tap my shoulder?" And the guy smiled and said no...then a minute later he did it again and I replied, 'What? Are you 5?" and everyone laughed. (I'd like to point out that Donnie and I had NOT been introduced and he did NOT play this tapping game with anyone else...HOWEVER, he is losing his hair...painfully.)

The guy from The Brothers McMullen, Mike McGlone, was very nice as well and remembered EVERYONE'S name.

The big fun here is that I got paid...minimum wage. It doesn't matter!! I'm a WORKING ACTRESS!!!

Big ups baby.

I MUST See This

My friend Karl, who has decamped from West Virginny to Old Virginny, sent me an email the other day about this movie. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. That's just brilliant. This strikes me as the perfect anodyne to our current dearth of Christploitation flicks. There are a few, just not enough.

Although not the biggest Jesus movie fan, I do love me some Vampire slaying. And while I doubt there's any reference to "Mr. Pointy," I think the movie's two tag lines are solid: "The Power of Christ Impales You" and "The first testament says "an eye for an eye." - The second testament says "love thy neighbour." - The third testament ... Kicks Ass!!!"

According to this review at Badmovies.org, this movie is a trifecta for me. Masked luchador? Check. Skinning lesbians to provide the vampires skin grafts? Check. Atheists attacking our lord and savior? Check.

Thank you Karl!

Thank God It's Monday

I can't believe I said that, but I did. I spent most of the weekend with my friend Jenny, who I've not seen for several weeks. I think the last time was when we were supposed to go to Charleston but ended up in the median. The visit was nothing exciting really--we ran out and grabbed some movies and I fixed dinner. We ate like pigs, changed into our jammies and had a movie marathon. The only thing missing was doing one another's hair and prank calling that dreamy boy from Geometry class.

There were, however, a couple of things that made this a truly Jenny experience. Saturday night her little shelter rescue schnauzer got incredibly sick all over the place and we had to clean that up. Sunday morning, as I was gearing up to leave, the light fixture/ceiling fan combo in her kitchen blew up. Each light exploded sequentially and it started smoking. We turned off the breakers to the kitchen and I had her call the fire department to find out what to do since we couldn't get her landlord or the building's handy man on the phone. That's part of the fun of seeing her--something always happens. You don't know if it's going to be benign (blitz attack by pooping birds) or potentially fatal (car in the median), but something happens that makes a good story later. She's like a magnet.

I've got an appointment to see the chiropractor tomorrow. I wanted an appointment today, but he's booked. I've got a pinched nerve that is totally screwing up my left arm if I move it the wrong way. The sad thing is, I'm not sure what "the wrong way" is just yet. So far it's been set off by washing my hair in the shower and driving (I drive a stick so my left arm/hand is the dominant steering hand) so I'm trying to avoid holding it straight out or raising it to head level. My mother, lord love her, asked me "Well how did you do that?" Honestly, I don't know. I suspect it happened because of sleeping on my left side, curled up. I'm looking forward to the alignment/adjustment though. I wrenched my back a couple of years ago and he had me fixed in less than an hour.

I got my machete. And I've learned that to get the herbicide and stump killer I need, I'm going to have to make a trip to a tractor supply store. I've never been to one. I'm looking at it as an anthropological experience.

Eye Patches

I caught part of Kill Bill Vol. II on TNT last night--the throwdown between Uma and Darryl specifically--and it got me to thinking: Why aren't more women in pop culture wearing eye patches? They're definitely attention-grabbing. Which then got me to thinking about my favorite women with eye patches in pop culture.

Honorable (Androgynous) Mentions:

PeteBurns, Dead or Alive

Ziggy Stardust era David Bowie

The Women in Question

Callisto from Marvel Comics' X-Men

Angelina Jolie, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

Wendy Robie as Nadine Hurly from Twin Peaks

Stockard Channing as Ruby McNutt in Smoke

Darryl Hannah as Elle Driver in Kill Bill Vol 1

The Frogs and Other Things

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce you to Pseudacris crucifer, otherwise known as the Northern Spring Peeper. It is truly spring. These little buggers are out in force, calling and sounding and looking for love. Though allegedly nocturnal, they've been doing their thing most hours of the day this week. There must be thousands of them due to the sound. I've had the windows open because it's been balmy and breezy and their calls are inescapable. They seem to work as a chorus, so it's nearly impossible to single out when a specific call begins or ends, unlike larger frogs or toads. It's almost like when cicadas are out in force. Their sounding never really becomes white noise that you can block...at best it becomes like a case of tinnitus. If you click the link above, Wiki has a sound file of hundreds of them. It gives a rough idea of it--but the scale is definitely off. Useless critter trivia: a group of frogs is referred to as an army or colony. More useless trivia: contrary to its poster, the 1972 animals amok flick, Frogs does not contain a scene where a large bullfrog eats a human hand. This one didn't make it into my recap of favorite killer critter movies because Joan Van Ark survives. I always hated Val.


Today is the last day of meds--huzzah! They've done the trick, although I'm now in that "feeling fine but have an energy deficit" zone. This is the hardest part of the whole illness/recovery cycle for me to navigate. It's a battle between stubborness and sensibility. I know I'm still not completely well, but dammit I feel fine. I wanted to work in the yard today, but am going to resist because I know I'll be clammy and coughing in about half an hour. I learned this on Friday when I went out to pick up some small branches and things that had blown out of the maples. I lasted twenty minutes and then ended up sacked out for a couple of hours. No need to repeat that. A few days of waiting isn't going to change much since the dead stems will still be there.



Daffodils are blooming like crazy, as are the tulips. In addition to the bargain packs of bulbs I'd nabbed at Lowe's, I had gone around last fall and dug up several large clumps of daffodils to transplant on the bank. What's astonishing is the amount of bulbs I must've missed. There are still sizeable clumps growing and blooming from areas I know I harvested. I might feed them heavily and then transplant more in the fall. Not sure how viable this plan is--I need to consult some books.

Forget the Rain--There's No Washin' These Boys Out

Out of all these movies, Kingdom of the Spiders is the one that freaks my shit out. The rest of them tickle me because they're just patently bad. And I'm not saying this one is a winner by any means, but it makes me scratch for a good two hours after seeing it and has me checking inside my shoes for days.

Yea, it's got Shatner. Yea, it's a bad movie. Yea, there are way too many of the "characters behaving stupidly" bits. But this movie has lots and lots of spiders. Tarantulas, actually. And they're dumped on the actors. By the bucket-full. I can't imagine how badly these people needed the money to subject themselves to that--but you could not pay me enough to do it.

This movie gets closer to being effective than most of the others on my list. It doesn't toy with making them huge or by being a hybrid sort of movie. It takes something that legitimately creeps people out and pours it on. Granted they take some liberties (tarantulas are not social; these buggers are immune to DDT; they're hyper-poisonous; they spin webs [this becomes important later]) but for this genre of movie the film-makers show remarkable restraint. They know what's scary and they give it to you.

William Shatner plays a western veterinarian who goes by the name of Rack. He's called out to a farm to check on a dead calf. He takes samples to see what the cause of death is and sends some off to the big city. If it's due to some sort of virus or disease, the farmer might lose his herd and property. Later in the movie, when the hot big city entomologist arrives, it turns out it's spider venom. Five times more lethal than normal. No explanation is really given for this--but hey, just go with it. There's a lull for character development--we realize Shatner and the bug-chick are gonna hook up because they get off on the wrong foot; we meet Shatner's sister-in-law (his brother's dead) who's in love with him and has a kid; we meet some more of the locals. All just setting us up for the third act fun. The pacing is a little slow here--but sort of worth it just for the overwrought Shatner emoting.

Things pick up when they discover a huge hill crawling with tarantulas. More of these hell-condos appear later and of course that means more spiders. Shatner has a fight with sis-in-law and bags the bug girl. Another cow dies. And from this point on it's just carnage. The farmer and his wife both meet their ends due to the spiders. Pa is attacked in his truck and drives off a cliff. He's found dead and webbed (this is one of the creepiest effects in the movie to me.) Ma is assaulted by the tarantulas in the homestead and has them crawling up her arm--instead of shaking it off her, she SHOOTS her damned arm off. She, thankfully, also becomes arachno-chow. The mayor sends up a crop duster to poison the spiders. He's attacked mid-flight and crashes into a barn. The horny sister-in-law is next to go. And so it goes.

Shatner tries calling out for help, but you see the operator all webbed up with spiders crawling over her. There are also seens of webbed up victims looking dessicated with tarnatulas crawling on them. And then the town just goes bug shit. You see people running from spiders; cars driving over spiders; people succumbing to spiders. And people running around screaming covered in tarantulas. It's lunacy. And I just shuddered typing this paragraph.

People hole up at a lodge for the night after battling spiders. In the morning, Shatner looks out the window to see what daylight brings: a town covered in webs. Yep--spiders win.

Haiku Synopsis
Kingdom of the Spiders
Not even Shatner
can stop the killer spiders.
The spiders win, bitch.

Bow Wow Wow, Yippee Yo, Yippee Yay

Today's first offering on the double feature is: Devil Dog: the Hound of Hell, a hybrid of the demonic kid and scary critter genres. One part Omen plus one part Old Yeller (the rabid frothing bits), this movie was a staple on WGN when I was in junior high and high school. They had to have shown it at least once a month; though it feels, in retrospect, like more. And I always watched it. It was just that bad.

The movie opens with satanic cultists in aviator shades going to a kennel in search of a demonic dog. And wouldn't ya know it--the puppy mill has a demonic German Shepherd (this must've been the period when we were supposed to be afraid of them; depending on when it was made it could've just as easily been a Rottweiler, Doberman, a Saint Bernard or a Pit Bull.) So they get their dog and take it to their sanctuary and have a ceremony with it--to imbue it with even more evil, I'm supposing.

Richard Crenna plays the dad and Yvette Mimieux is the mom in this horrid little flick. When we meet them, he's driving the family home where they find their dog dead in the street. In the midst of the kids' grief, a vegetable truck pulls up. Not only does this truck have farm fresh produce, it also carries the object of their doom--the devil dog. The kids take the plutonian pup inside where it's housed in a cardboard box.

The maid doesn't like the pup in a box. There are extreme close ups on the dog's eyes in the box staring at that maid, then her mumu bursts into flames. This to me is the most interesting bit of the movie. Take that you neo-marxists! The workers may control the means of production--but Satan controls the devil dog!

Ok--lets gloss over the mid-section of the movie which is perilously dull. Mom becomes a slut, banging Dad's friends and neighbors. Dad is convinced that this is all due to the dog. Why you ask? Good question. Dad was out working on his lawnmower one day, with the devil dog near by. Suddenly he gets this intense urge to plunge his hand into the whirring spinning mower blades. And the dog was staring at him. The urge to mutilate himself could have nothing to do with his leisure suits, bad hair, slut wife and hideous kids.

Then a few neighbors die and the kids become mouthy and uncontrollable. This is, of course, all the dog's fault. He goes to his doctor (?) about this. The doc gives him a scrip for tranquilizers and encourages him to take slutty slutty bang bang to Hawaii for a vacation. Dad opts out for this and decides to take the dog off some place and shoot it. He fires at it repeatedly and misses--because it's, ya know, satanic and can deflect bullets. He leaves the dog in the wilds and drives home. Only to find the devil dog waiting for him in the yard.

Okay--so modern medicine and Smith & Wesson can't help him. Who can? That's right--the crazy lady at the local bookstore. She tells him to go to South America, find some shaman guru guy who can help. He flies to South America and indeed does find the High Father of Devil Dog Knowledge who draws a pattern on his palm to aid his battle against the forces of canine evil. By the time Dad is back, dog is pissed. And they have their face-off in a nuclear power facility (don't ask me, I'm just recapping.) The dog reveals its true satanic form (which is like a full body suit that looks oddly like a jheri curl wig with a couple of lame-assed horns attached to its head.) Most of this "battle" is about Dad trying to flash his palm tattoo at the dog. He eventually does and the dog goes up in flames.

Ahhh it's over. The family is going on a vacation. They're getting into the car, when the son reveals that the devil dog is one of 10 puppies! Instead of going off and having old school throwdowns with the other devil dogs, Dad gets in the car and drives them off into the sunset.

Haiku Synopsis:

Devil Dog: Hound of Hell
Dogs are not good gifts.
Your life will go straight to hell.
Bad dog! Bad, bad dog!

The Ultimate B-Movie

Helicopter Pilot #2: Oh, my God! Bees! Bees! Millions of Bees!

The Swarm is an Irwin Allen spectacular. Africanized bees run amok, brought to you by the guy responsible for The Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno. So you know what that means: a busload of old movie and tv stars in peril. The cast includes: Michael Caine, Jose Ferer, Katherine Ross, Henry Fonda, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia DeHaviland, Patty Duke and Slim Pickens.

The Swarm is a B-movie that presents itself as A-list drama, playing out Allen's favorite movie theme: man vs. disaster while we meet lots of secondary characters and follow their subplots. Think of him as Robert Altman's schlocky step-cousin.

Thankfully, the menace we face is not giant-sized. Though the giant-critter run amok genre is fun, considering the limited production values and technologies at hand, there's more of a "you've gotta be kidding me factor" at work in those movies. Their failures are obvious in their execution. The Swarm gets it sort of right. Take something a little scary (after all the Africanized bee angle was worked and is still brought out in the tabloids and the legitimate news), tweak it just a little (these bees have stronger mouths and can sting more than once before dying), and just go balls out. Where The Swarm goes off the tracks is the dialogue.

Brad Crane (Michael Caine): We've been fighting a losing battle against the insects for fifteen years, but I never thought I'd see the final face-off in my lifetime. And I never dreamed, that it would turn out to be the bees. They've always been our friend.

Brad Crane: These bees, General, are of joint concern, and they are killing Americans, without reference as to whether or not they have a serial number and are expected to salute YOU! So there will be no air drops of any kind until I give the OK!
General Slater (Richard Widmark): You're OK, huh? Then just possible I can persuade you to attack this particular swarm, now that we know where it is! Attack and eliminate it!
Brad Crane: Possibly, if you can explain to me, how you air drop chemicals, without killing the native insect life! If your chemical will kill the African bee, it will also kill the American bee, right?
General Slater: Right! And better a few American bees than a lot of AMERICAN PEOPLE!
Brad Crane: That is the point, general! The honey bee is vital to the environment! Every year in america, they pollinate six billion dollars worth of crops! If you kill the bee, you're gonna kill the crop! If you kill the plants, you'll kill the people! No! No, general! There will be no air drop, until we know exactly, what we are dropping, and where, and how! Excuse me!

Brad Crane: [while the giant bee is hovering next to him] There's no bee here. I promise you, there's no bee here.

More examples of the it's so bad it's goodness here.


OK so here's the quick (considering the movie runs about 2.5 hours depending on the version you see) breakdown. Africanized bees come over the border into Texas, invading a nuclear base (underground!) and killing everyone. Now let's just stop a minute and consider this...Africanized bees, coming into America from Mexico... no, never mind, let's move on. It gets worse from there. A family's picnic is ruined. People die. Old people are in a love triangle. Patty Duke doesn't do much. Houston is in flames. They lure the bees to an oil slick in the ocean using "sonics" (portable radios in little rafts dropped into the water). Once the swarm has been drawn to the oil slick missiles are launched setting the whole mess aflame. Finis.

Irwin Allen was noted as the "Master of Disaster." This film was a disaster. It was one of the final nails in his movie career. He pretty much stuck to television stuff for the rest of his life after When Time Ran Out also tanked.

Haiku Synopsis

The Swarm
Awful, awful film.
Urge friends to watch? They'll hate you.
Michael Caine is sexy?

The Ants Are My Friends...

Empire of the Ants is allegedly based on an HG Wells' story. Sort of like that execrable War of the Worlds was. They also share another quality--the solemn narrator (which luckily for EotA only serves as an introduction). Thankfully though, there is no parallel to the shrieking Dakota Fanning in EotAHere ya go:

This is the ant.Treat it with respect for it may very well be the next dominant life form of our planet. Sound incredible? Impossible? Have you ever taken a good close look at what the ant is all about? Like these... one of the 15,000 different species inhabiting our planet. This one cultivates crops of fungus for food. Others herd aphids, just as man herds cattle. And what about the warriors? The builders of bridges, roads, tunnels. Frightening, isn't it, that a creature as small as an ant is able to have a fair claim to rank next to Man on the scale of intelligence.

What's frightening is the bullshit narration. Essentially you get the movie plot in suma. Cultivating crops? Check. Herding? Check. Warring? Check.

Like Night of the Lepus and unlike some of the other movies I'm showcasing, EotA is a fusion sci-fi/horror film. Part big "insert animal here." Part enivronmental panic parable. Part 70s morality play about the dangers of development. Ultimately, though what you get with EotA is a Them! rip-off, set in the Florida Everglades. Seriously. Shady guys dump shiny new barrels of toxic waste into the ocean. One barrel washes ashore and we later see it, washed up on the beach, corroded and icky. Toxic waste is apparently irresistible to ants. Toxic waste mutates ants to more-than human size. Sadly, the special effects in the movie show no sort of techincal advancement in the 20-odd years since Them! was released.

Part green screen, part puppet--all schlock. The film does do this one thing which I love--the ant-compound vision-pov cam shot. This is brilliant. And hideous. All at the same time.

The best thing about this movie is Joan Collins in a pantsuit and headscarf, working towards her ultimate cultural role of power bitch. It'd be another few years until she landed Dynasty, but the haughty coolness is at work. Let me take a minute to address lady miss Joan. She hates this movie. The dvd copy proclaims that she doesn't want you to see this movie. She says that it was the worst acting gig of her life. Considering her resume, this is something to consider. She has been in some bad shit. There's also this curious affectation of a southern accent that comes and goes. Sort of like Tina Turner in reverse, but less consistent.

The second best thing about this movie is that they actually try to use some sort of science admist the sci-fi/enviomental terror crap--the mutant queen ant emits a pheremone that not only controls ants but people as well. So people end up being sprayed with talcum powder and then turn all Stepford, seeking sugar and other fungible ant necessities. Good good stuff. Especially the footage of giant ants running a sugar factory. Superimposed ants --marvelous. Luckily there's a tanker truck marked "Flammable" outside the sugar factory. Eventually characters escape , they blow up the truck and ants. The end.

But what of Joan Collins? She gets eaten. By a monstrous puppet ant.

Haiku Synopsis:

Empire of the Ants
Toxic waste mutates
Ants. They want to rule the world.
Boom! The ants are dead.

Animals Amok Week

The Night of the Lepus post got me thinking about similar movies and just how much I love them. The "animal amok" horror movie is always something that can make me smile--usually because they're just so damned bad. I'll admit that actually I don't love them ironically. Even though I appreciate them as camp, it's sincere. I love almost every aspect of their badness. Part of my fondness might be driven by the fact that they were a staple; out of the 70s movies that could be replayed with minimal cuts and cheaply on network tv, these had to be a bargain for the networks. I remember seeing at least half of this week's choices on network telly as a kid. We didn't have cable (we lived too far in the country...it stopped about a half mile from our house); satellite tv wasn't really an option until I was in junior high. There's another thing about these flicks-- each time I see one I think to myself: this is someone's favorite movie. So this week I'm going to do a rundown on my favorites. Each with a haiku synopsis. (A fun note about Night of the Lepus--it's as old as I am. But I think I've aged better...despite lacking DeForest Kelly's hair and Janet Leigh's cheekbones.)

Fun trivia--the movie can be seen in both Natural Born Killers and the Matrix.

Exquisitely bad dialogue: Ladies and gentleman, reports from headquarters confirm that the horde of killer rabbits is getting closer to town. High voltage has been turned on to a section of the railroad tracks, and it is your car lights that we hope will huddle the rabbits under them. There will be machine gun and rifle fire to both kill and divert these monsters. Do not panic.

Greg the bunny knew he should've never taken that PCP from the Caddyshack gopher.

So now, the synopsis:

Night of the Lepus
Mutant bunnies kill.
Reservists stop their rampage.
The town is saved. Yay!

It's not even St. Patrick's Day

And I'm thinking about Easter. Specifically, thinking about how much I want to get my hands on Night of the Lepus and watch it for Easter. Maybe make a tradition of it. Forget The Robe, The Greatest Story Ever Told and all that rot. Give me mutant bunnies. And candy. Peeps and licorice jelly beans and malted milk eggs. That's Easter. I remember seeing this on television as a kid and loved it--especially when the bunnies go on a rampage through the town, destroying (hah) HO scale power lines and knocking over a Lionel train set. I dubbed a copy onto VHS while in college, but that's sadly gone the way of the dodo, so it's probably been 10 plus years since I've gotten my killer bunny fix. Plus it's got Janet Leigh and DeForest Kelly. Oh and once I'm at the height of my sugar mania I want to listen to the Pansy Division's Bunnies and dance around til I'm sick. That would be the perfect Easter.

Sunday, Bluh Bluh Sunday

It's been a nice weekend so far. The drive here was a little hairy--freaky winds for about 200 miles of my drive Friday--but I just sucked it up and slowed down. They've taken the infamous Virgin billboard down, though I did notice one while I was on I-395. Still no sign of the alleged Virgin buses. We ordered some cheap chinese and stayed in watching dvds.

I was in such a rush to leave Friday morning I ran out of the house without the bag holding my toiletries, foundation garments, pajamas and black boots. Brian had an extra toothbrush so when we were out shopping I picked up some things. We also caught the Reno: 911! Miami movie. It was okay but both of us prefer the show. It's something we always watch when I visit, it seems. When we first really spent time together we watched it all weekend and just laughed til we were stupid. Brian suggests that the budget limitations for the series makes them a little more inventive--I think he's onto something there. For me it's their interactions with the locals that are the funniest bits...that sort of thing was lacking in the movie. Tho there's a good bit with a Bubba in a red speedo that I found funny...but it still felt underdeveloped. The guys behind the movie claim they shot much more footage than showed up in the movie and that there are plans to use it for the DVD release...I'm curious to see what else they had and didn't use.
.
Baltimore is snowy today. Very pretty looking out at the armory, the Meyerhoff symphony center and the rest of the view. We wandered out today to do some light shopping--rite-aid, Lambda Rising and Eddie's grocery store--just as the snow was really starting to stick. It's building up now. Brian snapped some pictures of the view from the balcony--it's very grey out. He's going out later to snap a couple of more pictures of a very special car in the neighborhood.

the Meyerhoff Symphony Center


the Clocktower from across the street


the Armory


the Light Rail

Nerdvana

Little Miss Sunshine

Just watched this on pay-per-view and loved it. The humor is for the most part dark and character-driven and I laughed til I cried 3 or 4 times. The full page ad touting the "Surprise Best Seller by America's Number 1 Proust Scholar" was a great moment (one of the few that I can share that isn't a spoiler.) The ending plays a little broad and as more situational--it's more a sort of cringe-inducing funny for me--not so much a natural extension of who these people are and how they act upon the world or are acted upon by it. I'm not saying I don't enjoy that sort of comedy, I do. It just felt out of place for me, given everything that came before it, which is disappointing because the rest of the movie seemed very natural and easy. Character leading to action and all that jazz. I know that there are alternate endings and that the one finally chosen was a last minute shoot, so I'm guessing that part of the problem was finding a way to end it. I'm curious to see it on DVD now and check out the alternates.