Movies

This weekend, I learned that Byzantine is secure enough in who he is to go to Blockbuster on a Saturday evening, by himself, and rent the teen vampire romance (vampmance? romire?) movie “Twilight” for us to watch.

No, really!

Have we lost our minds, you may wonder? Are we jealous that the word “tween” hadn’t yet been invented when we were that age, so we want to find out what we are missing? Did Fussypants abruptly advance in age by a decade and insist we let her watch it?

No, actually we watched the movie with the accompanying Rifftrax, which was very funny. I doubt either of us could have sat through the movie without it. You would have to come into the movie very, very invested in watching Edward and Bella (the two main characters, if you didn’t know, and I love what you’ve done with the bottom of that rock) stare at each other.

Staaaarrrrreeee and staaaarrrrreeee and staaaaaaarrrrrrrrreeeeee. For really really looooooonnnggggg periods of time. And very, very frrrreeeeeequuueeeentlllllyyyyy.

That is basically all that happens in this movie, really, I am not exaggerating. That is what the movie is about. A couple of other things happen briefly towards the beginning and end, but what the movie is about is Edward and Bella staring at each other.

So anyway, what I liked:

1. Jacob! Yup, I’m in the Jacob camp. (He’s a werewolf, and Edward is a vampire, and they don’t like each other, or something. But the important thing is he seems like a pretty nice normal guy, while Edward seems like kind of an idiot.)

2. The damp Pacific Northwest woods reminded me of the X-Files.

3. The evil vampire coven. They provide the main conflict in the story, although they receive about 5 minutes of total screen time out of this two-hour movie, because the movie is not about them (see above) although they are by far the most interesting characters.

4. The yummy looking diner food Bella and her dad are always eating.

5. The Bella actress has very pretty hair.

What I didn’t like…well, I’m not 13, I’ve never read the books, and my cat stares at me like 14 hours a day so I get enough staring already. But the movies aren’t for me. I don’t have any philosophical problem with them, when I was that age it was just something else we were swooning over, and it was probably something on tv (Kirk Cameron, I think, although I can’t really believe it myself) rather than books, so at least the kids are reading these days. So go hit the library, kids, and get off my lawn.

I’ve rated the Rifftrax above, since giving Twilight a star rating would imply I have an opinion about it.

So Byz, do you have any reflections on the movie (vampire joke haha)?

So the final season of Lost is well underway! I’m so excited to be part of a cultural phenomenon in the only way I can be now that I’m a parent: sitting on my own couch, after bedtime.

But enough about that. An issue far more important to all parents of small children, is what to watch/listen to while the kid’s awake. Such listening material must adhere to the following criteria: 1) it must not give the child nightmares (no Smoke Monster during the daylight hours); 2) it must not make it preferable for you to sever your own optical nerve/ reach into your ears to crush your own eardrums rather than experience that again. Here’s what we’ve tried so far:

The Wiggles: When young Fussypants became old enough to become a consumer of popular culture, I had to draw upon my very limited knowledge of current childrens’ shows to find something for her, and recalled a weird video I once happened to catch. Since Netflix had some instant-view Wiggles videos available, I tried Sing a Song of Wiggles first. It was…excruciating. Adults can’t watch this, at least this one can’t. But, anything for Fussypants, so I persevered. I don’t know if You Make Me Feel Like Dancing and Wiggle Bay are actually entertaining or if I’m just desensitized, but either way, I don’t mind sitting through them.

Barney & Friends: No. No. Just…no. (But she loves it of course.)

Thomas the Tank Engine: Oh, to be an anthropomorphic piece of machinery on an imaginary island, what a blissful life it would be! It creeps me out when George Carlin is the narrator, and I’m not sure why a small island needs such an overdeveloped infrastructure, but otherwise this is good stuff. It also reminds me of my trip to England in the year 11 BF.

Clifford, the Big Red Dog: You might recognize the voice of Clifford as John Ritter, of Three’s Company. You might also recognize the voice of Cleo as Freddiefrom A Different World. Or, alternatively, you might not be as old as I am. Regardless, I like that big red freak of nature.

Speaking of being old, now seems like a good time for an Old Lady Rant: I had exactly one children’s album growing up, an 8-track of Sesame Street Fever (and wish I still had it), and VCRs hadn’t even been invented yet. I watched whatever show happened to be on PBS when I got leave to watch television, and that’s the way we liked it! I’m a Grumpy Old Woman!

And now, turning to music:

They Might Be Giants goes without saying of course. You don’t even need the kids’ albums, if I can ever find Flood, I expect that to become Fussy’s new favorite.

Mr. Froggy’s Friends’ ABCs: The title pretty much says it all really. But I am impressed by their not onlygetting the apostrophe in the right place for both possessives, but also didn’t put an apostrophe between ABC and s. Now that’s genius.

Byz found this album more sinister. He wondered why the singer purported to converse with Mr. Froggy, although Mr. Froggy himself never speaks. Who is this Mr. Froggy, he wondered?

Well, I can’t think of any other kid media we’ve experienced around here right now, but that’s because a two-year-old is about to collapse into tears because I’m not making a plush bear give a check-up to a plush monkey. So I can’t really think at all.

It hadn’t been done before, but we’re all glad it has been done now:

Fight about which Jennifer is better begins… now!

So there’s a new Sherlock Holmes movie coming out—check out the hi-def trailer. It has plenty of swashbuckling, pugilism, and double-entendres, along with (I assume), long exposition of brilliant deduction from Iron Man Holmes. I’m not familiar enough with the Holmes canon to know if this will be a travesty of modern re-imagining, or if it’s within the spirit of Doyle’s original Holmes. I need to finally get back into my Complete Sherlock Holmes to see, though it’s a safe bet that there are Holmes fanboys pre-emptively tearing the movie apart on the internets. I am sorry to see that there is no mention of Moriarty on the imdb page, but I suppose every movie needs to leave room for a sequel these days.

Nerds seem to have an affinity for Holmes. Two immediate examples that come to mind: TNG’s Holmes episodes, and Jon Bellairs’ Lewis Barnavelt, who dons his own deerstalker to solve mysteries. Anyone know of more nerdy tie-ins?

Extra credit: this post contains some blatant fanboy-bait; I assume any true Holmes fan is frothing at the mouth to point out my error. Find it!

I’m not exactly what you’d call an extreme sports guy. I don’t follow the X-Games, I’ve never been snowboarding, and I’ve owned two skateboards in my life—one was made of plastic and had removable handlebars, and the other was a $12 “Variflex” board from Target whose wheels were missing ball bearings. I also just used the phrase “extreme sports”, which I think immediately disqualifies me from having useful opinions on things.

All that being said, I still have a fascination with some of the things people can convince their bodies to do, sometimes with the aid of equipments (skateboards, bikes, etc.) and sometimes without any assistance but their own agility.

Take, for instance, Parkour, which you could call “extreme urban running”. The idea is to get from point A to point B in as fluid and efficient manner as is possible. The result is the sort of thing you see Jackie Chan doing all the time in his movies:

Some more here. These aren’t Jackass guys running into walls at top speed (amusing as that may be): these are people with a plan, whose goal is to not get hurt.

But there’s more than just Parkour.

Read the rest of this entry »

I think most of you guys read the same sites I do, and so you’ve probably seen this already, but:

At some point in the future, I may learn to write original content instead of just linking to things I found via I Watch Stuff!. Until such a day comes, I’ll just link to the original story conference where Indiana Jones was invented.

I have not dived in to the 125-page PDF, but I bet it’s fascinating.

Through the magic of programming languages, I can tell you exactly how addicted to films I am: 64.4%. Translation: I have seen 64.4% of the movies on the IMDB Top 250 list, which sounds about right as I never could make it through “The Seven Samurai”. Maybe next time!

Anyway, compare your lives to mine, then kill yourselves. Do it now!