Thanksgiving = Tradition

And in my house, that tradition means watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 and remembering how mom would groan at the prospect of another marathon. This is way better than The Twilight Zone...



Happy Holidays everyone!

A Movie Nearly Every Night: The Hunt For Red October

The Hunt For Red October (1990)
Dir: John "With a Vengeance" McTiernan
Starring: Sean Connery, Alec Baldwin, Scott Glenn, James Earl Jones -- in short, men. All men. Every man-jack one of them.

Ramius bids do svidanya to fishing in Polyarny.

To help me with this man movie today is the cousin/roommate.

How many times have we seen this movie? -- cuh ... I have no idea. Oh, you know, 20 times? -- So this time, keeping in mind that we're looking for meaning, we watched it with a different viewpoint. Specifically: What was really going on here? What was this movie really talking about? We decided it was about fear. -- Well, yeah ... it's pretty much using the rules, going by the regular rules, but a lot of it is driven by fear. -- It all starts with fear. -- Yeah. -- Ramius is afraid of nuclear war and steals the Red October. Alec Baldwin is afraid of flying. The guys in the war room are afraid of everything they don't know or think they know. Even James Earl Jones is afraid Jack is saying too much. I love how he puts his hand on Jack's arm to calm him down in that soft, fatherly way.

"I told you to speak your mind, Jack, but Jesus..."

The only one who isn't really afraid of anything is the senator. -- Without him it wouldn't go anywhere. -- I wonder why he's not afraid. -- That's a good question. It's because he's a sandman. He knows he's not going to live past 30. -- Yeah, half the guys in the room are late for Carousel. No wonder they're edgy.

the analyst and the guy who kisses babies and steals their lollipops

Man we need Logan's Run on Bluray.

But it's interesting that in a movie with so much machismo and procedural male organization, that fear plays such an important role in how they react to each other. Everyone's afraid that everyone else will over-react or react incorrectly, and it's not until they master that preconception of reaction that they succeed. -- Or how they manage other people's fear, like with the radiation. -- Oh right, that's how they get them off the boat, by making them afraid of it. -- Or with the officers, they're more afraid of dying than of being captured. They're well-motivated because they'll die if they don't follow Ramius. --

Yeah, yeah ... see? It's knowing what the other guy is afraid of and using it to your advantage, all the while knowing that you're also afraid of stuff. What if you meet a buckaroo? What if the chopper crashes in the icy North Atlantic? What if you can't beat Tupolev at chicken? (Dude, his sub ... honestly, who the hell would want to work on it?)

But, I think the most important thing and we both agree on it, is that the engineer on the Red October is the best character. Hands down.

Yeah. Or the best cigarette ad.

Pros & Cons of Owning a Kitler

Pros:
Endless source of amusement
Lots of nutty blog posts
A full array of names: Adolpha, Eva, Mrs. H, Meine Furrier

Cons:
The dictator factor - will she try to conquer Siam?
Lots of nutty blog posts
It was hard enough to get 1 cat to not piss on the Christmas tree

Decision: sometimes one pet is better than two

And it's only November

Winter hasn't even really started yet --- at least no snow and the temperatures haven't gone below 35 --- and I already have SAD. I know it, because I'm lethargic and depressed over stupid things like the cousin/roommate not wanting us to adopt a cat that looks like Hitler. You know, he's right, Veda is a one-cat pet and if it looks like Hitler, well chances are it will want to take over the house, maybe even the house next door. The cousin/roommate is right. But it bums me out. That and our non-traditional Thanksgiving plans, which were my idea because I like Indian food and the restaurant we go to has the best, but ... wah, no turkey with family ... and Christmas will be alone --- see? stupid stuff that last week I was totally fine with, this week, with the gloomy dark weather I'm just like mush on the couch. Meh, everything sucks.

So what better than to rent some great television shows from Netflix! Yesterday we got Taggart (although it's the new, non-Taggart/non-Jardine shows, so we haven't watched them yet because I don't want to be ... well, depressed about it, I guess) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.

The first couple of episodes were lackluster, with the exception of the giant jellyfish that sucked in the Neptune submarine, because that was kind of cool, but the stories were sort of blah. Then we watched an episode called Doomsday.


Wow. Crisis of conscience and executive error leading to nuclear war --- far out! I felt better already!

Admiral Nelson (Richard Basehart) turns the key on the fail safe

Some guy is getting glass picked out of his eye while enemy cruisers drop depth charges on the Seaview; Lt. Commander Corbett struggles with the reality of launching missles -- DUDE, it had everything but the bloodhounds nipping at their rear-ends. It even had this delightful little moment where the "polywogs" are initated into King Neptune's realm.

In fact, the first few minutes are tense with a countdown to zero and everyone sweating bullets, and you figure on an episode called Doomsday that something really heavy has happened or will happen, and it turns out that it's a countdown to crossing the equator. My grandfather did it on the Indianapolis with Roosevelt leading the ceremony, so it was kind of sweet for me to see the television crew going through it on the Seaview. They don't complete the ceremony because of the alarm bell and one of the polywogs is the guy who can't fire his missle ... what do you suppose that means...?

The last episode, The Invaders, was a little dreary apart from the special guest star, Robert Duvall (his name spelled as "Duval" on the credits), who played this alien? ancient mystic? founder of Atlantis? I don't know, because I kind of lost interest early into the show. It was just not up there with Doomsday for excitement.


But Duvall was awesome in his skull cap and white makeup. No part too small for the full fisted performance of a thesbian master. He made the others look a little silly --- I know! and he's the one in the skull cap and funny clothes and they look silly! Crazy.

A (Hindi) Movie Nearly Every Night: Shakti

Shakti (1982)
Dir: Ramesh Sippy
Starring: the double-star-whammy of Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan (with special guest star Amrish Puri, who went on to rip people's hearts out 2 years later in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom)

Police officer or father ... well, that's the story, isn't it?

When it's dark and gloomy out, I don't know about you, but I like to put on a little Amitabh Bachchan to make myself feel better. He's smoking hot. I mean, really, who cares what the story is? Just put him in suits, preferably suede, and let him talk.

Not everything he does is solid gold, sure. This was a fine movie, not great, but fine. It was not as much fun as Amar, Akbar and Anthony, but it was certainly way better than Ganga Ki Saugand (with the exception of the gold bustier). But they can't all be Sholay. It doesn't matter much anyway, because it's just a pleasure to see him work his baritone-voiced cinema magic.

Shakti also has little moments that make me adore Ramesh Sippy. I know, how can my love grow? But it does. If you remember back in August I talked up Sholay (produced by G.P. Sippy, but directed by Ramesh), and what a fantastic shock to see the shot-for-shot homage to Once Upon a Time in the West. There are a few Leone-like shots in Shakti, but it's the scenes at the airport that made me hop around the couch cushions like a monkey. It's not shot-for-shot, but it is absolutely, 100%, without a doubt inspired by Bullitt.

Vijay as vigilante in a crowded airport hallway -- go, brother, go

And that, my friends, is awesome.

In an industry where artists churn out 2 - 3 movies a year, Ramesh Sippy doesn't do very much, but when he hits the mark it's choice.

I Will Gladly Pay You Tuesday...

Hey, who's got 500 bucks they can loan me?

Actually, maybe more like 2 g's, because I've got to fly down and it's $1,200 for all 4 days of the Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival. I don't know what they're showing, but with 50 movies on the plate some of them are bound to be good. I'm only guessing, of course. I'm sure it's one good movie and 49 crappy ones, because the reality is I'm going to have to stay home and miss out because it's too flippin' expensive to really be there and it's not worth it, it's not! so screw it. Who needs it anyway? It's going to suck.

Nuts.

A Movie Nearly Every Night: Paranormal Activity

Paranormal Activity (2009)
Dir.: Oren Peli
Starring: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat, Mark Fredrichs

The happy couple (before the eeeeeeeeee-vil.)
courtesy of www.red-carpet.org

That's right, I went out to the show. I left the couch, got in the car, met up with some girlfriends and took in a real picture on a real movie screen. Don't believe me? I've still got gummy fruit snacks in my purse.

Sure, it was scary. I had chicken skin for some of it. Some of it is a little ponderous, and that's kind of okay when you're building up for scary, but I wouldn't want to sit through it again knowing when stuff happens and when it doesn't -- or I'd see it again while baking cookies so I could go out and come back. It might be a good knitting movie. Katie knits in the movie, so it's like a stitch-n-bitch in a way.

The best parts (without ruining anything) are definitely the fire and the no-credits credits. Blank screen. And we sat there for 2, 3 minutes waiting for something and nothing happened. No stars, no editing, no best boy -- nothin'. In an age of credits that last longer than the movie, that's pretty cool and that we were willing to wait for it is kind of a credit to a movie that makes you wait for everything. The other stuff, the home-made video idea, was already sort of blown with The Blair Witch Project, which was fun in its way, with the sounds separated from the action depending on where the microphone was. Here it's all got the aura of having been done before, which makes it hard to buy completely into the "this was a true story" extra spice that might have made it scarier.

Mostly, though, I liked it for the couple. Watching two isolated people bump around a closed space for 90 minutes is kind of interesting.