November movie wishlist!

1) Due Date
Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifinakis in a road-trip buddy movie. I'm sure whacky hijinks will be involved.

Edit! Celia says Due Date is NOT supremely funny. Avoid!

2) Four Lions
I just discovered this one now searching for November releases on the internet. It's a comedy about terrorists. Looks clever. I guess they won't be showing it at the United Artist's though.

3) Morning Glory
Although I'm a little skeptical about Harrison Ford being paired with Diane Keaton. And even more skeptical about him playing somebody doing anything besides desperately trying to save his family and/or America. Also I don't like Rachel MacAdams. Maybe I don't want to see this one that badly. I dunno, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

4) Skyline
It's a sci-fi thriller with aliens! Alien movies are metaphors for xenophobia, and this one is called SKYLINE. I don't care. I like sci-fi thrillers.

5) Unstoppable
Or "Speed 3: Train in Vain." Trains need to be reintegrated into pop culture because I'm sick of airplanes.

6) Heartless
OK - I really like sci-fi thrillers, but my favoritest of all favorite genres is arcane interpretations of religious doctrine. Heartless is like Dorian Grey or Faust with a deal with the devil. Do you guys remember Bedazzled? Not the Brendan Fraser one...

Movies I don't want to see

a) 127 Hours
This is the one about that mountain climber who had to hack off his own arm...SPOILER ALERT.

b) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
WHY WON'T THIS GO AWAY

c) Love and Other Drugs
Anne Hathaway is only slightly less irritating than Rachel MacAdams. Also the tagline says that love is the ultimate drug. Because it's about pharmaceutical sales. Some female friend will probably get me to see this with her sometime. Like The Wedding Planner and How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, some rom-coms are hard to shake.

d) Tangled
Unless there's a montage scene where Rapunzel tries a lot of different hairstyles and/or hats.

e) The King's Speech
I don't care if Colin Firth is in it. It's about King George's speech therapist.

30 Oct - "I may be a bastard, but I'm not a fucking bastard"

From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
dir. Robert Rodriguez (The Faculty, 1998)

CAST
George Clooney (Batman and Robin, 1997)
Harvey Keitel (Little Nicky, 2000)
Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, 1994)
Cheech Marin (Ferngully: The Last Rainforest (voice), 1992)
Juliette Lewis (What's Eating Gilbert Grape, 1993)
Salma Hayek (The Faculty, 1998)

Danny Trejo (Grindhouse, 2007)

Whoa! I guess this is my last horror movie for a while! I can't say that I'm not THRILLED about that, since I still haven't gotten around to seeing The Exorcist, which is probably good for my own peace of mind forever.

Let me start off by expressing an opinion: I don't like Quentin Tarantino. I don't his face, I don't like his voice, I don't like how he writes his own parts. Luckily he died about halfway through.

I guess the cool thing here (sorry I'm kinda tired this morning and my writing style suffers) is that the vampires are not integrated into the storyline in any kind of graceful way. It's a basic runnin' from the law kind of story and then, uh-oh, some whacky monsters show up. I thought the plot was going to a cool place before vampires became an issue. You had the two bank-robbers, the family held hostage, some good tension, maybe some stockholm syndrome. And then it all just devolves into a gory mess. Not a Tarantino fan.

Oct 24 - "You bought a used jacket? What are we, poor?"

Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)
dir. Susan Seidelman

CAST
Rosanna Arquette (Pulp Fiction, 1994)
Madonna (A League of their Own, 1992)
Aidan Quinn (Benny and Joon, 1993)
Mark Blum ('Crocodile' Dundee 1986)
Laurie Metcalf (Toy Story (voice), 1995)
John Turturro (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, 2000)
Will Patton (The Mothman Prophecies, 2002)

Michael Badalucco (Sleepless in Seattle, 1993)
Kim Chan (The Fifth Element, 1997)

So I actually watched this a few weeks ago but i didn't want to look like i crapped out on my horror-movie October initiative. So i sat on it. But I think this is better now, as it provides a good transition into my next theme: movies about frustrated teenage girls. Even though this one isn't about teenagers, but twentysomethings.

The problem with these older movies sometimes, is that I recognize too many faces and I want to comment on all of them. Thus the long cast list. Richard Hell was also in there, but he's not generally known for his cinematic portfolio. This movie was rife with the luxe extravagance (redundant?) that I associate with (movies about) the 80s.

Desperately Seeking Susan was a classic story of mistaken identity- so I'm going to sound like I know what I'm talking about when I say that it's like an updated and feminized version of North by Northwest (because everyone sounds smarter when they reference North by Northwest, and yeah, I watched the whole thing). Madonna plays hip, transient hot-mess Susan, who communicates with her erstwhile boyfriend through newspaper personals, Arquette is Roberta, a painfully drab housewife who covets everything that Susan lives and represents. There's a theft, and a murder, and some amnesia, and lots of cute outfits and comic relief and everyone's running around after the wrong person. I gave it 4 stars on netflix.

24 Oct - That chick is annoying when she's worried

Paranormal Activity(2007)
dir. Oren Peli
starring
No one on the cast had any significant credits. So :P

Yeah, it was pretty scary. I coped with this in various ways, as you'll see below. I hope I don't have trouble sleeping tonight - 'cause that would be lousy.I'm not really sure what else to say, as significant critique seems unnecessary. Anyway, I don't want to piss off the demon.

I thought maybe it would be better to put a screen shot from the movie as the leading image rather than the movie poster. I don't know if anyone cares about that.

Oct 24 - Conquering fears

I finally finished Paranormal Activity! How did I manage it?

Paris's Guide to Surviving a Movie that's too scary

1) Turn all the lights on, preferably, you should arrange your lamps so there is plenty of glare on the screen, if you can't see the monster you won't have nightmares about it later

2) Multitask - the key is to normalize the situation and emphasize the contrast between the fantastic and the banal. So pull out some ironing or paint your nails. I made chicken makhani and blogged.

3) Pause often! Let your heart rate settle down again.

4) Don't pause at all! Get up and go pee with the movie running - maybe the awful pars will be over by the time you get back.

4) Make sure you're going to end the movie before dark!

23 Oct - "The past is a wilderness of horrors. Lawrence, I'm glad you're home.".

The Wolfman (2010)
dir. Joe Johnston (Jumanji, 1995)

CAST
Benicio Del Toro (Traffic, 2000)
Emily Blunt (Sunshine Cleaning, 2008)
Anthony Hopkins (The Silence of the Lambs, 1991)
Hugo Weaving (Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, 1994)
David Schofield (The Last of the Mohicans, 1992)

I did some serious multitasking while watching this one! I also took notes! And I discovered I have problems distinguishing Benicio Del Toro and Javier Bardem!


Ok - I guess they don't look THAT much alike, but they do have that swarthy, hispanic, heavy-jawed thing going on and it wasn't until the movie was over that I was 100% sure it was not Javier Bardem that I was watching. I also thought Benicio del Toro directed Pan's Labyrinth until just right now (Oops! That's not even close).

I don't know where to start! At first The Wolfman was really good! I thought the only reason it didn't do well in the theaters was that gothic horrors weren't really in the mode now (What was the last one? The Others?) But then it sort of devolved into a Van Helsing/League of Extraordinary Gentlemen sort of mess. Was this supposed to be about coming to terms with the undeniable-yet-ultimately-unacceptable beast that exists in the heart of Man or is this about beasties tearing it up? Because you're not allowed to have it both ways.

There was some cool visual stuff, Anthony Hopkins was supposed to be some sort of Great White Hunter type guy, and he had this tiger-fur lined coat that was badass. Also the African-Animal topiary garden where child Lawrence discovers his dead mother makes me want to live in an old-time British estate.

On the other hand, the second half of the movie was really tedious and predictable. Really shameless forshadowing is rampant throughout. The one exception is a silver cane/sword received by a mysterious stranger near the front end, which entirely violates the rule of Chekov's Gun, and I'm not sure whether I should be relieved about that or not.

A few points remaining:
1) Cameo by GOLLUM at the 35-minute mark

2) Death toll in the 20s, but the DEER survives.

3) Old-time insane asylums are the scariest places in all of space and time

4) Requisite circling dolly shot of the anti-hero perched on the edge of a rooftop and howling

5) The romance was SO contrived: OMIGOSH - he taught her how to skip stones! They are soul-mates now! I have asked countless male-types to teach me how to skip stones, and not only have I never fallen in love with any of them - I still can't skip a damn stone. This scene irritates me.

6) Where can I get some arcane old textbooks with monster illustrations?

7) The sequence of full moons is insensible. From Buffy, I know that the full moon lasts for 3 nights a months. However, in Wolfman, it only lasts for one. Fine. Whatever. Here's the timeline.

Moon1) Lawrence visits the gypsies, gets bit by wolf.

Moon2) After recovering from his injury for a month, Lawrence transforms into a werefolf and kills many townsfolk, he is apprehended in the morning.

Moon3) Lawrence has been confined in a mental asylum for what we can assume is one month. He transforms and kills many sinister old-time doctors. In the morning he tells his GF that he has to return home to kill the first Werewolf (for vengeance reasons)

Moon3-4???) Lawrence returns to his home (after dark!!!) pursued by his GF and Scotland Yard after a journey which could not have sensibly taken a whole month, and seems to have only taken the day (making it the night after the full moon). Nevertheless, Lawrence and the original werewolf transform well after night has fallen! Grrr, sloppy storyline.

Last point: They stole this scene from The Lion King, and it's weird how obvious it is.

Stalling...

I don't know when I'm getting to the next movie (I haven't even opened the envelope yet. I think it's...The Ruins?) But here's a cool little piece I read on some other part of the internet:

Dogs in Science Fiction Movies

It's cute, but it got me thinking, and I wish there was a LOT more discussion on this topic.