House on Skull Mountain

Back in the '70s growing up in Port Arthur, Texas, there was a movie theater that had about five screens and all movies cost $1 to see.  The screens weren't much bigger than today's home television sets with the largest being about one third the size of a normal movie theater screen.

Right now, I'm sitting on my couch in my very own living room watching the fabulously awful 1974 "House on Skull Mountain."  I'm watching it on a television set not much smaller than the smallest screen at the Golden Tri Cinema.  Weird.  These are exactly the kinds of movies we used to see there:  lots of Burt Reynolds, Bruce Lee and B-horror movies.

They also ran some mainstream movies there about a month after they left the real theaters.  There were always technical problems, bad film stock issues (the copies shown at the Golden Tri had already been viewed hundreds and hundreds of times by the time they made it there) and out of sync or non-existent sound.  Of course, with no cable television or VCRs back then, it was the only way to see a movie, if you didn't want to (or couldn't afford to) pay full price.

Hey, look!  It's Lionel Jefferson!

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Valley of My Couch

What a wonderfully awful movie.  Not a bad way to spend a Tuesday night.

Movies I Can't Pass Up When Channel Surfing

I just saw a list of movies that Mike Rowe Can't Channel Surf By.  Below is my list.  This is not a list of my favorite movies.  That's a different list.  Right now, I'm watching "Stripes."  It's not listed below, but it's a good one.  "That's the fact, Jack!"

In no particular order and with the certainty that I'm leaving something off...

Jaws
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Annie Hall
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World
Any 1950s era scifi or horror movie
Tremors
So, I Married an Axe Murderer
Ghostbusters
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (the one with Donald Sutherland)
When Harry Met Sally
Clue
The 'Burbs
The Money Pit
Midnight Run
Dr. Strangelove
Funny Farm
What About Bob?
Barefoot in the Park
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Vacation
Caddyshack
Support Your Local Sheriff
Honeymoon in Vegas
Stakeout
A Summer Place
Where the Boys Are
Valley Girl
A Star is Born (the one with Kris Kristofferson)
Outrageous Fortune
Down and Out in Beverly Hills

Good Movie Sequels

Of course there are some very good movie sequels:

The Godfathr Part II
Die Hard 2
Christmas Vacation
Bourne Supremacy
All the Harry Potters
All the Lord of the Rings
Some of the Indiana Jones
Not sure if you'd consider James Bond movies as sequels, but I like all of them...some more than others.

It's been years since I read The Godfather. If you've never read it, I think you should...

What do Revenge of the Nerds, Police Academy and Jaws have in common?

There are some movies with such awful sequels that I had forgetten how good the originals were.  I stumbled upon Revenge of the Nerds last night and couldn't make myself change the channel.  It's one of my favorite stupidly funny movies, but the sequels were so awful and so numerous that I had even boycotted the original. 

Other movies with awful sequels:
Saturday Night Fever
Jaws
Caddyshack
Grease
Rocky
Police Academy
Karate Kid
Planet of the Apes
Dirty Dancing
Weekend at Bernie's
Porky's
Jurassic Park
The Godfather (the third one, of course)
Indiana Jones (some were good, some not so good, none as good as the first)
Halloween
Nightmare on Elm Street

Dad Update and a Brain Fart

Dad Update
Dad is still doing good with the new flush tube and/or stent. Mom's still not sure if he got a new stent or just a new tube. No fever today. One doctor told dad he heard they were going home tomorrow and dad says he's not going home until he's sure he won't run fever again as soon as he gets home. Hopefully, he'll feel better about going home and will be home tomorrow or the next day.

Brain Fart
I quoted "Airplane!" today ("Don't call me Shirley") and couldn't think of Leslie Nielsen's name to save my life. The problem was that my brain got stuck in a loop of "Liam Neeson"..."Liam Neeson"..."Liam Neeson"...

With Liam Neeson running through my brain, Leslie Nielsen couldn't get through. I guess I'm not smarter than a fifth grader.

John Hughes - Rest in Peace

If you think your life hasn't been influenced by John Hughes, think about how many times you've watched the following movies or quoted lines from these movies either written, produced or directed (sometimes all three) by him...

• 1983 -Vacation
• 1983 - Mr. Mom
• 1984 - Sixteen Candles
• 1985 - The Breakfast Club
• 1985 - Weird Science
• 1986 - Ferris Bueller's Day Off
• 1986 - Pretty in Pink
• 1987 - Planes, Trains and Automobiles
• 1987 - Some Kind of Wonderful
• 1988 - The Great Outdoors
• 1989 - Uncle Buck
• 1989 - Christmas Vacation
• 1990 - Home Alone

Captain Richard Phillips Rescued from Pirates

Is this guy going to be played by George Clooney in the movie or what?

• My Netflix queue currently has 314 items in it.


• I add at least 5 items a week to the queue.


• I watch 1 Netflix movie/television show selection per week.


• Sometimes I don't even watch that much.


• It would take me over 6 years to watch the 314 items currently in my queue at one movie/tv show per week.


• It would take me over 12 years to watch the 314 NetFlix thingys if I only watch one thingy every other week.


• Adding 5 new movies per week puts an additional 260 movies in my queue every year


• If I only watch one Netflix item per week, at the end of 6 years I will have 1,560 movies in my queue, because I can never watch as much as I add.


• Crap.

It's an Emmy!!

Yes, boys and girls, that is a real live Emmy! My beautiful friend Jen's brother-in-law is a composer and recently won an actual freakin' Emmy for his score for a documentary. I'm going to go visit Jen sometime this summer (we're dying to take a girl's trip to the very haunted Myrtles Hotel) and I'm going to take a picture of me with that Emmy, by God.

Fifty-Three Candles

Sixteen Candles is one of those movies I never get tired of. If I'm scrolling through the channel guide and see it's playing, chances are I'm going to tune in for at least a little while. Of course, "a little while" inevitably turns into finishing the movie, so I've probably seen this movie in whole or in part about a hundred times over the last twenty-five years.

In 1984, when Sixteen Candles first came out, I had only been out of high school for ten years and my son was 4 years old. So, I identified more with Samantha than her parents. Twelve years later, when Cory was sixteen, I noticed a change in my perspective. I was suddenly more sympathetic to the parents than I was to the "kids" in the movie.

Now, with the twenty-fifth anniversary of the movie approaching, God help me I'm beginning to understand and appreciate the beauty of being the clueless grandparents. Just tell me where to go and when to be there and I'll do my best to try not to embarrass anybody.




Of course, anybody who's a regular reader of this blog knows it's not looking good for my kids and grandkids.

Hellboy meets Grant and Jay

If you're a Ghost Hunters fan, you saw this commercial last night. If you aren't a Ghost Hunters fan, you might not think this commercial is particularly funny. If you're Laurie, you post it anyway...

History - It's all about perspective

I was talking to a friend the other day and he was telling me that his daughter was taking a course her freshman year in college called "The History of Rock and Roll." We decided that was a pretty cool course for a university to offer.

Then, I said, "Actually, if you think about it, that's a lot of history. Rock and roll really took off in the early '50s. That's more than fifty years ago."

My friend looked at me with an expression that said, regardless of the truth of my statement, he wasn't totally convinced that 1954 was over fifty years ago.

I went on to say, "Think of it this way. We graduated from high school in 1974 so, assuming our freshman year of college was 1974, your daughter studying the origins of rock and roll is the same as if we had taken a class studying the origins of movies with sound."



"Fuck."

"Yeah," I said, "You know what else? The '80s were twenty years ago."



I sometimes wonder why people talk to me at all.

Strange Weirdos - Loudon Wainwright, III

I've had a busy year and I'm behind on my movie watching. I only recently watched Knocked Up and absolutely loved it. I cried a lot more than I expected and fell in love with the soundtrack which I immediately ordered from my best friend Amazon.

The CD "Strange Weirdos" isn't really a soundtrack. It's a CD by Loudon Wainwright, III who wrote several songs for the movie and did the score. The CD is musically and lyrically amazing. I like music that is touching with a sharp edge and all of these songs have that. I highly recommend it.

NOTE:
While listening to the CD, for some reason I was constantly reminded of Al Stewart. Loudon's voice is still clear and beautiful like Al's and all of the songs have incredible lyrics which invoke specific images of emotion, time and place. When I checked with my other good friend Wikipedia, I found that Mr. Wainwright was born on September 5. Guess who else was born on September 5...Al Stewart...and ME!

Yin and Yang

My current June/girly/bridal television watching schedule includes...

• new season of Bridezillas (YAY!!)


• new program called "Rock the Reception" in which a husband and wife choreography team teaches brides and grooms and their wedding party dance routines for their first dance at the reception (FABULOUS!!)


• a documentary about the annual bridal sale mania at Filine's (WILD!!)


• reruns of America's Next Top Model (DON'T JUDGE ME!!)

I make up for the fluffiness of those programs with my NetFlix subscription. Recently...

• Eraserhead


• El Topo


• No Country for Old Men


• There Will be Blood


• Superbad

Sometimes on Sundays, I even put my television on MTV and just let America's Top Model reruns play all day. There's only one cure for that...

Iron Man

I'm not an action/comic book movie fanatic and heavily CGI-ed movies give me vertigo. I am, however, a huge Robert Downey, Jr. fan. So, I left work a little early today and caught the afternoon matinee of Iron Man.

TIP #1 FOR THE DAY: The trick to watching a movie in public with limited audience conversationalists (the person who's seen the movie already and is just there to accompany someone else, the person who constantly says, "Watch this part...") is to catch it the first day of its release.

When I realized I had forgotten to take a Dramamine to fight the inevitable motion sickness these types of movies usually give me, I got a little worried. Turns out, it wasn't a problem. This movie is smoooooooooooooth. It's also well written, well acted and totally entertaining. By the time you see this movie, you will probably know (if you don't already) who plays the bad guy. I didn't and was totally shocked when he said his first lines and I realized who it was. I'm not telling you who it is, but he is fantastic.

TIP #2 FOR THE DAY: When you go to see this movie (not IF...WHEN), try to sit by an 8 year old boy. As much as I enjoyed the film, multiply that by ten for an adult male, a hundred for a teenage male and a thousand for an 8 year old boy. Don't be creepy about it, but stake out a young boy, sit as close as you can without freaking him out and sit back and enjoy.

TIP #3 FOR THE DAY: Put on your shoes, grab your keys and go to the theater to see a movie, any movie. I know it's not as comfortable as your couch and I know you're taking your chances of getting stuck by an annoying person and I know the food is outrageously expensive. However, I don't care how great your sound system is at home or how big your television screen is, nothing can compare to the magnificence of seeing and hearing a movie in the theater on a huge screen surrounded by total strangers who are also caught up in the drama or comedy or horror or action unfolding in front of you. Go. Now.

2008 Movie Posters

Click here to see 2008 movie posters.

Two Movie Recommendations

Deja Vu

Denzel Washington

Val Kilmer

New Orleans

Time Travel

What? You want more?

Fight Club

Last night, I saw that Fight Club was playing on one of my 562 movie channels so I thought, "What the hell. I've avoided this movie for a few years. Tonight's the night." Plus, one of my favorite television shows, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, did a parody of Fight Club in an episode and I knew I would better appreciate the parody if I saw the movie.

I was shocked to read the details and learn that I hadn't avoided this movie for "a few years." I had avoided this movie for eight years. Eight years! I couldn't believe it. I hate movies about boxing and I hate all those Spike television network shows where men beat the crap out of each other. Still, I had no idea that my dislike of watching people pummel each other had outweighed my desire to see Brad Pitt, frequently shirtless, for eight whole years.

Edward Norton is the kind of actor I would watch clip his toenails. He's always fascinating and is especially so in this movie. Helena Bonham Carter as Marla Singer is also excellent as is the scrumptious Brad Pitt as Tyler Durden.

All that being said, this movie was absolutely not what I expected. Somehow, while avoiding seeing this movie for eight years, I had also avoided learning the actual plot. In case you've also avoided this movie for eight years, it has very little to do with shirtless men beating each other up in basements.

This Preview is Rated R

I recently told some friends that I prefer to read subtitles to watching a dubbed foreign movie. Last night I watched a French film which I first watched with subtitles then watched dubbed. Although I still prefer the subtitles so that I can hear the actual voices of the actors, I'm now wondering if the dubbing isn't a more accurate interpretation of the writer's intent.

I never thought about it before but subtitles, out of necessity, must be severely edited to keep up with the pace of the movie. It's going to take me a lot longer to get through my NetFlix queue now if I start watching all my foreign movie choices twice, once with dubbing and once without.

My one exception to my preference for subtitles is 1970s Japanese kung fu/karate/ass kicking movies. I watched some of the movie below today and it and all its sequels are now in my ridiculously long Netflix queue.

Do You NetFlix?

Until very recently, I had successfully avoided joining NetFlix. It seemed silly for me to pay even more money per month for movies than I do now with all my digital cable movie channels and my DVR. Upon the recommendation of a friend, I decided to check it out. Within about five minutes of joining, I was hooked. I've been on NetFlix for about two weeks and have already changed my membership from one at a time, unlimited DVDs per month to two at a time, unlimited DVDs per month.

I've also rated over 1,000 movies and have about 60 or 70 movies in my queue. I rated some of the movies 5 stars not based on quality but based on how much I liked them. For example, I gave The Burbs and Honeymoon in Vegas each 5 stars because I loved them and not because either of them are award-worthy films. The more movies you rate, the better NetFlix becomes in recommending movies for you. This is especially helpful for obscure titles and foreign films which I love discovering.

Click here to become my NetFlix friend and you can see my queue, what movies I have at home and all of my ratings. Oh, and I can see yours, too. I'm a very nosy girl.