Little Life, grown out of proportion
Apr. 30th, 2009 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grrgoylWow, it's been awhile. Nothing big has happened, but life isn't always big. So here are a bunch of small things instead.
First is breaking news. Our good neighbors Mike and Anna very foolishly went to Mexico on vacation -- just after swine flu started making headlines here. As I told![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aurora_z, there's not panicking needlessly and then there's playing fast and loose with your chances. Tery said we now have two new cats (theirs, which she is watching for them). She just added, "Alas, Mike and Anna Takagi won't be joining us for the rest of their lives." (Recognize it? It's a variation on probably my favorite line in Die Hard. There'll be a quiz later.)
~*~
Working out is still...working out, with or without Ryan (who has started making excuses). My only complaint is that no one ever makes eye contact with you, and forget about a smile. All those endorphins raging and people working to better their health, and you won't see a grumpier group of individuals. What I like about it, however, is it doesn't matter how obese or out of shape someone is -- they're at a gym and they're trying to do something about it, and that makes me refreshingly nonjudgmental (unlike the contempt I feel for F-booms that sit around stuffing their faces when they should be working (e.g. the majority of Tery's workforce)).
Except this one guy. Granted I'm not an expert on gym etiquette, but what's this all about? Ryan and I had done every machine in our routine but one. However, this guy had spent the last 15 minutes or so sitting on the machine next to it, occasionally doing a few reps but mostly just sitting there. Ryan thought he was waiting for our last machine. I agreed, but I also thought if you're waiting for a machine, you shouldn't be hanging out on another machine, creating the illusion of using that machine, while waiting for a different machine. So when ours became free, I darted in and finished my set quickly. Sure enough, as soon as I left the guy finally got off his ass and boarded it. I still didn't feel bad though, because his workout "method" (if you can call it that) involved the occasional 2 or 3 reps followed by a whole lot of sitting there staring off into space, veeeeeeeery similar to his "waiting" mode. In fact, he was still at it when Ryan and I had finished our quick cardio about 15 minutes later. Me, I have things to do. I'm not interested in spending more time at the gym than I have to.
I've figured out the trick though. Some exercises are unique to only one machine. Others have three or four machines that all do very similar movements. The trick is to get the unique ones done first, so if it starts getting busy you can finish up on the ones with more choices. Gym smarts...I haz dem.
~*~
I've recently resurrected my interest in biking just in time for summer. I went on one ride, but then our final freak snowstorm hit two weekends ago (80 degrees one day, six inches of snow the next. Only in Colorado) and that was that for awhile. I was going to go the following Monday when it cleared up, but when Ryan bailed on me again I decided a day on the couch relaxing sounded more appealing. Tery flipped out on me, as if it was my last chance rather than my first.
Then Wednesday was Earth Day. I wanted desperately to kill two birds with one stone (probably an inappropriate metaphor when discussing Earth Day): Bike to the grocery store. Exercise and shopping in one! However, sadly I didn't need anything that weighed less than 10 pounds: kitty litter, laundry detergent, gallons of milk, tub of butter (fortunately we were set for concrete blocks and lawn furniture) -- big, heavy bulky things that would be impossible to secure to the bike, never mind pedal back two or three miles with. So I very begrudgingly took my car instead. Sorry, Earth.
I consoled myself with the knowledge that for me, every other day of the year is Earth Day. I walk (and now bike) whenever possible, recycle as much as possible, shop with canvas bags, refuse to drive an ecosystem-devouring SUV. So why do I still feel guilty? Because those of us who care need to go that extra mile to make up for the many, many who don't.
~*~
Our galley-style kitchen is quite small, and necessitated us keeping our garbage can inside one of our lower cabinets. Unfortunately the combination of something forbidden being shut away out of reach was irresistible to the ferrets, necessitating installing childproof locks on the door. This proved quite perplexing to our occasional guests, and so annoying to Tery that she preferred the trash lying around the house. So we've decided to try a low-profile can in the corner.
Obviously a more visible can should be somewhat nicer-looking, which means stainless steel. I've never priced stainless steel trash cans before, so had no idea anything bigger than an office bucket gets up into the $100+ range. One hundred dollars!! For a trash can!! And not even a 13-gallon. The biggest I found was 10-gallon, and required special bags from the manufacturer. Any bigger and we were looking at closer to $170. For a garbage can. Tery wanted it for her birthday, and she spared no expense for me, so I was willing to consider it (the $100, that is).
I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I stopped into Target and found a 13-gallon option for only $40. That was more like it. It was Target brand rather than SimpleHuman (the most popular brand I was finding online), but hey. The price was a lot easier to stomach, and Tery said she didn't mind a more reasonable option.
Upon getting it home, the reason for the price difference was immediately apparent. The "retaining ring" meant to hold the bag in place was flimsy and could barely hold itself in place. And the lid didn't have the tiniest bit of cushioning (unlike SimpleHuman's patented "LID SHOX" silent hydraulic lowering system), making it clang loudly with every closing (Tery has taken to exclaiming, "Ancient Chinese secret, huh?" with every gong-like report).
It seems crazy to me that for these little extra touches you need to shell out an additional 60+ bucks. I would happily say as much on Target's product review site, except suspiciously this particular can doesn't show up in any searches. Clever, Target. Very clever indeed. But it is pretty nice to throw trash away without stockpiling it first on the counter to cut down on opening the cabinet repeatedly. And now Tery is giddy with the possibilities opened up by regaining that cabinet space.
~*~
Okay, I lied. Something exciting DID happen to me. JeffyJeff sent my birthday package, a magazine, a CD sampler, a card and a nondescript piece of paper. I read the accompanying letter first, where he described how a student of his attending a West End play spotted Alan in the audience and acquired his autograph that now sat in my hands (there was no mention of how Jeffy got it from the student. However, since she addressed Alan as "Professor Snape," I suspect she's not the president of the Rickmania Fan Club). I.....WHAT????
I shakily unfolded the scrap of paper, and yes indeedy, it was Rickman's autograph. The original too, not just a photocopy:
Well, THIS is a photocopy
My eyes literally filled with tears. I couldn't believe it. Normally my opinion on autographs is what's the point if you can't meet the person and get it face to face, but I will most definitely make an exception in this case. Tery even recommended I keep the extraneous layers of scrap because Alan had touched them.
But now the quandary of displaying it. Problem #1: Despite my enormous cache of Alan photos on my hard drive, I didn't have a single nice glossy print to frame. Problem #2: I didn't have a frame designed for displaying a photo and autograph. There were several nice ones on eBay that contained cheap reprints of photos and autographs of famous people. But much as I loved the idea of buying an Elvis Presley autograph (reprint) and discarding it for Alan, with shipping it came to $20. I thought I could do better at a local hobby store.
I thought wrong. First stop: Michael's, where I found no less than two aisles devoted to shadow boxes for every imaginable collectible you'd ever wish to display -- except, naturally, autographs. Flags (the most popular). T-shirts. Baseballs. Record albums and CDs. Watches. ANTIQUE KEYS. Autographs? Nothing. Hobby Lobby had even less, so long story short I settled on a frame with a diploma display (8 x 10") with a smaller cut-out for a 5 x 7" photo that was only $10 on sale.
Even more frustrating was trying to find some kind of preserving agent. My first internet stop after receiving the precious document was to search for advice on how to protect it. The site I found recommended a spray that would neutralize the acid in the paper to prevent yellowing and breakdown. I thought I'd have no trouble finding such a thing at a craft store.
At Michael's, I asked the guy in Custom Framing, who said it was called an archival spray and they no longer carried it. Have you ever set foot in a Michael's? They carry hundreds of thousands of products. They couldn't possibly fit in one more?
Still better than Hobby Lobby, where the girl had never even heard of such a thing. Disgusted, I took the initiative and ended up in Scrapbooking, where I found a can of something called, helpfully enough, "Make it Acid-Free!" I brought it back to the girl, who I doubted appreciated my attempt at education.
Anyway, now I'm good to go. I found some delicious publicity glossies on eBay (no film stills or shots of the side of his head as he scurries away from paparazzi), and got three after not being able to choose. I'm displaying actually a photocopy and squirreling the original away in an acid-free pouch into my fire safe. It may very well be my most prized possession, even more than my Dan Radcliffe Equus poster.
Eat your heart out, Robert Pattinson. I like to think he was wearing something similar to this when he signed my paper
~*~
Now for some movies:
Untraceable: Diane Lane's remake of Silence of the Lambs. She plays an FBI detective, cybercrime division, along with Tom Hanks' son. Normally specializing in onlline credit fraud, she gets put on the case of a sadistic new site, killwithme.com. (I couldn't resist. I just went to that address, and the opening graphic looks exactly like in the movie. I got chills down my spine!) The killer makes his debut with a kitten that users can log on and watch get slowly poisoned to death. Charming. Diane is disturbed by it, but it isn't quite enough to get the SWAT team breaking down doors.
When this has moderate success, the killer immediately ups his game to kidnapping some guy. He's strapped bleeding to a bed frame, with a continuous heparin (anticoagulant) drip. Cleverly it's rigged so that the more users log into the site, the faster the heparin drips and the quicker the guy bleeds to death. Since the IV fluid lines I've seen don't come with a USB cord, I can't imagine how this is accomplished and the movie doesn't waste time explaining. Must be an iPhone app.
The next victim meets an even more gruesome fate -- cemented on his hands and knees and slowly fried to death as more and more heat lamps are turned on by site visitors. Even more sickening are the user comments streaming on the side of the screen, jeering at the tortured man and making stupid jokes, like most internet users do.
After two murders, the department begs the NSA for help tracking the internet connection and they refuse, something about not having any jurisdiction in private residences. Which seems like a bit of a cop-out with lives on the line and whatnot.
Then Colin Hanks gets taken, and this is the point we see the killer is Augusten Burroughs (I mean Joseph Cross), the least threatening actor I could possibly think of. Colin is tied in a tank of water, into which is pumped sulfuric acid. Oh, it wasn't pretty. "If no one were watching you'd just be sitting in water," Augusten intones from the stairway. The message seems clear -- internet users are sadistic, morbidly curious fucks who are so out of touch with reality they don't care if they're aiding and abetting a murder.
Colin manages to Morse code-blink the killer's identity to his FBI colleagues, recognizing him from a popular YouTube video as the son of a professor who killed himself on a bridge and a news camera caught it all. So it turns out that's what all the victims have in common -- they all had something to do with filming and distributing the video, releasing it virally on the net.
They can't save him, but now Diane is too close to his trail. So SHE gets taken. Has FBI training really gone downhill since Clarice Starling's day?
In what seems like a needlessly complex and potentially very messy plan, the fate he has planned for her is being suspended and slowly lowered over a spinning rototiller in her own basement. She struggles and frees herself, and ends up shooting him to death. She pulls herself hastily over to the webcam, thrusting her badge into extreme closeup. I couldn't really understand the reason for that -- to prevent murder charges being filed against her? I doubt anyone who saw her hanging over the whirling blades could claim anything other than self-defense.
We'll never know, because that's literally the end of the movie. No kind of denouement whatsoever. Kill the perp and roll credits. Which might be a blessing -- few things are sadder than a movie that sets itself up for a sequel that never comes when it has an underwhelming reception.
I don't know if I'm just getting old. I sat through all five Saw films with barely a flinch, but this movie made me positively queasy. Not just the torture murders, but the message perhaps hits a little too close to home. I often participate in the online culture that occasionally victimizes others (to my knowledge not killing anyone though). It turns a cold, unforgiving light on the phenomenon. The problem is the movie isn't really good enough to be as effective as it should be.
A far better movie is the classic suspense thriller The Bad Seed. Rhoda Penmark seems like a little angel straight from heaven -- blond hair, a sweet smile and impeccable manners. However, we get a glimpse of her vicious temper when she's casually asked about the Best Penmanship award she had been vying for at school; it went to the totally undeserving Claude Daigle, and Rhoda can barely control her rage over the injustice.
When Claude turns up mysteriously drowned at a school picnic, Rhoda seems strangely unperturbed. Their not-right-in-the-head maintenance man, Leroy, seems to know what's what, but he mumbles his comments mostly to himself. He even accuses the little girl in private, who disregards him completely, rightly realizing that no one will take the word of a twitchy half-wit over a darling little cherub.
Nothing can be said for certain until Mrs. Penmark accidentally finds the Penmanship badge stowed in Rhoda's box of knick-knacks. She confronts Rhoda, who maintains it was Claude's fault for not giving her the award when she told him to -- classic sociopathic id personality that doesn't care what means are necessary to achieve its ends, terrifyingly implacable and unreasonable. Mom destroys the evidence, but the stress of living with the secret quickly takes its toll on her.
Doing some digging, she remembers long-buried memories of running from her mother when she was very young and being rescued by a foster family. Her mother was an infamous murderess, and she begins to suspect the homicidal gene has been passed on to her daughter.
Poor Leroy taunts Rhoda about an incriminating pair of tap shoes that ended up in his furnace, and he gets locked in the basement and burned alive a short time later (since the movie was made in 1956, we mercifully only hear his screams of agony off-screen). Again, nothing pointing at Rhoda specifically, but mom has to face the facts: Her daughter is a cold-blooded killer -- and a terrible liar to boot (when confronted by her obviously distressed parent, her first response is to creepily stroke her hair and repeat soothingly, "Don't I have a pretty mother? Don't I have a beautiful mother?" Like she can distract her from her terrible crimes).
So, as Gabrielle does to her daughter Hope 42 years later, Mrs. Penmark poisons Rhoda to stop the evil in her. She then goes to her bedroom to shoot herself. The wicked twist at the end is, they're both discovered in time to save them (as someone commented on IMDb, she must be a pretty lousy shot). As mom recovers in the hospital, singleminded Rhoda sneaks out in the middle of the night to return to the pier where her mother dumped Claude's Penmanship badge -- where a bolt of lightning strikes her dead!!
What I haven't mentioned is the best part of the movie -- Claude's mother, Hortense Daigle. She's only seen twice in the movie, understandably grief-stricken and progressively more inebriated. She is this movie's version of Rickman, handily stealing the movie out from under the stars with minimal screen time. Equally tragic and hilarious, she was easily the highlight of the whole flick.
Well, I've gone and flouted the hilariously dated plea that appears before the closing credits imploring people "not to divulge this film's truly shocking ending!!!" Bad Seed, meet my friends The Crying Game and The Sixth Sense. But seriously, for a 50's movie based on a play, it was very well written and well acted. I normally can't stand such an obvious stage script, but this movie deserves the title "classic." I even watched it a second time with commentary, that's how much I enjoyed it. It was apparently the first time anyone had suggested a possible hereditary factor in sociopathy, and I found the psychobabble pretty fascinating. Not surprisingly, this movie is also pretty popular among teh gays, probably because it isn't hard to see the metaphor in a parent turning on a child after discovering their true nature. 5 out of 5, I think. At the very least worth a rental.
Finally, the last widely available Rickman movie I hadn't seen (oops. Besides Bob Roberts), Michael Collins. I'm slowly learning about Hollywood's version of Irish history, first The Wind that Shakes the Barley and now this. Perhaps this account is more factual, being directed by Neil Jordan, who doesn't make movies about anything else (except Company of Wolves, which Tery says is probably an allegory for the IRA's struggle).
I was encouraged when Alan appears in the very first scene! I should have known better. It seemed every subsequent scene of his served only to explain why he wouldn't be appearing for the next 20 minutes -- first he goes to prison. Then he's off to America. Then down to London. You're KILLING me, Neil.
No, this movie is all about Liam Neeson, with supporting performances by Aidan Quinn and Julia Roberts, who have pretty abysmal accents (not that Alan's is much better: I spent the first half of the movie thinking maybe he was Italian or something). Jordan tries to give his countrymen some work: Stephen Rea (well, duh. He's as married to Neil as Johnny Depp is to Tim Burton), a young Brendan Gleeson who looks virtually emaciated, and even a very brief appearance by Jonathan Rhys Meyers (as Alan'slove puppy assistant). But the most glaring omission is Gabriel Byrne. Really, Neil? Two Americans and no Gabriel? Tosh.
So yeah, blah blah, Michael Collins. Apparently a very controversial figure, after first leading the IRA at its beginnings and then selling out to the English and leading the troops to squash the rebellion the Republic is eventually labeled.
Alan plays Eamon "Dev" De Valera, the president of the Republic -- which sounds very important, except in a movie about Michael Collins. However, there's a scene where he's dressed as an altar boy (my heart just about stopped beating) and yet another where he breaks out of jail by dressing as Michael's auntie, and yet another where he delivers a rousing revolutionary speech to a town square full of Irish extras (in which he sounds more like Rasputin than De Valera). Damn you and your movie-stealing abilities, Alan!!! So, I guess I'll be sitting through all that other boring historical crap repeatedly for these scattered gems.
~*~
I'd like to dedicate this post to my dear JeffyJeff, not only for his amazingly thoughtful and wonderful gift, but for giving me the kick in the ass I needed to finally finish this post.
First is breaking news. Our good neighbors Mike and Anna very foolishly went to Mexico on vacation -- just after swine flu started making headlines here. As I told
aurora_z, there's not panicking needlessly and then there's playing fast and loose with your chances. Tery said we now have two new cats (theirs, which she is watching for them). She just added, "Alas, Mike and Anna Takagi won't be joining us for the rest of their lives." (Recognize it? It's a variation on probably my favorite line in Die Hard. There'll be a quiz later.) ~*~
Working out is still...working out, with or without Ryan (who has started making excuses). My only complaint is that no one ever makes eye contact with you, and forget about a smile. All those endorphins raging and people working to better their health, and you won't see a grumpier group of individuals. What I like about it, however, is it doesn't matter how obese or out of shape someone is -- they're at a gym and they're trying to do something about it, and that makes me refreshingly nonjudgmental (unlike the contempt I feel for F-booms that sit around stuffing their faces when they should be working (e.g. the majority of Tery's workforce)).
Except this one guy. Granted I'm not an expert on gym etiquette, but what's this all about? Ryan and I had done every machine in our routine but one. However, this guy had spent the last 15 minutes or so sitting on the machine next to it, occasionally doing a few reps but mostly just sitting there. Ryan thought he was waiting for our last machine. I agreed, but I also thought if you're waiting for a machine, you shouldn't be hanging out on another machine, creating the illusion of using that machine, while waiting for a different machine. So when ours became free, I darted in and finished my set quickly. Sure enough, as soon as I left the guy finally got off his ass and boarded it. I still didn't feel bad though, because his workout "method" (if you can call it that) involved the occasional 2 or 3 reps followed by a whole lot of sitting there staring off into space, veeeeeeeery similar to his "waiting" mode. In fact, he was still at it when Ryan and I had finished our quick cardio about 15 minutes later. Me, I have things to do. I'm not interested in spending more time at the gym than I have to.
I've figured out the trick though. Some exercises are unique to only one machine. Others have three or four machines that all do very similar movements. The trick is to get the unique ones done first, so if it starts getting busy you can finish up on the ones with more choices. Gym smarts...I haz dem.
~*~
I've recently resurrected my interest in biking just in time for summer. I went on one ride, but then our final freak snowstorm hit two weekends ago (80 degrees one day, six inches of snow the next. Only in Colorado) and that was that for awhile. I was going to go the following Monday when it cleared up, but when Ryan bailed on me again I decided a day on the couch relaxing sounded more appealing. Tery flipped out on me, as if it was my last chance rather than my first.
Then Wednesday was Earth Day. I wanted desperately to kill two birds with one stone (probably an inappropriate metaphor when discussing Earth Day): Bike to the grocery store. Exercise and shopping in one! However, sadly I didn't need anything that weighed less than 10 pounds: kitty litter, laundry detergent, gallons of milk, tub of butter (fortunately we were set for concrete blocks and lawn furniture) -- big, heavy bulky things that would be impossible to secure to the bike, never mind pedal back two or three miles with. So I very begrudgingly took my car instead. Sorry, Earth.
I consoled myself with the knowledge that for me, every other day of the year is Earth Day. I walk (and now bike) whenever possible, recycle as much as possible, shop with canvas bags, refuse to drive an ecosystem-devouring SUV. So why do I still feel guilty? Because those of us who care need to go that extra mile to make up for the many, many who don't.
~*~
Our galley-style kitchen is quite small, and necessitated us keeping our garbage can inside one of our lower cabinets. Unfortunately the combination of something forbidden being shut away out of reach was irresistible to the ferrets, necessitating installing childproof locks on the door. This proved quite perplexing to our occasional guests, and so annoying to Tery that she preferred the trash lying around the house. So we've decided to try a low-profile can in the corner.
Obviously a more visible can should be somewhat nicer-looking, which means stainless steel. I've never priced stainless steel trash cans before, so had no idea anything bigger than an office bucket gets up into the $100+ range. One hundred dollars!! For a trash can!! And not even a 13-gallon. The biggest I found was 10-gallon, and required special bags from the manufacturer. Any bigger and we were looking at closer to $170. For a garbage can. Tery wanted it for her birthday, and she spared no expense for me, so I was willing to consider it (the $100, that is).
I was therefore pleasantly surprised when I stopped into Target and found a 13-gallon option for only $40. That was more like it. It was Target brand rather than SimpleHuman (the most popular brand I was finding online), but hey. The price was a lot easier to stomach, and Tery said she didn't mind a more reasonable option.
Upon getting it home, the reason for the price difference was immediately apparent. The "retaining ring" meant to hold the bag in place was flimsy and could barely hold itself in place. And the lid didn't have the tiniest bit of cushioning (unlike SimpleHuman's patented "LID SHOX" silent hydraulic lowering system), making it clang loudly with every closing (Tery has taken to exclaiming, "Ancient Chinese secret, huh?" with every gong-like report).
It seems crazy to me that for these little extra touches you need to shell out an additional 60+ bucks. I would happily say as much on Target's product review site, except suspiciously this particular can doesn't show up in any searches. Clever, Target. Very clever indeed. But it is pretty nice to throw trash away without stockpiling it first on the counter to cut down on opening the cabinet repeatedly. And now Tery is giddy with the possibilities opened up by regaining that cabinet space.
~*~
Okay, I lied. Something exciting DID happen to me. JeffyJeff sent my birthday package, a magazine, a CD sampler, a card and a nondescript piece of paper. I read the accompanying letter first, where he described how a student of his attending a West End play spotted Alan in the audience and acquired his autograph that now sat in my hands (there was no mention of how Jeffy got it from the student. However, since she addressed Alan as "Professor Snape," I suspect she's not the president of the Rickmania Fan Club). I.....WHAT????
I shakily unfolded the scrap of paper, and yes indeedy, it was Rickman's autograph. The original too, not just a photocopy:
Well, THIS is a photocopy
My eyes literally filled with tears. I couldn't believe it. Normally my opinion on autographs is what's the point if you can't meet the person and get it face to face, but I will most definitely make an exception in this case. Tery even recommended I keep the extraneous layers of scrap because Alan had touched them.
But now the quandary of displaying it. Problem #1: Despite my enormous cache of Alan photos on my hard drive, I didn't have a single nice glossy print to frame. Problem #2: I didn't have a frame designed for displaying a photo and autograph. There were several nice ones on eBay that contained cheap reprints of photos and autographs of famous people. But much as I loved the idea of buying an Elvis Presley autograph (reprint) and discarding it for Alan, with shipping it came to $20. I thought I could do better at a local hobby store.
I thought wrong. First stop: Michael's, where I found no less than two aisles devoted to shadow boxes for every imaginable collectible you'd ever wish to display -- except, naturally, autographs. Flags (the most popular). T-shirts. Baseballs. Record albums and CDs. Watches. ANTIQUE KEYS. Autographs? Nothing. Hobby Lobby had even less, so long story short I settled on a frame with a diploma display (8 x 10") with a smaller cut-out for a 5 x 7" photo that was only $10 on sale.
Even more frustrating was trying to find some kind of preserving agent. My first internet stop after receiving the precious document was to search for advice on how to protect it. The site I found recommended a spray that would neutralize the acid in the paper to prevent yellowing and breakdown. I thought I'd have no trouble finding such a thing at a craft store.
At Michael's, I asked the guy in Custom Framing, who said it was called an archival spray and they no longer carried it. Have you ever set foot in a Michael's? They carry hundreds of thousands of products. They couldn't possibly fit in one more?
Still better than Hobby Lobby, where the girl had never even heard of such a thing. Disgusted, I took the initiative and ended up in Scrapbooking, where I found a can of something called, helpfully enough, "Make it Acid-Free!" I brought it back to the girl, who I doubted appreciated my attempt at education.
Anyway, now I'm good to go. I found some delicious publicity glossies on eBay (no film stills or shots of the side of his head as he scurries away from paparazzi), and got three after not being able to choose. I'm displaying actually a photocopy and squirreling the original away in an acid-free pouch into my fire safe. It may very well be my most prized possession, even more than my Dan Radcliffe Equus poster.
Eat your heart out, Robert Pattinson. I like to think he was wearing something similar to this when he signed my paper
~*~
Now for some movies:
Untraceable: Diane Lane's remake of Silence of the Lambs. She plays an FBI detective, cybercrime division, along with Tom Hanks' son. Normally specializing in onlline credit fraud, she gets put on the case of a sadistic new site, killwithme.com. (I couldn't resist. I just went to that address, and the opening graphic looks exactly like in the movie. I got chills down my spine!) The killer makes his debut with a kitten that users can log on and watch get slowly poisoned to death. Charming. Diane is disturbed by it, but it isn't quite enough to get the SWAT team breaking down doors.
When this has moderate success, the killer immediately ups his game to kidnapping some guy. He's strapped bleeding to a bed frame, with a continuous heparin (anticoagulant) drip. Cleverly it's rigged so that the more users log into the site, the faster the heparin drips and the quicker the guy bleeds to death. Since the IV fluid lines I've seen don't come with a USB cord, I can't imagine how this is accomplished and the movie doesn't waste time explaining. Must be an iPhone app.
The next victim meets an even more gruesome fate -- cemented on his hands and knees and slowly fried to death as more and more heat lamps are turned on by site visitors. Even more sickening are the user comments streaming on the side of the screen, jeering at the tortured man and making stupid jokes, like most internet users do.
After two murders, the department begs the NSA for help tracking the internet connection and they refuse, something about not having any jurisdiction in private residences. Which seems like a bit of a cop-out with lives on the line and whatnot.
Then Colin Hanks gets taken, and this is the point we see the killer is Augusten Burroughs (I mean Joseph Cross), the least threatening actor I could possibly think of. Colin is tied in a tank of water, into which is pumped sulfuric acid. Oh, it wasn't pretty. "If no one were watching you'd just be sitting in water," Augusten intones from the stairway. The message seems clear -- internet users are sadistic, morbidly curious fucks who are so out of touch with reality they don't care if they're aiding and abetting a murder.
Colin manages to Morse code-blink the killer's identity to his FBI colleagues, recognizing him from a popular YouTube video as the son of a professor who killed himself on a bridge and a news camera caught it all. So it turns out that's what all the victims have in common -- they all had something to do with filming and distributing the video, releasing it virally on the net.
They can't save him, but now Diane is too close to his trail. So SHE gets taken. Has FBI training really gone downhill since Clarice Starling's day?
In what seems like a needlessly complex and potentially very messy plan, the fate he has planned for her is being suspended and slowly lowered over a spinning rototiller in her own basement. She struggles and frees herself, and ends up shooting him to death. She pulls herself hastily over to the webcam, thrusting her badge into extreme closeup. I couldn't really understand the reason for that -- to prevent murder charges being filed against her? I doubt anyone who saw her hanging over the whirling blades could claim anything other than self-defense.
We'll never know, because that's literally the end of the movie. No kind of denouement whatsoever. Kill the perp and roll credits. Which might be a blessing -- few things are sadder than a movie that sets itself up for a sequel that never comes when it has an underwhelming reception.
I don't know if I'm just getting old. I sat through all five Saw films with barely a flinch, but this movie made me positively queasy. Not just the torture murders, but the message perhaps hits a little too close to home. I often participate in the online culture that occasionally victimizes others (to my knowledge not killing anyone though). It turns a cold, unforgiving light on the phenomenon. The problem is the movie isn't really good enough to be as effective as it should be.
A far better movie is the classic suspense thriller The Bad Seed. Rhoda Penmark seems like a little angel straight from heaven -- blond hair, a sweet smile and impeccable manners. However, we get a glimpse of her vicious temper when she's casually asked about the Best Penmanship award she had been vying for at school; it went to the totally undeserving Claude Daigle, and Rhoda can barely control her rage over the injustice.
When Claude turns up mysteriously drowned at a school picnic, Rhoda seems strangely unperturbed. Their not-right-in-the-head maintenance man, Leroy, seems to know what's what, but he mumbles his comments mostly to himself. He even accuses the little girl in private, who disregards him completely, rightly realizing that no one will take the word of a twitchy half-wit over a darling little cherub.
Nothing can be said for certain until Mrs. Penmark accidentally finds the Penmanship badge stowed in Rhoda's box of knick-knacks. She confronts Rhoda, who maintains it was Claude's fault for not giving her the award when she told him to -- classic sociopathic id personality that doesn't care what means are necessary to achieve its ends, terrifyingly implacable and unreasonable. Mom destroys the evidence, but the stress of living with the secret quickly takes its toll on her.
Doing some digging, she remembers long-buried memories of running from her mother when she was very young and being rescued by a foster family. Her mother was an infamous murderess, and she begins to suspect the homicidal gene has been passed on to her daughter.
Poor Leroy taunts Rhoda about an incriminating pair of tap shoes that ended up in his furnace, and he gets locked in the basement and burned alive a short time later (since the movie was made in 1956, we mercifully only hear his screams of agony off-screen). Again, nothing pointing at Rhoda specifically, but mom has to face the facts: Her daughter is a cold-blooded killer -- and a terrible liar to boot (when confronted by her obviously distressed parent, her first response is to creepily stroke her hair and repeat soothingly, "Don't I have a pretty mother? Don't I have a beautiful mother?" Like she can distract her from her terrible crimes).
So, as Gabrielle does to her daughter Hope 42 years later, Mrs. Penmark poisons Rhoda to stop the evil in her. She then goes to her bedroom to shoot herself. The wicked twist at the end is, they're both discovered in time to save them (as someone commented on IMDb, she must be a pretty lousy shot). As mom recovers in the hospital, singleminded Rhoda sneaks out in the middle of the night to return to the pier where her mother dumped Claude's Penmanship badge -- where a bolt of lightning strikes her dead!!
What I haven't mentioned is the best part of the movie -- Claude's mother, Hortense Daigle. She's only seen twice in the movie, understandably grief-stricken and progressively more inebriated. She is this movie's version of Rickman, handily stealing the movie out from under the stars with minimal screen time. Equally tragic and hilarious, she was easily the highlight of the whole flick.
Well, I've gone and flouted the hilariously dated plea that appears before the closing credits imploring people "not to divulge this film's truly shocking ending!!!" Bad Seed, meet my friends The Crying Game and The Sixth Sense. But seriously, for a 50's movie based on a play, it was very well written and well acted. I normally can't stand such an obvious stage script, but this movie deserves the title "classic." I even watched it a second time with commentary, that's how much I enjoyed it. It was apparently the first time anyone had suggested a possible hereditary factor in sociopathy, and I found the psychobabble pretty fascinating. Not surprisingly, this movie is also pretty popular among teh gays, probably because it isn't hard to see the metaphor in a parent turning on a child after discovering their true nature. 5 out of 5, I think. At the very least worth a rental.
Finally, the last widely available Rickman movie I hadn't seen (oops. Besides Bob Roberts), Michael Collins. I'm slowly learning about Hollywood's version of Irish history, first The Wind that Shakes the Barley and now this. Perhaps this account is more factual, being directed by Neil Jordan, who doesn't make movies about anything else (except Company of Wolves, which Tery says is probably an allegory for the IRA's struggle).
I was encouraged when Alan appears in the very first scene! I should have known better. It seemed every subsequent scene of his served only to explain why he wouldn't be appearing for the next 20 minutes -- first he goes to prison. Then he's off to America. Then down to London. You're KILLING me, Neil.
No, this movie is all about Liam Neeson, with supporting performances by Aidan Quinn and Julia Roberts, who have pretty abysmal accents (not that Alan's is much better: I spent the first half of the movie thinking maybe he was Italian or something). Jordan tries to give his countrymen some work: Stephen Rea (well, duh. He's as married to Neil as Johnny Depp is to Tim Burton), a young Brendan Gleeson who looks virtually emaciated, and even a very brief appearance by Jonathan Rhys Meyers (as Alan's
So yeah, blah blah, Michael Collins. Apparently a very controversial figure, after first leading the IRA at its beginnings and then selling out to the English and leading the troops to squash the rebellion the Republic is eventually labeled.
Alan plays Eamon "Dev" De Valera, the president of the Republic -- which sounds very important, except in a movie about Michael Collins. However, there's a scene where he's dressed as an altar boy (my heart just about stopped beating) and yet another where he breaks out of jail by dressing as Michael's auntie, and yet another where he delivers a rousing revolutionary speech to a town square full of Irish extras (in which he sounds more like Rasputin than De Valera). Damn you and your movie-stealing abilities, Alan!!! So, I guess I'll be sitting through all that other boring historical crap repeatedly for these scattered gems.
~*~
I'd like to dedicate this post to my dear JeffyJeff, not only for his amazingly thoughtful and wonderful gift, but for giving me the kick in the ass I needed to finally finish this post.
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Date: 2009-05-01 06:22 pm (UTC)Congrats on the autograph! I don't go in for them much, but for certain people I would totally make an exception.
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Date: 2009-05-01 07:46 pm (UTC)I don't either. Obviously I could have had a Rickman autograph long before now if I wanted to buy from an autograph hound on eBay. But getting it from my friend (who got it from someone who is a complete stranger to me) is different somehow. And I adore the glossy photos I found which I probably would never have searched for without the autograph.
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Date: 2009-05-02 02:03 pm (UTC)Getting something from a friend always makes it that much better! I have some frames from a 35mm print of Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. It's kind of neat, but not something I would have gotten for myself. However, I love that Eric bought them for me for my birthday one year. It's an unusual gift.