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More neighbor schna, and Dark Harbor
I received an email from the Alcoholic this morning, "Re: Tracey":
SHE'S BACK. I passed her this morning on my way to the parking lot at 6:45, keys in hand. No words were exchanged. She looks the same, surly demeanor. This is very disturbing.
I suppose it might be disturbing if she herself hadn't told me more than a month and a half ago that Tracey was coming back. Did she not remember her own rumors? But it isn't nearly as disturbing as the thought of Tracey coming and going while we have a gaping hole between our units in the attic (I don't know if it's there yet or not. I'm not much inclined to poke my head up there after receiving the testing service's letter advising us to seal off the area between the attic and the bedroom. But there will be one there eventually and I won't sleep better knowing Tracey (who obviously isn't afraid of contamination) might have access to our house).
I sighed and put it on the "What do you want from me?" back burner. The response I finally mustered was only, "Thanks for the warning." This unfortunately encouraged a longer reply:
It makes my skin crawl. No word yet from Dave Kinney (A/N: the HOA administrator). I can't wait for Dave R. (A/N: Mr. Conspiracy Theorist) to find out. We'll have more letters on our doors. How are you girls doing? Why isn't she in jail? I should be so lucky.
No, I should be so lucky as to live in the next building over, where I would tsk tsk and shake my head, thank my stars that I DIDN'T live next door to a Crankwhore, and realize that this wasn't ALL ABOUT ME. And she emailed poor Dave Kinney demanding I don't know what, after the man has patiently explained time and again that there isn't a whole lot he can do about it. I'm telling you, if we could harness the activist energy that she and Dave R. combined expend on poking their noses into everyone else's business, we could change the world, baby.
Next, Dark Harbor. I've seen it at last and I'll be discussing it later, but for now some words on the Saga of Acquiring Dark Harbor, because you know damn well there had to be one. I'd done enough research to learn that there was a version with commentary and one without. I thought I'd play it safe and email every seller I could find asking which version they had. After a week I think I received one answer (the wrong one). The rest, nothing. These were power sellers, people who made a lot of money on eBay, not like that one guy who was just toying with the idea of eBay on a lark. Am I the only person on the planet who checks email virtually every day?
I settled on a copy for sale on Half.com, trusting that the item details page that stated "commentary" was accurate. I've sold on Half before. I know you enter the item UPC and all that stuff generates automatically from their database. About a week later the disc arrived but the back of the case was notably free of any mention of commentary. I carefully compared UPCs with the details page and they matched. The deciding factor was my refusal to believe that this movie, that seemingly no one cares about but myself, was even released with two separate editions.
I popped it in and was forced to face the fact: it WAS released with two separate editions. Goddammit. I emailed the seller about the mixup in the ridiculously slim hope that they'd take it back, and then I watched it since it was already opened. Maybe it was as awful as the reviews made it sound and I wouldn't care about commentary at all. What? It's been known to happen.
David and Alexis Weinburg (Alan Rickman and Polly Walker) are a bickering married couple. The tension in their relationship is blatantly evident from the very first scene as they drive through the rain, rushing to catch a ferry. Alexis asks, "Do you think we'll make it?" David responds, "I certainly hope so" in the WORST American accent I've ever heard in all my life. He uses it through the entire scene, prompting me to make a plea of Alan Rickman I thought I never would hear: "Please. Please...just don't speak." Yes, it was THAT horrible. I thought back to any other movie I've seen where he uses an American accent, and came up only with the one scene in Die Hard. That wasn't so bad. I guess it's a lot harder to maintain it for an entire movie. So perhaps it was a good thing that this miserable excuse for an accent came and went throughout the rest of the movie, sometimes with whole scenes with him using his normal British accent, thank god. This did make it a little confusing as to why he bothered at all with the American. He could have just as easily been British and it wouldn't have made a bit of difference, as far as I can tell.
But moving on. They miss their ferry because they stop to help a young man (Norman Reedus) on the side of the road who's been beaten, and who suspiciously asks for no cops and no doctors. They leave him in the waterside town, but he stows away on the ferry and thus inevitably they encounter him again the next day. He ends up staying in their cabin and appears to have romantic designs on Alexis. There's some shenanigans with mushrooms where Alexis shows Norman (for lack of another name) the difference between identical-looking varieties, one an aphrodisiac and the other deadly poison. This becomes important at the end when she and David have a huge blowout fight, all three of them run into the woods and Norman tries once again to seduce her, only to pull a switcheroo and feed her the deadly kind.
Then comes the big twist ending that has all of the Amazon reviewers abuzz with "It was confusing and made no sense," and "I had to watch the movie three or four times before I got it." Oh good god, people. It essentially is the scene I've been watching on an endless loop ever since discovering it on YouTube -- the big kiss between David and Norman. And it makes perfect sense, if you're expecting it as I was. The entire time David and Norman were a thing, and they were playing Alexis with an eye towards getting rid of her so they could be together. These Amazon reviewers clearly don't come from the extensive slash background that I do.
I almost wish I hadn't seen the kissing scene (or watched it 80-something times), because through studying every nuance, every look, every touch (and with a little help from the rest of the "trailer" where I originally found the scene) I basically predicted almost the entire plot. I usually like some surprise in my movies, so this was kind of a bummer for me. But it meant the first time through I noticed that David acts irritable and put out by Norman's presence while Alexis is in the room, and more bemused and civil towards Norman when she's not. I recognized that Norman was dictating Alexis' own "suicide note" to her immediately. I noticed the first time that everything David says to Norman can be taken more than one way, depending on if you know about the relationship or not.
There have been complaints on Amazon about Norman Reedus not being appealing enough to make you believe David would give up his marriage for him. One guy came right out and called him a "skank." I can see why they think this, but I also disagree a little. He's like a mix between an older Edward Furlong and a younger Robert Patrick. Most of all, not that this will mean anything to anyone but me, he reminds me a lot of Angela, the ethereal 19-year-old that seduced Tery and me into moving to Denver in the first place. He has the same sort of haunting physical grace, a certain je ne sais quois about him.
As for whether David would give up a marriage of 7 years for this scruffy young drifter, well, as I've stated, the enmity between him and Alexis is palpable from the word "action," and three times as much in the climactic argument, which has all the bitterness but none of the humorous sarcasm of the climactic argument in The Ref. Even when they aren't bickering, Alexis is portrayed as a shrill, emptyheaded spoiled brat. Not that David is any more pleasant...he comes off looking like a hypercritical nagging fishwife. So their marriage is far from perfect, but did it have to end in murder?
I don't know. These are the film's flaws: there are a lot of questions left unanswered. Why the elaborate seduction of Alexis before killing her? They are the only three people on the island. They could have easily snuck the poison mushroom into her food with the same result. Wouldn't have made for much of a movie I suppose, but it would have made a lot more sense.
But what of David and Norman? Has David always been gay/bi, or is he that desperate for any escape from his hellish marriage? Has he been living a lie from day one with Alexis? (this may have been hinted at when he tells her he knew on their wedding day he was making a huge mistake.) When did he have time to establish this relationship with Norman, how long has it been going on, do they intend to spend the rest of their lives together? And who tops and who bottoms? And why does Norman now have a British accent in the final scene? Deliberate deceit or just general sloppiness on the director's part all around?
And what of Alexis and Norman's relationship? She's jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers around him, yet suddenly just because he briefly takes her side in the big blowout argument she's eating mushrooms out of his hand like they've been lovers for years, not just making googly eyes at each other over breakfast. Does she deserve to die because of this lapse in judgment? Perhaps. If it's the only way David can live happily ever after with his young male lover; most definitely.
After watching the movie and thinking about it, I found myself wanting to know more about these characters. So much more, more than perhaps a commentary could provide, but it would be better than nothing. Was this just me subconsciously tormenting myself because I didn't have the right version? I don't think so. I really wanted answers to some or all of my questions.
So it was back to pounding the virtual pavement for me again in search of the right edition. Ebay had the same assortment of sellers I'd pestered once already. I sent an email to an Amazon seller that was returned as undeliverable. I even went back to Hollywood Video, fruitlessly. Twice now I have stumped them while looking for a title. Shelves upon shelves upon shelves full of movies, yet they've never heard of the ones I want to see. Why? Tery's theory is because they have "stupid movies." I am forced to concur. Let's get rid of the older, harder to find titles so we can stuff the shelves full of more copies of Date Movie.
But still I didn't believe I was back in the grip of another full-blown saga until I checked DeepDiscountDVD.com. They didn't have it, but I noticed a tiny link at the top to their Canadian site, DeepDiscountDVD.ca. I happened to remember the movie was made in Canada, so I thought this might be a good place to look.
They had it! For only $6! Perfect! But a tiny part of me whispered that this is my life and nothing can be as simple as it should be, so I checked their FAQs for shipping conditions. Sure enough, it stated there in black and white that they "can't" ship to the US. "Can't" or "won't"? Because I ship stuff to and from Canada all the time. Has a trade embargo been imposed when I wasn't looking? Ludicrous. Even more ludicrous is the finer fine print that DOES allow international shipping for $3.99, only not to the US. What the hell is up with THAT??? At this point I wouldn't have been at all surprised if it said "Shipping anywhere except to Elaine."
I emailed the US site with my dilemma hoping for a solution. Haven't heard back yet so we'll see. Stupid DeepDiscountDVD. Stupid Canada.
ADDENDUM: Just got an email saying only that I have to be a resident of Canada to order from their Canadian site. Which begs the question of why they have an international shipping policy (except for the US). Has Canada become a continent when I wasn't looking and broken down into different countries? If not, why then do they provide for international shipping for their exclusively Canadian resident customers?
I sent back another email asking these hard questions, then immediately got completely fed up. I went back to Amazon and bought it from a seller that specifies in their listing "Official US edition (fuck yeah!!!) w/director's commentary." Fuck you, Canada. Fuck you, DeepDiscountDVD.com. Oh, how I'd love to tell them they've lost a customer, but their prices on some things (that they will deign to sell to me) are often too good to pass up. Yes, I'm an angry person. An angry person who buys LOTS of DVDs. DDD.com would do well to keep that in mind.
SHE'S BACK. I passed her this morning on my way to the parking lot at 6:45, keys in hand. No words were exchanged. She looks the same, surly demeanor. This is very disturbing.
I suppose it might be disturbing if she herself hadn't told me more than a month and a half ago that Tracey was coming back. Did she not remember her own rumors? But it isn't nearly as disturbing as the thought of Tracey coming and going while we have a gaping hole between our units in the attic (I don't know if it's there yet or not. I'm not much inclined to poke my head up there after receiving the testing service's letter advising us to seal off the area between the attic and the bedroom. But there will be one there eventually and I won't sleep better knowing Tracey (who obviously isn't afraid of contamination) might have access to our house).
I sighed and put it on the "What do you want from me?" back burner. The response I finally mustered was only, "Thanks for the warning." This unfortunately encouraged a longer reply:
It makes my skin crawl. No word yet from Dave Kinney (A/N: the HOA administrator). I can't wait for Dave R. (A/N: Mr. Conspiracy Theorist) to find out. We'll have more letters on our doors. How are you girls doing? Why isn't she in jail? I should be so lucky.
No, I should be so lucky as to live in the next building over, where I would tsk tsk and shake my head, thank my stars that I DIDN'T live next door to a Crankwhore, and realize that this wasn't ALL ABOUT ME. And she emailed poor Dave Kinney demanding I don't know what, after the man has patiently explained time and again that there isn't a whole lot he can do about it. I'm telling you, if we could harness the activist energy that she and Dave R. combined expend on poking their noses into everyone else's business, we could change the world, baby.
Next, Dark Harbor. I've seen it at last and I'll be discussing it later, but for now some words on the Saga of Acquiring Dark Harbor, because you know damn well there had to be one. I'd done enough research to learn that there was a version with commentary and one without. I thought I'd play it safe and email every seller I could find asking which version they had. After a week I think I received one answer (the wrong one). The rest, nothing. These were power sellers, people who made a lot of money on eBay, not like that one guy who was just toying with the idea of eBay on a lark. Am I the only person on the planet who checks email virtually every day?
I settled on a copy for sale on Half.com, trusting that the item details page that stated "commentary" was accurate. I've sold on Half before. I know you enter the item UPC and all that stuff generates automatically from their database. About a week later the disc arrived but the back of the case was notably free of any mention of commentary. I carefully compared UPCs with the details page and they matched. The deciding factor was my refusal to believe that this movie, that seemingly no one cares about but myself, was even released with two separate editions.
I popped it in and was forced to face the fact: it WAS released with two separate editions. Goddammit. I emailed the seller about the mixup in the ridiculously slim hope that they'd take it back, and then I watched it since it was already opened. Maybe it was as awful as the reviews made it sound and I wouldn't care about commentary at all. What? It's been known to happen.
David and Alexis Weinburg (Alan Rickman and Polly Walker) are a bickering married couple. The tension in their relationship is blatantly evident from the very first scene as they drive through the rain, rushing to catch a ferry. Alexis asks, "Do you think we'll make it?" David responds, "I certainly hope so" in the WORST American accent I've ever heard in all my life. He uses it through the entire scene, prompting me to make a plea of Alan Rickman I thought I never would hear: "Please. Please...just don't speak." Yes, it was THAT horrible. I thought back to any other movie I've seen where he uses an American accent, and came up only with the one scene in Die Hard. That wasn't so bad. I guess it's a lot harder to maintain it for an entire movie. So perhaps it was a good thing that this miserable excuse for an accent came and went throughout the rest of the movie, sometimes with whole scenes with him using his normal British accent, thank god. This did make it a little confusing as to why he bothered at all with the American. He could have just as easily been British and it wouldn't have made a bit of difference, as far as I can tell.
But moving on. They miss their ferry because they stop to help a young man (Norman Reedus) on the side of the road who's been beaten, and who suspiciously asks for no cops and no doctors. They leave him in the waterside town, but he stows away on the ferry and thus inevitably they encounter him again the next day. He ends up staying in their cabin and appears to have romantic designs on Alexis. There's some shenanigans with mushrooms where Alexis shows Norman (for lack of another name) the difference between identical-looking varieties, one an aphrodisiac and the other deadly poison. This becomes important at the end when she and David have a huge blowout fight, all three of them run into the woods and Norman tries once again to seduce her, only to pull a switcheroo and feed her the deadly kind.
Then comes the big twist ending that has all of the Amazon reviewers abuzz with "It was confusing and made no sense," and "I had to watch the movie three or four times before I got it." Oh good god, people. It essentially is the scene I've been watching on an endless loop ever since discovering it on YouTube -- the big kiss between David and Norman. And it makes perfect sense, if you're expecting it as I was. The entire time David and Norman were a thing, and they were playing Alexis with an eye towards getting rid of her so they could be together. These Amazon reviewers clearly don't come from the extensive slash background that I do.
I almost wish I hadn't seen the kissing scene (or watched it 80-something times), because through studying every nuance, every look, every touch (and with a little help from the rest of the "trailer" where I originally found the scene) I basically predicted almost the entire plot. I usually like some surprise in my movies, so this was kind of a bummer for me. But it meant the first time through I noticed that David acts irritable and put out by Norman's presence while Alexis is in the room, and more bemused and civil towards Norman when she's not. I recognized that Norman was dictating Alexis' own "suicide note" to her immediately. I noticed the first time that everything David says to Norman can be taken more than one way, depending on if you know about the relationship or not.
There have been complaints on Amazon about Norman Reedus not being appealing enough to make you believe David would give up his marriage for him. One guy came right out and called him a "skank." I can see why they think this, but I also disagree a little. He's like a mix between an older Edward Furlong and a younger Robert Patrick. Most of all, not that this will mean anything to anyone but me, he reminds me a lot of Angela, the ethereal 19-year-old that seduced Tery and me into moving to Denver in the first place. He has the same sort of haunting physical grace, a certain je ne sais quois about him.
As for whether David would give up a marriage of 7 years for this scruffy young drifter, well, as I've stated, the enmity between him and Alexis is palpable from the word "action," and three times as much in the climactic argument, which has all the bitterness but none of the humorous sarcasm of the climactic argument in The Ref. Even when they aren't bickering, Alexis is portrayed as a shrill, emptyheaded spoiled brat. Not that David is any more pleasant...he comes off looking like a hypercritical nagging fishwife. So their marriage is far from perfect, but did it have to end in murder?
I don't know. These are the film's flaws: there are a lot of questions left unanswered. Why the elaborate seduction of Alexis before killing her? They are the only three people on the island. They could have easily snuck the poison mushroom into her food with the same result. Wouldn't have made for much of a movie I suppose, but it would have made a lot more sense.
But what of David and Norman? Has David always been gay/bi, or is he that desperate for any escape from his hellish marriage? Has he been living a lie from day one with Alexis? (this may have been hinted at when he tells her he knew on their wedding day he was making a huge mistake.) When did he have time to establish this relationship with Norman, how long has it been going on, do they intend to spend the rest of their lives together? And who tops and who bottoms? And why does Norman now have a British accent in the final scene? Deliberate deceit or just general sloppiness on the director's part all around?
And what of Alexis and Norman's relationship? She's jumpier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers around him, yet suddenly just because he briefly takes her side in the big blowout argument she's eating mushrooms out of his hand like they've been lovers for years, not just making googly eyes at each other over breakfast. Does she deserve to die because of this lapse in judgment? Perhaps. If it's the only way David can live happily ever after with his young male lover; most definitely.
After watching the movie and thinking about it, I found myself wanting to know more about these characters. So much more, more than perhaps a commentary could provide, but it would be better than nothing. Was this just me subconsciously tormenting myself because I didn't have the right version? I don't think so. I really wanted answers to some or all of my questions.
So it was back to pounding the virtual pavement for me again in search of the right edition. Ebay had the same assortment of sellers I'd pestered once already. I sent an email to an Amazon seller that was returned as undeliverable. I even went back to Hollywood Video, fruitlessly. Twice now I have stumped them while looking for a title. Shelves upon shelves upon shelves full of movies, yet they've never heard of the ones I want to see. Why? Tery's theory is because they have "stupid movies." I am forced to concur. Let's get rid of the older, harder to find titles so we can stuff the shelves full of more copies of Date Movie.
But still I didn't believe I was back in the grip of another full-blown saga until I checked DeepDiscountDVD.com. They didn't have it, but I noticed a tiny link at the top to their Canadian site, DeepDiscountDVD.ca. I happened to remember the movie was made in Canada, so I thought this might be a good place to look.
They had it! For only $6! Perfect! But a tiny part of me whispered that this is my life and nothing can be as simple as it should be, so I checked their FAQs for shipping conditions. Sure enough, it stated there in black and white that they "can't" ship to the US. "Can't" or "won't"? Because I ship stuff to and from Canada all the time. Has a trade embargo been imposed when I wasn't looking? Ludicrous. Even more ludicrous is the finer fine print that DOES allow international shipping for $3.99, only not to the US. What the hell is up with THAT??? At this point I wouldn't have been at all surprised if it said "Shipping anywhere except to Elaine."
I emailed the US site with my dilemma hoping for a solution. Haven't heard back yet so we'll see. Stupid DeepDiscountDVD. Stupid Canada.
ADDENDUM: Just got an email saying only that I have to be a resident of Canada to order from their Canadian site. Which begs the question of why they have an international shipping policy (except for the US). Has Canada become a continent when I wasn't looking and broken down into different countries? If not, why then do they provide for international shipping for their exclusively Canadian resident customers?
I sent back another email asking these hard questions, then immediately got completely fed up. I went back to Amazon and bought it from a seller that specifies in their listing "Official US edition (fuck yeah!!!) w/director's commentary." Fuck you, Canada. Fuck you, DeepDiscountDVD.com. Oh, how I'd love to tell them they've lost a customer, but their prices on some things (that they will deign to sell to me) are often too good to pass up. Yes, I'm an angry person. An angry person who buys LOTS of DVDs. DDD.com would do well to keep that in mind.