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grrgoylThe bad: Tracey FCW's response to requests to pay for testing our stuff continues to be "La, la, la, I can't hear you." And to make matters worse, she's back to moving in at all hours of the night (last night's shift was 11:30 pm to 5 am), which honestly affects Tery more than me since I sleep in a buffered cocoon of white noise with my fan even when the temperature is 30 degrees. And probably affected the Alcoholic not at all, so it's a good thing she's given up sending me anguished, fretful emails about how we're going to get rid of our "mutual" scourge. The moving thing just flabbergasts us. Imagine, you're a drug dealer caught with a meth lab in your house. The whole neighborhood knows about it. But you still decide to move back in among all these people who know you are filth and already have perfectly good reasons to hate you. You could a.) try to mend some fences, try to prove that you've changed and show that you'd like another chance at being a decent member of the human race, or b.) keep on doing whatever the fuck you want and keep treating everyone around you like enemies. I know what I'D do, but I come from a background of being raised properly by my parents. I guess it takes more than a few months in rehab or wherever she went to instill consideration for others. I reported it to the HOA, not as a complaint, just as something for the record, so if/when there are more incidents everything is documented.
My mood was not improved when I watched part of the moving process through the peephole and noticed their primary method of transporting sundries up the stairs was pails. Lots of pails, all different sizes. Who the fuck has that many pails? Oh, I guess the former owner of a meth lab has lots of pails. Yeah, that did a lot to quell my fears.
The good: I emailed the HOA as well about everyone's seeming lack of concern for the safety of our attic. Dave the administrator was very sympathetic and perplexed as to why the Health Dept was dropping the matter. He had me send him an inventory of everything up there and promised to follow through for us, including using fines or whatever leverage the HOA could wield to pressure her themselves. So I guess there is some advantage to belonging to an HOA after all.
I hate her. I just fucking hate her.
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But enough about all that. Some movie reviews.
My favorite part of Halloween is watching all the horror movies on TV, things I would never actually rent. Tery and I were skimming through some the other night. We stumbled upon a channel showing a Troma festival and we stopped and laughed at The Toxic Avenger for about 15 minutes. It was bad, I mean REALLY bad, and 15 minutes was about all the cheese we could stomach. Then to my surprise she stopped on the Sci-Fi channel offering, It Waits. I was mildly intrigued by it; Tery promptly fell asleep.
The first thing we see is the titular "It" freed from a cave by some vaguely Native American-looking people, who are immediately slaughtered. Cut to present day (?) where we meet a young forest ranger, Danielle. The details of the beginning are fuzzy (I was zoning). One thing I remember for certain was Danielle had an African Grey parrot, Hoppy. I know this because Danielle takes Hoppy with her everywhere, even to a bar where she gets drunk with her girlfriend (I'm not kidding. Big old parrot cage next to her on the floor in the bar). Danielle drives her friend's car drunk, they get in an accident and her friend flies through the passenger window and dies, but Danielle survives (as does Hoppy. They show her actually pulling his cage from the burning vehicle). Hoppy is the comic relief to this movie that Kodo and Podo, those amazingly verbal ferrets, are to the Beastmaster series. Tery observed before passing out, "Half our budget went to renting this bird. We're damn well going to use it."
Danielle goes to her job on the mountain, but the accident continues to haunt her. Not because she killed her friend, but because she let the police believe that her friend was driving. Which means they believed that Danielle flew through the passenger window and survived, and her friend died from injuries consistent with flying through a window but in fact stayed in the vehicle; the police in this jurisdiction must not be particularly observant.
She meets up with a fellow ranger, who talks a good game about having to man base camp but never makes a move to actually do so. Instead he shacks up with Danielle in the ranger watchtower, engaging in a steamy sex scene that lasts 5 minutes but manages to show no recognizable body parts whatsoever. By now we've forgotten that this is a horror movie, until the tower is attacked in the night by It, who tears off their satellite dish, mutilates their Jeep and disables all communication.
They head into the woods the next day to find the culprit. They meet a backpacking couple who are lost, and Danielle alludes to hearing bulletins about them missing but was too drunk at the time to take notice. Danielle's alcoholism is apparently very familiar to everyone (a dispatcher makes some snarky comments about her getting drunk on the job), which leads one to wonder why she continues to be entrusted with the important task of watching for forest fires.
It doesn't matter. "It" comes along and kills the couple in broad daylight while Danielle and her lover's backs are turned. Now they start to realize that this could be serious, so that night Loverboy heads off to find help, leaving Danielle and Hoppy in the tower. HE gets killed, naturally, and It dumps his body (along with the backpackers) right in Danielle's lap.
This is when the movie stops making sense. It becomes a sort of Predator-like face-off between Danielle and It. The creature plays mindgames with her, sneaking into the tower while she's gone and arranging the bodies of It's victims in gruesome vignettes at Danielle's dinner table. It's strong enough to rip out the tower's support beams from below. It can even fly. Yet It seems to be confounded by glass windows and a screen door with a bureau shoved in front of it.
Meanwhile, instead of thinking of ways to defeat it or, I don't know, get off the mountain, Danielle spends her time gazing at the sunset, mourning her slain ranger to the tune of sappy 80's-style love ballads. What. The fuck. This movie was made in 2005.
At one point Danielle ventures out and stumbles upon a biologist living in an RV so he can study the creature. He tells her It is the incarnation of a mythological Native American beast and is possibly female. And is afraid of water. He gives her a book that presumably will answer all her questions, which is instantly forgotten. In the midst of the final attack in the watchtower, Danielle finds a cellphone under a table. I want to believe it fell out of the pocket of one of the victims, rather than it was there the whole time and she was too wrapped up in her grief to notice. She reaches her boss at the base of the mountain who mockingly promises to rescue her right away, but waits until morning because he knows she's just drunk. Which is fine because she's safe as a kitten behind all those windows that It can't get through. On her way off the mountain she stops to trap It in a cave with some explosive charges, in the process getting her boss killed by It as well. She returns to civilization and her first action is to report the whereabouts of the dead bodies, and to incidentally set the record straight with regards to that car crash a year ago that no one really cares about anymore.
Ugh. This falls firmly in the "88 minutes of my life I'll never get back" category. 1.5 out of 5, just for providing some truly MST3k moments.
Saw III. Ryan and I saw it tonight. The reviews are correct...it IS better than the second, almost as good as the first. There are no spoilers following.
First, the theater wasn't that full when we arrived. There was a girl and two guys sitting a few rows behind us that later were joined by fellow classmates until almost the entire row was occupied. They talked and joked loudly, but only up until the trailers started, so it was all good. I did hear the girl say quite clearly before the lights went down, "So, this guy, he plays games or something and doesn't actually kill anyone himself?" Either she was being cute or she really hadn't seen the first two films.
The reviews were also correct that this is probably 10 times gorier than the first two. That's a LOT of gore, but I handled it. It has two simultaneous running plots like Saw II, a doctor captured and coerced into keeping the deathly ill Jigsaw alive long enough to see the end of his final test, and the test subject, a man given the opportunity to either forgive or condemn various agents in the trial of the drunk driver who killed his son and got off with a slap on the wrist.
These plots are cleverly interwoven, even moreso because they manage to integrate some key points of the first two films, showing what led up to them and tying up loose ends -- and completely spoiling both films for anyone foolish enough to come in this late in the franchise. HA. It gave me chills, it was so nicely done.
There are only two things I want to say, again no spoilers. First, the trap planned for the judge is just about the worst way to die that I can imagine (you'll know what I mean if you see it). Secondly, one of Jigsaw's victims is chosen only because she's "dead inside" and relates better to murder victims than to living companions. Well, god help you if you suffer from clinical depression or something. The lesson here is the next time you're walking alone in the dark, be sure to show off your joie de vivre with every step just in case you're being stalked by a Jigsaw copycat.
This chapter was a very satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. The reviews mention the possibility of sequels, but no more with the original two writers, so most likely count me out. 4 out of 5
Oh, and why can't Jigsaw kidnap our Filthy Crankwhore and teach her a lesson or two?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Finally, we thought we needed a plumber; the toilet was making a dripping leaking sound. Then when Tery tried to fix it, the turn-off valve started leaking. She eventually fixed both, but the point is I was looking in the phone book for a plumber. One of the first ads I read boasted, "No charge for travel!" which implies that other companies DO. This hardly seems fair -- it's not as if you can go to them. But the funniest was a huge two-page ad that listed all the services they guarantee. In addition to the actual plumbing work you hire them for, they will 1) empty the trash in every room they work in (not so bad), 2) change any lightbulbs they notice are out and 3) even bring in your newspaper for you from outside. Seems like a pretty all-purpose service, but how much more are they charging you for all those personal touches? I can change my own lightbulbs and I can certainly carry in my own newspaper. I call a plumber to handle the things I CAN'T do myself, k?
My mood was not improved when I watched part of the moving process through the peephole and noticed their primary method of transporting sundries up the stairs was pails. Lots of pails, all different sizes. Who the fuck has that many pails? Oh, I guess the former owner of a meth lab has lots of pails. Yeah, that did a lot to quell my fears.
The good: I emailed the HOA as well about everyone's seeming lack of concern for the safety of our attic. Dave the administrator was very sympathetic and perplexed as to why the Health Dept was dropping the matter. He had me send him an inventory of everything up there and promised to follow through for us, including using fines or whatever leverage the HOA could wield to pressure her themselves. So I guess there is some advantage to belonging to an HOA after all.
I hate her. I just fucking hate her.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
But enough about all that. Some movie reviews.
My favorite part of Halloween is watching all the horror movies on TV, things I would never actually rent. Tery and I were skimming through some the other night. We stumbled upon a channel showing a Troma festival and we stopped and laughed at The Toxic Avenger for about 15 minutes. It was bad, I mean REALLY bad, and 15 minutes was about all the cheese we could stomach. Then to my surprise she stopped on the Sci-Fi channel offering, It Waits. I was mildly intrigued by it; Tery promptly fell asleep.
The first thing we see is the titular "It" freed from a cave by some vaguely Native American-looking people, who are immediately slaughtered. Cut to present day (?) where we meet a young forest ranger, Danielle. The details of the beginning are fuzzy (I was zoning). One thing I remember for certain was Danielle had an African Grey parrot, Hoppy. I know this because Danielle takes Hoppy with her everywhere, even to a bar where she gets drunk with her girlfriend (I'm not kidding. Big old parrot cage next to her on the floor in the bar). Danielle drives her friend's car drunk, they get in an accident and her friend flies through the passenger window and dies, but Danielle survives (as does Hoppy. They show her actually pulling his cage from the burning vehicle). Hoppy is the comic relief to this movie that Kodo and Podo, those amazingly verbal ferrets, are to the Beastmaster series. Tery observed before passing out, "Half our budget went to renting this bird. We're damn well going to use it."
Danielle goes to her job on the mountain, but the accident continues to haunt her. Not because she killed her friend, but because she let the police believe that her friend was driving. Which means they believed that Danielle flew through the passenger window and survived, and her friend died from injuries consistent with flying through a window but in fact stayed in the vehicle; the police in this jurisdiction must not be particularly observant.
She meets up with a fellow ranger, who talks a good game about having to man base camp but never makes a move to actually do so. Instead he shacks up with Danielle in the ranger watchtower, engaging in a steamy sex scene that lasts 5 minutes but manages to show no recognizable body parts whatsoever. By now we've forgotten that this is a horror movie, until the tower is attacked in the night by It, who tears off their satellite dish, mutilates their Jeep and disables all communication.
They head into the woods the next day to find the culprit. They meet a backpacking couple who are lost, and Danielle alludes to hearing bulletins about them missing but was too drunk at the time to take notice. Danielle's alcoholism is apparently very familiar to everyone (a dispatcher makes some snarky comments about her getting drunk on the job), which leads one to wonder why she continues to be entrusted with the important task of watching for forest fires.
It doesn't matter. "It" comes along and kills the couple in broad daylight while Danielle and her lover's backs are turned. Now they start to realize that this could be serious, so that night Loverboy heads off to find help, leaving Danielle and Hoppy in the tower. HE gets killed, naturally, and It dumps his body (along with the backpackers) right in Danielle's lap.
This is when the movie stops making sense. It becomes a sort of Predator-like face-off between Danielle and It. The creature plays mindgames with her, sneaking into the tower while she's gone and arranging the bodies of It's victims in gruesome vignettes at Danielle's dinner table. It's strong enough to rip out the tower's support beams from below. It can even fly. Yet It seems to be confounded by glass windows and a screen door with a bureau shoved in front of it.
Meanwhile, instead of thinking of ways to defeat it or, I don't know, get off the mountain, Danielle spends her time gazing at the sunset, mourning her slain ranger to the tune of sappy 80's-style love ballads. What. The fuck. This movie was made in 2005.
At one point Danielle ventures out and stumbles upon a biologist living in an RV so he can study the creature. He tells her It is the incarnation of a mythological Native American beast and is possibly female. And is afraid of water. He gives her a book that presumably will answer all her questions, which is instantly forgotten. In the midst of the final attack in the watchtower, Danielle finds a cellphone under a table. I want to believe it fell out of the pocket of one of the victims, rather than it was there the whole time and she was too wrapped up in her grief to notice. She reaches her boss at the base of the mountain who mockingly promises to rescue her right away, but waits until morning because he knows she's just drunk. Which is fine because she's safe as a kitten behind all those windows that It can't get through. On her way off the mountain she stops to trap It in a cave with some explosive charges, in the process getting her boss killed by It as well. She returns to civilization and her first action is to report the whereabouts of the dead bodies, and to incidentally set the record straight with regards to that car crash a year ago that no one really cares about anymore.
Ugh. This falls firmly in the "88 minutes of my life I'll never get back" category. 1.5 out of 5, just for providing some truly MST3k moments.
Saw III. Ryan and I saw it tonight. The reviews are correct...it IS better than the second, almost as good as the first. There are no spoilers following.
First, the theater wasn't that full when we arrived. There was a girl and two guys sitting a few rows behind us that later were joined by fellow classmates until almost the entire row was occupied. They talked and joked loudly, but only up until the trailers started, so it was all good. I did hear the girl say quite clearly before the lights went down, "So, this guy, he plays games or something and doesn't actually kill anyone himself?" Either she was being cute or she really hadn't seen the first two films.
The reviews were also correct that this is probably 10 times gorier than the first two. That's a LOT of gore, but I handled it. It has two simultaneous running plots like Saw II, a doctor captured and coerced into keeping the deathly ill Jigsaw alive long enough to see the end of his final test, and the test subject, a man given the opportunity to either forgive or condemn various agents in the trial of the drunk driver who killed his son and got off with a slap on the wrist.
These plots are cleverly interwoven, even moreso because they manage to integrate some key points of the first two films, showing what led up to them and tying up loose ends -- and completely spoiling both films for anyone foolish enough to come in this late in the franchise. HA. It gave me chills, it was so nicely done.
There are only two things I want to say, again no spoilers. First, the trap planned for the judge is just about the worst way to die that I can imagine (you'll know what I mean if you see it). Secondly, one of Jigsaw's victims is chosen only because she's "dead inside" and relates better to murder victims than to living companions. Well, god help you if you suffer from clinical depression or something. The lesson here is the next time you're walking alone in the dark, be sure to show off your joie de vivre with every step just in case you're being stalked by a Jigsaw copycat.
This chapter was a very satisfying conclusion to the trilogy. The reviews mention the possibility of sequels, but no more with the original two writers, so most likely count me out. 4 out of 5
Oh, and why can't Jigsaw kidnap our Filthy Crankwhore and teach her a lesson or two?
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Finally, we thought we needed a plumber; the toilet was making a dripping leaking sound. Then when Tery tried to fix it, the turn-off valve started leaking. She eventually fixed both, but the point is I was looking in the phone book for a plumber. One of the first ads I read boasted, "No charge for travel!" which implies that other companies DO. This hardly seems fair -- it's not as if you can go to them. But the funniest was a huge two-page ad that listed all the services they guarantee. In addition to the actual plumbing work you hire them for, they will 1) empty the trash in every room they work in (not so bad), 2) change any lightbulbs they notice are out and 3) even bring in your newspaper for you from outside. Seems like a pretty all-purpose service, but how much more are they charging you for all those personal touches? I can change my own lightbulbs and I can certainly carry in my own newspaper. I call a plumber to handle the things I CAN'T do myself, k?
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Date: 2006-11-01 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-01 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-01 08:18 pm (UTC)I'm not recommending Route 666 because it's the cheesiest thing since forever but I love watching it anyway. It's about these people in California that get attacked by the ghosts of chain-gang prisoners. The ghosts are apparently angry because they were murdered by a policeman via really slow steamroller. The effects are ridiculously shoddy and the screen shakes every time the ghosts appear.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-01 08:30 pm (UTC)If you love SotD you should give "Spaced" a try, the British series also starring Simon Pegg (occasionally) Nick Frost and directed by Edgar Wright. More of the same fabulous humor and clever film references.