PunkKittyDiddy

Trash Talk From The Mouths of Babes

I'm back from a writing hiatus and ready to resume the flibbertigibbetry.  Apologies for the long absence - or for the return, depending on how you view things.

I love that the Wee Z. (she of Hardly A Toddler Any Longer classification) is still at a relatively innocent age.  Take, for instance, her feeble attempts at trash talking.  At this point, the most heinous insult she can think to lob at someone is to call them a "werewolf."   (My Netflix viewing habits are probably at least partly to blame for this....in which case, it's a good thing I'm not a fan of Guy Ritchie or the Jackass franchise......)  Beyond "werewolf," the second most vitriolic insult she can conjure is to christen someone a "baby."  (Because, you see, she is a big girl now herself.  To be called a "baby" is the lowest of the lows.)  

So the other day, as we're weaving in and out of some particularly heinous L.A. traffic, a fellow motorist decided to cut us off.  Z. spent a good ten seconds sputtering in indignation before shouting, "Werewolf!  He's a werewolf!"  Then her eyes got all squinty a la Clint Eastwood.  (If she'd had a cigarette dangling from her lips, the resemblance would have been uncanny.)   An eerie and almost dead calm came over her wee face, and in a voice dripping with scathing contempt, she corrected herself.  "He's a baby werewolf," she sneered.

I withheld my instinctive reaction, which was to say, "That's it?  That's the best you've got?"  (One of my goals is to hone Z.'s verbal sparring skills to a sharp, needle-fine point, after all.)  

But I decided to let it slide.  Because one day....... a day all too soon in coming, I realize......I will yearn for such verbal impotence.  Particularly when it's aimed in my general direction...... 

Adventures in Netflixing: "Friday the 13th" (2009)

Again, I do lower the bar when watching horror movies.  I really do.  I was even willing to bury the bar in the backyard and forget all about it when I realized this was produced by Michael Bay.  Sure, I would run the risk of the dog one day digging up the bar, and bringing it to me, and shaming me with the reminder that I once had standards. I was OK with that.

But why did these characters have to spew dialogue like, "Where are you, gun?!" 

I somehow managed to piece together what that character's motivation was as soon as he dropped the gun into the stream. I'm clever like that.  And even if I weren't, by process of elimination, I would have eventually come to realize that he was dipping his hands into the water to retrieve the gun, as it certainly didn't seem like a good time to stop running through the woods and splash some cold, refreshing water on his face.......what with that machete-wielding, hockey-mask-wearing guy in close pursuit and all.

Did he have to address the gun?  Did he, really?

I can't say why those four words pushed me over the edge, when there were so many other painful sequences of verbiage to suffer through.  I was (inexplicably) otherwise on board throughout the pageant of heaving bosoms, splatter, and endless exposition about the deranged killer's motivation, too.  Then stupid, yuppie, Twinkie-fluff-for-brains Trent had to go and talk to his little gun buddy.  I draw the line there, however random it may seem.

D minus.  One star.  Two thumbs down.

Adventures in Netflixing: "Orphan"

[Disclaimer #1:  the following is a spoiler-y spoilerfest from a spoiler-spewing spoilermonger (me).  So only read this if you're NOT one of the five remaining people on this planet who still intends to rent this, but hasn't yet.] 

[Disclaimer #2 - this isn't a proper film review.  Why?  Because one of the liberating things about keeping a personal blog is the complete and utter absence of rules.] 

Onward.

Finally got around to netflixing "Orphan."  I wasn't in loooooooove with this movie, but I am still strangely compelled to defend the movie from its less than favorable reviews.  One mainstream critic actually slammed this for being "sleazy." 

Sleazy?  Did he think he was buying a ticket to the arty slasher flick about the psycho kid who goes on a rampage?  Is anyone watching a slasher movie for its metaphors or artful nuances?

Then there are the adoption advocates who felt this movie didn't make the most flattering case for older orphans.  And hey, what prospective adoptive parent doesn't look to a scary movie for encouragement or guidance in regards to a life-changing decision like adoption?  I mean, besides the sane ones.

The Plot and Plot Twist Thing.  Grieving parents, following the stillbirth of their third child, adopt an older girl from an orphanage.  Dad's a philanderer.  Mom's a recovering alcoholic whose vodka-soaked negligence nearly killed their second child.  A new kid seems like just the ticket to repair the riffs in this dysfunctional family!  Ah, but would you believe the orphan they welcome into their happy home is a bad apple?  Or a bad dwarf, more specifically?  See, there's an insane asylum in Eastern Europe whose resident population is minus one raving psychopath.....a raving psychopath who suffers from hypopituitarism, a rare condition which renders her appearance as child-like even though she's a 30-something homicidal nutcase.

Yes, really.  When the tagline promised that there was something wrong with Esther, it wasn't kidding.

The Angry Dwarf Thing.  As a general rule, I am the last person on the moviegoing planet who appreciates a good "The angry dwarf did it (or was in the general vicinity, just to impart a sense of surrealism)" plot twist.  I loathed "Don't Look Now" - watching that made me nearly as twitchy as an angry dwarf.  And "The Brood"?  Please.  Throwing a dozen angry dwarves into one movie doesn't make it exponentially more creepy or weird.  David Lynch can almost get away with his own dwarf fetish, because he invariably places the dwarf in a scene that is absurd of its own accord.  When the dwarf seems like the normal one, it's less of a crutch.  (At the same time, Lynch is a little too dwarf-dependent for my liking. I've always thought that inclusion of dwarves in such instances was lazy shorthand for "Check me out - I'm a rogue filmmaker!  I'm edgy!  I've got freakin' dwarves, man!") 

Tom DeCillo's "Living in Oblivion"  tackled this conceit (and more than a few other film-making cliches) head-on.  In it, Peter Dinklage played a diminutive actor who is hired to flesh out filmmaker Steve Buscemi's scripted dream sequence.  Dinklage's character eventually storms off the set after protesting the ubiquitous 'dream sequence with a dwarf in it' set-up.  "I don't even have dreams with dwarves in them!" he fires off in parting.   

But I digress.

I kind of liked the angry dwarf technique as it was deployed here.  The movie ought to be granted heaps of extra credit for coming up with such an imaginative variation of the creepy kid sub-genre.  What's creepier than a creepy kid?  A creepy dwarf from a creepy Eastern European insane asylum who is merely pretending to be a creepy kid, and who has a penchant for trying to seduce her adoptive fathers!  "The Bad Seed" has been done to death.  "The Bad Seed" meets "Fatal Attraction" is pretty damn innovative in comparison. 

(And of course, the insane asylum is located in Eastern Europe, because one of Eastern Europe's primary exports is gothicism!  That's where Transylvania is located, OK?)

The Peter Skarsgard Thing.   Peter Skarsgard finds it a little too easy to channel those "wet noodle of a man" type characters.  I was actually made more queasy by his character than by the rogue killer dwarf on the loose.  That was probably the intent, because it's easier to root for the alcoholic mother who nearly drowned her daughter when Peter Skarsgard is the only other alternative.

The Gullible Nun Thing.  Sister Abigail thinks it's adorable that Esther wears a choker and wrist bands that she never removes, ever!  Alas, the Sister's skills in assessing would-be adoptive parents are about as thorough and unblinking as her automatic acceptance of Esther's kiddie steampunk sense of chic.

So, maybe - just maybe - Sister Abigail's orphanage could have developed a reputation for being more 'flexible' in its adoption requirements....the go-to orphan dispenser for parents who might otherwise be discriminated against due to their households being ripped apart by infidelity, alcoholism and near-fatal accidents involving their other offspring.  This angle could have been a more credible one - if Kate and John had purposefully enlisted the help of some slapdash orphan obtainers with a wink and a nod.

Instead, Kate and John fall in love with Esther at the orphanage simply because she paints like Chagall on crack and is preternaturally wise!   Sister Abigail thinks it's great that Kate and John adore Esther because she paints like Chagall on crack and is preternaturally wise!  Yay!  Love match!  Did anyone read Esther's file?  No?  Ah, screw it - who needs a stinkin' file when you've got a cute kid sitting right in front of you, batting her eyelashes and making creepy paintings of fish with human heads?!  It's only after Esther starts behaving strangely (er...more strangely) in her new home that Kate calls Sister Abigail with questions. Then Sister Abigail reads Esther's file.  Doh!  Boy, don't they all feel a bit stupid now! 

It would have been easy enough to make this about the overburdened, underfunded foster care system and its workers.  Or the filmmakers could have riffed on the belief that organized religion attracts people who are led by emotion (cue the kindly but clueless nun), rather than logic or intellect.  But noooooooooooo.  All the relevant adult characters simply....um....forgot to read Esther's file, or run a basic background check.

Yeah, yeah, yeah - I know.  I'm kind of torpedo-ing my own argument above.  The one in which I harp on the guy who accused the movie of being sleazy.  It's a horror flick. I get it.  The bar has been lowered.  But does it have to be?  With a couple of quick plot tweaks, lots of horror movies could at least meet us halfway on that whole 'suspension of disbelief' thing.  Yet they don't. And that really irks me, because I love this genre.

In Closing.  "Orphan" isn't the worst time suck on the planet, albeit it's one that feels a tad long.  I give it a B minus.

Adventures in Netflixing: "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans"

So tonight I wound up watching a portion of Underworld: Rise of the Lycans with my almost three-year-old daughter. 

Not on purpose, exactly.  It was just one of those moments of weakness that pops up along the path toward parental enlightenment (or maybe it's the path toward dog-tired submission.....I get those two states of being confused sometimes).  At any rate, it was one of those times when I have already said (for the fiftieth, or the seventieth, or the hundredth time):  "How many more times am I going to have to tell you to get back in bed?!!"

This eventually becomes a rhetorical question.  The Toddler has already done the math.  She likes her odds.  She knows I can't bring myself to say, "How many more times am I going to have to tell you to get back in bed?" for the fifty-first (or seventy-first, or one hundred and first) time.

So she walks into the living room right in the middle of a vampire versus lycan smackdown.  Her eyes get HUGE.  Not in a terrified way.  More like in a "You have been holding out on me......this is WAY better than Elmo!" way. 

And she asks, "What is this?"

I could have, and probably should have, told her, "I'm not going to tell you again......"

Instead I say, "It's werewolves versus vampires.  Level with me.  Which do you think is cooler?"

She pauses, watches a few more moments of footage, and appears to actually consider her response.  After a minute, she says, "Werewolves."

I ask her:  "Why?"  (Because kids say the damnest things.  It's true.)

And she says:  "Because the wolves go:  GARRRRRRRRGH!"

There are loads of debates going on in assorted horror fan chat rooms and message boards right now this very second, in which this exact same topic is being dissected by completely grown adults.........

......and I can assure you that, ultimately, her answer is no less legit than anything a person ten times her age can offer up.

True story.

Adventures in Netflixing: "The Unborn"

When they were initially promoting the theatrical release of The Unborn, my interest was piqued by the crab-like humanoid that went scurrying through the preview trailer.  That looked new!  Or new-ish.  Or.....well, at least crab-like humanoids haven't been done to death already, unlike zombies and vampires and other manner of what have you. (Hey, I love zombies and vampires.  I'm just sayin'.)

Jane Alexander makes an appearance in this one.  So does Gary Oldman.  I'm no longer amazed at seeing high-caliber actors pop up in horror flicks.  How can that NOT be a fun gig?  Who wouldn't want to run screaming through darkened hallways saying, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" for a living?   At the very least, it beats the alternatives - like sitting in a cubicle shuffling papers, which makes you want to run screaming through the hallways (albeit fluorescently lit, corporate ones) going, "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

But back to the crab-like humanoid.........

So, Demonic Crab Guy pursues Jane Alexander in a chase sequence.  I'm watching this monster make like Forrest Gump while twisted into a pretzel, and I'm thinking to myself, "Hey!  I'm no yoga expert, but Demonic Crab Guy really seems to be rocking the bridge pose!  I can barely do the bridge pose, and that's with some soothing New Age music in the background.....never mind doing it while following Satan's directive to chase someone through a labyrinthian old folks home in order to meet some soul-culling quota!"  Then it hits me.  An elite athlete I am not, BUT I'm pretty sure that if someone or something was chasing me while doing the bridge pose (even if they are possessed by a demon conjured by Nazis, and/or even if they are really, really good at yoga), that's a foot race I could probably win. 

Alas - Jane blows her competitive edge by running straight into a closet. 

Then it all started to seem a bit silly, frankly.

Meh.  It wasn't brilliant.  It wasn't awful, either.  There were a few passably creepy moments. 

B minus.

Adventures in Netflixing: "Let The Right One In"

Leave it to a Swedish filmmaker to make a realistic vampire movie.  And by 'realistic,' I'm simply referring to the conspicuous absence of things like red velvet chaise lounges.  The head of wardrobe didn't exactly go on a bender in Hot Topic, either.  Nor will any of the cast members be wresting the "Like, Most Awesomely Coiffed Vampire EVER" trophy from Robert Pattinson's vise-like grip any time soon.

Instead, in true Ingmar Bergman-y tradition, we get a muted color palette, zero hair product presence, and lots of existential angst.  How a vampire movie can come across as subtle, even when the bloodsucker in question spends the better part of the movie tearing into jugulars, is beyond me. 

But that's part of its charm.  OK, yes - the pacing might feel a tad slow to those who prefer a more brusque, Rob Zombie approach to horror.  But those folk were probably long ago dissuaded by words like "well-crafted" and "Swedish" that consistently appeared in the reviews for this flick when it first came out....... 

The Plot:  There's a nerdy boy named Oskar who is getting picked on at school.  Then a pre-pubescent vampire girl named Eli conveniently moves into the apartment next door to Oskar.  They become BFFs.  The Netflix sleeve blurb further insists that, "Eli helps Oskar find the courage to stand up to his tormentors." 

Er........nice try, but when your new BFF is a throat-gouging vampire, I'm not sure "courage" really enters into it.  Regardless, the second to final scene serves up some suh-weet payback to the bullies.  It's a very poignant coming-of-age buddy movie, with some incidental limb detachment stuff going on.

Loved it.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

OK, OK, OK.  So I'm an unabashed Hugh Jackman fangirl anyway.  And I loooove the X-Men franchise.

But this picture, in particular, makes my ovaries twitch. 

Nay....convulse.

Good lord.  All I can think of when I look at this is how much I want to bear him a litter of wolf pups.

Gah.  Must move on and devote the rest of my day to more productive thoughts........

Adventures in Netflixing: "The Proposition"

  Film fans, there's freshly fabricated fodder to be found at my Film Floozy blog!  Giddyup on over and take a gander at my review of the decidedly dark Western, "The Proposition."  

Buried somewhere beneath all the dirt and flies are Guy Pearce and Ray Winstone, doing their usual "I'm a brilliant actor, nyah nyah nyah!" thing.  Danny Huston also delivers as a mayhem-mongering maniac.

Yeehaw!

Fast but Filling Film Fun at the Film Floozy Cafe

Howdy, hon! 

If you're hungry for a bit of hooey, please stop next door at the Film Floozy Cafe and grab yourself a seat.  I'll pour you a hot steamin' cup of hogwash and serve up some fresh- (albeit half-) baked mutterings about movies.  While it's none of that fancy gourmet gab that you can expect from serious film critics, the portions are generous, and I can dish it out like nobody's business.  Yup, the Film Floozy is nothing if not hot, fast and cheap............. 

Today's special is No Country for Old Men - a meaty slab of shoot 'em up action paired with sharp dialogue and smothered in a tangy neo-noir sauce, served with a side of extra-crusty Tommy Lee Jones.

Or, if you're hankering for lighter fare, help yourself to the fluffy little fragment in which I writhe in estactic anticipation over the upcoming release of Mamma Mia, the movie.....

All this and more, available 24/7 - there's always fast but filling film fun at the Film Floozy Cafe!  Come on by!

  

Now Playing On Channel 2.........

  

Come on in!  I'm sorry I didn't hear the doorbell ring....I was just out back tending to my garden of blooming movie delights. 

Do take a gander - my hydrangea of horror has produced a lovely blossom by way of The Orphanage (produced by Guillermo del Toro, and it shows).  I try to prune prudently, but inevitably a few wayward weeds sprout up here and there........such was the case with the virulent British comedy of manners, Death at a Funeral (best to nip those in the bud -  I personally find that pruning shears work best, unless of course you are fortunate enough to have a full-time crop duster on staff................).

And thus spring has sprung!  Pop on by and enjoy the bouquet of cinematic delights and duds now growing in the Film Floozy's backyard.