movies

Saturday night’s all right

My parents have been away for a couple of weeks, traveling in Portugal, Gibraltar, and Spain, and they returned on Thursday night. I went to pick them up at the airport after work and then returned home to a very happy-to-see-them dog. (It was very shortly like they’d never been gone — “oh, were you away? welcome back” — but clearly just him and me for two weeks wasn’t exactly what he’d prefer.

I was out of the office this week, except for Thursday and Friday, visiting campuses and talking with instructors (or being stood up them), and I was out the week before. So I’m slowly getting used to a regular schedule too, just as much as the dog.

This evening, I did let myself do something I pretty much refused to while I was alone in the house: I watched a horror movie. Seriously, I like horror movies, but I can be kind of a wuss about them. The house is three stories tall, it’s dark and mid-October, and it’s just me and the dog. I didn’t even want to watch Sleepy Hollow in the evenings.

So I was kind of looking forward to this…but disappointed when I actually decided on a movie, Resolution. It’s interesting — I’m seeing it described a lot as an indie Cabin in the Woods, which I guess is sort of accurate — but it’s not very scary, and it’s pretty disappointing in the end. It’s almost a parody of the genre, or a knowing commentary on it, except less knowing and and well-constructed as Cabin.

Anyway, that was my Saturday. My parents are still a little jet-lagged, I think, and maybe feeling a little under the weather too. But the dog is clearly glad that they’re back, if only because my father is the soft touch when the dog’s begging at the dinner table.

Sunday

Last night, I watched His Girl Friday, which was fun and fast-paced, and then I watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which was only infrequently the former and not even once the latter. Seriously, the idea that I am now only a third of the way done with Peter Jackson’s three-part movie just makes me feel weary. Rather than cut out the book’s boring bits — and I’m sorry, Tolkien fans, but there are plenty — Jackson somehow adds more. It’s not without its occasional charms — Martin Freeman is good, as is Andy Serkis, however much they do over-use Gollum across all the films — but it’s also just plain exhausting. Which is really the last thing you want a fantasy adventure story to be.

His Girl Friday was a lot of fun, though.

Friday

I wish I could say it had been an especially productive week, but it hasn’t been, really. I mean, I did watch the entire second season of Continuum and a bunch of movies, but I’m not exactly sure that counts.

I like Continuum, which I say having not always been the biggest fan of star Rachel Nichols. Of course, I say that, I now realize, only dimly remembering her at all from Alias and The Inside, and from small roles in the first GI Joe and Star Trek movies. This season may have complicated things with a little too much plot, but maybe that just leaves something for the (now confirmed) third season to make sense of. The show’s Canadian-ness also started to creep out in year two. I don’t necessarily remember them hiding the fact that it takes place in Vancouver in season one, but it’s firmly established in season two.

I also watched a bunch of movies. Earlier in the week, it was Point Break and The Sunset Limited, then Gravity on Wednesday, Magicians last night, and This Is 40, Room 237, and Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing all today. (Oh, and I re-watched Pee Wee’s Big Adventure this afternoon as well.)

Gravity is more spectacle than story, more experience than anything else. It’s a pretty thrilling experience, and worth the (not insignificant) added cost of seeing it in IMAX and 3D — seriously, this is a film that will not benefit from DVD or television viewing — but there’s not a lot of weight to it beyond the often stunning visuals.

Room 237 is an interesting movie, full of lots of odd theories — most not very compelling — about The Shining and Stanley Kubrick’s intent. The theorists in the film — heard but never seen — who talk about The Shining‘s impossible geographies and recurring visual themes are much more convincing than the ones who claim it’s about the Holocaust or Kubrick’s involvement in the faked moon landing. (“I’m not saying we didn’t go to the moon, I’m just saying that what we saw was faked, and that it was faked by Stanley Kubrick.”) If nothing else, it made me want to re-watch The Shining, though I settled for Kubrick’s earlier noir film The Killing.

Magicians, meanwhile, was pretty terrible, as was This Is 40, although at least the former was just unfunny and didn’t feel like it was forty years in real time. I like a lot of the cast in both films, and it’s easy to see how Magicians might have seemed funny on paper…whereas This Is 40, on the other hand, is so shaggy and plotless it’s hard to believe any of it ever existed on paper. It’s telling when you’re sitting around in your pajamas on a Friday watching a movie and thinking, “Maybe I should have gone to work after all.”

Of course, I did kind of go to work. I sent and answered a whole bunch of e-mails this week, mostly trying to get reviewers looking at a project before I return to the office at the end of next week. I also went back to SUNY Old Westbury briefly yesterday morning, since that seemed easier than trying to schedule a phone call.

And that, more or less, seems to have been my week.

Sunday

I have done nothing more interesting in the past two days than watch the entire eighth season of How I Met Your Mother on Netflix.

I’d fallen out of the habit of watching it, but honestly I think the show is best when experienced in big blocks back to back. I really want to continue watching, but at the same time I worry about getting caught up and therefore falling out of the habit again. (The again, the ninth is apparently the final season, so maybe that’s not an issue.)

On Friday night, I re-watched Running Scared, inspired by this article about it and the discovery that it’s also on Netflix. It really does hold up very well. Then last night I watched Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing. I really think he and this “Shakespeare” fellow are going to go far. Also Amy Acker and Reed Diamond should be in everything. Everyone’s delightful — and Joss Whedon has a lovely house — but those two are really something special.

I’m off from work next week. It’s maybe not the single best week for it — I have my computer home with me and will probably read and send a few e-mails — but I’m nevertheless glad for it.

No writing group again this week — still on hiatus — and not much else going on.

Sunday, again

No writing group again this week, as we’re taking a short hiatus.

So instead, I put a new issue of Kaleidotrope online. The new issue has stories of alien encounters, warring tribes, strange events and stranger journeys, and, of course, the future. Plus poems and silly horoscopes. I’m pleased with how it came out, though I’d appreciate any feedback, there or here. (I don’t get a lot of feedback on the zine, actually.)

I wish I could say it’s been a busy week otherwise, but I’ve mostly just been working.

Last night I watched Prince of Darkness. It’s a deeply odd and silly movie on some levels, but also really creepy and smart about what’s frightening. It’s far from John Carpenter’s best — I’d say that’s easily Halloween followed by The Thing — but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

I was not surprised by how much I enjoyed the finale of Breaking Bad this evening, though. There’s been a lot of hype, particularly if you’re on Twitter, calling it “the best show ever,” and some of that is probably overblown. But I liked it a lot, and I thought tonight’s episode was as strong as the show has ever been.

I mean, it’s no Sleepy Hollow, of course, but then what is?