I’m right on top of that, Rose

Dammit, RyAn.

So, today yesterday was the 20th anniversary of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead. One of the greatest comedies of all time, with a cast that, with two exceptions, has slunk into blissful oblivion, yet will always, in my mind, be associated with this movie that I loved and cherished and was just thinking about last night as I was trying to go to sleep and ignore the cat pouncing on my head.

And RyAn chooses MIDNIGHT to inform me of this knowledge.

RyAn is a fucker. But I love him. And of course, he takes the only real promo image available, so I’m stuck with a watermarked title image. Really, love him.

I remember exactly where I was the first time I watched this movie. It was almost immediately after my parents’ divorce, and my mother, sister, and I were living in our first place away from Psycho Puppy Killer. We watched this movie, and I nearly peed myself laughing. As I grew older ('Cause I was 8?), and kept watching, I’d catch things I’d missed, and find it even more hilarious.

I loved Sue Ellen. And as a child of the late 80’s-early 90’s, thought she was so stylish.

 

Commence mockery in 5…4…3…2…

 

 

But apart from the horrendous fashion in the movie, this is truly a classic. I have bonded repeatedly with people over this. This is a movie where, if I bust out a quote in a random situation, and no one gets it? I know I am surrounded by idiots.

Walking through a grocery store with my friend Ashlie.

“Every girl over 25 needs a cucumber in the house.”

She got it.

Working at the horrible cable company, stressed out of my mind, and I get asked a question.

“I’m right on top of that, Rose!”

Peals of laughter. It became the new office catch phrase. We wrote it all over the office.

And of course, the classic line that can never be overused.

“The dishes are done, man.”

Whatever happened to these people? With the exception of Christina Applegate and David Duchovny, they have all been relegated to “Hey It’s That Guy” status. Which, to be frank, is sad and appalling.

(WARNING. That link goes to TV Tropes. Unless you have an extremely strong willpower, or 8 hours to spend on the internet, don’t click it)

I can never see this movie enough. And I wish someone had told me earlier that I should’ve watched it to celebrate today.

If I owned it on DVD. Which I just realize I don’t. Damn.

Notoriety for whatever reason, never seems to benefit the noted, only the notees

The first time I saw the trailer for Easy A, I knew I was going to love it. No, really. If you go back through my Twitter feed to last year at some indeterminable time,  you’ll find my tweet. It was even responded to.

I say this not in the Hipster, “Oh, I liked that waaay before it was mainstream” way. I say it because this movie was released in September of 2010 and I took my precious damned time in watching it.

I begged people to see it at the theater with me. (Yes, I am one of those people) I got it from the library twice. I returned it, put it back on hold, and felt like an overwhelming failure.

But HA HA, I finally watched it. Suck on that, Hipsters!

If the lion knows its own strength, no man could control it

In honor of the sweetness that was the wedding of William and Kate, it is only fitting that I finally post my thoughts on The Tudors.

My love for all things from the Tudor dynasty started at the end of 2008, when I read The Other Boleyn Girl at the recommendation of my friend Dawnie. The book is hilariously thick, but I devoured the pages. I love reading about history, and royalty, but it tends to be very dry, and that rubs the nerves. I figured out I am a fan of historical fiction, not so much the nonfiction.

I’d never seen the television show The Tudors, however, until the idea to get it from the library popped randomly into my head. I got Season 1, watched it voraciously, and immediately put Seasons 2 and 3 on hold. I would’ve made an entry after Season 1, but I was too focused on getting the next and next and next. I decided halfway through Season 3 I would just write an entry about the entire series.

The show is beyond phenomenal. Though to be fair, I’m not watching it for historical accuracy. I know about as much about England’s political history as I do about it’s political present. It’s sad, really. I knew Kate and William were getting married, Harry dressed as a Nazi, and the royal prince wanted to be a woman’s tampon. That’s the knowledge I retain.

Anyway, back to more pleasant matters.

I take it you think everybody is who they say they are

Recent tragedy in my life has pretty much cut me off from watching TV or movies for the past two weeks. I tried to watch a few different things, Season 4 of The Tudors, which I’ve been waiting for from the library for months. 12 Angry Men. The Last Samurai. Okay, I didn’t try particularly hard to watch that one, only pretended to.

But I finally got a weekend “to myself” (read: at home working/moping rather than trying to run around putting out fires), and a couple of brand new (to me) movies. To celebrate this momentous occasion, I blog.

I saw the trailer for Shutter Island movie during whichever Scream Awards it premiered on. I thought, “Wow, a suspense movie by Scorcese, starring Leonardo DiCaprio? This is going to be great! How could it not be?”

I started watching the movie Saturday night. And fell asleep. Several times. Finally gave up, hoping that watching it Sunday morning it would be more interesting. Fell asleep again. Between this and The Depahted, Martin Scorcese is losing some serious points with me.

The worst part is, this should be a movie I would love. Creepy mental asylum, total mind fuckage where you suspect something is going to happen, but have no idea what it. Creepy doctors, all worlds of mystery and suspense. This is totally my genre!

Except I didn’t give a damn about any of the characters. As a matter of fact, the only semblance of sympathy I had through the entire movie was for the characters at Dachau. From the jump, I didn’t care about Teddy’s dead wife. Then when he started seeing her everywhere, I pretty much had it figured that he was, indeed, one of the looney bin occupants, and this was an elaborate dream world. The only part I didn’t see coming was the children being his, and that the doctor had planned it.

I seriously may never watch another Scorcese flick again. At least not a new one.

Salt, on the other hand, not only lived up to every expectation I had, it blew them all out of the water and brought my Angelina fangirling to a brand new level. It was not hard to surprise me, though, seeing as how my knowledge of the movie was extremely limited. Originally a male lead, rewritten specifically for her. Bond/Bourne-esque, and The Operative from Serenity is in it. That’s my knowledge.

I always make the error of watching Special Features before the film. Not all of them, if it looks like it’s obviously going to spoil me, I won’t do it. And of course I wait until I’ve viewed the film once before watching any commentary. But I watched a couple of featurettes which pretty much caught me up on the basic premise, without giving really anything away.

Similar to Mr. And Mrs. Smith, we start out with a very domesticated Jolie character, with the knowledge that she’s anything but. I have never liked her as a blonde, not even when she was macking on Christian Kane. And the blonde wig here was just tragic. But the moment the camera rounded her and we saw the black hair, the payoff was well worth it.

As much as I love emotional scenes with this actress, her real talent is in the action, and this movie is crammed with enough fight porn to fill even the most macho of macho men’s quotas for the year. And the best part is that these fight scenes don’t feel choreographed, like with Mr and Mrs Smith, but spur of the moment, vicious and mean and brutal.

And that sums her up in a nutshell. Evelyn Salt/Natasha Chenkova was mean. And that’s what makes this stand out next to other action movies. In the original script, it was a male lead, fighting to fight, yes, but also to rescue his wife and child. Angelina immediately said, “Erm, yeah, fuck that, no kid.” We got a little heart and spirit with her quest for her husband, and the heartbreak on her face for that split second after they murder her husband is very real, and extremely painful. But she snaps back, and keeps going, and turns into the baddest badass you’d never want to run into, male or female.

The pacing of the movie felt weird. It didn’t feel like there was really a beginning, and the end was strange and abrupt. Obviously leaving an opening for a sequel, which I am not averse to. But still, I watched it twice, once with commentary, and still didn’t feel there was a middle. Then again, I don’t watch a lot of Bond-esque movies, so maybe I’m just not used to it.

My Angelina fangirling is safe once more. Amazing.

My Leonardo love is in serious jeopardy, and may not recover.

I Remember My Dream Now

When the promos for The Walking Dead first started making their way into my internet world, I was less than impressed. I enjoy a good George Romero film as much as the next person, but a TV show about zombies? Really?

Two things changed my mind. The first, that this show was going to air on AMC. This is the channel that airs Mad Men. It’s hard to believe that it would waste air time on a show strictly about mmmm, brains. Secondly, in watching the promotional trailers, I noticed it was from the creators of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. Now, both of those movies are the brain children of Stephen King, and they’re both very intense, and beautifully done. Never in a million years would I watch either of those and think, “Wow, these people really need to put a new spin on the zombie genre.”

When I mentioned on Twitter and the book of face that I was considering giving it a shot, I got bombarded with WD comic love. Oh. This is a comic? That got my attention. So I set my DVR to record the series, and promptly forgot about it. Well, to be more accurate, I was so bombarded with other things to watch that I didn’t carve out time to watch it. Then the New Orleans Comic Con announced three actors from the show were coming, and I realized if I didn’t watch the show, I was going to be that person. “Oh, yeah, the show looks great. I have it recorded. NO idea who you are. Nice to meet you, though.”

So, I set the weekend before the con aside and watched the six episodes that comprise season one. And then screamed in rage that it only lasted six episodes, and I had an entire nine months to wait for the next season.

New Orleans Comic Con

Last weekend, I had the extreme pleasure of being chosen to be one of two official photographers at the New Orleans Comic Con. It was my first Comic Con ever, and it makes me wish that I worked for Wizard Con and could follow them around taking pictures for them all the time.

This blog entry is about my personal experience, which means I’m only going to have information about what I experienced personally, and my thoughts on those parts. The pictures are either my personal (unofficial) photos, or photos I borrowed from my co-photographer, Laurie Lee.

So, if you’d like to take a gander, I think it’s worth it. If only to hear what a pathetic fangirl I turn out to be.

Being Boothy

In April, I said I was looking forward to Season 5 of Bones. I also said it would take me a year to watch it.

Good news! It only took me nine months! I’m ahead by three.

I wasn’t spoiled for this season like I was the last. I saw one episode, the barbecued body one, because it was an opener for Dollhouse. It didn’t spoil me for anything other than Arastoo’s actual accent. I didn’t know where the storyline was going with Booth and Brennan, but I had the feeling I wasn’t going to like it, no matter what they did.

The good news is, I didn’t hate it as much as I did Season 4. But that doesn’t mean I was happy.