Blackmoor Vituperative

I liked the first Harry Potter book and the first Harry Potter movie. The whole setting is nonsensical, but it was fun to explore this wacky nonsense world, and Harry was a sympathetic underdog. I liked each successive book and movie less, as they became progressively less fun and more dreary, while remaining completely nonsensical, and while Harry became progressively less sympathetic.

Dreary, nonsensical, and unsympathetic is not a recipe for a good movie (or book).

My favorite character is Snape, of course.

Just watched World War Z with Susan. It is not quite like any zombie movie I have ever seen. Sort of like Day Of The Dead meets DaVinci Code meets Outbreak. I enjoyed it, although from time to time we did shout at the screen when something was excessively stupid. For example, while sneaking through a medical facility and trying not to make noise, it seemed like the characters were going out of their way to step on broken glass, kick cans, bang their gear on metal cabinets, and just generally make as much noise as they possibly could. At any moment, I expected one of the characters to stumble into a huge stack of champagne glasses.

We tried following up with Doomsday, which I quite like but which Susan has not yet seen, but we aren’t even in Scotland yet and Susan is falling asleep. So I guess that will have to wait for another evening.

Just got back from seeing Ender’s Game (in IMAX!). I really liked it — enough to see again (when it comes to DVD or Netflix), which is quite rare for me. A couple of scenes felt a bit overwrought and artificial (conversation in car, conversation on raft), but other than that, I think the dialogue and the acting conveyed the characters very well. I sympathized with almost everyone.

My only complaint — and it’s a small one — is that this seemed too much movie to squeeze into the time allotted. The screenwriter did a splendid job of it, in my opinion, but I can’t help but think that, like Dune, this much story really needs to be a miniseries to be done justice (but not a series of movies, like The Hobbit, which is like too little butter spread over too much bread).

But that’s a minor criticism. Ender’s Game is really good movie, worth seeing in a theater (although maybe IMAX is overdoing it, what with the EXTREME CLOSE-UPS).

The theme for Cult Movie Night this month was “haunted houses”. The first movie was one of the films that scared me the most as a kid, Burnt Offerings, starring Oliver Reed, Karen Black, and Bette Davis. One of the things I really liked about Burnt Offerings is that (spoilers!) the haunted house wins. That’s pretty unusual, even today.

The second movie was Legend Of Hell House, starring one of my favorite actors, Roddy McDowell. I love Roddy McDowell in just about everything, and he really excels in this. He’s the only person who keeps his head together from start to finish, and he turns out to be the hero of the movie (although he doesn’t start out that way).

One of the things that I found really entertaining was how effortlessly he shrugged off the ghost-possessed sexual advances of the female cast. Of course, we know now that McDowell was gay, so those scenes have a level of irony that the director might not have intended. We don’t know whether whether McDowell’s character was gay (unless we’ve read the novel, which I have not), but when the ghost-possessed temptresses fail and fail and fail again in their attempts to seduce him, you can just imagine the ghost’s frustration at McDowell’s apparently indomitable willpower. (“What is it with this guy? Is he made of stone?”)

Next month’s theme: 1995 Ice-T movies! What’s that? You didn’t know that was a genre? Sure it is!

Not too long ago, I spent a day watching animated films I’d never seen before on NetFlix, including The Great Mouse Detective, Hercules, The Emperor’s New Groove, and a movie I had never heard of before, A Monster in Paris. While I enjoyed the other three movies well enough, the best of these, to my surprise, was the movie I had never heard of.

In Paris in 1910, during a city-wide flood, four friends experience adventure and discover love when two of them accidentally create a giant monster in a brilliant scientist’s laboratory. I do not wish to tell you any more, because I would like you to discover this wonderful film for yourself.

A Monster In Paris is a beautiful, charming film, with humor and a heart that is too often lacking in American films (most Pixar films being the exceptions). One of the Amazon reviews refers to this an as “undiscovered pearl”, and I couldn’t agree more.

Watched “(Jack Ketchum’s) The Girl Next Door”. It’s based (very loosely) on the true story of a girl who was tortured to death by her guardian and some neighbor children. Netflix called this a “thriller”. It’s not a thriller. It’s not a mystery, or a whodunnit, or a suspense film, either: it’s horror. Unlike most horror, it does not depict evil as smart, strong, sexy, or suave. That kind of evil exists only in fiction. “The Girl Next Door” shows the kind of evil that actually exists in the real world, and it’s utterly banal.

In the real world, evil isn’t Hannibal Lecter. In the real world, evil is a pathetic wretch that abuses children.

Good morning, afternoon, or evening, Mr. or Ms. Hollywood producer. Thank you for coming. I present to you seven rules that you must follow from now on. No, sorry: there are no exceptions. Policy, you see.

1. Do not use the “fade to black” transition more than once per minute during any theatrical trailer.
2. Hold the camera still while filming. If the camera operator is not capable of holding the camera still, enroll them in a drug treatment program until their shakes go away.
3. Do not remake any movie that was good the last time it was made. One good version of any film is sufficient.
4. You may make a film version of a TV show, but the film must belong to the same genre as the television show: if the TV show was a drama, the film must be a drama; if the TV show was a comedy, the film must be a comedy.
5. You must wait at least two years before releasing another movie about a superhero in which the same actor plays that hero.
6. You must wait at least ten years before releasing another movie about a superhero if the actor playing the character has changed since the last time.
7. Some day we will all look like a cross between Terrence Howard and Kristin Kreuk, but until then, at least make an effort to match up the appearance of the actor with the appearance of the character. Don’t cast pasty white Englishmen as Indians. You might even try casting an Indian as an Indian.

We may add new rules here from time to time, so please check back periodically. Ignorance will not be an excuse for failing to follow these rules.

Thank you.

Cult Movie Night at Castle Blackmoor returns to the third Friday of the month. In September, we will celebrate D-list superheroes with Mystery Men and The Specials. In Mystery Men (1999), a group of inept amateur superheroes must try to save the day when a supervillian threatens to destroy the city. Features fun performances by Hank Azaria, William H. Macy, Janeane Garofalo, and Geoffrey Rush.

People who want to stay late will see The Specials (2000). The sixth or seventh best superhero team in the world pursue their rightful place in the harshly competitive world of toy tie-ins and fighting evil. Features Jordan Ladd, Rob Lowe, Thomas Haden Church, and Jamie Kennedy.

I think Mystery Men is a hoot, but the real gem here is The Specials. The character interplay is such great fun, and there are little touches that any fan of superhero comics will notice and appreciate.

This evening’s Cult Movie Night was Phantom of the Paradise and Suck.

Phantom of the Paradise is unusual among our Cult Movie Night offerings in that I had never seen it before this evening. It was… interesting. I’m glad we saw it, but it’s not the sort of movie I will go out of my way to see again. Or maybe I will. Who knows.

Suck, on the other hand, is simply brilliant. From the numerous cameos and supporting parts played by rock icons like Henry Rollins, Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, and Alex Lifeson, to the surprisingly good music, to the various homages to classic rock album covers, to the hilarious subversion of — and yet total respect for — the vampire movie genre, there is so much about this movie that we love. It’s just 96 minutes of pure awesome. If you haven’t seen this yet, you need to see it. You need to buy it. And you need to see it again.

We watched Double Indemnity this evening, which stars Fred MacMurray and Barbara Stanwyck. I am a huge fan of the genre, yet somehow I had never seen this classic. It was so much more hokey than I expected. From the self-consciously hard-boiled narration, to the snappy nonsensical patter, to the “twists” in the plot that are more spoof than suspense, I kept thinking that Larry Blamire would have made this movie if Billy Wilder hadn’t made it first.

I enjoyed it, but I chuckled a lot.