Demons, Haunted Houses and Bad Relationships

Hey, remember me??? No? Well, I don’t blame you. It’s been over a month since I last posted.  Let’s face it: January was a dud, but February is looking better. There will be a lot to talk about: The new seasons of Project Runway (which is actually good–hooray!) and Damages are here and Lost’s last season begins tomorrow.

However, I finally got around to seeing Paranormal Activity this weekend, and I have to say, it wasn’t bad. I say that because, when it was in theaters, PA was constantly compared to The Blair Witch Project, a movie that I hated. And, while PA isn’t perfect, it is scarier than BWP. Why?

(Warning: There are so many spoilers in the next section it will make your head spin.)

• The acting is better: Both BWP and PA used newcomers to play the main roles, however, the actors from PA (Katie Featherstone and Micah Sloat, who play . . . Katie and Micah, natch) have  genuine chemistry, and are better at improvising. (Watch the scene in BWP where the one guy “loses” the map. It’s God-awlful.)
• Katie is a sympathetic character: One of the problems I had with BWP is that I couldn’t stand any of the characters. I actually couldn’t wait for them to die. Now, in some horror movies, that’s not a problem (any of the Saw movies, for example).  However, with a movie like PA, you need to relate to at least one of the characters, or else you won’t care about the escalating horror. Katie (who is haunted by a demon since childhood) is a likable, empathic character. Micah, not so much. (You will want to slap him, trust me.)

Paranormal Activity has a lot in common with BWP, but it also like The Haunting (the original version, not the terrible remake) in that you hear more than you see. The plot in a nutshell: Katie’s haunted by a demon on and off since she was 8-years-old.  Her live-in boyfriend, Micah, decides to videotape them while they are sleeping so he can capture the haunting.  Micah doesn’t take the haunting seriously, so antagonizes the demon despite Katie’s fearful pleas. Bad shit happens. The end.

So, while there are some things I wish they had done differently (the scene with the ouija board was just plain silly. Also: I wish we had more information about Diane. I also wish that they kept the creepy ending -labeled “The Throat” and not the Steven Spielberg Approved! ending, because the creepy ending makes the most sense) overall, it’s a good, creepy movie that is fun to watch.

Oh, right, I have a blog . . .

. . .  and once again, real life gets in the way. Between Christmas prep, the new job, my home computer dying and my friend having her second child (I’m a Godmother, woo!), I haven’t had time to write about anything. It doesn’t help that I haven’t had time to really watch anything, either. I don’t have Showtime, so I didn’t see Dexter (although The Soup spoiled the finale for me) and I have no interest in seeing Avatar or any of the other movies out right now.  So, I guess I’m in a holding pattern till Lost airs again. I’m sure I’ll write every once in a while–we’ll see.

Hope everyone has a happy and safe New Year. It’s supposed to snow New Year’s Eve, so there is a very good chance I’ll be home with my cat, enjoying the quiet. Right now, that sounds pretty good.

May the road rise to meet you

As I mentioned, my uncle passed away last week. It’s been difficult to watch my cousins go through this– partly because I’ve been there, and I know how hard it is– but also because I know they’re relationship with their father was very, very complicated. (Of course, who doesn’t have a complicated relationship with their father?)

My cousin gave the eulogy, and summed it up best. It was an acknowledgment that my uncle became angry when he couldn’t control everything around him. However, he loved and adored his children, and he did the best he could with what he had. He was the man who did terrible things to his family, but he’s also the man who gave my mother flowers when my Dad passed away.

What I remember most about my uncle? Glazed doughnuts. As a kid, I was always so jealous because my cousins got glazed doughnuts every Sunday, and we got bagels. I also remember how handsome he was, and how he always wore plaid. Always.

Rest in peace Uncle Chuck. And may God hold you in the palm of His hand.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Hello,

On the off-chance you’ve been wondering where I’ve been, there’s been a lot of changes lately:

• I got a new, permanent job (woo!) But . . .
• my home computer died.  It was 3 days older than God. And . . .
• my uncle passed away on Monday. Which is heartbreaking.

So my week has been filled with learning a new job and making arrangements to get home. Ack. Hopefully, I’ll have more to write about soon.

Her hair is like that all the time.

Was anyone else distracted by Suzy Menkes’s hair? It’s like she forgot to take a curler out.

Well, it turns out that she wears her hair like that all the time. Yes, she always leaves the house that way.

Project Runwzzzzzzzz . . .

Good God, how boring was this past season? I know I’ve talked about it before, but I watched the finale last night, and calling it lame would be kind. In a sense, I feel bad for the final three. They waited a year for this show to air so they could take credit for their collections, and it was pretty dreadful. My main problem with the show was the runway portion itself. It was too fast; I had a hard time remembering the clothes. This is especially true of Irina’s collection. There was a lot of black . . . I remember some hats (oh, those hats) . . . and show’s over! Oy.

I just have to ask: Was I the only one who wanted to slap Irina when she gave a snotty, “That’s Althea!” to the discovery that Althea’s models also were going to wear smudged eye shadow? Memo to Irina: I’ll check Wikipedia, but I’m pretty sure that you did not invent either the sweater or the concept of smudged eye shadow. Another memo: people who steal their ideas from New York Magazine shouldn’t throw stones. Just saying.

Season seven will air in January, here’s hoping that Lifetime has the kinks worked out.  Oh, and contestants to root for.

One more thing: Coney Island. One n in Coney. Sheesh!

*Just wanted to add: when I ran spellcheck, it suggested that I replace the “I” in the sentence, “I just wanted to ask . . .” with “Eye just wanted to ask.”

Is my spellcheck on drugs?

“I’m not a number!”

So, amc’s remake of The Prisoner aired last night, and honestly, I didn’t watch the whole thing. Not because I have any loyalty to the original (I only have very vague memories of seeing it as a child), but because Jim Caviezel is about as interesting as watching paint dry.  You’re not supposed to root for 2, but that’s what I found myself doing. Not sure I’ll be back.

Previews, episode 12: The Grown-Ups

From amc.com:

Don meets with an impressive candidate. Peggy second guesses her taste in men. Pete makes big career decisions.

So, Where Are The Wild Things?

Has anyone seen Where the Wild Things Are yet? And, if so, do you recommend it? I’m curious, because after reading this from the website io9 (Spoilers ahead? Maybe?):

In a way, WTWTA is the polar opposite of Watchmen: Zack Snyder faced a 12-book magnum opus of graphic storytelling, and tried to distill it to three hours without losing anything essential or changing anything (except the ending.) Jonze takes Sendak’s twelve sentences and expands them to 100 minutes of incidents. And yet, both films wind up feeling lovely but a bit empty, triumphs of gorgeous imagery over substance.

I’m now debating whether or not it’s worth it. The Watchmen is one of my all-time favorite comics (I say “comics” instead of “graphic novel” because I originally read it as a 12-part series), but the movie version left me cold because it really was imagery over substance. Will Where the Wild Things Are make me feel the same way? Please, let me know.

“We Investigate Anything.”

Before I fell asleep last night, I thought, “Remember ‘Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators?’ They were so cool.”

As a child, I visited my library at least twice a month to pick up new books. My mother had a huge Nancy Drew collection that I could read at any time, and I would occasionally pick up an Encyclopedia Brown book, but my personal favorites were the Alfred Hitchcock series. Encyclopedia Brown seemed a little to smug for my tastes, and I couldn’t relate to Nancy Drew (she always seemed a little too perfect to me.) However, two-thirds of The Three Investigators were outcasts. Jupiter Jones was a former child star who lived with his aunt and uncle in a junkyard. He was a chubby kid, and most adults believed he was stupid (the irony is he was the smartest of the three). Bob Andrews was quiet, shy and had braces on his legs for the first few books due to an accident. But even without the braces, he wasn’t athletically inclined. The exception to the rule is Pete Crenshaw, who was very athletic and good looking, he just wasn’t as smart as the other two.

But what really thrilled me about The Three Investigators was that they genuinely had to work to solve a mystery. There was also a feeling of danger with this series, a feeling I never got from Encyclopedia Brown or Nancy Drew. The characterizations of the three boys were well rounded: sometimes, Jupiter was too smart for his own good, or Pete would be the one who would figure out the mystery before Jupiter (much to Jupiter’s dismay).

If you’re ever in the library and you run across these books (after Hitchcock’s death, the series was renamed “The Three Investigators”), I suggest picking them up. They’re criminally underrated, and very enjoyable.