Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Things that make you go ewww...

Miss Snark had a post a while back where she asked what in a book makes you go ewww. I think between books and movies, there are three broad categories of things that will always turn me off: Serial killers, child abuse (particularly sexual abuse), and talking animals. I occasionally like things which deal with these subjects, but they have to be truly exceptional.

For instance, serial killers. Didn't like Silence of the Lambs or Red Dragon or, god forbid, The Cell. I like aspects of them; the acting might be good or in the case of The Cell the visuals are amazing, but I can't ger around the whole serial killer thing. People who like these sorts of things usually tell me they like them because they are curious about what makes serial killers tick. I guess I'm more interested in what makes normal folks tick than the rare extreme deviant from norm.

My exception in this category... can you guess? It's Seven. Why? I've asked myself this question a lot, because my distate for serial killer movies and my love of this particular film are proportional. I think it's a few things. First, this film is really more about Morgan Freeman and is relationship to life in the city than it is about serial killers. And Morgan Freeman rocks. Second, you never see the murders or the victims before they've been killed. There is no vicarious "thrill" watching some clueless chick who's about to get it. There are no scenes of actresses screaming or just being terrified. In particular, we neve see the scene where he gets Gwyneth. Granted, that's mostly for reasons of "what's in the box" suspense, but I can see a lot of writers or directors wanting to use it as an after-the-fact flashback or even intercutting it with the final scene. We never even see her head in the box; it's all implied. So kudos to David Fincher for not going there. The stalking and killing are so incidental to the plot the serial killer himself has no scenes until the very end of the film. And I love the way Spacey played him; he does not radiate evil. He's just this guy.

I can't think of any examples of abuse that I liked unless you include Lolita. I was expecting to hate that book but was quite entranced. I'd give the Kubrick movie a B.

The third category, talking animals, is pretty far afield from the first two, I'll admit. But it's the one that bugs me the most. Bambi, the Lion King, etc. etc. I just can't stand it; I don't know why. But there are probably more exceptions to this rule. Finding Nemo was great, and I enjoyed A Bug's Life as well. I loved Babe, although to me that's really a movie about a laconic farmer. I very nearly never saw this film because the annoying singing mice were so prominently featured in the previews and ads I was sure I would hate it. I do hate the mice, but the movie is good.

On a related note, here is a link to animals that don't talk: Garfield cartoons where all the dialogue except Jon's has been deleted. Now it's a sad tale of a desperately lonely man and his pets. Warning, the site tends to exceed it's bandwidth so you might have to try it more than once to actually get there.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

"He works in profanity like Picasso worked in oils."

I recently noticed that Oliver, the younger son, was smacking himself in the head completely out of the blue. He did this a couple of times before I finally asked him why he was hitting himself. Turns out, like a good old-school Catholic, he was flogging himself for impure thoughts.

Let me back up a bit. My job is very repetitive, typing as fast as I can for my entire shift. For ergonomic reasons, I have to take non-typing breaks. I usually read for five minutes or check e-mail or something. Last weekend I decided to burn a new mix CD for the car. Since all my music is on the computer it's just a matter of picking out the songs and away we go. So I picked out a CD worth of songs that nobody likes but me. I started out with the Black Eye Peas, "My Humps", a very dumb, very catchy song. I decided to keep with that theme and do all up-tempo songs by women. Missy Elliot, Gwen Stefani, Salt and Peppa, that sort of thing. I labeled it "Girl Jams", tossed it in the car, and promptly forgot about it. (Do you know how often I drive alone in the car? Almost never. The whole exercise was not the most productive use of my time.)

Later, Quin took the boys to swimming. He saw the CD and put it in the player. I'm not sure why he thought something labeled "Girl Jams" would be something he'd like, or how he got Oliver to let him put on something that wasn't Beck. I should have put a parental advisory sticker on this CD, but honestly it didn't occur to me that they'd ever want to play it. They got through "My Humps" without incident, but then they hit Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl". Catchy tune, like a cheerleader thing, but the word "shit" comes up repeatedly. The bridge goes: "This shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S."

Unfortunately Oliver liked it a lot. He got it in his head and he can't get it out. But it has "sailor talk" in it, so he can't sing it. So when he hears the call of Gwen in his head, he hits himself.

Personally I'm not bothered by profanity. I suppose it's a love of language. I love the words of Shakespeare. I love the words of Quentin Tarantino. The problem comes with society at large; no one wants a foul-mouthed 4-year-old (particularly not his grandparents). So he's not allowed to repeat the bad words he hears. But he wants to. He complains when he hears "sailor talk" because it makes him "interested to talk that way". A world of words he wants to explore but can't. When you're older, dear. When you're older.

The other problem is that his bedroom is at the end of the short hallway that leads to the living room. He can sit in his doorway and see the TV when his father and I are watching grown-up movies (and that's when he's not out right sneaking into the hall). I recently rewatched the works of Kevin Smith back-to-back, and Quin and I watched all the American Pie movies last week. We caught the last half of "Pulp Fiction" on one of the movie channels. I'm not sure how much of these he hears from his room (I always turn the subtitles on because we tend to err on the side of low volume). But I think if Gwen Stefani makes him interested to use "sailor talk", what of Seann William Scott? As Fred Willard says, SWS works in profanity the way Picasso worked in oils (and you really see that if you watch the out-takes. He varies his profanity in every take. Quite the foul-mouthed improviser). I wouldn't call him Picasso mself; he's not yet working at the level of a Kevin Smith or a Quentin Tarantino.

Perhaps I have sympathy for Oliver since I had to clean up my own speech early on in my mom-hood. I know the siren call of profanity. Which is how we ended up watching half of a fullscreen version of "Pulp Fiction" on TV when we own the letterboxed DVD. It came up while Quin was channel-surfing and I begged him to stop. "I just want to hear the scene about dead nigger storage." And then: "We can turn it in a minute, I just want to hear Sam Jackson say 'Well I'm a mushroom-cloud-layin' motherfucker, motherfucker!' " Before I knew it we'd watched the rest of the movie. I can't watch Shakespeare without saying the lines with the actors; Tarantino is the same way.

Monday, February 06, 2006

What Force user are you?



I'm Obi Wan Kenobi. That's cool. Want to know who you are? Go here.

Warning: I'm pretty sure the maker of this test was once quoted as saying, "Women Jedi? There are women Jedi?" Also, some of the questions are pretty obvious, so if you are trying to steer yourself to be, say, Mace Windu, it's totally doable. Still, cool.