Dept. of Execrable Movies: Raimi Edition (SPOILERS)

Okay, I must have sat through another version of this movie, because it sure wasn't the one that everybody seems to be raving over. It wasn't scary. It wasn't particularly original (a gypsy puts a curse on somebody who pisses them off...hmm, sounds a lot like "Thinner," methinks). And if this is supposed to be Sam Raimi's grand return to the horror genre, then he can stay the hell out, as far as I'm concerned.

I. Hated. This. Movie.

And when I say "hate," I mean hate with the fire of a thousand suns. Yeah, I'm surprised too. I figured I'd at least like it. It's Sam Raimi! "The Evil Dead" is one of my favorite movies of all time. How could it not be good?

Well, let me count the ways...

First of all, there's the problem of the main character--you know, the pretty blonde who denies an ugly old woman an extension on her bank loan and done gets herself all cursified. One of the most important rules of scriptwriting is HAVE A SYMPATHETIC MAIN CHARACTER. That way the audience actually gives a shit if she lives or dies or gets herself dragged to hell.

In this movie...not so much. Her boss leaves the choice up to her, and she chooses to kick the old woman out of her house so she'll seem all badass and tough and will get promoted. It's not like her hands are tied and she's really sorry, but she has no choice...blah blah blah. She wants the promotion, so she kicks out the old woman. Cut and dried.

There's a really great book on scriptwriting called "Save the Cat" (the irony in this will be apparent in a moment) that urges scriptwriters to insert one small scene in their script that will align the audience's sympathy with the main character. Maybe they save the cat from a tree. Maybe they do something nice for an old person. Whatever. It's a moment where they are funny or sweet or caring, and it's guaranteed to put the audience squarely on the character's side for the rest of the movie.

There's one moment in this piece of cinematic crap that totally destroyed any small shred of sympathy I had for the main character. It involved a teeny kitten, a big knife, and a cut to the outside of the house with an off-screen cat's screech. Why...WHY??? Why do you have your main character kill a kitten--even if she's trying to save her soul--midway through the movie? It was almost played for laughs (disturbing enough) but it was just unnecessary. After that scene, they couldn't drag that bitch's ass to hell fast enough.

And then there's Raimi's insistance on using his lameass slapstick. I like the Three Stooges too, but that kind of stuff has no place in a horror movie, even if you are attempting to add humor. It totally pulled me out of the movie and made me wonder who in the hell green-lit the script. I mean, it LITERALLY drops an anvil on a character's head. I kept waiting for somebody to do the Curley shuffle.

And let's not even mention the moment when a goat talks. Yes. Talks. A goat. By that point, I was doing the Sideshow Bob shudder.

Stephen King once wrote that when he couldn't go for the scare, he'd go for the gross-out. Okay. Fair enough. I've done it in my own writing more than once. Raimi, unfortunately, took those words to heart. There was more spit/worms/maggots/blood/formaldehyde/unknowable bodily fluids going into the main character's mouth than necessary for the plot. It was like Raimi decided that his audience was going to be made up of teenage boys who'd think it was super cool to watch a pretty girl get choked on thick goo while a toothless old woman gummed her open mouth. I've got nothing against disgusting stuff in movies, but come on...there's a limit.

Honestly, I cannot understand why this movie is getting so many good reviews. It's like Raimi's diehard fans are just happy enough to see his name on the screen, to hell with whatever follows it. One review called it a perfect summer horror flick. No. It's not. It's a horror movie for people who don't know what horror movies should (or could) be.

If Raimi had played it straight, if he'd cut out the dumbass slapstick and made the script a little more palatable, this might have been a good movie. As it is, he uses all his old "Evil Dead" tricks--shaky cam, zooms, quick pans to shock the audience, "possessed" objects, etc. and so on. It's all gimmicks, no substance.

The movie could have been good. If he'd made the main character sympathetic, the gypsy woman totally unlikable (instead of pathetic), and made good on the promise of showing the Lamia demon (instead of shadow silhouettes and quick glimpses), then maybe...maybe...it would have been scary. If it had really been, as the trailer says, about the fact that even a good person could be condemned to hell, then that would have been something for the audience to think about.

Drag the bitch to hell, see if I care. And take this damned movie with you.

I FINALLY figured out...

...what Kate Gosselin's hair reminds me
of...

The indomitable Lola "I want to bear your children!" Heatherton (Catherine O'Hara) from SCTV!

Once seen, it can't be unseen.

Like the mountains are safe...

Weird-ass dream

I dreamed last night that I was lost on my old college campus. I was there to do some kind of library-related thing, and I couldn't find my class, so I kept wandering around looking for the right building. That was bad enough, but then I stumbled across a myopic little man who was making a delivery and asked if he knew where the building I was looking for might be. He said he was making a delivery there, so I could come along with him. Even in my dream, my gut said, "Whoa...hold on," but I went along with him anyway.

It was only 11:30am in the dream (I remember the time vividly, because my "class" was supposed to start at noon) but it was dark outside. I followed this little man across campus until we were at a completely unfamiliar place, and then he turned around and said, "This is as far as you're going" and pulled out a serrated knife. And then that little bastard stabbed me!

I remember being shocked and surprised and--above all--pissed off beyond all reason that he would dare do that to me. I grabbed the knife and turned it around on him and pretty much pulled a Jack the Ripper on his ass. Didn't kill him, but I dragged him around campus looking for a cop, leaving a trail of blood behind me. I remember looking at my knife wound in the dream and being grossed out, and feeling the pain from it.

According to an online dream dictionary, this dream means that I feel I've lost direction in my life and I'm pretty pissed off about it. This is what the site has to say about dreaming about being stabbed:

To dream that you have been stabbed, signifies your struggle with power. You may be experiencing feelings of inadequacy and defensiveness. Alternatively, you may be feeling betrayed as the popular phrase goes, "being stabbed in the back".

To dream that you stab someone, indicates your fear of betrayal and your untrusting nature. You may be too much on the defensive.

Me? On the defensive? Untrusting? Okay. Maybe.

I've had these kinds of dreams before, where I've been attacked (one time I was even shot in the gut) and beat the holy hell out of the person who hurt me. Where that comes from is a mystery to me; I've never been in a fight in my life. I've never even slapped anybody.

But apparently if anybody tries to stab, hit, and/or shoot me, I'll turn into a Tasmanian Devil of rage. Huh. Good to know.

"Popping Out Kids for Fun & Profit (but mostly profit)" by OCTOMOM!

Well, hell...what a fool I've been all these years!

Why didn't I figure out earlier that the quick (not necessarily easy) way to be a multi-millionaire was to use my student loan money for in-vitro fertilization instead of a silly college education? Then maybe I could have squeezed out a litter of kids and made mucho money off of them. Silly, silly me.

I mean, look at Octomom (aka Octopussy, aka Nadya Suleman, aka Woman Who Should Have Her Uterus Revoked). She's 33 and had those octuplets, which means she's got Oprah slobbering all over her for an exclusive interview (to the tune of $2 million, according to the rumors) and so many potentially lucrative book/tv deals that she had to hire not one, but TWO PR flacks!

And here I am, idiot me, thinking that the way to get a book deal was to actually...oh, I don't know...write a book or something.

And even though her eight newest babies are lying in a hospital struggling to survive, Octomom somehow managed to spruce herself up for an exclusive interview with the Today show. What a brave little trouper!!! And she explained herself so well...she wanted a big family because poor widdle her was an only child and her family was all bad and dysfunctional.

Wait a second...would this be the same mother and father who not only had to declare bankruptcy to pay for HER bad investments and who have given her and her brood a place to live? Would THEY be the dysfunctional family she was referring to? Ooh...what bad, bad people!

But hey, it's okay because Octomom is a CHILD-REARING EXPERT now. Yep. That's her story and she's sticking to it (because that's the kind of TV show she's angling to get).

I'm sorry, I'm sure being pregnant is a wonderful miraculous miracle of miracle but come on...when it comes right down to it, it's a biological process that doesn't exactly take a lot of heavy thinking. Sperm meets egg, cell division commences, and voila...nine months later you have a baby. And yet, because she managed to get IVF so many times, she's an expert on raising kids.

My opinion? She's an expert in bullshit, and she's flinging it for all the world to enjoy.

I have a theory that this woman is nothing but a hoarder, the kind of person who would have a house filled with fifty cats if she didn't take to the IVF treatments so well. Her mother has said she always wanted a big family. Okay. Great. Can't blame a person for that. But what kind of irresponsible, unthinking, stupid asshole goes out and gets IVF when she can't even support herself...and then brings all the embryos to term because she wanted more kids?

And as for those poor octuplets...if a parent crammed eight kids into a tight space, made them share an inadequate amount of nutrition and didn't give them room to grow normally, wouldn't they be slammed into jail by child protective services? Octomom claims to have wanted all the babies, but obviously she's not thinking about what would be best for them, or else she wouldn't have put all their lives at risk. Even now, as they struggle to get through these first few weeks of life, there's a big chance that they'll have future health problems. If they make it.

But I'm sure that's the last thing on old Octomom's mind. She's already got it made. If some of the babies die now, well...too bad, so sad, but she's already got contracts in place since they're the longest surviving octuplets. And just think of the sympathy she might get if some of the babies die. Boy oh boy, won't people feel like jerks then! She'll be able to play the grieving mother card and make even more scratch by allowing Entertainment Tonight or People magazine to buy the exclusive rights to the funeral and the photos of her dabbing away tears while trying to be strong for the other children.

Maybe I'm being too hard on the poor dearie. According to her interview on the Today show (which she expected to be paid for, by the way), all of the expenses of having 14 kids is coming as a huge surprise to her. Of course it is! Who could have known that it takes money to raise and care for children? Who could have predicted that having octuplets would mean a shitload of hospital bills? No one could have known that in advance! Why, I'm sure Octomom believed that once she had her precious babies that angels would descend from on high and shower her with oodles and oodles of money. Doesn't that happen to every woman who has a baby?

Ugh. I can't imagine a woman being that fucking stupid. And yet...and yet...

All I can say is that it's a damn good thing for Octomom that I don't run things, because I'd have those kids taken away from her in a heartbeat. And it's not because she's a single mother. It's because she's proved herself to be too reckless and too self-involved to be a responsible mother. Those kids are going to be the ones to pay the price for all this, one way or another.

But what am I saying? Octomom's the child-rearing expert! Her children will grow up to cure cancer and solve world hunger and be the saviors of us all!!

Well...the ones who manage to make it through the first few weeks, that is.

But it's all good for Octomom. She's got her contracts and her PR people and her TV interviews to console her. And as we all know, as long as Octomom is happy and gets what she wants, that's ALL that matters.

Moldy Oldie

What happened to January?

Wow...time flies, don't it?

Well, since I'm writing this now, I guess it's safe to say that we all survived the New Year. Yay, us. I don't even remember how I spent New Year's Eve (not due to a surplus of partying, but due to not doing anything particularly particular. Maybe we watched movies?).

But anyway...here it is January 30 and a whole month has passed in a whirlwind of snow days from work, doctors' appointments, and new episodes of "24" on TV. I've been working on a script that I'm not allowed to talk about just yet (let's just say it's a "reimagining" of a beloved, non-copyrighted classic) and trying to keep warm. It's been unreasonably winterlike this winter. I didn't realize how much I'd depended on the Greenhouse Effect to keep wintertime temperate and moderately dry.

It's hard to believe it's February already. And even harder to believe is that my birthday is coming up in less than a week. *groan* Let me just tell you that it sucks to have a birthday in February. And here's a short list of reasons why:

• It's too cold to have any kind of swimming party when you're a teenager (unless you're a member of the Teen Polar Bear Club, which I wasn't).
  
• There's a more than good chance that a snowstorm will keep anyone from being able to attend your birthday party.
  
• Ice cream cakes are painful.
• Two words: Valentine's Day.

When I was younger (and unattached), this used to be particularly painful for my angsty, lovelorn self. Oh, the pain of turning another year older and being reminded that I am, once more, alone... (the previous sentence, by the way, should be read in a "Lost in Space" Dr. Smith voice). I used to be very attuned to Valentine's Day when I was younger. I'd see the VD cards and the candies and the flowers and yearn to the bottom of my little heart that one day February 14th would mean something special to me.

Blech.

Now that I'm older, wiser, bitterer, and WAY more cynically realistic, I've come to realize that Feb. 14th does mean something to me: it's the day before payday! Honestly, V-day absolutely doesn't bother me anymore. Being single doesn't bother me anymore either, but that's a whole 'nother post in and of itself. And having to face V-day just a week or so after my birthday REALLY doesn't bother me.

I don't know exactly what happened, but I'm glad it did. I'm not really cut out for the whole angsty lovelorn thing. It gets boring after a while.

But anyway...my birthday. Blargh. I know I'm getting more mature, because I've told my family that if it happens to snow too badly for anyone to come home for cake and presents, I'll just wait until the next week. For presents, mind you! It's not that I'm bummed out about turning 39 so much as simply stunned that I'm actually that old. That's a grown-up's age! I'm not a grown-up.

Actually, I'm rather looking forward to my 40s. My 20s were spent unhappily in college and then more unhappily unemployed for a couple of years, and then unhappily employed. I'm not saying that I walked around all gloom and doom all the time, but...there were some tough times.

My 30s were better. I quit my crap job and got a much better one as a library director. For the first six or so years of my 30s, I had a very enjoyable online relationship with a guy who I cared about a lot (but which ended, more or less, when I was about 36). I was gainfully employed for all but two months of my 30s, and I managed to start selling some short stories. Now, in my 39th year, my first novel will (I hope) be published in the fall. So...progress.

I freak out about my age only in terms of the physical decay we all face as we get older. More doctor visits. More problems. I do what I can, and I'm starting to take better care of myself than I ever did in my 20s or 30s, so hopefully that'll ease the transition into the 40s. I moisterize the hell out of my skin (you know that character Cassandra in the new Doctor Who series? The big flap of skin who constantly barks out for her lackey to "Moisterize me! Moisterize me!"? She's my hero).

I've got some big changes coming my way this year (a major surgery this spring/summer, for one), but hopefully this year will pass as most of my others have: quietly, calmly, nondramatically. I'll use this time to contemplate my life, my accomplishments, my future...and to get a head start on my total meltdown this time next year when 40 is actually staring me in the face.

Happy birthday to me. :)