shiz.ca

No Cow is Sacred: The House MD and CSI:NY Drinking Games

In theory, I'm all for drinking games.

How do you mean? Topographically?

I love this scene, love love love:

Enjoy.

Lage Raho Munna Bhai

This movie:

Lage Raho Munna Bhai (Carry on Brother Munna), is a Bollywood musical, a sequel to Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (Roughly, Brother Munna, MD), was out in Delhi while I visited, and some friends and I listened to the soundtrack whilst we tooled around HOT-HOT Delhi. As a result, I often got the title song in my head, so here is the fun, fun, silly-fun video to make your day. Enjoy. This song and video make me sooo happy:

I must see this movie.

By the way, Wikipedia tells me this film is has received a lot of positive attention, as the plot centres around a Mafia don who's visions of Ghandi lead him to practice non-violence and to be kind to people. It was the first Hindi film shown in the United Nations.*

Take that, Syriana.

* Who knew a job at the UN could be so much FUN!?

Sherrybaby

Last night he husband and I watched Sherrybaby starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. The film revolves around a woman in her mid-twenties upon her release from prison, while she tries to reconnect with her five year-old daughter.

On the whole, the film lacks momentum. I love the craft of storytelling, for letting the story unfold on its own and not be rushed, but I did hope for a quicker pace. The story also has an underdeveloped feeling (in part because the climax is internal -- not something I mind) and feels incomplete.

The great part is Maggie Gyllenhaal. I love her as Sherry, a believable, messed-up woman. Sherry is a woman in pain, and I want her to succeed. Gyllenhaal plays this role with grace and eloquence. Her performance is spectacular.

Best Villains: Discuss

I love my Starbucks.

Today, all of the baristas and addicts were discussing movie villains. One of the baristas turned to a customer and said, "Name the two best villains of all time and your drink is free."

The answer, according to Barista Guy, was:

#2: Hannibal Lecter
#1: Darth Vader

But we had a great time discussing others, which included, in no particular order: Dorian Grey, Annie Wilkes (Misery), the guys from Fargo, Keyser Soze, Scrooge, Nurse Mildred Ratched (Cuckoo's Nest), the Queen from Snow White and Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty, and of course, Nazis, including Amon Goeth of Schindler's List.

We had so much fun that I'm tagging some friends to discuss it here in the comments.

Tagged are:

Jay
Dane
FloridaGirl
The husband
Mike Todd
Dawn
Marymuses
Cara
Henri
Dodo
Eileen
Corwin
Movie Buffs

Ideas to consider: What makes a great villain? Who are the greatest film villains? Who are the greatest villains in literature? Who is the most evil? Who is the most scary? Who is the most psychotic?

Begin.

Eve & the Fire Horse

D & I rented a film called Eve & the Fire Horse last night. There's a dream scene when Eve sees Jesus and the Buddha dancing together in her living room, but the Jesus looked a bit boring. I said to David, "Buddha looks like more fun." He agreed.

What else is a husband for if you cannot agree that Buddha looks like more fun than Jesus?

Woody Allen Films

I just read a blog post where the author admitted to never having seen a Woody Allen film, so I recommended a few. I'll pass it on for any of you who might be interested:

Manhattan Murder Mystery
Mighty Aphrodite
Sweet and Lowdown
The Curse of the Jade Scorpion
Hollywood Ending

JUNEBUG

I *LOVED* this movie. My husband, on the other hand, when the movie was finished, said, "Okay, why did we watch this, again?"

But I loved it. I really really loved it.

"Mal. Guy killed me, Mal. He killed me with a sword. How weird is that?"

Just saw Serenity again. I can't stop saying that line. Love saying the line.

Anyhoo, the point of this post is to say how I have acid reflux disease, or GERD. I've had an occasional irritation in my throat for about 4 years, and my throat had been mildly sore since January. This past week it decided to be really sore, feeling like a nastybad case of viral infection. But no! I have just been awash with acid instead! Yeeha!

For the next 2 weeks I'm trying behaviour modification - no food or drink 3 hrs before bed and an elevated pillow for sleep (but COME ON, no water, even? crap.) - to see if I improve. The next step would be drugs. In the meantime I have a very sore throat but no heartburn-y sensations. I guess this thing can be stealthy. Yay, stealth!

I mean boo. Boo, stealth! Boo GERD. Frikkun GERD.

Meantime I'll jut be saying this:

"Mal. Guy killed me, Mal. He killed me with a sword. How weird is that?"

Good.

If there was ever any doubt

This is what Rotten Tomatoes has to say about The Da Vinci Code:

Reviews Counted: 159
Fresh: 35
Rotten: 124
Average Rating: 4.8/10
Positive reviews: 22%
Positive "Cream of the Crop" Reviews: 9%
Concensus: ROTTEN

Reviewer quotes:

"an unwieldy, bloated melodrama."
"the urge to tune out is overwhelming."
"flat-out, eye-crossingly dull."
"about as exciting as watching your parents play Sudoku."
"overstuffed and underwhelming."
"a total snore."
"punishingly long, dramatically overwrought"
"one of the most talky and pretentious major films in memory."
"a prolonged slog through material that resists the screen."
"inert."
"even its self-flagellating albino killer monk isn't any fun."

It wouldn't be so good if Howard the Duck was inside

Buy:

For $7.99 (previously viewed); get:

inside the dvd case instead. Keep it because you like it; go back and get Broken Flowers for $7.99 again.

A bargain is a bargain.

Diversions

Fun trailers:

Little Miss Sunshine

Er, Superman

Junebug

Free MP3s:

Some of them are quite good. I like Ellis' Tigers Above, Tigers Below.

This post is not awsum.

I saw my uncle on Saturday. He had had a heart attack. He's in great spirits and we spoke for much longer than I'd anticipated. He had surgery today, but no word yet. It is all meant to have been very routine. And then I saw my gramma, a woman who as a child swallowed some Essence of Mischef, Twinkling Eyes, and Winking which has lasted her thoughout her 88 years. She turns 89 in December and still lives on her own. Gramma ROKS.

I made Wolfgang Puck's dal. AND. IT. IS. AWSUM!

Sooooooooooo very awesome and easy to make. Go ahead and give it a whirl.

Whirl, baby, whirl!

I also made, in a fit of culinary creativity, crepes with fresh, hot applesauce and fresh, warm, homemade CARAMEL SAUCE that was, also, very AWSUM! The caramel sauce was so thick that when it cooled it made VERY SOFT CARAMELS that went all melty in our mouths. YUM!

I like cooking. Right now I am making brownies, and NOT your regular brownie. To me, a brownie is always a cross between "cakey" and "cookie"; I am using my mom's recipe, a cookie recipe from her Fanny Merritt Farmer cookbook.

Cooking makes me happy.

Oh, and I might interview somewhere tomorrow. AWSUM! I say might because I didn't get the message in time to call back and confirm, but I'll be ready. YASS!

Also, D and I saw The Squid and the Whale on DVD. It is a good movie but I still kinda wish I hadn't seen it.

You see, things remain with me. And there are things in this movie that disturbed me. There's a lot of pain, and it seems real, it plays real, and it feels engulfing. And the two sons act out in ways that are evidence of that - as well as evidence of their reaction/response to each of their parents. Anyhow, that's the way I feel about it. The acting is fabulous, the script is very good, especially the dialogue, but if you had a hard time with, say, The Royal Tenenbaums*, I'd say this is a step or two more of that sort of stay-with-you-ness. I saw it a week ago and I'm STILL remembering it, dreamlike. And, kinda bad-dream-like. So you softies out there are WARNED.

* I actually love TRT, however, there are some dark parts in it. To me TRT is a movie I'd watch again, and TSatW is one I would not; the line is in-between.

If you were intrigued by TSatW but now are considering whether it's to dark for you, consider watching Imaginary Heroes. Like TSatW, it also has a brilliant Jeff Daniels performance, good scripting and acting, and it doesn't leave you with the "Well, life SUCKS" feeling. It's not happy-go-lucky, but, well, you get the picture.

Also seen recently: Capote (good!), Good Night, And Good Luck (AWSUM!), SCRUBS Season 2 Disc 1 (AWSUM!), Lord of War (pretty good), Thumbsucker (good!), and for the eleventy-billionth time on DVD: Gosford Park (Triple AWSUM!!!).

Brownies are ready, and the verdict is yum. Must. Eat.

Just when you think you're safe from Scott Baio in Prime Time ...

I have an a capella version of the CHARLES IN CHARGE theme song in my head.

Because of SCRUBS.

GREAT show (Scrubs, not CiC), great episode, and even a funny moment WITH the a capella theme song, but please brain, PLEEEASE? Stop it already.

It's very catchy.

Hiya

You know, I find it a source of rich blessing that even though I am too sick to eat Chinese noodles, I can still have mint chocolates and be fine.

It's day 3 of the tummy-watch, day three of eating crackers and arrowroot biscuits and rice and plain noodles and Special K and very plain cookies (no nuts or peanut butter!) and diluted apple juice and plain bread and eating THOSE THINGS ALONE all day every day and not too much of them, either. Yesterday I nibbled bits of a hot chicken wing bone of my husband's just to taste something other than WHITE FLOUR.

When I had this before, I was so sick at the beginning that I did not want to eat, but this time I caught on early and keep thinking I might be ok and venture a bit more and then the body says, "What? No. Noodles with sauce? You MUST be kidding." and gives me a whole load of reasons to not want to do that again.

But I had a bit of chocolate tonight, and that is sitting fine with me tummy.

Tonight I saw Diary of a Mad Black Woman and it was awful. I was fully prepared to enjoy it, but it was too bad for words. And I didn't hate it because the marketing made it seem that the main character and Mad Black Woman was Tyler Perry as Madea, and he is hardly in the film at all, and not the Mad Black Woman the film is about (though I do LOVE scrolling over his name on the cast and crew tab here, listening to that line over and over again). And I don't dislike the film because it's all-too-brightly-shining Christian values were a bit too omnipresent, and, well, obnoxious. And I didn't dislike the film because Tyler Perry looks bad in that dress that matches his coffee mug. I hated it because the story wove such a bizzare and jarring series of events that no natural-born storyteller could read aloud the tale and live, and because instead of the characters each having a character arc, they seemed to have a series of character hairpin curves in mad succession, and not in a good way, as though a series of character hairpin curves in mad succession could be good anyway. There were nice moments. And then would come the next scene, where someone would be so out of character it was jarring.

And the saccharine-laced love-lines? I could do without those, too.

Tyler Perry needs to make a great silly comedy without all the preaching and break-neck story lines. No one with a pacemaker should see this film. Also no one without.

I am also here to tell you that hey, if you're going to create a procuct to reduce hairball occurrence in felines, that perhaps you should not call it LAX•A•CAT. I cannot find it online, and I'mm too lazy to take a picture at the moment. But LAX•A•CAT? Please. Why not PUKE PREVENT or HAIR-EEZE or STOP HAVING THESE GODDAMN HAIRBALLS, ALREADY? LAX•A•CAT sounds like it's for the other end.

Okay, cat hairball remedy naming contest. FUR AWAY? HACK-ME-NOT? SLICKERY THROAT?

Okay, what about SLICKERY LICKERY? As in "Slickery Lickery Dock"? From "Hickory Dickory Dock"?

You people are sick.

I've also been told that it's virtually a sin to not have read the Thorn Birds, and was given my own copy and a sort of informational lesson having something to do with Richard Chamberlin. So I'll be reading that someday soon.

Okay, I have to get back to my Special K now. Yummy!

Happy Sunday! Oh yeah, and happy Christmas!

What's today? Why today is Christmas day! I don't think I've had a more laid-back Christmas. And that's good.

First, an observation:

What is with the make-up on Rob Lowe's face in this trailer? That's th emost disturbing thing Hollywood's thrown out since the Bruce Willis poster for The Whole Ten Yards, and that, my friends, was disturbing.

I doesn't feel much like Christmas. One of the best parts of my childhood Christmases would be to sit by the tree and look at the amazing coloured shadows left from the lights, coating the wall with stained-glassish wonder, and we don't have a tree this year. I liked Christmas because it was one of the only times when our family behaved kind-of like a family. We did the Christmas thing together. And we never did anything together. It's hard to be an idealistic child; I was alway hoping we'd turn into one of those families that went on picnics and laughed and gathered around the table with mirth. That didn't happen. But Christmas was the one time we could participate and pretend we did that sort of thing all the time. Or at least, sometimes.

But not to be blue on Christmas! This year we get to hang out by ourselves and do things our way, which so far has included sleeping in, an evening of friends and debauchery beforehand.

David turned 34 yesterday and we celebrated with gifts and good times and Vinyl Cafe and sleeping in and naps and the aforementioned debauchery. And in an ill-advised moment, we put in a movie and the host promptly crashed asleep. The guests didn't last either, not to the end of the film, but that doesn't matter because we had a great time.

I have to get to laundry now, because what says "Christmas" like laundry? (Don't judge my husband; he is attacking the Leaning Tower of Every Dish in the House. I got off easy.)

Later I'll make Lamb and we'll feast again, and we'll probably go for a walk. Happy Christmas, everybody. Peace to you and yours.

I have decided that I don't like It's a Wonderful Life anymore.

Saw It's a Wonderful Life last night and you know what? I don't like it anymore. The way George Bailey behaves in the dark times -- all the anger and shouting -- bothers me a lot. I don't like George. And if he wanted out of bedford Falls so badly, why didn't he groom a successor for the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan? And the way he proposes to Mary just freaks me right out.

Now, I know we all have our dark sides, but by gum, George's dark side scares me more than Voldemort.

Sorry, internet. I have turned on you. I'm rejecting a classic.

Goat, and goat.

I'm told the internet wants a post.

So this week David and I bought our goats. Two goats, to be precise. For the needy. Because the needy need goats. Goats provide milk, um, manure, and more goats. They're the gift that keeps on giving.

My thank-you e-mail and receipt came from World Vision and said, no lie, "Thank you for your gift of goat, and goat ..."

Tomorrow is the 1-year cativersary of bringing home Apricot Willow Huntington the Third, or Willow, for short. We will NOT be celebrating when Shiz freaked out and thought Willow had to go back because Alpha Cat was unhappy. She got over it and so did I, and now the two are good friends, licking each other's hard-to-reach places.

So because we bought goats, we opted not to get gifts for anyone else. So everyone I woulda bought a gift for? You're in for part of a goat. Doesn't it make you feel good? D and I buy gifts for each other - Christmas and birthday gifts - and leave it at that. Not even the kitties are getting loot this year. And? We're not doing stockings, because we tend to fill them with things that we could easily do without. I mean, radioactive x-ray glasses are COOL and all, but in the end, it's not like we live in neighborhood with a lot of hot people anyway.

We'll be hunkering down to watch It's a Wonderful Life tonight, because, well, I guess because we want to. And because every time a bell rings an angel gets its wings. And why is Zuzu's voice so grating? For real. I think it's a sign of change that I used to love the scene where George gets angry in front of his family and storms out of the house (big! dramatic! moment!) and now I'm more into the softer sides of the film.

I've already seen A Muppet's Christmas Carol and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation this year, but have yet to put on It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas, Elf or The Nightmare Before Christmas.

It seems like I'm forgetting some in there. I guess Little Women could go in there, but which version? I haven't seen the Katie H. version in so long; I think that may be my favourite; it's the one that feels most like Christmas. And of COURSE any Simpson's Christmas episode. Mmmmm, Simpsons.

This post is pathetic, I realize. It's a compilation of anything jettisoned from my head, but then again, does every post have to be perfect? I think not. I'm off now to fix dinner and set my mulling spices to "Mull a little longer," and maybe to wonder how those World Vision people are going to giftwrap my goats. I hope they poke holes in the box.

From my favourite fictional dysfunctional family ...

The Bluth family:

George Sr.: Stay out of it. When I thought your first wife was coming between us, I didn't cause a stink.

Michael: Dad, you complained all the time. And she was my only wife. And, she died.

George Sr.: Well, you know, these things have a way of working themselves out.

Thank you, Miramax

For basing a movie on a Pulitzer Price winner.

Gotta love those Pulitzer Price winners.