Day off movies

List: Rosemary's Baby, Room 237, Kiss of the Damned, Done the Impossible

I had a Sunday off and I decided while letting my domestic diva out that I would watch stuff I've been saying I'm going to watch for months. First off any one who knows me should be saying to themselves are you ok? Why are you cleaning every thing in the house?! I'm not Donna Reed by any stretch of the imagination, but for some reason I needed to clean and needed something to keep me going.

First up on the list was Rosemary's Baby. I know, I know, how have I not seen this movie. I have seen bits and pieces but never sat down and watched it from beginning to end. I'm glad I finally did. Even though the movie is dated it still plays well. I love Mia Farrow. Her voice grates a bit, but you kind of get used to it. All I ever remember from the bits and pieces I've seen was they lived in this awesome building in NYC, she gets knocked up by Satan, there's a group of old people yelling Hail Satan, and her baby **spoiler alert** is the devil's baby. Also that haircut. Practically anyone who has a pixie cut is striving for the perfect Rosemary. When Rosemary announces she's pregnant her husband gives her a glass of wine to celebrate and then proceeds to smoke like a chimney around her was interesting  Coming from the mind set of modern day where you can't breathe in the direction of a pregnant woman for fear of it instantly aborting the fetus seeing this made me laugh. I also noticed the similarities with The Devil's Advocate (another favorite movie of mine despite Keanu Reeves). The more I think about it the more The Devil's Advocate is practically a remake of Rosemary's Baby right down to the devil screwing the blonde neglected wife and no one believing her. The wife cutting her hair off, the neighbors all being part of the devil's plot, the wife being covered in scrapes and bruises after her "encounter" with the devil, crap now I'm going to have to watch them both and make a list. I digress, over all Rosemary's Baby still holds up as a creepy devil movie even now. The ending perplexes me but then again I guess it's the whole it's my baby and I love it anyway thing. Not sure if I would be able to do that if my I found out my baby was going to bring about the Apocalypse.

Next up was Room 237. If you've never seen Kubrick's version of The Shining go watch it and then watch Room 237. It's ok I'll wait. Now that you've killed 6 hours of your life how much do you want to watch The Shining forwards and backwards super imposed on itself? I would curl up on my couch with a bowl of popcorn and watch that in a minute. Ok so Room 237 is in essence a conspiracy theory wet dream all about the hidden meanings behind everything in The Shining. I knew I was in for a doosey of a flick when one of the first things said is that the cans in the store room are set up in a way to show Kubrick's feelings on the plight of the American Indians. Ok maybe, kind of a stretch, but maybe the whole movie is a political statement about how the white man plundered America and stole all the land from the Native American tribes across the country, or it's just a can with a profile wearing a headress on it. Then we get into how there's all these points where he deviates from the book and all these points are Kubrick's way of telling the world he directed the Moon Landing film. The rug in the upstairs hallway looks like the landing pads at NASA, the kid has an Apollo 11 sweater on, the room number was changed to 237 because it's 237,000 miles from the Earth to the Moon, and my favorite the key tag hanging in the door of room 237 says "ROOM No 237" and as the guy explains the acronym "No" was used in place of the word number back in the day and Kubrick used it here to tell us his involvement with the moon landing because the only letters that were capitalized were R-O-O-M-N which can be used to spell out MOON. Hey guy you failed to explain that when that acronym was used the the "o" was almost always lower case. My absolute favorite hole you can drive a truck through is the guy who talks about the kid riding around on his big wheel and we see a diagram being drawn on the screen at the same time. The kid rides straight down the hallway takes a left across the balcony above the lobby then makes a box around the elevator ending up back where he started but facing the other direction.(This is the map {other maps by this artist are used throughout Room 237}) The guy narrating the sequence makes comments about how Kubrick puts in pieces of the lobby in the background so the viewer knows where the kid is in the hotel. He actually says "there's the fake elevator...and there's a piece of the stained glass there. {Kubrick} didn't have to do that but he did." As if to say that Kubrick placed shots of the lobby below in certain areas of the frame. The guy was talking about camera trickery so at first I was going along with it. Then a bit later there's another scene where Wendy picks the kid up and the camera is facing the upper balcony. So Mr. Camera trickery guy did you not realize the the kid was on that side of the set? Or that the view from that balcony which over looks the lounge wouldn't include the stained glass segments of the windows in the lounge that are eye level from the balcony?

Next was Kiss of the Damned. This was reviewed on episode 69 of Devour the Podcast and after everyone's reactions I had to check it out. It has one of my favorite easy on the eyes actors Milo Ventimigila as Paulo. He's naked and buff and...sorry I was thinking of the scene were he gets bitten. Let me clean up the drool. The movie is artsy fartsy but worth a watch. I feel like it had so much it could have explored but only veered into alternate 1985 and then careened back into the correct timeline every other scene. Mimi feels tossed in to the film just to muss perfect Djuna's (pronounced Juna) pristine hair especially in the steam shower scene, oof needed a cold shower myself after that one. There's a whole scene about vampire vs human rights that only serves to set up Mimi plotting against Xenia, our vampire leader and famous Broadway actress to eat a virgin stage door fan (she doesn't do matinees as a theatre geek this line made me giggle, just like when Rosemary says she went to see The Fantasticks in Rosemary's Baby). Mimi meets a great end though. Watch out for those maids they can be murder.

After that I finally finished watching Done the Impossible. A Firefly documentary about all the Browncoats, fans of the series and the film Serenity. Adam Baldwin "Jayne" hosts for lack of a better term the whole movie. If you've never seen the show or if you're a Browncoat like me take the time to watch this movie. Joss Whedon talks about how the fans made this show and how they literally got the movie made.. The fans and the actors talk about how the show changed their lives. Browncoats of all ages tell their story of finding the 'verse and sailing through it with the crew of the Serenity. There's one girl who tries to explain how the death of Wash affected her and she simply bursts into tears. I fell in love with Firefly in college just after it had been cancelled. I can't explain why or what draws me to the series exactly but when I'm having a shit day or just need to lose myself in something a few hours I turn to Firefly. It has a strange calming affect on me and I find myself just sitting and smiling while watching it. Done the Impossible let me know that I'm not alone in my obsession with this little show that wouldn't die. Go see what a fandom can do when they band together and show Hollywood that they have no idea what is good and what isn't good TV.

Ok guys that's it for this week. I've got way more days off coming up that I think will be spent binge watching movies like today. Any suggestion?

Final Destination 5

I wasn't going to give it a chance after the last installment of the franchise, but I'm glad I did. The deaths aren't so far out there that there is no way in hell there could ever be the correct circumstances for them to take place as in past installments. I generally like the characters well except the douche who feels his girlfriend shouldn't have died and everyone else should have. There's always one.

Anywho, FD5 follows the same premise as the rest of them . Some one has a vision that death is about to get them and they freak out. A group of people follow them to safety only to be picked off one by one to settle death's list. Tony Todd does his job again of providing the key to survival and progress the mania. Although once you see the ending of the movie his "I've seen this before" speech half way through is an "ah ha" moment. Fair warning I will spoil the ending later. You've been warned.

Sam has a vision that the bridge his bus is on is going to collapse. He freaks out gets himself and a group of others to safety just in time to watch the bus and the bridge fall into the lake below. Now the fun starts. I'm not going to go through all of the deaths just a couple.

The first death takes place at a gym where Candice is practicing her gymnastics. Shit goes down and she ends up folded in half on the gym floor. There's a line about the first death after it happens that made me laugh. Olivia says she wonders how it doesn't happen all the time. I've thought that same thing many a time during the Olympics.

The 3rd death is Olivia's and it freaked me out. I wear glasses and would like to get Lasik. However after seeing the laser blind her I'm rethinking that decision. That poor teddy bear got his eye ripped off in the process. Poor teddy.

Now Tony Todd comes back as the how to survive death guy. He's wearing a coroner's jacket this time around and in past movies he was a funeral home mortician. I looked around at the various Wiki's and other info and everything said he was still a funeral home mortician but that coroner's jacket and medical examiner's van threw me off. Oh well. Nice to see him back after not being in the last movie.

Over all it is the same old same old for the franchise. Not as far out as the last movie which is good. I still can't drive behind a log truck on the highway thanks to these movies. The end of this movie is what makes it different and a nice change to the series.

Now here's where I'm going to spoil the ending. Go away now if you don't want to know. But come back for another installment of my musings later!!!





Ending Spoilers ahead!!!




So the whole movie Sam is talking about going to Paris to take this apprenticeship. Paris, Paris, Paris, it's mentioned 18 thousand times throughout the movie. We never see any type of newspaper or date anywhere, but we do see a pic of Olivia on the roller coaster from the 3rd movie. I'm mad at myself as a props master for not catching on to the lack of smart phones and the phones that we did see being so out of date. This whole movie is a prequel! Sam and his girlfriend survive (she was going to live anyway) only to end up on Flight 180 to Paris. We actually see Devon Sawa freak out and get removed from the plane. And then they die. It was a nice way to round out the series. If they continue to make any more sequels I'll still watch them but I can't imagine where'd they go from here other than to explain Tony Todd's background and how he knows so much.