Movies of My Life #5: My Senior English Project

A few months ago, I received an invite via Facebook to my 15-year high school reunion. I’ve never harbored much nostalgia for my high school days- I wasn’t a popular guy, partly because I wasn’t popular but also because I was, quite frankly, a bit of an asshole to anyone outside my strange little circle of friends. Still, I’m curious as to how the event will go for me, not least because I’m genuinely curious to find out of I changed that much in the last decade and a half.

Like many people, I don’t think I’ve retained a lot of what I learned in high school, at least not to the point where I can readily summon up the knowledge that once came almost instantly. In hindsight, it seems like my biggest takeaway from high school was that it was a key time in the formation of my tastes, especially in terms of how I think about movies. I first started getting really serious about cinema during my junior and senior years, which feel comfortably in the aftermath of Pulp Fiction, which served as a gateway drug for many a budding cinephile back in the day.

So, when my AP English class was tasked with penning and presenting a project to be completed during senior year, I took the opportunity to delve into cinema history. I remember justifying the project to my teacher by positioning cinema as the logical successor to novels in the realm of popular narrative entertainment, but in fact this was mostly an excuse to educate myself in the films of yesteryear. Because I hadn’t seen most of the canonical classics, I had to comb through lots of books and web sites in search of the ideal selection. Then throughout the year, I watched all of the films (on VHS, of course), then assessed each of them in terms of their cultural impact and their cinematic and “literary” merits.

In order to help narrow down the list, I set myself some limitations:

1. Only English-language films. Since one of my goals was to analyze the films’ impact on the cultural climate, I thought it would be easier to limit myself to movies that were made primarily for English-speaking audiences. With a handful of exceptions, the movies I chose were pretty well-known, and the ones that weren’t had a specific reason for being chosen. More on this later.

2. No films made after 1986. Why 1986? Because I was presenting the project to the class in 1996, and I thought it was best to have at least a decade’s distance in order to gauge the film’s long-lasting legacy rather than catching the tail end of its contemporary buzz. Because of this, I missed out on a handful of golden greats, most egregiously Do the Right Thing and the movie that helped inspire the project in the first place, Pulp Fiction.

3. No more than two films per director. I mean, sure- I could have loaded down the list with Hitchcock, Kubrick, Chaplin, and so on, but I wanted to get some diversity in the selection while at the same time recognizing how major these guys really were.

4. No animated films. Of course, this was back when “animated classics” were almost exclusively old-school Disney (to give you some perspective, Toy Story was released in November of my senior year). However, my principal justification for this rule was that I didn’t feel that cel-and-ink moviemaking should be judged alongside live-action works, due to the differences in how they were made. Whether I still feel that way is a subject for another post entirely.

5. No documentaries, for much the same reasons I decided against including animated films.

Anyway, here’s my original senior project list of movies:

The General (1927, Keaton/Bruckman)
City Lights (1931, Chaplin)
Gone With the Wind (1939, Fleming)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
Casablanca (1942, Curtiz)
The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, Welles)
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948, Huston)
The Third Man (1949, Reed)
Sunset Blvd. (1950, Wilder)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Kelly/Donen)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957, Lean)
Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
Psycho (1960, Hitchcock)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Lean)
The Manchurian Candidate (1962, Frankenheimer)
Dr. Strangelove (1964, Kubrick)
Blowup (1966, Antonioni)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
The Godfather (1972, Coppola)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)
E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982, Spielberg)
Platoon (1986, Stone)

OK, so a lot of these choices are pretty obvious. But all in all, I think I kept things fairly eclectic, especially considering how much I still had to learn.

But like so many tinkerer types, I just can’t seem to leave anything alone. So with fifteen years and thousands more movies under my belt, I’ve decided to revisit the list, separating the worthy titles from the ones that can be pared away, and replacing them with movies that I think broaden the scope of the list even more.

First, I’ve decided to tighten my two-films-per-director rule, forcing myself to choose only a single work per filmmaker, thereby representing some of the greats I neglected last time, either due to space issues or simple ignorance of their greatness. But which to choose? For Welles, it was easy- considering the type of list this is, how are you not gonna go with Kane? Likewise, with Kubrick and Lean, I felt like 2001 and Lawrence were more representative not only of their makers’ styles but of the ambitions that helped to make them great. Vertigo, more than Psycho, represents a kind of Rosetta Stone for Hitchcock. And finally, despite the enduring popularity of Gone With the Wind, I find that it doesn’t hold up as well as The Wizard of Oz, which remains one of those movies that everyone knows even today- no mean feat after more than seven decades.

So what else would I cut? The easiest choice would be the most recent film on the list, Platoon, an inclusion which dates my list more than any other. After all, in the mid-nineties, Stone was one of the most inescapable figures on the cinematic scene- up there with Spielberg and Scorsese, certainly- and his cachet was so strong that even a steaming load of speculative bullshit like Nixon won raves from critics all over the world. Today, Stone has largely been unmasked as a charlatan, and Platoon has been overshadowed by more skillful works of art about Vietnam, in particular Coppola’s far superior Apocalypse Now.

And if I’m bringing Apocalypse on board, I’m afraid I’ll have to cut out The Godfather, alas. While Godfather remains more popular and influential in popular culture, Apocalypse is the better work of art, and a rare case in which directorial indulgence and borderline madness actually worked to produce a masterpiece.

As for two of my other original choices, City Lights and E.T., I’d switch them out in favor of two different films by their makers. For my new Chaplin film, I’d go with Modern Times, which keeps Chaplin’s sentimental streak but amps up the satirical streak, making it a key mid-point film in his career as he transitioned from silents to talkies. For Spielberg, I’d be inclined to pick Jaws to fill the horror-film gap left by Psycho, along with taking over the seventies blockbuster role left by the loss of The Godfather.

The final two movies I’d jettison- Treasure of the Sierra Madre and The Manchurian Candidate- simply don’t feel as indispensible now as they did back in high school. In my research at the time, I got the impression that John Huston was one of the canonical masters of the cinema, but the intervening years have shown me that, as great as he was, he wasn’t quite on the level of some of the folks who didn’t end up making the cut. Likewise, The Manchurian Candidate, while certainly a great film, isn’t quite major enough to justify keeping it on the list when any number of stone-cold classics have been sidelined.

As for the keepers, I feel like most of them are fairly self-explanatory. You can’t make a list like this without Kane, Casablanca, The Third Man, and Singin’ in the Rain. Additionally, films by John Ford, Buster Keaton, Martin Scorsese, and Billy Wilder should be represented in the mix. And while Chinatown’s entry would be justified by its screenplay alone, it also stands both as a superlative homage to classic detective noir and a vehicle for one of the most singular stars in cinema, Jack Nicholson.

Finally, there’s Blowup, a quirky selection that I’ve decided to keep. The primary reason I originally chose this was because I wanted to spotlight the increasing presence foreign filmmaking had on the cinematic scene in the second half of the 20th century. Many of the biggest names in world cinema (Godard, Bergman, Bunuel, Fellini, Kurosawa, et al) have avoided working in English for the most part if not entirely. Others, such as Polanski came to America and proceeded to make films within the system, although he was able to keep plenty of his sensibility in his English-language films. By contract, Blowup essentially finds Antonioni translating his signature style into English, with little discernible difference aside from the language and setting. As such, it’s a fascinating case, and combined with the fact that it remains a masterpiece and an essential time capsule of 60s-era swinging London, it deserves to be here.

So where does the list stand now? I decided to keep fourteen of the original titles:

The General (1927, Keaton/Bruckman)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
Casablanca (1942, Curtiz)
The Third Man (1949, Reed)
Sunset Blvd. (1950, Wilder)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Kelly/Donen)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Lean)
Blowup (1966, Antonioni)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)

… and so far, I’ve added the following:

Modern Times (1936, Chaplin)
Jaws (1975, Spielberg)
Apocalypse Now (1979, Coppola)

This leaves us eight spots. To begin with, let’s trade one hugely popular but ideologically prickly Civil War epic (Gone With the Wind) for another- Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation. Sure, its racial politics are regrettable, to put it politely, but its influence is unmistakable.

While we’re at it, why not another silent film? Of my original 25, only two films were from the silent era (City Lights was a borderline pick at that), and both of them were comedies. The Birth of a Nation broadened the possibilities for cinema as a storytelling form, but it only hinted at how expressionistic the medium could be. To better spotlight this, I would choose Murnau’s Sunrise, one of the most beautiful films ever made, and one that to my eyes best represents the poetry of which the silent film form was capable just before spoken dialogue came along to change everything.

Moving forward in time, there were several filmmakers I overlooked the first time who have since become favorites, and I would want to see their work represented on this list- namely Robert Altman, Michael Powell, and Howard Hawks. Altman has cast such a long shadow over the last four decades of American cinema that he should be included here, and I think the obvious choice would be Nashville, which would also give the list another film with a political bent. Of all the Powell’s classics, the one that I think suits the project best is A Matter of Life and Death, which would double as a replacement of Bridge on the River Kwai as the WW2 selection while injecting some magical realism into the proceedings.

Hawks is the toughest call. The guy made plenty of masterpieces across genres, to the point where it’s hard to say which is his most representative. Rio Bravo would be a hell of a choice, as would Only Angels Have Wings, but my choice would be The Big Sleep, which in addition to offering many of the usual Hawksian pleasures is also a classic detective noir to serve as a point of comparison with the already-selected Chinatown.

Which leaves me with three more choices. The first of these would be Bonnie and Clyde, which I’ve chosen to represent the transitional period that Hollywood faced at the fall of the Production Code. Director Arthur Penn polarized critics infusing the popular crooks-on-the-run genre with shocking violence that hadn’t previously been possible in a high-profile release. This made the film a flashpoint between older audiences who dismissed it as exploitation and younger ones who saw it as a sign of the grittiness that would take over Hollywood movies for the next decade.

With two choices to go, I find myself having to evaluate my reasons behind this project. Then and now, one of the deciding factors was whether a film said something significant about the times in which it was made. And while it’s debatable whether this is the case with, say, Sunrise, I think it’s applicable to most of the movies I’ve chosen. It also, I think applies to Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night!, which even today stands as the pinnacle of rock’n’roll musicals. While rock was probably the most dominant force in Western media in the second half of the 1900s, there’s precious little of it on my list. Lester’s use of cinema vérité techniques to liven up the musical genre is also a factor in my decision, although not so much as the fact that it stars the biggest band the world has ever known at a time when they were in the process of changing popular culture forever.

But while I’m pondering what made me take on the project on the first place, I also find myself thinking over why I’m revisiting it now. Fifteen years down the line, I could look back at my old list like I look back on so many aspects of my youth, with amusement and slight derision at how young and foolish I was. But what good would that do? If I feel nostalgic for this particular part of my life, it’s because I know that it set me on a steady course as a movie lover, laying a strong foundation for my cinematic education. So with this in mind, my final selection is David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, which remains one of the most acclaimed and singular American films of the last quarter century. If nothing else, consider this my gift to the high-school me, whose mind surely would have been blown.

Here’s the New List:
The Birth of a Nation (1915, Griffith)
The General (1927, Keaton/Bruckman)
Sunrise (1927, Murnau)
Modern Times (1936, Chaplin)
The Wizard of Oz (1939, Fleming)
Citizen Kane (1941, Welles)
Casablanca (1942, Curtiz)
The Big Sleep (1946, Hawks)
A Matter of Life and Death (1946, Powell and Pressburger)
The Third Man (1949, Reed)
Sunset Blvd. (1950, Wilder)
Singin’ in the Rain (1952, Kelly/Donen)
The Searchers (1956, Ford)
Vertigo (1958, Hitchcock)
Lawrence of Arabia (1962, Lean)
A Hard Day’s Night! (1964, Lester)
Blowup (1966, Antonioni)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967, Penn)
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Kubrick)
Chinatown (1974, Polanski)
Jaws (1975, Spielberg)
Nashville (1975, Altman)
Apocalypse Now (1979, Coppola)
Raging Bull (1980, Scorsese)
Blue Velvet (1986, Lynch)

"Grim it up"?!?!?!?

After reading this, I’m pretty much done with Jeff Wells. I can handle his super-sounds-of-the-70s taste in movie and alpha-male posturing, and hell, I find his comically thin skin as amusing as anyone. But after reading his comments about child abuse I don’t think I can take any more. To tell abused and neglected children to “grim it up” in response to poor parenting is insensitive at best and dangerous at worst. I was lucky enough to grow up with parents who didn’t abuse me, but I know plenty of people who weren’t so fortunate, and I know from experience that the suffering adults inflict on children causes lifelong wounds, both physical and psychological. I came of age in a time when the idea of physical punishment of kids was being seriously called into question, and I wholeheartedly agree with nearly every child psychologist today that hitting your children does far more harm than good. Likewise, to willfully cause pain to someone you live is, to me anyway, fairly unthinkable.

But what really gets me is his remark that he “can tell you stories about my own messed-up childhood that’ll tear your heart out.” Oh, so you had a terrible childhood and you turned out OK, so that means every kid should be able to do it? I call foul on that remark. If you made it out fine, then bully for you. However, most children don’t have the temperament or the inner strength to suck it up when things get bad for them, especially when the bad stuff is coming at the hands of the person they look to first for help and guidance in life. For him to downplay the cost of child abuse so casually is, to my eyes, a glaring lack of the sort of empathy I abhor in others. If you can’t extend your heart to someone who’s suffering- particularly if you suffered from the same sort of pain- I don’t have much use for you in my life.

A Very Criterion Christmas!

Dig, if you will, this year's Christmas haul. Woohoo!






Hope you all got everything you wished for and more.

Last Days

As you may recall, last fall Muriel had some health problems last fall after she contracted an infection in one of her eyes. Needless to say, it was a pretty difficult time for me, and back then I didn’t know if she would make it. Once I saw her condition, I knew I would have to get it taken out, but because of the pain she stopped eating almost completely, and I ended up having to take her to the veterinary hospital to get them to make her eat again. My most vivid memory of this was from the drive to the hospital. I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other petting Muriel in her box, and again and again I did my best to reassure her. I’ve always been the sort of person to talk to animals as if they could understand, and before we entered the hospital, I looked down at her and said, “I’m going to make sure you’re not in pain anymore. No matter what, I don’t want you to hurt.”

While I waited for the doctors to finish working on Muriel, I reconciled myself to the idea that she might not survive her illness. I even said “goodbye” to her before they took her back to the examination area, just in case. So when she started to eat again, putting back on enough weight that she could have the infected eye removed, I was naturally grateful. As you already know, she survived that surgery as well. After she recovered from the illness and became her ornery self again, we started joking around the house that she was indestructible.

Of course, this wasn’t true. Guinea pigs are small and fairly fragile creatures, and their life span averages roughly four years. When she fell ill again last weekend, it had been a little over four years since I first brought her home, and she had lived to a fairly good age for her species. And because guinea pigs are so delicate, I didn’t want to run the risk of putting her under the knife again. After all, we had fought off death together once already, and I didn’t want to risk tempting fate again. So instead, I decided to spend one last night with my Muriel, cradling her to my chest as I gave her water from her bottle. If I was really going to have to say goodbye, I wanted to do it at home, surrounded by the family (human and canine alike) who had grown to love her these past four years. And when she passed away in her sleep that night, I thought that was just about the best she could have gone, much better than I feared would happen when she was sick last year.

Goodbye, Muriel. Thank you for being part of my life.

Sad news

Sad news for you Muriel lovers- our little girl, who graciously lent her name to everyone's favorite online movie awards, passed away during the night at the age of 4. I'll try to post some thoughts about her soon, but until then here's a link to an appreciation I wrote about her prior to the 2009 Muriels:

Click here to read my post about Muriel from 6 February 2010

Muriel has been there for me through a lot of changes in my life, and she will be greatly missed.

R.I.P. Victoria

When I brought Muriel home on Halloween 2006, it was because I needed a furry companion in my life. By contrast, I brought Victoria home so that Muriel would have a friend of her own. When I bought Victoria, I imagined that she and Muriel would get along swimmingly, chasing each other playfully around their shared cage and snuggling up next to each other when it time to sleep, which would essentially double the adorability factor of one of nature’s most adorable sights, a sleeping guinea pig. Well, that didn’t happen. From the beginning, the two new “friends” didn’t get along. I couldn’t put them together for more than a minute or so before some kind of dust-up would begin. As it turns out, this was because Victoria had her own friends that she brought with her- including the late Charlotte- to be born a month or so later.

Likewise, it took Victoria longer to get used to living with me. At the pet store, she was a sweetheart, even falling asleep in my hand while I held her. But after I brought her home, she became restless. She would take hours to fall asleep at night, and eventually I had to start putting a towel on top of her cage to help her fall asleep and turn on a fan so her late-night activity wouldn’t keep me awake. Also, there were a few instances when I was holding her that she actually jumped out of my hands and tried to run away. More than once I had to (carefully, of course) move around all my furniture in order to find her.

But eventually, she settled down. Having babies helped, I think. And once she did, I was better able to appreciate Victoria in terms of her own personality rather than as a would-be accessory for Muriel. It’s funny how guinea pigs, which seem to be little more than fur, squeak, and appetite, can fit so much personality into those tiny bodies. While Muriel was bright-eyed and ornery and Charlotte was curious, Victoria was always warm and affectionate. Of the three, Victoria was the one who enjoyed being held the most. Sometimes I would prop her front paws up on my finger and raise up her front end so that I could rub her belly, which was her favorite spot. Other times, I would simply lie her down on my chest and cradle her. Unlike Muriel and Charlotte, she wouldn’t try to jump off or poke her nose about, but simply relax in my hands.

Victoria and Charlotte were an inseparable team until Charlotte passed away earlier this year. But after Charlotte died, I began to notice Victoria open herself up more to the world. While she had previously been skittish around our dogs, she became more comfortable with them. And she even seemed to warm up to Muriel. I even began to notice her chomping on the bars of her cage when she was hungry, just like Muriel does.

Alas, that’s part of the past now, since Victoria passed on over the weekend. I buried her yesterday in our backyard under a tree, right next to her baby. It’s strange to think that a year ago I had three guinea pigs, and now I only have the one, and that one only has one eye. For the time being, I think that rather than buying a new guinea pig to replace the ones I’ve lost, I’ll content myself with Muriel. I have plenty of others to love in my life now, of both the human and furry variety. But as Angela eloquently put it, Victoria and Charlotte were there when I needed them, and for that I’ll always be grateful.

Note on comments moderation

Due to a rather annoying influx of spam on this and my other blogs of late, I'll be enabling comment moderation here. This means that if you post a comment here, it won't be available for viewing until I've had a chance to OK it. Sorry if this is a pain, but I'm just kind of sick of people I don't know leaving links to sites I couldn't care less about just to reel in web business. I'm committed to keeping Silly Hats Only non-commercial, and I just can't abide people trying to hijack the thread like this. Anyway, sorry for the inconvenience buds. I don't plan on deleting any posts other than obvious spam, and I might even allow one or two of those if they happen to be as amusing as this one.

Call it morning driving thru the sound and in and out the valley

So far, there’s been a pretty great response all around to this year’s White Elephant Blogathon. And guess what, folks? It’s not over yet! Just today, I received notification from Muriels voter Philip Tatler that he’s resurrected his long-dormant blog for the purposes of posting a review of his White Elephant assignment, Ken Russell’s Crimes of Passion. And not long after, Richard Gorelick of 75/50/25 linked me to his review of Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare. Click the links in the post below to check them out, and if you haven’t had time to read the other reviews yet, they’re all worth a look. So yeah, I’m pretty happy with how it’s turned out so far, and if all goes well there will be at least a few more reviews before it’s all said and done. Why, it’s almost enough to make me forget all about those horrible drivers out there.

(Yes, this is going to be another rant about bad driving. Deal.)

Today’s targets are those people who haven’t quite figured out how to deal with those newfangled “roundabouts” that are popping up nowadays. Personally, I think they’re fairly easy to navigate. But try telling that to the guy who nearly plowed into the side of my car this morning trying to enter the roundabout. So for that guy, and all the other mental flyweights who sacrifice all common sense whenever they climb behind the wheel, here’s a short list I’ve compiled of roundabout rules:

1. Roundabouts are designed as a replacement for the conventional intersection. Rather than simply turning in the direction of his desired street, the motorist navigates around a small circle in a counterclockwise direction until he finds himself in a position to turn right on the desired street. Thankfully, I haven’t noticed anyone who hasn’t figured this out already. Still, it’s worth mentioning all the same.

2. The traffic that is already in the roundabout has the right of way. This means that if you’re waiting at the roundabout for an opening in traffic, you’re just gonna have to be patient and watch carefully for a real opening instead of speeding implusively into traffic in an attempt to create one. If you can’t handle that, then tough shit, because if you hit someone it’s your bloody fault.

3. That said, once you’re in the flow of traffic in the roundabout, you should do your level best to keep traffic moving. Naturally, if there’s a choice between applying the brakes and mowing somebody down, then by all means slow down or stop. But other than that, there’s no discernible reason (at least, not as far as I can imagine) to stop once you’ve entered the roundabout. Pull the car in, drive around, and drive out again. Pretty basic, I’d say.

4. Likewise, it behooves you (and everyone else around you) to slow the hell down once you’ve entered the roundabout. This means that roundabouts should not be taken at 45 MPH. Better to slow down a little and be careful than speed up and cause an accident that’ll slow you down even more, right?

5. Roundabouts have been around in Europe for years, and for some in America the sight of a roundabout conjures up images of motorists in Paris or Rome speeding around in a circle and jockeying for position like the famed chariot race in Ben-Hur. This shouldn’t happen. In my experience, most roundabouts have clearly marked lanes designed to feed drivers into different streets. These should be observed at all times, particularly during high-traffic hours. And yes, this means that if you miss your desired turn, you’ll just have to drive around again. I mean, it’s not called a “roundabout” for nothing after all.

So, what reason could I possibly have to write this post? Last night, someone damn near ran me off the road trying to make a right turn from the left-hand lane. Seriously- are roundabouts that bloody hard? I’d like to think that if one uses a little common sense (a precious commodity, I know) behind the wheel, and shows a little consideration for others on the road, a post like this won’t be necessary. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case, so I’ve done this for the benefit of those who require it. That goes double for you, dingbat teenager who rear-ended Ang a few months ago.

As for you other smart drivers out there, there’s no need to thank me. I like to think I’m doing the Lord’s work here. Consider it preemptive penance for the curse Victor put on me…

Saving Gracefully

Tax returns are due tomorrow, and while for some people this portends a healthy return check, I’m not so lucky. For the third year in a row, I’ve owed a good chunk of change to Uncle Sam (and his stately progeny, Cousin Ted). I’m hoping this will be the final year that this will happen to me- writing for Screengrab was a blast, but they didn’t take out any taxes from my check, leading me to grit my teeth every April 15.

Being bled again this year- funny, $600 in taxes doesn’t feel like that much until you have to pay it all at once- has naturally strengthened by resolve to save money whenever possible. But unlike when I was living alone and I could simply rely on Netflix and the Columbus Public Library system to keep me entertained and the good folks at Maruchan to feed me, now that I’ve got Ang and the Offspring it’s gotten a little more complicated. After all, while you can tell a kid until you’re blue in the face that when you buy Frosted Flakes you’re mostly paying for the tiger on the box, there’s just something about the young boy’s taste buds that won’t allow store brands of their favorite products to pass muster.

And it’s more than just the finickiness of a child’s eating habits- it just feels right for a family to sit down and enjoy a full meal, both as a wrap-up to the day and as a bonding ritual that allows everyone to get together at least once a day as a unit. And when you’re having a honest-to-goodness dinner, you want something good, not just something edible. It’s not just about filling your stomachs- it’s about relaxing and enjoying some time together. At least, that’s what I like my dinners to be.

So how to reconcile my goal of saving money with my desire to provide my family with tasty, nutritious dinners? The most obvious change would be to make the switch to store brands in some cases. Of course, Tony the Tiger and pals will still find their way into my grocery cart, but in the cases with many staples of my diet- pasta, for example- the store brands work just as well for our purposes as the name brands do. In addition, I’m trying to be keep a closer eye on the sales and promotions at the supermarket and, if necessary, do some quick mental computations to determine the best value. This can be tricky, as the general assumption is that the larger sizes tend to have a lower per-unit cost, but this isn’t always the case. For example, a few weeks ago Kroger was selling a pack of eight Pop Tarts on sale for $1.88, and a box of twelve for almost twice that amount. So much for conventional wisdom.

Perhaps the biggest way we’ve been trying to cut down on food expenses is to start looking for homemade alternatives to restaurant or carry-out food. Naturally, there are always going to be times when there’s no alternative but to eat out. Now that spring is here, the Offspring is busy with sports, so whenever he’s got a game there really isn’t time for anything BUT carry-out. However, if you’re serious about saving money, you can’t let restaurant eating become your default choice just because you don’t feel like cooking.

One thing we’ve tried lately is to overhaul our weekly pizza dinner. Whereas we once relied on pizza-delivery chains to take care of the meal, recently we’ve started buying the ingredients at the grocery store and preparing the pizzas at home. This is easier than one might think- pre-made crusts are tasty and reasonably priced, and pizza sauce, cheese, and toppings don’t cost a whole lot, unless of course you’re topping your pizzas with expensive meats and hoity-toity veggies. As for us, we tend to stick with the old reliable pepperoni (or just cheese for the Offspring).

After my last ingredients run, I itemized the cost of preparing two pizzas, one pepperoni and one cheese. Here’s what I came up with:

Pre-made 12 inch pizza crusts (2) - $5
12 oz. mozzarella cheese - $3
12 oz. pizza sauce - $1
½ pack (~50) slices pepperoni - $1.50
Total - $10.50

Of course, this doesn’t factor in the smaller costs such as spices, butter or olive oil to brush on the crusts, and gas for the oven, but those would take the cost up to $11, tops. Not bad at all for two pizzas.

So, you ask, how did they turn out? Not to sound immodest, but pretty darn good, especially for a non-professional cook like myself. The Offspring was especially fond of the cheese pizza, eating an unheard-of-for-him four slices. And it even passed the all-important next-day test- after all, any pizza worth its sauce will still be good after a night in the fridge. Now, I wouldn’t claim that my homemade pizzas were as good as the ones we order from the local delivery joints. Then again, those usually run us about twice the cost of the homemade ones, and they certainly aren’t twice as good as the homemade kind. And considering that (a) it takes less time to have a pizza on the table when you make it yourself than when you order one, and (b) the Offspring can help out it he wants, I think I’ll keep on baking my pizzas at home, thank you very much.

To that end, I’ve been puzzling out ways to make our pizzas even better. Maybe next time I’ll pick up some provolone to lace in with the mozzarella, or some onions or peppers to add some zing to the toppings. In addition, I’m trying to find other restaurant favorites I can learn to whip up at home. Anybody know of some good (and fairly simple) Chinese recipes? Because that would be awesome.

Unhappy Motoring

OK, so I’ve been away for a while, which seems to be the typical way things work around here during the month or so after the Muriels. What can I say- I’ve been swamped lately, and I just haven’t had a lot of energy to keep updating the blog. Sorry about that, folks. And though I’d like to say that what got me to come back was the opportunity to write about a movie that was just too good not to share with the rest of you, the truth is that my motivation for this post is an inspiration as old as blogging itself- namely, the chance to write about something that pisses me off. If nothing else, I figure this might cleanse the palate in anticipation of more substantial writing that I hope will come in the near future.

So… what’s burning my brisket nowadays? In short, it’s those drivers on the highway who won’t scoot over so that others can enter the flow of traffic. Don’t you hate that? Think about it- you’ve just gotten on the on-ramp and are trying to accelerate to 65 mph. Sometimes, that’s a tricky proposition- there might be a steep incline, a sharp bend, multiple entrances to the ramp that need to merge into one before the cars hit the freeway. Heck, every once in a while it’ll be two or even three of these things. In short, you want to bring your car up to highway speed so that you won’t slow down everyone else.

Yet these idiots just mosey along in the far-right lane, not thinking about everyone who’s trying to enter. They cruise along at full speed like they’re the only ones on the road. And yes, I realize that technically, the drivers who are already on the highway have the right-of-way. But you know what? It’s called courtesy. It’s one thing when it’s rush hour and all lanes are filled with cars so that there really isn’t anywhere you can move to so that others can get in. I can understand that. It’s when no one else is around that this behavior annoys the hell out of me.

Take, for example, the humanitarian I encountered last night whilst trying to hop on I-670. It was 9:30 PM, so the roads weren’t exactly jam-packed. So there I am, trying to speed up my not-exactly-new car to enter the highway. As I approach the straightaway portion of the ramp, I see this guy in my rear-view mirror, speeding forward like nothing’s the matter. As a way of letting him know that I plan on merging with his lane (which was my only choice in this situation), I hit my left-turn signal. But he doesn’t move. What ends up happening then is that I scoot over into the shoulder and lean on the horn to express my displeasure.

So what does God's gift to the gene pool do next? He flips me the bird.

Really, fucko? REALLY? So it’s not enough that you nearly sent me careening into a concrete barrier (I’m not exaggerating) simply because you felt the need to stand your ground- how very Alpha Male of you!- but then you’ve got the nerve to fly the bird at me simply because I got in your way? That just won’t do, bud. It’s bad enough when you lack the courtesy to accommodate your fellow motorists, but when you more or less broadcast your pride in being discourteous- well, you just crossed the Curtis line, dickhead.

Coming soon on Things That Piss Paul Off: guys who can’t be bothered to lift the toilet seat in public restrooms. Seriously dudes, that’s just nasty.

In Memoriam: Charlotte

Out of my three guinea pigs, Charlotte was the only one who was born under my roof. Consequently, she was the only one whose birthday I knew for certain- March 9, 2007. I remember clearly the day she was born. It was a Friday night, the end of a long work week, and I came home that night with the idea of catching a late movie. I even remember that the movie was The Lives of Others- strange, the way some movie lovers associate movies with particular events, innit? Anyway, after having a bite to eat and feeding Muriel and Victoria, I decided to take a quick nap before the movie. An hour or so later, I woke up to discover that Victoria wasn’t alone in her cage.

At first, I thought her new roommates were mice- they were roughly the size of domesticated mice. But no, these rodents didn’t have any tails. Then it hit me- Victoria had babies. After thoroughly inspecting Muriel to be sure she wasn’t concealing something, I discerned that Victoria had come home from the store with a few, shall we say, bonus features. This would certainly explain the hostility that Muriel had toward Victoria- after all, she was throwing off all kinds of hormones from the time I’d brought her home. What really sticks out in my mind about that day is that I hadn’t heard a thing. Sure, I was taking a nap, but Victoria’s cage was right next to my bed, and you’d think that a guinea pig giving birth might make some noise. Nope, at least not loud enough to wake me up.

I spoke with a local pet rescue group about getting the babies adopted, and while they told me they’d be happy to take them off my hands, I would have to keep them for at least a month so that Victoria could nurse them. As these little creatures grew, so did their personalities, and I became attached to all three even before I was able to discern their sexes. This, by the way, was how I came up with Charlotte’s name- for a while I thought all three of the babies were female, and being the pompous humanities major I am, I decided to name them after the Brontë sisters. Eventually, I discovered that Anne was Andy, but Charlotte’s name stuck all the same.

But I digress. The three little piggies grew and flourished under their mother’s watchful eye, and although my original plan was to give all three of them away, I soon decided it best to hold on to one, partly because I couldn’t bear to part with them, but also because I thought Victoria would want some company. After some thought, I settled upon the idea of keeping Charlotte. One reason for this was for the sake of adoption- most adopters prefer their guinea pigs with smooth, silky fur, and although both Emily and Anne/Andy had straight fur (presumably like their absent father), Charlotte got her kinkier coat from her mother. Fearing that this could keep her from finding a good home, I decided to keep her for myself.

But beyond that, of the three little ones, I had grown closest to Charlotte. More than the others, she had developed a charming and sweet personality, mixed with a degree of animal intelligence that the others didn’t have. This sweetness comes through most clearly for me on the day I had to say goodbye to the others- after leaving them with the rescue group, I returned home to find Charlotte searching all over her cage, trying to find her now-absent siblings and playmates. It would have been adorable if not for how sad it was. I made sure to comfort her (and Victoria as well) that night, but I could tell she missed them, and I did too. Just because it had to be done didn’t make it easy.

I can’t say whether Charlotte forgot about her siblings over time, but she and Victoria remained a team from that point forward. I kept the two of them in the same cage, and while they had the occasional conflict (as mothers and daughters are prone to do), it was also apparent that they were close and cared about each other a great deal. Whenever it was time to eat, they would wait patiently near the opening of the cage, and at bedtime they’d snuggle up next to each other before going to sleep.

I always felt a little guilty whenever I would intrude on this closeness, but Charlotte and I nonetheless enjoyed a good relationship. Of my three girls, she was the most reluctant to be handled (possibly because she never had to live at the pet store), but she always enjoyed being seated on my chest. Every guinea pig has a spot where she especially enjoys people petting her, and Charlotte’s was just above her hind legs. Whenever I would pet her there, she would let out a long, pleasurable purr, which was enough to provide a little warmth for my heart.

As you may already be aware, Saturday night I discovered that Charlotte has passed away. But I’d rather not think of her lying there, lifeless, in her cage, or of the fact that she wasn’t even three years old (guinea pigs have an average lifespan of 5 to 6 years). No, I want to remember her as she lived- sweet, well-behaved, but also full of life and curiosity. I want to remember how she was the only one of my girls who would sit still when getting her nails trimmed. Or how she absolutely hated baths. Or the way she would defer to Victoria when I filled up their pellet food, but couldn’t restrain herself when it was time for lettuce. Or her adorable squeak- not as loud as Victoria’s or as insistent as Muriel’s, but just as attention-grabbing in its way. Or, yes, the day she discovered that her brother and sister had gone away.

Somewhere, someday, I hope she finds them again.

Muriel

I recently realized that, considering all I’ve written about the Muriels Awards in the past four years, I’ve written precious little about the inspiration for their name. For those of you who don’t know, the name for the Muriels came from that of my little guinea pig, who I’d bought a few months prior to getting these awards started. And while the Muriels name was originally intended as a placeholder until a better suggestion came along, I think it’s worked out pretty well, don’t you?

But what about Muriel herself? This past year has been an eventful one for us, which has gotten me thinking about the effect she’s had on my life. Back in October, Muriel had some health problems, which I discovered when I found that her eye was glazed over and swollen. In most small animals, the only thing that can be done for this is to remove the eye. Unfortunately, the pain from the infected eye was affecting her appetite as well, her weight began to drop, and the veterinarian refused to perform the surgery on Muriel until her weight level began to rise again, for fear that other complications would arise from the operation.

As you can imagine, this was a difficult time in my life. I tried to do everything I could to get Muriel to eat, but nothing worked. Not eating for a guinea pig is especially dangerous, since their digestive tract must remain active at all times, and if their digestive cycle stops altogether then it’s almost impossible to start it back up again. Finally, I rushed her to the veterinary hospital where they were able to feed her some special solutions to rev up her appetite, but it was pretty touch-and-go up to that point. The drive to the hospital was especially hard, as I drove with one hand on the wheel and the other trying to comfort her, fearing that this might be the last time we spend together.

It was then that it dawned on me just how important this little rodent had become in my life. I first bought Muriel on Halloween back in 2006, when I was in a fairly rough spot. Only a few months before, I had moved back to Columbus after living in Akron for a year for family-related reasons. I had spent most of the time since I graduated from college trying (and failing) to make it as a writer, and I had finally buckled down and was trying something less exciting but more stable. But all I had going on back then was work, plus the occasional movie, and I decided I needed something to liven up my home life. A pet was in order, and having cared for guinea pigs when I was a kid, buying a guinea pig was the obvious choice.

Since that time, Muriel and her friends Victoria and Charlotte (who joined the family later) have seen me through a lot. I’ve been able to make a new path for my self in the last 3 ½ years. I’ve got a pretty good job, and I’m back in school to help me get a better one. And I’ve met a woman I love, and we’ve got our own little family, of which Muriel and friends are de facto members. I won’t say that none of these things would have been possible without Muriel, but I believe that taking care of a pet helps us to think outside ourselves, and I think that having to be responsible for Muriel has helped me to become more responsible in other aspects of my life as well.

And if nothing else, she’s given me plenty of laughter and animal companionship. I wouldn’t say that Muriel is my favorite of my three guinea pigs, but I’ve always enjoyed a much closer relationship with her than with Victoria or Charlotte. It’s more than simply the fact that I adopted her first- it’s that Victoria and Charlotte have always been close, whereas Muriel is more or less a loner, so she seems to enjoy spending time with me much more than the other two. Additionally- and I realize how odd this sounds, considering how small guinea pigs are- but she really does have an engaging personality (so to speak). She’s ornery as hell- as you may have seen from the pictures I post here, she chomps on the cage bars whenever she’s ready to eat- and she’s also much more excitable than the other two. But she’s also very affectionate, loves to be held, and has even made friends with our strange little pug.

All in all, I think Muriel has worked out better than I could have hoped when I first adopted her, and I’m looking forward to many more years both with her and with the awards that bear her name. Steve Carlson will be posting the winners over at his site beginning tomorrow- hope to see you there.

Accounting for Myself

Ever since Nerve dropped Screengrab like the proverbial bad habit this past May, I’ve struggled to continue my once-impressive output. Part of the reason for that is financial- I was getting paid for it before, and now that I’m working strictly pro bono it becomes that much harder to write for free than it was in the past. Consequently, it’s simply easier to occupy my time with other pursuits. As you know, I moved in with Angela and the Offspring this summer, and it’s been everything I’d hoped for. Not always easy, of course, but I’m certainly not having second thoughts about the decision.

In addition to the new demands of live-in boyfriend-hood and quasi-fatherhood, I’ve also been busy with some other pursuits. In January, I started taking college courses part-time, in the evenings and on weekends. I earned my B.A. back in 2001, but I have yet to do anything in my major field of study (Humanities, so duh), and now that I’ve got more financial responsibilities on my plate than I had before, I figured that it was time to go back to school to study something I can actually make a little money doing. So I’m studying Accounting, with the goal of becoming a CPA.

I hinted at this decision back in February when I resigned my post as head honcho of the Muriels- though I’m staying on in a consigliere-esque role- but I’ve kept mum on the details until now since I didn’t want to mention it until I was sure that I could actually handle it. It was a struggle at first, but I’ve been working hard and have gotten good grades to show for it, and it looks like I’ll be seeing this thing through to the end.

Since returning to school, I always hoped that I might be able to find time to keep the blog going as I once did, but seeing as how I’ve written only a handful of reviews since Screengrab folded, it looks like that isn’t going to happen. But in the interest of giving my fans some thoughts on the movies I’ve been seeing, I recently settled upon a solution- micro-reviews. That’s right- all of the 2009 releases I’ve seen will be compacted, processed, and packaged into an easily digestible ten-word format for your reading pleasure and critical enlightenment. In some cases, I’d like to think I captured the essence of these movies- or my feelings about them, anyway- with haiku-like precision. However, in others I couldn’t resist the urge to get a little silly.

Anyway, hope you enjoy. In a handful of instances, I've linked to longer piecesI've written about the films, or work by others that dovetails nicely with my own opinions. See if you can find them all!

In kinda-sorta-alphabetical order:

17 Again (Steers)- Remember, kids- follow your dreams, or you’ll become Matthew Perry. [5]

24 City (Jia)- Sorry, Jia fanboys. He doesn’t excite me. Maybe next time… [6]

500 Days of Summer (Webb)- Half insightful relationship tale, half cutesy bullshit. Good enough for me. [6]

Adoration (Egoyan)- Second-tier Egoyan, but in his classic style. I’m down. [6]

Angels and Demons (Howard)- Outpaces Da Vinci by embracing its ridiculousness. Still not great. [5]

Away We Go (Mendes)- Genuine emotion can’t overcome condescending script. Schneider almost saves it. [5]

The Beaches of Agnes (Varda)- A doodle, but by now I’d say she’s entitled. [6]

The Brothers Bloom (Johnson)- RJ’s ear for patois impeccable in Lesteresque romp with soul. [8]

Brüno (Charles)- Sometimes funny, occasionally probing, but man, the gag’s wearing thin. [5]

Capitalism: A Love Story (Moore)- See Brüno mini-review, only even more so. [5]

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (Lord/Miller)- Hilarious with a chance of charming. Animated Mr. T FTW. [7]

Coraline (Selick)- Selick finds his way again. Dark stop-motion eye candy. [7]

Crank 2: High Voltage (Neveldine/Taylor)- “Statham makes England look ****ing awesome” ~ ZMF. In this, anyway. [7]

Disney’s A Christmas Carol (Zemeckis)- Zemeckis’ best motion-capture epic thusfar. Decidedly not for kids. [7]

District 9 (Blomkamp)- Imperfect, but miles better than a Halo movie would’ve been. [6]

Drag Me to Hell (Raimi)- Will stop at nothing to entertain you. I wholeheartedly approve. [7]

Duplicity (Gilroy)- Trouble in Paradise for cynical times. Stellar turns all around. [8]

Extract (Judge)- Kind of a lazy, downmarket SERIOUS MAN. Lacks flavor (sorry). [4]

Fados (Saura)- One to let wash over you. Click for review. [7]

Fantastic Mr. Fox (Anderson)- Just what you’d expect, but in the best sense. Hotbox! [9]

Funny People (Apatow)- Inconsistent, sometimes insightful. Still not taken with Serious Adam Sandler. Click for review. [5]

G-Force (Yeatman)- Muriel, Victoria & Charlotte could whup these CGI cavies’ asses. [4]

The Girlfriend Experience (Soderbergh) I’d hate to meet this dude in a dark alley. [6]

Gomorrah (Garrone)- Well-made, but eventually I just stopped giving a shit. [6]

Goodbye Solo (Bahrani)- Low-key friendship story mostly avoids cliché. Red West supercool. [7]

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Yates)- Mostly setup, thus kinda unsatisfying. #7 shows real potential though. [5]

The Headless Woman (Martel)- Fascinating enigma warrants second view, along with other Martel films. [7]

Hotel for Dogs (Freudenthal)- Clumsy, almost painfully square, but sunny and awfully good-natured. Click for review. [5]

Hunger (McQueen)- Less artsy stunt that I’d feared. Double-feature with Papillon. [7]

The Hurt Locker (Bigelow)- Only Beckham stuff holds this back from being a 10. [9]

In the Loop (Iannucci)- Deliciously salty as a big bag of pretzels. Cast awesome. [7]

The Informant! (Soderbergh)- “Man, I’d be invisible if it wasn’t for that thing.” [7]

Inglourious Basterds (Tarantino)- Watch first to marvel, then to relish. “It’s a bingo!!” [9]

Inkheart (Softley)- Decent family adventure, full of eminent thesps clearly enjoying themselves. [5]

Julia (Zonca)- Muriel FYC: Tilda Swinton. “Are ya shot?” Brilliant stuff. [8]

Land of the Lost (Silberling)- Obviously crap, but it’s so gleefully silly I hardly cared. [6]

The Limits of Control (Jarmusch)- Artsy slog, or poker-faced self-parody? Jarmusch ain’t telling. [6]

Lorna’s Silence (Dardenne bros.)- Dardennes: best bet in world cinema? They’re surely up there. Click for review. [9]

Monsters vs. Aliens (Letterman/Vernon)- Harmless, fairly amusing. Will inevitably see this a million times. [5]

Observe and Report (Hill)- Misanthropy curdles into sheer ugliness. Good thing it’s really funny. [7]

Paranormal Activity (Peli)- No Blair Witch, but effective LoFi horror all the same. [6]

Ponyo (Miyazaki)- Gorgeous, younger-skewing than most Miyazaki. Shame about the song. [7]

Public Enemies (Mann)- Solid, but please, Michael Mann- go back to film already. [6]

Revanche (Spielmann)- Trades action thrills for laser-like focus. Chop that log! [7]

A Serious Man (Coen bros.)- Compelling pieces, frustrating whole. Listless doormat protagonist. Coen naysayers right? [5]

Star Trek (Abrams)- My eyes are still reeling from the bright white bridge. Click for review. [6]

Sugar (Fleck/Boden)- More on its mind than baseball, usually to its benefit. [6]

Summer Hours (Assayas)- What he said re: Toy Story 2. Weep for furniture. [8]

Taking Woodstock (Lee)- Staunton’s arc made me want to punch something. Otherwise forgettable forgotten. [4]

Tetro (Coppola)- Operatic emotions, gorgeous style smooth over Freudian narrative. More, please. [8]

Three Monkeys (Ceylan)- All this ugliness gets stifling. NBC, you can do better. [5]

Tony Manero (Larrain)- Galling study of human train wreck, with Pinochet-era implications. [6]

Treeless Mountain (Kim)- Decent story of childhood hardship takes off in final third. [6]

Tulpan (Dvortsevoy)- Ethnographically awesome, otherwise pretty okay. So that’s a yurt. [6]

The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Weitz)- Beats Twilight, that’s for sure. At least Weitz can direct. [5]

Two Lovers (Gray)- White Nights storyline still works. Come back, awesome actor Joaquin. [8]

Tyson (Toback)- Less enlightening than Toback seems to think it is. Pity. [5]

Up (Docter)- Still the filet of 2009. Cried at beginning, fer chrissakes. Click for review. [10]

Watchmen (Snyder)- “Meh” isn’t the emotion a Watchmen movie should warrant. Click for review. [5]

Whatever Works (Allen)- Allen/David pairing somehow not awesome. Wait- late Woody. Nevermind. [5]

Where the Wild Things Are (Jonze)- Bracing anarchy gives way to emo fuzzies. What gives, Spike? [6]

You, the Living (Andersson)- A Songs coda, but why complain? Andersson’s images still spectacular. [8]

Zombieland (Flesicher)- Prefab cult hit gets the job done. Guest cameo kills. [6]

Also, I’ll be maintaining a running tally of all the 2009 releases I’ve seen. The link can be found in the sidebar. On this page you’ll also see a list of movies which, for whatever reason, I haven’t managed to see yet. Some of them are still in theatres, others on DVD, and still others haven’t found their way to Central Ohio just yet. If you can hook me up with some of the harder-to-find titles, I’d be eternally grateful, so feel free to drop me a line.

Oh, and by the way- Famous Last Words kicks off again in January. So stick around a while, will ya?

The only new Thanksgiving recipe you'll need this year

With Thanksgiving coming up, it’s easy to get excited for all of the traditional foods of the season. Naturally, everyone is anticipating the old favorites- dressing, gravy, (s)mashed potatoes, Tofurkey, and the like. But let’s not overlook that classic creation, everyone’s favorite gun-metal grey veggie-centric delicacy, green bean casserole. Of course, not everyone has been so blessed to have grown up on this savory treat. If that’s the case, you’re in luck. I hereby bequeath to you, my loyal readership, the world’s greatest recipe for Green Bean Casserole.

Paul’s Impossibly Easy Green Bean Casserole
Ingredients:
2 16 oz cans green beans, drained
2 16 oz cans cream of mushroom soup, not drained
1 can French-fried onions, also not drained

1. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Eat one can of green beans as quickly as possible.
3. Eat one can of mushroom soup as quickly as possible.
4. Repeat steps 1 and 2.
5. Vomit contents of stomach into 9-by-12 casserole dish. Induce vomiting, if necessary, only by physical means, either by having a family member or friend administer the Heimlich maneuver or performing it on yourself using the back of a chair. Remember, catch as much as you can in casserole dish to avoid cleanup issues afterwards.
6. Sprinkle onions on top of beans-soup-stomach acid mixture.
7. Place casserole into oven until rancid odor permeates the house and overwhelms the appetizing smells of your other Thanksgiving fare. Remove from oven and serve to gullible guests.

As you can probably guess, I don’t care much for green bean casserole, or it will henceforth be referred to by me, “bean barf.” Of course, I realize that it’s one of those love/hate foods, and I know plenty of otherwise sensible people (including the lovely Angela) who are fans of the stuff. But I find it pretty disgusting, even when it’s made using more conventional methods than the ones I employ above.

Part of it is that the combination of tasty veggies and cream soup seems a fairly unholy alliance. If I’m in the mood for green beans, I want them as unadorned as possible, with some butter and occasionally a few slivers of almond. What I don’t want is for them to be drowning in a heavy cream soup, particularly not if said soup turns the beans from a vibrant green to a grey the color of volcanic ash. I suppose it doesn’t help that I discovered about ten years back that I’m allergic to mushrooms. But then again, my allergy does free me from the burden of having to ever eat bean barf, even out of politeness. The younger me, whose parents thankfully never made the stuff but who often found himself having to “take just a little bit” out of courtesy when visiting others, would be green- or grey, as the case may be- with envy.

So Happy Thanksgiving, everybody, and enjoy your bean barf. Or, if you’re like me, don’t.

A missive from Hiatusville

Hey there folks. You may have noticed that I haven’t posted anything in the last month or so. Rest assured that I’m doing fine. I’m just really, really busy. I’ll write more about it when I’ve gotten it under control, but for now I’ll just leave it at that.

What’s more, I simply haven’t felt very inspired lately. Normally, I would have posted a Criterion Watch just to have some new content on the blog. However, seeing as how last month’s announcement was a massive box set of Akira Kurosawa movies, I didn’t see much of a point. Being a quality-over-quantity kind of guy, I can’t get too worked up about the notion of spending several hundred dollars on a box of bare-bones editions of Kurosawa movies, most of which Criterion has already done up right. Then again, I sort of felt the same way about the Essential Art House box a few years back, but that didn’t stop others from declaring it, well, “Essential”.

Finally, an update on my progress with the Nobel Project. Or more precisely, the lack thereof. My original goal being to start with the then-most-recent winner and work back in time backfired when I couldn’t make it through the first thirty pages or so of J.M.G. le Clézio’s The Interrogation. Maybe it was a bad translation, but I found the style of it really alienating, full of endless paragraphs and the like. Perhaps I’ll re-evaluate my plan of attack on the Nobel laureates- start with a few that really interest me (Lewis, Coetzee, Garcia Marquez, etc.)- before progressing to the others. I’ll even try le Clézio again when I’m in a better frame of mind. And sometime in the near future, I’ll find time to work in next year’s (co-)winner(s), the staff of the Onion AV Club, and their new Inventory book.

Anyway, look for new content here later today. And thanks for sticking around.

Everything's better with fried plantains on the side.

Ever since I moved in with Angela back in July, there have been some incidental changes that have taken some getting used to on my part. For one thing, while I once lived more or less in the city, Hilliard (my new stomping grounds) is fairly suburban, and naturally this means a lot more driving. Most of my regular destinations (work, school, my movie theatres of choice) tend to be a twenty minute drive or more, which may not sound like much to those of you who are used to New York/L.A. commutes, but is much more than I’m used to. Still, it’s not all bad- how could it be, when I’m with Ang and the offspring full-time now? In addition, Hilliard offers some unique amenities of its own, beginning with one of my favorite restaurants in town, the Starliner Diner.

Situated comfortably atop a hill on Cemetary Road just west of a set of railroad tracks, the Starliner is an unassuming little storefront operation. But once you’re inside, the place reveals its true character. Its walls are covered with murals and trinkets- one wall is devoted almost entirely to retro clocks- but it’s hardly the designer bric-a-brac that lines your local Applebee’s. At Starliner the surroundings are more than background noise- they’re indicative of the off-kilter quirkiness of the joint, and provide easy conversations starters to first-time visitors. This isn’t your father’s greasy spoon, that’s for sure.

But of course the real draw of Starliner is the food. Rather than sticking to the traditional diner fare of middle-of-the-road sandwiches and soups, Starliner delivers a distinctively Latin flair with its menu. So while you can still get a burger’n’fries, there’s plenty to satisfy more adventurous diners. Sandwich-wise, I highly recommend the Cajun Chicken Melt (loaded with bacon and cheese, plus veggies that include a slice of avocado) and the classic Cuban Sandwich. The latter is a dead-pig-lover’s delight, piled high with both flavorful pork and just-salty-enough ham, plus the requisite cheese, yellow mustard and pickles- though if you’re like me, you’ll want extra pickles.

And the goodness doesn’t stop there, since Starliner has a wide array of sides and appetizers. Most meals come with fries or tortilla chips, but I recommend substituting (for a small fee) the addictive fried plantains or the sweet potato fries, which are complemented perfectly by the Starliner’s chipotle Ranch dressing. And if you’re really hungry, start off your meal with an order of the black bean nachos- the order’s big enough to share, and they’re so flavorful that adding meat would be overdoing it. The Starliner also makes tasty burritos, pastas, and entrees, all with their trademark pizzazz.

It wasn’t until more recently, however, that I managed to discover Starliner’s tasty breakfast menu. I’ve quickly become a fan of their Huevos Rancheros, served with either home fries or black beans, although you can ask for half-and-half. Even better are their pancakes, which are- no exaggeration- some of the best I’ve ever tasted. These plate-filling flapjacks are cooked to a pleasing shade of golden brown, and are fluffy without being doughy- no mean feat, that. Starliner’s menu also offers banana pancakes, which I highly recommend- the fruitiness nicely offsets the sweetness of the pancake batter and the table syrup. Sometimes they also offer chocolate chip or blueberries with the pancakes as well, and while the chocolate (which I haven’t tried) seems like it would be overkill, the plump, fresh blueberries make the already tasty ‘cakes even better. Their breakfasts are so comfort-food addictive that it’s probably a good thing that they keep wonky breakfast hours- open at 9 AM, after most of us are at work.

Like any good diner, Starliner offers a good selection of daily specials to complement their menu, and they’re almost always intriguing enough to make me second-guess my meal choice- for example, on my last breakfast visit they offered a fascinating pairing of crab cakes and eggs. But really- you can’t go wrong with anything at Starliner, at least not in my experience. I’ve tried a good number of their dishes, and everything I’ve tried I’d recommend. So if you ever find yourself up in Hilliard, drop in at Starliner. Heck, drop me a line and I’ll be seriously tempted to join you.

Where I've Been

I just realized it’s been more than two weeks since I last updated this thing, which despite my agenda generally being packed is practically unprecedented for me. Anyway, here I am, alive and well, and busy as ever. Besides work and Screengrab, I’ve been spending plenty of time with Angela, which of course has been great. I even went to the Ohio Renaissance Festival with her and her child (henceforth to be known as The Offspring), wearing a costume she made for me. I’ll spare you the photos for the time being, but I had a great time. Lots of fun to be had, even if the place was swarming with jerks who took every opportunity to gawk at those who actually dressed for the festivities (what did they think it was, the county fair?). Still, I enjoyed myself, and if nothing else I’ll take away the memory of The Offspring, in deep concentration while playing the Diabolo I bought as a gift.

In addition, Angela and I (sans Offspring this time) spent much of this past weekend together. Attended my first hockey game on Friday night, with OSU taking on Lake Superior St. OSU lost, but still a good time. One thing that isn’t conveyed on televised games is how fast the players move. I’ve always been hopeless on ice skates, so I’m sort of in awe of how they bolted all over the ice like it was no big deal. But then, they’ve probably been doing it all their lives, so I’m guessing it wasn’t a big deal. Anyway, between this, a long nostalgic discussion I had last week about the NBA of my youth, and my recently re-emerging interest in Major League Baseball, I suppose I’m less of an anti-sports curmudgeon than I’d previously thought. Although I still couldn't care less about football.

And Saturday night Angela and I took in the Horror Marathon. Wasn’t sure she’d be down with it, but I think she enjoyed it at least as much as I did, although it didn’t look like she got into Meet the Feebles as much as I. Alas, we had to bail before it was over, a sad side effect of our having to work regular 9-to-5 hours during the week. You might say I’ve gotten assimilated.

In short, my girlfriend rocks. Need more proof? She loved Lawrence of Arabia when we saw it in 70mm a few weekends back.

Somewhere in the middle of my busy schedule, I also found time to catch some new releases and review them for your enjoyment and edification. Click on the titles for my posts on W., Let the Right One In (shown at the Marathon), Miracle at St. Anna, Choke, and I Served the King of England.

Everything old is new again

Ever since my grandfather passed away in February, the family has struggled with getting his affairs in order. After moving Grandma into an assisted-living community (she's loving it there, by the way), they switched their energies to dividing up the possessions he left behind. And seeing as how it's October and the job isn't close to being finished, you can probably guess that there was quite a bit to sort through. Truth is, Grandpa and Grandma lived in the same house for more than fifty years, and in that time one can accrue a whole lot of stuff.

It was sort of strange visiting the old house on Saturday for the first time since Grandpa passed away. All of the curtains were drawn, and the furniture was in unfamiliar places. All the personality and character of five decades' worth of living there had been drained from the place. It was no longer Grandma and Grandpa's home, simply another old house.

My Dad, who was with me at the time, asked me if I might be interested in taking any mementos of Grandpa. A few months ago, he got two of Grandpa's old candy dishes that were a fond memory of my youthful visits to his home. This time, I took an old fedora of his that he once wore to work, from back when men still did such things. What I found interesting about this hat wasn't simply that it once belonged to him- though that's certainly part of it. I also liked that it was an honest-to-goodness remnant of the past, rather than simply a bit of retro nostalgia that someone like Justin Timberlake might wear onstage. I've long been interested in the difference between vintage and retro, and I'd say this fedora falls comfortably in the former category. Hell, when I showed it to my mom, she immediately responded, "that looks like an old man's hat." But that's what I liked about it, that it belongs resolutely to the past.

As I was leaving the house, I noticed an old rotary telephone sitting on top of a chest. Naturally, this piqued my curiosity, and when closer inspection revealed not only an old-school phone jack (the wires had to be screwed into the wall) but also a label with the antiquated letter-prefix of "JEfferson-5", I knew I had to take it home with me. The old-fashioned style of phone prefixes has intrigued me for years, perhaps because it fell out of use before I was born but was still in effect during my parents' lifetimes, which makes it both alien and somehow familiar to me in a comforting way.

Now, I don't anticipate that I'll use the old telephone- which is even heavier than I'd remembered- in the way it was designed, but I'm sure I'll find a place for it in my home, just like the fedora will find its logical new place in my wardrobe. The candy bowls might hold candy again, or maybe something else entirely. The house will eventually be cleared out, cleaned, and sold to someone completely new. And Grandma, miles removed from where she was less than a year ago, is as happy as she's been in years. Life moves forward, with or without us.

Good news for everyone who's sick of the James Taylor video

Morning, folks! Did you miss me? I’m sure you’ve all wondered what I’ve been up to lately that was more important than posting here. Truth is, I haven’t been myself lately. I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong until yesterday, when I remembered that I hadn’t bought a DVD in over a month. Obviously, that really isn’t like me, so I promptly remedied the situation by running out and purchasing this:


I know- it’s not the kind of thing I usually go for. But there was actually a reason for this purchase. I’m not a huge fan of it myself, but it was a gift for my girlfriend and her son.

Yup. As Albert Brooks said in Broadcast News, “How do you like that? I buried the lead.”

Yes, recently I’ve found myself in a wonderful relationship with a lovely woman named Angela. It’s been too damn long since I’ve been this happy, either with myself or someone else. So I hope you’ll forgive me for being delinquent in my duties on this blog. Between Angela and work and Screengrab and Angela’s son and keeping up with new movies and Angela, something’s got to give. But I’m great, in case you’ve been worried. Pretty damn great, actually.

Moving on to other DVD news that you probably already knew about, here are the newly-announced Criterions for August:

First off is a new pressing of Salo, for the benefit of those of us who missed the three-hour window for it the first time around and couldn’t make it to the local indie video store before some punk decided to steal their copy. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Continuing Criterion’s commitment to the Archers, here’s probably the best-known Powell/Pressburger film I haven’t yet seen. I love these guys (though certainly not as much as Donna) so I’m stoked to get a chance to finally see this one.

This one’s new to me, but I’m sure I’ll rent it. Hell, since it’s Criterion I’ll give it a spin on general principle.

This may be the most intriguing of all the August releases. I wasn’t a big fan of the movie, but it should be worth the price simply for the dazzling array of announced narration tracks- Isabella Rossellini, Crispin Glover, Eli Wallach, Laurie Anderson, and more.

Finally, the best Criterion-related news I’ve gotten lately is this month’s animated riddle. A month after I wished Max Ophüls would finally get some Criterion love, I found this in my e-Mail:

Ask and ye shall receive in my opinion. Now maybe they can get around to releasing some high-quality versions of Jacques Rivette films. Hint, hint.

That’s all there is for now. I’ll do my best to keep this regularly updated in the future, but I make no promises. Please try to understand.

YouTubed Nostalgia Trip: James Taylor on Sesame Street

A few days ago on Twitter, longtime SLH bud Kent Beeson linked to a video of James Taylor performing on Sesame Street. He said he didn't remember it, but I sure did. It was actually one of my favorite episodes when I was little, not least because I was already familiar with Taylor because my mom listened to him. Now with the magic of YouTube I was able to see parts of the episode for the first time in a quarter of a century. Here's JT and friends performing "Jelly Man Kelly."



Two things stick out. First off, the tuba is a nice touch- gives it a whimsical and benign feel that a more conventional bassline might not have, and makes the music much more listenable whenever the kids are singing. But secondly, and more importantly, Taylor has a darn good rapport with the kids. He actually interacts with them, directing them to sing when the song reaches its refrain, then gently shushing them when it's time for the verses. It's easy to imagine the career he might have had as a children's entertainer had the recording-artist thing not worked out, and you definitely can't say that of all the guest stars on Sesame Street.