Movies

Tonight I got a bit of a rare treat, The Man Who Came To Dinner was on tonight. It seems that TCM has been doing Bette Davis all day, and I’ve missed some of my darn good movies :'(.

The man who came to dinner, is one of those films that is not on, but you just have to make waves to sit down and see it when it is! Sheridan Whiteside as portrayed by Monty Woolley, I feel is one of the best cantankerous characters I’ve ever encountered on the screen. Whiteside is the ultimate and supreme bastard, and one selfish mean old son of a bitch to say the least. It’s like take every chipper and nasty thought you ever had, roll it into a big tight ball, and let it roll on over everyone else kind of a part to see. Yeah, you could say I’m a “Nice guy” that envies such a bit lol. What can I say, the villian is always more fun then the hero, until the end of a story >_>.

Every time I watch the film, I always crack up, it really is deliciously funny. Oh, and when the sarcophagus shows up at the end…. mahuhauha! Although I would have to say, the thing wraps up in a hugemongus feat of deus ex machina; it is still hilarious. The second it arrived, my brain clicked, “Hmm, hey why not …”, and sure enough they did xD. I generally have an exceptionally fine memory for cinema compared to most of my peers, but this is a movie I get to see maybe once every year or three, so I can’t remember every single nuance of it, without a little jogging. And of course, the finale is a perfect and fitting ending to the whole scheme hehe.

And an excellent summery of just how nasty the old bastard is, here’s his Nurses parting words after friend Banjo chases her off:

Nurse Preen: I am not only walking out on this case, Mr. Whiteside, I am leaving the nursing profession. I became a nurse because all my life, ever since I was a little girl, I was filled with the idea of serving a suffering humanity. After one month with you , Mr. Whiteside, I am going to work in a munitions factory. From now on , anything I can do to help exterminate the human race will fill me with the greatest of pleasure. If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed YOU, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross!

and that is an understatement 🙂

In reading around Wikipedia, as I usually do before adding an IMDB link to one of my blogs; I’ve learned that The Man Who Came To Dinner was written by the same people that wrote another of my very dear favourite films. Which of course as it so happens to be, is also an uproarious comedy in its own right xD

I feel much better at the moment, lately life has just been a bit overly negative; the more things go on, the more deeply I am reminded of what it so terribly missing. The past couple weeks has felt a lot like limbo, just passing grueling time.

One of my favourite films was on tonight, The Teahouse of the August Moon. You could say, I really needed the chance to sit, enjoy, and laugh; there hasn’t been much joy in my life for a good long while now. In all honesty, I think I would take the slower way of life given the chance, hmm; what was the last time I could have seen the sun rise or set, and be at liberty to do so? The movies ending is also priceless! In a way, Sakini’s words also struck a cord:

“Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable.”

I find truth in it.

Just finished watching a film called Sunshine, a bleak future where our sun is dying and Earth being subjected to the deep freeze. Our last hope is a starship named the Icarus II, on a go for broke mission to drop a “stellar bomb” made with all the Earths remaining fissionable mass, into the sun with hopes that the detonation may jump start the sun and spare humanity from its cold grave.

I’m not really a big student of Greek mythology, let along mythology in general (never had the chance) but I do know of Icarus – who flew to close to the sun, and died as his wings melted away from the heat. I can’t think who in their bloody right mind would dare name a ship Icarus in such a dreadful scenario lol (no offense). As far as I know, it is thought that our sun should last billions of years pardoning anything truly catastrophic! And thus, only an immortal might have to worry about its eventual death: the rest of us mortals can just be worried about a planet killer sized asteroid or alien invasion obliterating our world before we manage to annihilate ourselves… be it fast or slow in coming. (I hope man lives to see GOD putting an end to our world, not our own stupidity being the cause)

Sunshine is a very interesting movie, and the stressful-confined-get-me-the-hell-out-of-here feel of some of the scenes remind me of the old Alien. I’m not even going to think about the probability of surviving the oh-shit-it’s-come-to-this emergency method of transferring 3 men with 1 suit from the derelict Icarus I back to the moribund Icarus II. I must admit however, that the Pinbacker mystery also leaves some interesting questions for my mind; but I don’t believe such a thing feasible. It almost reminded me of David Bowman from 2001: A Space Odyssey but not quite on par with the Starchild.

The thing I find the hardest to comprehend is how witihn ~50 years, could man kind possibly develop technology that could get *that close* to the sun? I compared the Icarus’s troubles with that of Doctor Reinhardts efforts in The Black Hole, id est so freaking big a problem only sci-fi could plausibly pull it off in our lifetime. Between intense heat and the amount of gravity that must surround such a beast, I just can’t fathom mans technology alcomplishing that so soon – I would be suspicious if we could even get a bomb close enough to be of science-fictional interest let along that close. That is, without advancing the stories focal point from ~2057 into some point so far in the future, that it becomes a date on the Gregorian calendar, more reflective of the numbers seen in Dunes universe—which spans some 15,000 years and leaves our calendars in the dust. I would reckon that in even seven or eight thousand years from now, the technology of the future would be to us, a satisifcation of Clarke’s third law. But by then I would expect a Death Star or something, not the Icarus II.

In some strange way it also makes me wish I had the ability and attitude to study Astrophysics :-/. Then again if I did, I would probably find watching such films to be more on par with watching an 80’s action flick lol.

Ended up putting my head down for a few minutes and what do ya know, next thing I know it’s a quarter after zero instead of a quarter after twenty two lol, Sat down to soak the toe, and flipped on Night of the Living Dead with about an hour left to go; I’ve never seen the original or the remake before actually. Not much of a fan of zombie movies but it wasn’t to bad I guess :-/. Despite the remarkable danger of it, it was actually refreshing to see someone tackle zombies unarmed—but I wouldn’t reccomend it tactically lol.When it comes to horror movies, I actually consider a zombie horde more threatening then a vampire invasion; it’s kind of hard to find both minigun emplacements with nearly limitless ammunition and a good defensible position at the same time! In looking through some of the notes on the web, it looks like Night of the Living Dead is also where the expression “They’re coming to get you, Barbra!” comes from, never knew that. Ok, so I’ve probably been living under a rock for the last century, so sue me.

After that was a movie I wanted to see but never had the chance: Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I very much enjoyed what I got to see of the first film, you could say I have a soft spot for movies with a sense of humour ;). The scene when Hellboy and Abe are getting drunk is also worth while, and Yohann Krauss makes for an interesting addition. (Telling Manning to suck his ectoplasmic schwanzstucker was also a nice touch.) Interestingly, it seems that the comics on Hellboy were published by Dark Horse, always a big plus in my book.I can still remember as a kid, it was always Dark Horse that kept Aliens and Aliens Vs Predator on the shelves hehe. Ironically, ‘Before Hellboy was published independently at Dark Horse Comics, the concept was initially pitched to a board of directors for DC Comics, who loved it but didn’t like the idea of it involving “hell.”‘ which sounds just like DC!

There hasn’t been much on nor much to do lately, so it was actually kind of refreshing to watch TV instead of spend the entire night on the computer….

Just finished watching Awakenings, which I have not seen in a few years. Towards the end one of the scenes with Robert De Niro’s “ticks” and the robe, it made me think of one of the residents at the nursing home where my grand mother stayed. My word, that place was horrible. My brother wouldn’t even go, and I never wanted to stay very long, but hey… she was our grand mother and I love her, so I went a long whenever Ma went to visit, which was regularly. It’s been maybe 13 or 14 years, but I can vaguely remember the layout of the building even. I can remember around Christmas when we brought her a little miniature tree and everything for her room; we still have it some where. I can even remember one of her birthday parties (would’ve been late 80s or early 90s, I think it was 89); it was probably the biggest event to touch that place (everyone there was invited). I still remember after ma had finally gotten to sick of the place, Nanny came back to live with her (My brother couldn’t pronounce “Granny” properly as a child, so “Nanny” stuck, and that’s what we all called my grand mother).

When the Alzheimer’s had started to get worse, Nanny had come to live with us: always fine by me. Worsening Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and a broken hip eventually accelerated things towards the end game. I still remember getting up one morning to find out that ma had found her sprawled out on the floor from a stroke; I remember sitting in the hospital waiting with my brother. And I remember the day before she died, ma and I had gone down to visit her; I wasn’t allowed in because I was still fairly young and they didn’t want kids runnin’ around. After a while though, given the situation, a nurse took me back and I got to see Nanny. It was about the next morning that we learned, she had passed away in her sleep during the night; a quick Google via site: shows me the when it happened. Watching Awakenings and that one scene, has made me think of a lot of things in greater detail.

I haven’t really thought about the home that much, was glad when she came back to stay with us for a while. But in the end, do I ever truly forget anything? Heh, I can still remember back to the day we moved into our last apartment: I remember it well because it was raining cats, dogs, and alligators down in Florida, and I was forgotten over the commotion, and left in the car for a while lol

Memory is an interesting thing.

Just finished watching the movie Hitman. I missed the first ~15 minutes :-(, but hey… I just woke up lol. Quite interesting, and the ending…. bloody brilliant! I’ve never gotten a chance to play any of the games, but have always been interested in the series – stealth over shoot’em up.

A copy of Hitman Trilogy would be sweet, lol.

Just finished watching a movie called The Bucket List, about to dying men (Jack Nicholson & Morgan Freeman) who set out to complete a list of the things they want to do, before they “kick the bucket” in six months.

Hmm, I remember composing such a list myself, about 10 or 12 years ago :-/

Ahh, a good movie that I haven’t seen in ages: Jurassic Park!

There’s just something special about JP, different then most films. IMHO I think the book was much more through, and the sequels more action packed but the original Jurassic Park has just got that air, that feel about it. I’ve always been fascinated by dinosaurs, all of my life, but knowing the amount of college involved with paleontology I never made it a high-point in my education.

Hmm, for some reason that brings back memories of my birthdays. When I was a little kid, every birthday party was ruled by dinosaurs: or as my aunt Janet probably put it, if I’ve got to wear this stupid (dino) hat again next year, I’m going to kill this kid looooool. When Jurassic Park came out back in the early 90s, it got even worse xD. Heh, even when I first hit the World Wide Web, my first web searches were paleological in nature lol.

What can I say, I like the study of history and technology in many forms…. <-- geek.