Monkey Thoughts

I don't know what it is with me. I actually have more time on my hands, and yet I never seem to get around to updating this site. Well, on the plus side, I've been using that time to do productive stuff like exercising, getting my yoga on, keeping the place clean. (Except now...it needs some straightening up.) I've been a little better about getting more creative outlets, but still not where I want to be. My problem is I can think of all sorts of amazing things, but getting them to come to fruition is an obstacle for me. Got to work on that.

I caught this little ditty on Netflix. Ever since Cache, amongst others, I've been a bit hesitant to dive right into a French flick. (Sorry, but I did not find anything mysterious and deep about an hour's worth of cars driving by and a man getting a stick figure drawing. Ooooooh.)
Anyway, I decided 'why the hell not' and was pleasantly surprised how creeped the hell I out I got. The story is simple- a couple is in their remote house one night with a group of people start fucking with them. I think it's the simplicity that keeps it creepy. From the first scene, you have no idea who the antagonists are or what their motives are. It's just all kinds of freaky. It's a very straightforward flick with not a lot of time spent on character development or any other extra devices. It just takes the story and runs with it. Definitely worth a watch.

The synopsis on Netflix reads "In this byzantine psychological thriller directed by Dario Piana, working stiff Ian Stone (Mike Vogel) finds himself trapped in a bizarre reality: Every day he dies a horrific death at the hands of a killer, only to be resurrected and murdered again. Can Ian get to the bottom of the mystery and break the recurring cycle of death and rebirth?"
My theory is whomever wrote that synopsis had been waiting patiently for years for the opportunity to use "byzantine" in a sentence.
Another of the After Dark series, this one just didn't cut it for me. At first it seemed promising, but then the story just got messy. Not to mention, I swear the main character had an accent in the beginning of the movie and lost it later on. What the hell? Nice effects though.

Very creepy and beautifully shot flick. A woman moves with her husband and son back to the orphanage she grew up in to renovate it and open it as a home for disabled children. But slowly, her son starts acting odd and talking about invisible friends. And that's just setting the mood!
I find any movie that involves creepy kids to be especially scary, but this one really did it well. Watch it with the lights out!

Came across this video today, which sums up exactly how I feel about those damn yogurt commercials:

I was sitting at my kitchen counter tonight faced with a bit of a dilemma. A dilemma in the form of a really bad batch of brandy sitting on my fridge, ever since that night I thought it'd be good to have a drink. It was bad...really quite awful. I'm the type of person who enjoys the "hard" stuff more than a beer, but this was just putrid. I wasn't sure what exactly to do with this brandy; throwing it out would surely be alcohol abuse and yet there was no way I could drink it again. (I'm allowed to make alcohol abuse jokes by the way. It comes with the territory of having a recovering family member- endless supplies of jokes for therapeutic purposes.) I even googled 'What can I do to make shitty brandy taste good?" Seriously. That led me to my ah-ha moment. I caught a comment about someone liking brandy in their coffee, which made me remember just how much I love it when someone spikes MY coffee. So bam! In a cup of coffee the brandy went. I gotta say, while I prefer other liquors in my coffee, it's not half bad. I win!

One of the best spiked coffees I've ever had was not a spiked coffee. It is called the "Lucky Coffee". It's "sambuca negra or sambuca romana in a steamed snifter with espresso beans afloat (to be eaten) & a complimentary coffee". See, they trick you. I love Sambuca, but it knocks me on my ass every time. The coffee came in handy, let me tell you.

I've been dancing around this one for a while cause frankly, I'm not sure what to think. Half of me didn't want the series touched with and the other half couldn't wait to see Indy again on the big screen. Sitting in the theatre, I felt like a kid again. My mom was the Original Pirate. The O.P. Back in the day, she used to smuggle in bags of candy in her purse along with a tape recorder to record the movie's sound, which we would later listen to at home. I'm not talking about a mini recorder. I mean a full-on recorder that could easily slip into her behemoth mom-purse. And if you were to listen back to those recordings of "Temple of Doom" or "Raiders...", you would no doubt hear me whining at various parts. You see, I was a pansy-ass as a kid. I was terrified of Scooby-Doo to the point where I'd be hiding on my parents' steps in tears because no one would watch it with me. Yeah, lovely, right? My own kid mocked me when I told him that one.
So, yes...the delicate balance of the Indy movies. Like I said, I'm still undecided as I only saw it once and not, oh I don't know, three times like my brothers. (Because they are NERDS. HAHAHA! I'm joking.Really, I am.) I had some problems with it. Shia Labeouf can go suck an egg as far as I'm concerned. Not that I don't like him. I enjoyed "Disturbia". But this is Indiana Jones and I do not appreciate getting set up here for a replacement Indy. I had some issues with the flick, but I did enjoy it. Maybe I need a few more viewings to make up my mind completely. I feel 3 nanas is a safe "middle of the road" rating. Not completely against it, but not in love with it either.

Me: "I'm 30 yrs old and I got no cool nickname"
My brother: "The Leopard."

rawr.

I may be a bit generous in giving The Strangers 3 nanas, but you know...I did like it. It's a fairly simple story line - a couple goes to a vacation house in the middle of the night when some masked folks start effing with them. Terror ensues.
One of the things that struck me about this film (and similarly, Ils) was the lack of character development on either side of the spectrum. As an audience, we're exposed to very little back story on our couple. It's evident from the get go that there is some tension between them, and we get to see a handful of flashbacks, but it is bare bones at best. I think it's the sort of awkwardness of the situation that adds to atmosphere once the creepy stuff starts happening. The creepy stuff, by the way, was something else I enjoyed. Sure, there is a definitive suspension of belief that three people can randomly pick a house and be able to maneuver about as if they built it themselves, but hey, who cares? I like to think that crazy people have some sort of super crazy powers anyway, so mental blueprints of a property they've just been staking out seems entirely feasible to me.
A complaint I read quite often about this film is how it's not an original idea. Well, what the hell is? We live in the decade of remakes, and people want to complain about a fairly common fear being revisioned for a film? How about all the good Asian flicks being made into 'merican versions, hmm? That seems like a much better complaint to have. (I may be biased, considering my grumpy disposition to remakes.)
Anyway, I did enjoy this film right down to the really uncomfortable ending. (That sounds messed up. I didn't enjoy the ending per se, but the rest was good.)

What is life without a nemesis or two? A few years back, I embraced the fact that I had to deal with someone I refer to as my Arch Nemesis. My arch nemesis used to tick the hell out of me, and I took solace in venting through various online outlets about the jackassery I had to deal with. Lately, I could care less about this arch nemesis, who's been downgraded to just a minor annoyance, a mere eye-roll. So there was an empty spot to fill in my life.

Enter a old nemesis.

......

Okay, so the old nemesis never actually bothers me except when I happen to read stuff about her. Then I start twitching. Old nemesis is from back in the day and honestly, not that bad of a person. So why have I crowned her as a nemesis? Frankly, I missed the conflict. I need someone to shake my fist in the air at and curse the gods about. It provides yin to my yang....or is that yang to my yin? Regardless...it keeps life in balance. Although today, I ended up hiding under my blanket in a seriously funked out mood. Sure, I'll be irritated for the next few days (mind you, over absolutely nothing), but I'll be fine after getting it out of my system.

As I said to a colleague earlier today, maturity is overrated.

To simply put it, I hated this movie. Hated it. I don't care what sort of social statement the director was trying to make, it was a poorly made film overfilled with gimmicky shots.
You know when you find yourself saying 'Oh just kill them already so I can go to bed', it's not a gripping film in the least bit.

Pflt.

That's what I think of it.