Hey, I really dug The Blood Spattered Bride, a trashy take on LeFanu's Camilla. Also, I have fond memories of being scared silly by The Town That Dreaded Sundown, and have longed to revisit it, but its been a long time no show.

Speaking of Grindhouse Pics ... I just got back from seeing Black Snake Moan ... it was quite a hoot. A good mix of comedy and music and sex and religion. Samuel Jackson good as always, Christina Ricci perfect as the town loadie/slut, and Justin Timberlake surprisingly good as her messed-up boyfriend.


Yes, she's chained half-naked to Sam Jackson's radiator for a good part of the movie. Yes, Ricci got herself to look the part via a steady diet of junk food. And Samuel L. learned a couple of cool songs on the guitar. All in all, a fun night at the movies.

I finally got around to seeing Little Miss Sunshine, and while I liked it fine I can't say that I loved it. Steve Carrell was great- I felt he deserved the nom for BSA more than Arkin did. I loved Arkin but his performance was very abbreviated, unless you count the time his cadaver was onscreen. Carrell was funny, sad and very believable, even as a Proust scholar. I'm going to watch it again, just to make sure I wasn't in the wrong viewing mood and giving it less kudos than it might deserve, not that the producers or anyone else gives a rats ass what I think of it.....

We had a movie marathon yesterday.

I finally saw all three Saw movies - really good storyline beyond the gore. I liked the first one the best. The third was really good and ties a lot of things together and the second was OK. The first wasn't super gory and the gore was 'necessary' or implied. In the second and third the directors admitted using gore for the sake of gore. We watched the extra features and the making of. Great stuff.

Little Miss Sunshine - Bought it. I love that movie. Second time for me, first time for the rest. They loved it too.

Brokeback - Bought it. Love that movie. Watched it with my friend who hasn't seen it. He loved it and is now walking around saying "I wish I knew how to quit you" with a fake drawl. Roommate and crowd didn't want to watch a movie about gay cowboys. Uh cowboys = yum. Duh.

Poor friend. Finally gets the joke and it was old 18 months ago.

I saw it this last weekend as well and I agree. I was scratching my head, I love Alan Arkin, but I thought Steve Carrell deserved a nod much more than Arkin.

I thought the movie was good, fun, sad, quirky. Did it deserve a best pic nomination, to my thinking, no.

I watched The Prestige over the weekend. It was over long, a little dull, predicatable, but it had a nice look to it. Am I the only person finding the Scarlett Johanson nymphette pout to be tiresome. Enjoyed her in Lost in Translation, everything else is just more of the same. Hugh Jackman, where's the fire? David Bowie, a fun cameo as Tesla. I heard the book may better, so I will add that to the growing pile of books.

We watched Stranger Than Fiction over the weekend. I really enjoyed it, definitely Ferrel's least annoying performance ever.

It suffered some in my mind simply because it kept bringing to mind other films/stories that are much better. With the whole watch thing, I couldn't help but think of Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it was a very Adams-esque device, but not executed with quite the cleverness (close, but not quite). Hoffman's character and performance couldn't help but be compared to his role in I [heart] Huckabees. And, being of the "wacky actor turned serious" genre, Eternal Sunshine was in my head the whole time.

I like all three of those better than I liked Stranger than Fiction. But I still quite enjoyed it and it continually surprised me in its cleverness, even if some of the elements came up a bit short.

At least it was leaps and bounds better than the other work that my brain decided to compare it to, Adaptation.

He got it then too.

For years I had it in my head that the line "Could be worse. Could be raining" was from the crucifixion scene in "Life of Brian." This weekend I re-watched "Young Frankenstein," and found that I was wrong. I felt, well, "Life of Brian" must have copied the line, but the script I looked over online says no. Nonetheless, I still have a very strong visual in my head about this scene having occurred in "Life of Brian." Strange.