A Boy and His Dog get knocked off the list..

I'm not sure I can explain how much I detested this movie. Someday ranked it on a "Best Disaster Movies" list and I added it to my Q without reading the description. When it arrived I read the little blurb and was wary, but decided that it was worth a watch. After sitting through all 90 minutes of the movie, I kind of wish I could somehow rinse my eyes out with soap.

The movie begins innocently enough; Vick is a kind of oafish protagonist but has a clearly loving relationship with his talking telepathic dog (it's Sci Fi.. don't judge). I didn't start to get nervous until I realized that the beeping noise meant that the dog was searching for women. Yep, the talking telepathic dog's real talent is using his weird power to find women for Vick to ravage. In return, Vick finds the dog food. I almost turned the movie off when Vick finds a woman who has been attacked by marauders. She's obviously been raped and beaten to death. His reaction is to lament that they killed her so soon, because she could have been used a few more times.

It's not worth describing the rest of the movie, but it turns out that a weird community of survivors is living underground and they send a young woman up to seduce Vick and bring him back. After having what is probably his first consensual sexual acts with her, he leaves his partner and friend (the dog) to go underground after her.

Turns out the girl is kind of evil and was sent to the surface specifically to get Vick underground. Her weird totalitarian gov't hooks him up to a machine and tries to impregnate as many young women as possible. Their explanation for this assault..something akin to hybrid vigor. Eventually Vick escapes, and then kills the girl and feeds her to the starving dog because she dared to be conniving and have personal autonomy. Not that I'm advocating using seduction to entrap men and then forcible ejaculation, but I also do not think that cannibalism is the answer. Apparently being a loyal friend to your talking canine companion totally negates your forcible sexual assault of women, total disregard for human life and general lack of intelligence or compassion.

Thanks A Boy and His Dog.. now if the world ends I know that women will be conniving and useless, and I can expect all men to be more attached to their pets than to other human beings.

A response to: Missouri abortion-rights group changes name

Faith Aloud, formerly MORCRC was mentioned in the St. Louis post dispatch political blog today. As a former employee of MORCRC I received info about the article and visited the site to read Jo Mannies had to say. While I'm not sure the title is entirely accurate (I think reproductive justice is more in line with the mission), the article itself is short & relatively informative. I was really upset,however, by some of the angry & judgemental comments left by readers. I decided to post a response in the comments after reading things like:

"I always find it sadly laughable that pro-baby killing groups use the words "human rights" in their creed. I also find it hard to believe that these "religous" [sic] organizations believe that God would support the killing of a baby, or that God does not believe that they are, indeed, human beings in the womb."


I wrote:
First of all, congrats to MORCRC for recognizing the changing needs of our community and advocating for women & families from a spiritual and religious perspective! I know that Faith Aloud is going to do amazing things! As a graduate student in public health, I can't emphasize enough the need for a COMPREHENSIVE approach to sexuality and healthy living. It is not just about abortion; it is about stewardship of the planet, good family dynamics, healthy people (mentally healthy too!) and healthy children.

From a personal standpoint I am also really put off by a lot of the comments left by people claiming that America is a Christian nation. As someone of another religious persuasion, I do not feel any less American or faithful/spiritual because I am Jewish. Our country was founded with ideals of religious freedom, and advocating for policy based upon any particular faith is disenfranchising and disrespectful.

Oh Jack Lemmon. If I panic, will you grip my face?

I was heartened by the snappy dialogue at the beginning of Airport 1977; Jack Lemmon and his lady friend (Eve) discussed their marriage prospects and he declared that he wanted a wife and children, and not necessarily in that order. How modern and risque Jack!
Sadly, at 50 minutes into the movie (and about 5 minutes post plane crash) Jack is now gripping Eve's face and is likely to slap her out of her panic. Of course Jack is totally calm despite the fact that the plane has crashed into the ocean and is sinking..and must chastise Eva into being helpful.

Things I've learned:

1. If you are in love with a blind piano player, he will really appreciate your earring as a token of affection. He will also die in your arms despite lacking any visible injuries.

2. There might be enough pressure to slowly crack the plane in half, but you'll be able to free dive (well, free swim up) to the surface without any real scuba gear. Also, despite known risks of swimming straight up from deep under, you will be perfectly fine once you're out of the water. Especially when you are needed by your passengers, dammit!

3. The Navy will be really excited to help raise the boat full of people from the bottom of the ocean. They'll be able to use big balloons and float it right to the top!

4. A lot of people will die, but nobody will really care because the important people will all survive. Also, children do not die in disasters. They may be gravely ill, but they survive (thank you Airplane for following the rules..Piranha, take note!)

Airport 1977: I kid you not

For now I'd just like to type the tagline found on the back of the box:

"A 747 is trapped underwater in the Bermuda triangle. It's a race against time and the elements to save the passengers and crew"

Thank god for people dumb enough to greenlight a movie with this premise. We have the Bermuda triangle, a plane crash and some sort of terrorism all mixed into one movie. Awesome.

Is Alien the exception to the rule?

Anyone who watches movies knows that several things are almost always true:

1)If it's based on a book, 9 time out of 10 the book is better.
2)Sequels are usually bad.. sometimes funny bad, but almost always bad. There is the occasional exception (thank you Godfather II fans), but generally speaking the higher the number (II, III, etc) the worse the movie is going to be.

I think I might have found the exception to the rule with Alien vs Aliens. Maybe because I watched them out of order (by accident!) I subconsciously found myself favoring Aliens, but however it happened I think I actually liked a sequel more than an original.

Not that Alien was bad- far from it- I just think that Aliens was better. In Alien we meet Sigourney Weaver's character, Ripley, and see the first installment of human vs alien. Although humans technically win the encounter, I kind of found myself annoyed by a lot of the crew members. I do have to admit that the first time one of those things bursts out of a chest it's both unbelievebly gross and pretty darn interesting, but this does not make up for the fact that the begining of the movie is rather slow. Maybe I'm showing my propensity for crass disaster movies.. but I was not all that enthralled by the ode to 2001 (lack of dialogue, slow start). Once the action gets going there are some pretty horrific death scenes, but I never found myself as scared or interested in the outcome as I did in Aliens. I did think it was interesting that there is an entire thread on imdb discussing whether an alien sexually assaults Lambert..but only becaue I found people's preoccupation with the idea kind of appalling. I don't think that the scene is question is meant to depict a sexual assault, I think it's just Lambert crying out as an alien scares her, slithers up her leg and then murders her. Do we really need to make murder somehow even worse?

Anyway, som things I learned from Alien:

1. Space food is gross. If you complain about it a lot maybe you'll put off imminent death..or maybe you'll just be lucky enough to die at the table!

2. I think that Dallas and Lambert might have been engaging in a torrid space affair. Maybe they snuck into those little space sleepers together. Anyway, based upon Lambert's totally hysterical reaction to Dallas's death I think they broke the sex rule and paid with their lives.

3. Aliens need oxygen to breathe just like we do! Thus sending them out into space is a surefire way to kill them despite knowing absolutely nothing about their anatomy or physiology.

4. Acid will drip through several stories of metal in a spaceship, but will conveniently stop right before puncturing the hull or injuring any of your crew members.

Piranha might be too much for my paranoia

I know that my blogging has been rather inconsistent lately, but I just started graduate school and am still trying to figure out how to balance schoolwork with having a life. I only took a year off between undergraduate and starting this program but I seem to have lost all of my studying skills in the interim!
Anyway, I ended up home relatively early after a fun evening out and decided to catch up on blogging while watching my newest BB.com rental: Piranha. Thanks to Jaws I now only go knee deep in the ocean, and I'm a little worried that my snorkeling days (OK, day..I've been once!) are over if I watch this movie. As a compromise I decided to watch the movie using the tiniest view screen possible so the scary fish won't bother me as much.

Body count within the first 10 minutes: 2.
Taking off your clothing and skinny dipping in the dark=death. Obviously.

Also, I'm all for trying to find missing teenagers but why would you drain a pond full of water in a creepy lab? Don't you think that maybe all that weird murky water is hiding something scary and possibly man-eating? Now all the piranha's have escaped into the river and are going to eat at least 6-10 more people. I'm guessing that drunk guy's daughter and her buddies at camp are in danger since they have already needlessly pointed out that she's afraid of water. I'm assuming that at least a few kids will get attacked, but somehow I doubt they'll kill off tiny children.

30 minutes in, other old drunk guy gets his feet eaten and dies a few feet from his dock. Lesson learned: do not dunk your feet into murky water, especially if your dog is barking furiously at the water. Doesn't anyone learn their water safety lessons from Jaws? All scary people eating water creatures like eating dogs. First they go for Fido, then they go for you.