More Shit
Taking full advantage of my 50% off rental fees at Hollywood Video while they last. I watched the Spanish horror film, El Orfanato – in Spanish with English sub-titles. I believe the film was Produced in some way by Guillermo Del Toro (”Pan’s Labrynth”). If you watch the film, I think it looks like something Del Toro could have made himself instead of just being a producer.
The story follows Laura (Belen Rueda), who returns to the orphanage where she lived prior to being adopted. She and her husband (Fernando Cayo) have bought the place and plan to use it as a house for special needs. Their adopted son, Simon (Roger Princep), starts to behave strange, after playing with some ghosts that are haunting the premises.
Laura and Carlos (her husband) host a party to show off the house, and she and Simon have a little fight, leading to his disappearance. The film uncovers the ghosts of the past and Laura’s desperate attempts to find her son. It is a very interesting story, and I was very involved from beginning to end (trying to do some writing of my own at the time, but I was glued to the screen – of course, having to read the subtitles helped that as well). Very well acted. Looked beautiful Without there being any graphic horror (except for a woman being hit by a vehicle), the movie plays up the creepy suspense perfectly, and it’s much more horrific than any of the graphic films that I’ve seen. Despite the ghosts, there is still enough of a realism to the story to make it that much creepier, and I highly recommend checking this one out.
3.5/4
We also watched Super High Me, which is kind of a spoof on Super Size Me. Comedian Doug Benson (I guess a noted stoner – didn’t know that til getting this movie) sees what happens when he’s stoned all the time for thirty straight days. Aside from the stand-up routines interspersed throughout the film while he is on this 30 day experiment, it shows Doug’s visits to doctors, psychics, and marijuana-themed churches. Mostly, the film seems to be focusing on the issue of medical marijuana use, and the problems being felt in California, where marijuana stores are open to the public (you have to have a card to be allowed to buy anything). From the looks of it, Doug was able to get a card pretty easily, but I don’t remember too much being made of that. Anyway, although California law permits medical marijuana use and the existence of these stores to supply the medicine, Federal Law does not recognize it, so the FDA keeps swooping in and closing the places down. Really weird scenario. My thought was that the FDA closed these legal places down just to try to pad their numbers to pretend like they are winning the war on drugs.
I’m not a druggie, and I’m square enough to admit that I’ve never tried smokin’ dope, but I found this film still to be very entertaining and enjoyable and had me siding with users and wondering just what the fuck our Government is doing.
3/4
Naked Lunch
I’ve tried before and failed, so I’m going to try again to read the William S. Burroughs novel, Naked Lunch. Having never been a junkie or experimented with drugs, I’m thinking the ramblings may be more difficult to follow, but I seem to be following along better than I had in past attempts to get through the book. It is not set up like a typical story, where a character coherently moves from place to place and has this and that happen to him. It seems like it’s there, but you have to be looking for it to figure out any sort of storyline. I think I’m only in the forties, as far as page count, but I’m going to try to stick it out this time.
Escribir
I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing with my writing. I pretty much know the path that I’m taking with my book, My Wife and My Dead Wife – it’s just a matter of making time for myself, which, if things in my head work in reality, I should be making time soon. I like having two projects at once so that I can work on one if the other has a block or whatever. So, I’m trying to decide on my “horror” project to work on, so that I can be focused on the two. Both choices are novels I’ve mostly written in the past but have never been happy with, so I’m looking to focus on them.
Healthy?
Trying to get healthy as well – lose weight, eat right, exercise. I took a little walk today and was thinking about what I’d like to do, as far as getting healthy, and I felt really good about my little plan. Exercising in the morning, planning my “work” menu. I’m looking forward to putting all that in place because I think it will be a money saver as well.
in “super high me”, wasn’t it the DEA, not the FDA, that shut the places down? Then again, I was in and out during that movie… (and i’m a secret pot smoker in my dreams now- not sure what that’s about…)
I must have been smoking, too. Yeah. DEA. Maybe the FDA was there to look at the brownies….
Agree that El Orfanato was good, nicely shot and atmospheric. Saw the end ‘twist’ a mile off though (but then, while watching TV and The 6th Sense trailer came on, both my brother and I said “He’s dead” in unison). Still, good stuff (I think I might have choked up at one point, though that doesn’t take much).
Thanks for the Super high me tip…I’ll put it on the ‘watch’ list.
Yeah. Although the ending could be seen before it arrived, I thought it brought the story together nicely and made the fantasy more realistic. I enjoyed that.
I watched the movies Feast, and Postal. Funny stuff…also, just watched Tropic Thunder and Battle Royale. BR is better…though Tom Cruise is pretty funny in TH…Super High Me sounds interesting…I’ll have to add it to my Netflix…I read Naked Lunch so long ago…I don’t know if I’d have it in me to read it again. It’s a difficult read…Absurdistan, by Gary Shteyngart is really good. Got RocknRolla in the mail today…check out thedailyplate.com. If it’s not blocked
…you can track what you eat, calories, sodium, fat content, etc. I think it’s helpful to see a daily tally of calorie intake…the beer kills my numbers!