(one of my favorites even though it's not really something i'd say i like)

The first time I saw "Vampire's Kiss" I didn't know what to think...DID Nicolas Cage's character get bitten by a vampire or did he suffer a psychotic break from reality? In some scenes he's talking to a vamp (played by Jennifer Beals) and other times he's talking to nothing but air. 

Cage (as Peter Loew) has this very odd way of talking in the movie...an affectation of sorts that isn't as put-on as it sounds the more he descends into madness. As annoying as his character can be at times, you can't help but be fascinated by his craziness and his intense need to believe what he thinks is (or what may actually be) happening to him.

Jennifer Beals does the best she can with a rather limited role, but when she IS on screen, she is strangely seductive and convincingly vampiric. The great thing about films like "Vampire's Kiss" is that it's up to the viewer to decide what's happening. And while I could be totally wrong, I think Rachel (Beals) is not a vampire,  but the amazingly attractive woman who is completely out of Peter's league and whose rejection of him at a party one night sends him into a tailspin.

I could never do this book justice with a review. All I will say is that _Affinity_ by Sarah Waters broke my heart. I went through several tissues and my heart skipped a few beats through some of the twists and turns the novel took.  

When I first read it a few years ago I filled my journal with pages of thoughts and feelings, but I have since lost it...I remember reading it and getting so into it that I was devastated  for days, even after I finished reading...in my lifetime not many books have done that to me.

 

Just when I think I have seen all the films that could possibly leave me vulnerable, I find this under-rated and powerful DVD. I watched this on Showtime and it left me in that "wow" fog a good movie can leave behind.

If you start watching AMERICAN GUN and are tempted to stop because Virginia Madsen apparently leaves the storyline early, don't! Not only is her character crucial to the overall plot, James Coburn knocks you out cold with his caring, but angry-at-the-world-and-himself portrayal of a father who loses a family member to a fatal gunshot.

I hesitate to describe too much of the plot since there are unexpected turns and twists that shouldn't be revealed, but I can elaborate on the style and lovely quietness of AMERICAN GUN. Maybe "quiet" isn't the whole truth since various gunshots explode throughout the movie as James Coburn explores the history of one gun that has traveled through many different hands. The loudness is also there when he looks back at his own experiences with ammunition in war.

AMERICAN GUN hit me so hard because it is an emotional film more than anything else. At first it seems to be about how a husband and wife each handle grief differently or how one man is determined to find his daughter's killer. In a way, that could sum it up, but there's also a lot about closure and what we think we see versus what is actually there.

The reason this indie deserves more acclaim is because it takes you places you don't expect to go and you are able to experience that great mental process called "thinking." Watch this by yourself--or better yet, rent it with a group of friends who truly enjoy discussing (but not talking to death) a great work of art.

On a side note: The whole cast is just spectacular (a small role by Alexandra Holden will get you a bit teary-eyed), but Coburn and Madsen shine.

  

Tonight's "Medium," an episode called "Psych" (which pretty much gives away the ending, if you ask me), was not one of its betters ones...or at least that's how I felt. But aside from the plot holes you could drive a truck through, I found one particular part, a cat death scene, especially unnecessary and garish. It echoed a scene from an earlier episode this year in which a dog died in an equally gruesome manner.

Lately (as it did way back in the first season before it found its footing) "Medium" often seems to be going for shock value instead of something integral to the plot...both the dog and cat killings were just nasty weird, like a puppet show gone horribly wrong...I always find "Medium" at its best when it goes for sweet (but not sugary) and quirky with a real, gripping mystery to sink our teeth into...take "Dear Dad," for example. While that dealt with sensitive material (i.e. date rape) it handled it in a thoughtful manner.

 

I've always wanted to see "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone". According to TCM's website the movie's airing next week on their cable channel. Yay!

Meanwhile here's what one reviewer has to say about the film:

Vivien Leigh, so stirringly memorable as Blanche in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, stars in this 1961 adaptation of Williams's only novella, giving a nuanced, slightly neurotic performance that is haunting and all the more tragic by its being one of the actress's last performances before her sad death at age 53. Leigh plays Karen Stone, a 50-ish theater actress whose comeback vehicle never gets off the ground; en route to Rome for a brief escape, she's devastated by the sudden death of her beloved husband. She decides to stay in Rome, and there, her loneliness takes root against the spectacular backdrop of the city. Lotte Lenya plays a viperous contessa who pimps young men to older rich ladies, and introduces the handsome Paolo (played with dissolute perfection--though his Italian accent is shaky--by Warren Beatty) to Mrs. Stone. Leigh's performance is unnervingly raw, though one wonders why a woman with a long, happy marriage and at least one very real friend (played by Coral Browne) should be doomed to such relentless loneliness--surely she and her hubby had some pals back in New York? But with Williams, you simply must go along for the ride, and the journey through the emotional dark spaces of Mrs. Stone's life is gripping. The location shots of the glorious, decaying beauty of Rome are fabulous, as are the costumes. Extras include a featurette, Mrs. Stone: Looking for Love in All the Dark Corners. --A.T. Hurley

It wasn’t always called "The Wedding Album," but over the years, Duran Duran’s self-titled 1993 album has taken on the name to avoid being confused with their 1981 debut (also self-titled). Whatever you want to call it,  you may be surprised (if you’re just a casual Duran Duran fan or have never heard of them at all) to discover that it’s one of the group’s deepest and most emotionally appealing collection of songs.

The incredibly sultry and downright despondent "Come Undone" emerges halfway through as the stand-out track that, along with "Ordinary World," makes you feel pretty good about feeling so sad. And the hypnotic sounds of "Love Voodoo" and "UMF"will have you hitting replay as you dance along to your CD player.

As a longtime Duran Duran fan, I have always loved the more well-known albums "Rio" and "Seven and the Ragged Tiger" (what devoted DD fan could ever deny loving "The Reflex" or "Union of the Snake"?) But as a lover of great music that is timeless and not limited to just the 80s, I can’t help but praise the melancholy madness of  this particular wedding.

It's been a while since I've seen a really good horror movie and the ones I have seen are so bad and just plain disgusting that I think I've been turned off the genre forever...The rise of  "torture porn" (and maybe it's just me who thinks this, but hopefully not) has not been a good thing. The poster for one of the "Saw" movies is probably the least threatening-looking and tamest of the lot...the ones for both "Hostel" films being SO bad they can't even be posted here without possibly traumatizing an innocent reader.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer the illusion of  scary, not the scary itself...gore has quickly become a replacement for what should be atmospheric and implied scares.  Last year I tried to watch both "Hostel" flicks...and couldn't make it through either. The premise alone (Americans traveling to a small town in Eastern Europe where they pay for the "opportunity" to brutalize and kill kidnapped tourists) is a morally difficult one to grasp, even for those of who have long been a fan of the genre (horror, that is, not torture.)

I turned the second off at least halfway through, but not before the damage had been done...a scene with two women, one enjoying killing the other one in almost orgasmic delight (basking in her blood), made me so sick i thought i was going to vomit. There was a point in my life when I could handle some of  the "Saw" movies, but I've since grown tired of them and am not in that "dark" place anymore where I need a shocking jolt to distract me from life's problems.

For truly great cinema thrills, you can't beat something like "The Others" or "The Turn of  The Screw." I think I'm officially through with the hardcore stuff (unless, of course, there are zombies involved.)

Consider yourself very lucky if you’ve never fallen like Bud and Deanie in Splendor in the Grass — a fairly well-known, but often underrated Natalie Wood film that speaks volumes about how dangerous emotions can be. I haven’t seen the film in a long time, but it doesn’t matter because I could share (if you so desired) frame by frame just exactly what happens. Let me tell you, the movie might be pretty, but it’s not always romantic…it’s such a huge storm of feelings that I can only handle it every few years.

The title is taken from a line in a William Wordsworth poem, and it appropriately underscores how often innocence and sexuality are at odds, yet similar in their euphoria.

In one startling, heartbreaking scene, Deanie’s character (Wood) is taking a bath and has already started to show signs of being affected by her feelings for Bud (Warren Beatty). Her mother — with good intentions, even if they are smothering — is concerned about her daughter’s "purity." Deanie, suddenly covering herself and standing up in the tub, shouts "No, Mom! I’m not spoiled. I’m not spoiled, Mom!" It’s a scene years ahead of its time in its depiction of the messiness of first love — shocking in its bluntness, almost tragic in its vulnerability.

Few films have left such a mark on me, but Splendor in the Grass is particularly special because of its resonating power over the years. Anyone who has loved just a little too much in her (or his) life can probably understand how the wrong kind of love can put you in the hospital…as happens with Deanie. (Did I mention how outstanding Natalie Wood is here??)

As with any classic, its age doesn’t matter. Love changes in form over the years, but its effects can be equally smashing or uplifting. We want to feel passionately. To go through life without any interests or enthusiasm is awful…but sometimes how strongly we feel about someone zaps everything else out of us. The cost of loving someone else is sometimes detrimental to our own well-being.

Splendor in the Grass dealt with sex and sexuality in an honest and sincere way that current films would not be able to…and it recognized that teenagers and young adults have the power to love and want things they may not be capable of handling so early in their lives.

I LOVE the accordion, though maybe not as much as Steve Urkel did.  I think it should be appreciated and even seen as sexy (if used right). Huey Lewis and The News put an album out in late 1988 ("Small World") that used the accordion in a wonderful and tastefully wacky way...

On one of the Korgis' songs I've been listening to you can hear whispers of the quirky musical instrument. The track (called "Hunger") is appropriately titled because it makes you feel the singer's longing for someone, something,  he can never have...he sounds like a less theatrical, more melancholy Barry Manilow, with his own "Mandy" thing going on...

"Hunger" is haunting, seductive and somehow makes you want to tango.

Every once in a while you discover a horror film that makes you wrestle with the ending for days afterward. It seeps into you and causes restless sleep, and not just because it's scary. Based on the Stephen King novella of the same name, The Mist mixes the unimaginable with the all-too-familiar and may very well make you feel uncomfortable and unnerved. And like so many of Stephen King's works, this film takes you somewhere you think of as safe -- in this case, the grocery store -- and makes it the creepiest place around.

The incredible cast (including Thomas Jane and Andre Braugher playing neighbors pitted against each other) couldn’t have done a better job...though maybe Marcia Gay Harden might have toned it down JUST a tad. She plays a religious fanatic the way it’s been played in countless horror films before (think Piper Laurie in Carrie, but slightly less bitter).  I love it though, when a man she’s trying to preach to responds with: "I do believe in God, I just don’t think He’s the vengeful, bloodthirsty (replace curse word with family friendly word here) you make him out to be."

Whereas I don’t remember the book being so deep...the movie really captures the current cultural divide and the absolutes people cling to so desperately, often causing them to lash out at others who politely disagree.

I won’t ruin the ending, but let’s just say it blindsides you. It throws out so much that really gets to you: nail-biting suspense...humanity...inhumanity (a lot of the people are far worse than the supernatural creatures they battle inside the grocery store), emotions...tough, protective women...sensitive, protective men...

The Mist is an intense experience and never quite the film you're expecting, a combination making it a cut above (way above!) all the other horror films you've seen until now. The only complaint I have? Someone needs to teach Thomas Jane (who otherwise is amazing in this!) how to properly cry.

Sure, I've gotten over my disappointment that "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" was canceled. It WAS a great sci-fi show, with lots of emotional complexities buried under a seemingly reserved family dynamic, but mourning a program's loss needs to be quick and swift because it's never coming back.

Still that doesn't mean I can't listen to Bear McCreary's lovely score!:)

The music is more low key and chill than anything that ever came from the movie's soundtrack...it's just wonderful to listen to when you want something without words and are in a contemplative mood.

Another tv soundtrack that's amazing (and in this case, FAR better than the show) is:



It's everything I had hoped the show would be: smart, pretty, loving, spiritual, complex, sincere...needless to say (if you've seen even one episode!) the show was none of these...

On last night's "24" Agent Walker (played by superb actress Annie Wersching)  continued her very interesting and intense descent from a previously level-headed and reserved by-the-book FBI agent to a self-destructive break-the-rules-with-a-vengeance woman who (we now learn) may or may not have been sexually abused the first time she went undercover with the Russian mob.

While it's true that a LOT of off-screen things happened to Agent Walker between season 7 and 8 (the one currently airing on Fox Monday nights) it's still hard swallow such a swift change in character; with a less talented actress, it would be near impossible...in last night's episode we learned much more about why Walker had the nervous breakdown that was mentioned in the January 19th episode...and I still have a hard time believing that it's supposed to be connected solely to her interrogating a witness and not more related to the horrible things she experienced while undercover and probably will again now that's she been reassigned (unofficially) to infiltrate the mob.

I know it's just a tv show and Wersching (who I might have already mentioned is doing a superb job!) is just playing a fictional character. Still...it saddens and even unnerves me to see the difference between what the cost of recklessness is to a woman who is basically doing the same things (minus last week's saw incident) Jack is and paying a much higher price...that is if we're talking about all of this unwinding being a direct result of Walker's harshly interrogating her witness...I'm still not sure that's what this is all about...

Next week's preview looks even more disturbing as in it we see Wersching's character in a towel  and fresh out of the shower being summoned by Vladimir, the man who physically abused her the first time she went undercover. Even in a brief glimpse of her face it's easy to tell that she does not want to respond. The whole situation (being undercover and having to put up with physical, and possibly sexual, assault or risk breaking her cover) is a very uneasy one and (if handled right) has the potential to pose one of the most thought-provoking questions "24" has ever raised...what exactly is a person capable of going through when committed to a job that involves national security but puts her in serious jeopardy, in both bodily and emotional harm.

Jack's drug addiction horrors (as a result of his undercover work during the third season) sort of pale next to this.

I'm up late because I've been having nightmares lately and would rather not have another tonight...

very scary dream early this morning...scary because while the content was scary i didn't flinch at all and what does that say about me? in the dream I was in a room with two metal boxes of organs (all the organs and innards of the human body) that were probably from two different humans and I was supposed to shift through everything...it was extremely slimy and there was someone to the right of me (I don't know who) when all of the sudden a newspaper article (which I couldn't read) and a cat appeared next to me (the cat was my childhood cat Boots, I think)...the cat started purring and said, "See what happens when you fall in love with humans." or maybe it was: "see what happens when humans fall in love."

awfullll except that the cat wanted me to pick him up and hug him, which I did...there were other dreams before that, but I don't remember them...

I think I had the dream because I'd seen a Francis Bacon painting the night before and his stuff always creeps me out:

(be warned: this link will show you one of the creepiest pictures ever!!)

http://www.sai.msu.su/wm/paint/auth/bacon/painting.jpg

In the Air (88 Remix)In the Air (88 Remix)

I've been looking for the infamous (or maybe not so infamous since how infamous can Phil Collins music really be?!!) 1988 remix of "In the Air Tonight" and just now I see this online (see above link) $52.90??...is this the only way to get it? I've been looking for a while now 'cause I used to love the remix (and the amazing piano intro), but, man, 52 bucks??? Really?? And that's the USED price...to buy it new is over 200 bucks...wow!!

Anyone know of a cheaper (still legal!) way to find the MP3?

It looks like the most recent review on Amazon (April 3rd of last year) shows this CD is the only way to locate it right now...darn!

I guess for now, at least, I'll just continue to listen to it through grooveshark:

http://listen.grooveshark.com/#/playlist/Favoriteforgottensongs/572698

...cool website that lead to a cool package in the mail!...

Maybe it's the digital age or just that I bypass the mail room on my way into my apartment...for some reason I wait for days to check my mail. Tonight I went downstairs to get the mail and I had a 'surprise' package from this company I'd completely forgotten I'd contacted.

The site (fakechapter.com or musicisfake.com) will send you (FREE!) brand new cds of quirky music groups and singers you probably have never have heard of but who have a lot to offer. The site doesn't even charge you for postage...so neat!!

Tomorrow I'll be back to write about Green To Think's "Liar Like Me." Sleep well!:)

....

Green to Think is okay and certainly mellow enough for the kind of music I like late at night, but I think maybe they're TOO mellow...hmmm.

"The Palm Sampler" is a pretty neat album full of eclectic sounds and it's free through Amazon MP3's music store...shameless plug, I know, but the music is SO good, especially "Last Good Day of the Year" by Cousteau:)

Also good and also free is the solemnly pretty song "With of All You Here by My Side":



And "I Wonder Whatever Became of You" is yet another wonderful free song (and one that may hit a little too close to home for anyone whose heart was ever touched by someone--long ago--who now fleets across our minds from time to time):



...been listening to more Korgis' music...love their gentle, ethereal sounds so much and looked up more about them on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Korgis

There is so much good stuff that the Korgis put out...wish I had enough money to buy it all.

for more of their sounds:

http://www.amazon.com/Korgis/e/B000AP74GS/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1264312896&sr=1-2-ent

I don't know what to make of this book. When it showed up on our "new" non-fiction shelf the other day at work I didn't realize at first it was specifically related to Natalie Wood's death. I was thrilled at the thought of a new and possibly better (than previous ones) biography on the "Splendor in the Grass" actress.

Once I flipped the book open, though, and saw it was really nothing more than a speculative take on what may or may not have happened on that horrible night back in November of 1981, I lost interest. I want to know more about what her life was like on the set of her films, what her interests were, how she interacted with people. Her death was so very sad and truly shocking, but people always seem to want to focus on the scandalous possibilities whenever it's mentioned, not really open to the theory that it COULD have been an accident.

I meant to take it back with me to work to today and return it, but a few minutes ago I saw that I had left it on my kitchen table.

The PR for the book mentions that it's a non-sensationalistic look at her very tragic death ("never salacious or exploitive," the back blurb states with what I believe is true sincerity but somehow doesn't ring true once you start reading.)

I think there's a very good reason that this book came as a surprise (and with little to no fanfare) to Natalie Wood fans and it has nothing to do with the fact that the publisher is a small press one I've never heard of before. (Small presses can often be wonderful!)

What's more likely is that it has no new information to add after almost thirty years. What's even more of a turn-off is the awkward recreation of dialogue from that fateful night that no one (not even someone with a photographic memory) could possibly recall unless they had a tape recorder with them that night.

The author Marti Rulli states that Natalie Wood deserves justice and that she wrote this book to help get her some...I don't doubt that the author DOES have good intentions, even if it's slightly creepy just HOW much she wants that justice and how connected she feels to someone she never even met.

Whether it's JFK, Elvis, Marilyn or (in this case) Natalie Wood there are always going to be endless theories on events we will never know the cause of, particularly when the person in the center of it all is not around to tell us.

Maybe it's just me...but I think your time would be better spent watching one of Natalie's many movies...whether it's the delightful guilty pleasure "Sex and the Single Girl" or the gut-wrenching and amazing "Splendor in the Grass."

...just my two cents...

...It's been a busy day at work (love my job!!!!!) and now that the end of the day is approaching I can't wait to get home and read one of the books that has been eying me all day long from the new book shelf...It's called _John Dies at the End_ by David Wong....will keep you posted on in over the weekend...have an awesome one, by the way!!:)

...It's later and I'm home and I just can't get into this book, but I guess I'll still keep trying. Meanwhile I'm listening to the Cowboy Junkies and their song "Sweet Jane"...off of "Sounds of the Eighties" (1988-1989). I couldn't find the cover picture from the actual CD I heard this song on, but below is the "Best of the Cowboy Junkies." Can't believe I never heard their music until now...but then there are several songs on this "Sounds of the Eighties" I've never heard...