Mirrormask.

Oh my god, Mirrormask.

If it is playing ANYWHERE near you, you must go see it. It's beautiful. Gorgeous, gorgeous visuals that I want to overlay on the world around me.

I just saw A History of Violence.

Liked it, although I thought it fell apart in the last act. Viggo is AMAZING. There is a scene where he stands up as Tom Stall and then walks toward Ed Harris and literally turns into Joey before our eyes. His whole physicality changes.

Viewing #5 of Serenity may be it for me for a week or two. I've seen it enough times in a short enough period that I started to drift off early on, though once the heist got underway the action was moving fast enough to keep me engaged. But during the fight at Inara's I found myself imagining Companion self-defense training with the Operative falling victim to pepper perfume spray, nerve Astroglide, or a high-powered "back massager" with its batteries set on overload .

Best line this viewing: "At last, we can retire and give up this life of crime."

Mal was right: Fanti is prettier than Mingo.

I noticed for the first time that Kaylee actually stepped on a wounded Jayne on her way to fuss over Simon after the folks on the mule narrowly escaped the Reavers.

Oh my god, Mirrormask.

I told you!

Hee to Matt's notation on the twins.

I liked [Cronenberg's Crash]. But it's very strange and I think some find it disturbing.

I read the book (by J.G. Ballard). That was brilliant. I have yet to see the movie, but I probably will eventually.

I read the book back around '88 or so. I remember thinking, "This is one of those books, like Naked Lunch, that is impossible to film."

I was amused to be proven wrong on both books (although the film Naked Lunch is about a writer who's writing a book much like the book Naked Lunch, so it's not exactly a film adaptation).

And they were both done by Cronenberg, right?

Yeah.

I didn't even think of that when I made my previous post.

I should buy those two on DVD.

This weekend, we watched Hell House, a documentary about a Dallas fundamentalist "scare 'em straight" halloween extravaganza. Deeply unsettling, primarily for the scenarios that these sweet, bland people created and the creepy joy they took in damning (for instance) a woman who'd just been (mock) raped or a (mock) gay man dying of AIDS. Worst of all was the conflict with the tragic family at the heart of the movie, a quietly devastated single father with four children, two of whom suffered from cerebral palsy, whose wife had cheated on him and apparently left the whole family. It was obvious how much the church supported him and meant to him, but it was also obvious how oblivious the church members were to his suffering, such as when they had him watching a domestic abuse scenario with echoes of his own life.

What a way to kick off our Netflixed Month of Goofy Horror!

I read the book back around '88 or so. I remember thinking, "This is one of those books, like Naked Lunch, that is impossible to film."

I can remember thinking that and I had read the book after it had been filmed. But it wasn't because I found the book uncinematic, it's because Ballard's prose virtuosity calls for an insanely sophisticated director. I mean his stuff in Crash is gorgeous despite every second sentence being about the marrying of foreskin and chrome.

I found the book, on the whole, to be kinda vapid but I'd put that down to immaturity on my part, not the novel's.