Hopefully seeing Sleestaks on the big screen won't make me soil myself.

I just hope they give Bill Lambeer a cameo. The fucking goon.

Sw Australia last night, finally. Although it was kinda two movies smashed into one too-long one, I liked it. Jackman is good and I love Baz's big, showy, melodramatic style. You just don't see a lot of that unselfconscious quest to entertain in movies anymore. Nicole Kidman's giant unmoving forehead is rather ditracting, but I was riveted by the beautiful little boy in most of her scenes, so was able to avert my eyes.

I saw Benjamin Buttons last night and have very mixed feelings. On the one hand, I sobbed nonstop during the last 20 minutes or so. (Pretty much the entire Benjamin as a senile old man in a child's body sequence. The line about watching him forget how to walk just broke me in half. ) On the other hand, if I step back a bit and actually think about it, the script has all the same annoying triteness that Forrest Gump did. (I only found out afterwards that it's the same screenwriter.) And I really hated the Katrina frame. All Fincher had to do was not name the fucking hurricane and it would have been fine. But making it Katrina was distracting and inappropriate at best, and borderline offensive at worst.

MSU did a sneak preview of "Coraline" this weekend. The MSU bakery made these: [link]

Those who have seen it - is it too dark for Em, do you think? She has watched Spiderman 1 and 2 and Batman Begins with no problem.

(This post might show what a bad parent I am in the what movies I allow my kid to see realm.)

Aims, those cookies are great!

I hope that they were as delicious as they were cool looking.

I have it on good authority that they were very tasty!

Aims, I'm going to defer to Neil Gaiman on this one:

Hello Neil:

Graciela Jenkins

...and the only real reply I can give, is that it's a bit like saying "I'm planning to cook a mushroom omelette tomorrow, and do you feel this food would be welcomed by a six year old?"

Answer: I don't know. I don't know your six year old. They tend to like different things and respond differently. Does your six year old like mushrooms or omelettes?

And the answer to is Coraline right for six year olds is, I don't know. What sort of thing does your six year old like?

I think a good rule of thumb would be, that if your child can cope with The Nightmare Before Christmas and the original Wizard of Oz then they should be able to cope with Coraline just fine.

As a general rule, Coraline the book is much creepier for adults than it is for kids, who tend to read it as an adventure. I suspect that this will be true of the film as well.

Also I'll say that there was a 7 or 8 year old in the row in front of us at the screening and she did not seem to find it too scary. I don't remember seeing any kids younger than that, but it was a pretty late screening so the age range probably had more to do with bedtime than content.

Rage looks interesting, for a number of reasons.

Christian Bale loses his SHIT.

[link]

I listened to his tirade and I cannot believe it.

BTW, the tirade is not safe for work. no way.