WHAT OSCAR MISSED

I may come back in here and at least list what we've watched. I've just totally lost my momentum!! But TBH too, DH has been gone from June 18th to the present, on a business trip, and I've only watched one movie. So since my last entry was June 11th, maybe I'm about caught up----

I did watch Cheaper by the Dozen, the old version, while he was gone. And a library video of a funny British sitcom called Bless Me Father.

A long time ago, when our first son was born, and we decided I would stay home with him, DH and I discussed which form of entertainment we'd drop--both for financial reasons and time reasons. Dish network or the internet. And the Dish went. Fast.

Obviously it was the right choice; I've spent our usual couple hours of "movie time" at night reading forums and other fun internet stuff since DH has been gone.

Of course, I waste a lot of time on the internet. When he's in town, I'm sure I log about an hour or more per day--a long visit in the morning checking emails, bank accounts, and forums. And a couple shorter visits during the day. And with him gone, add a couple hours at night.

BUT the tv is NEVER turned on (since it doesn't pick up any channels anyway, lol). I'm sure that most people zone out there, in front of the tv, for probably the same amount of time.

But I am getting a computer headache after nearly 3 weeks of too much reading :) And hunched up shoulders.

He'll be home tomorrow; I can't wait. And we can watch some movies and I can pick up my Abandoned Knitting again----

Okay, obviously I'm really behind on the movie reviews. I've gotten completely obsessed in Homeschool curriculum reviews, reading 3 different boards about 4 times per day, plus my usual yahoo groups. I'm a nervous wreck! Something's gotta go. As soon as VBS is over this week, I'm going to get off some of my lists and cut down my computer time.

And actually HOMESCHOOL instead of reading about it, lol.

And get caught up on my digital pictures--useful computer time!!

jkl

jkl

jkl

jkl

jkl

jkl

This movie was pretty bad. We have seen a few of these caveman type movies, and they're obviously just an excuse to have women run around in skimpy outfits. This one didn't even have very good outfits--

No real dialogue; basically just some guy narrating the whole thing. Some women used to be enslaved to the men of their tribe, doing all the hard labor. They escaped with their female children and formed a tribe of their own. All was well and good until a giant came and killed off all the grown women except for the old "wise woman". She raised the girls, and when they reached a "certain age", she advised them to find some men.

So they kidnap some men and bring them to their treehouses, but there is a lot of conflict because they ladies want to be the masters, and the men aren't very excited about that. One of the men discovers fire and cooking, and uses fire to take over the camp. The men are going to take the women back to their tribe, but on the way, they are attacked by the giant, the fire-man saves everyone, and the men and women decide to start their own tribe and live in harmony . . .

The women certainly had pretty hair and fancy outfits for not even having spoken language . . . I don't think this will fit in any historical category for our creationist homeschooling, ha ha. And it's not even funny enough to watch for laughs. Well, there was the elephant with giant tusks glued on him to be some kind of mammoth (but weren't they woolly?), with his speed increased to chase the fire-man. And the duck with thingies glued to his head to perhaps be a pterodactyl?

This movie holds special horror for me that many of my friends don't even know about--I am terrified, terrified, terrified of sharks, and it all can be traced back to---one day when I was about five or six years old, and my mom told me that there was a "great movie on tv!" and sent me down into the dark basement to watch Jaws. All alone. A nice 70's basement with wood paneling and brown carpeting. Just me and the giant white shark.

I don't remember any of the movie, but I distinctly remember trying to go to sleep at night when I just *knew* that Jaws was hiding in the wicker elephant hamper in the corner of my room. I guess I finally realized he wasn't in my room, but I have always avoided the ocean as much as possible, and always avoided boats. Even on freshwater, because pirhana and water moccasins are at least as scary as Jaws.

So anyway, Happy Birthday To Me, DH bought me the 30th Anniversary Jaws DVD for my birthday, and we watched it Tuesday and Wednesday. It's as scary as ever. We haven't watched the extras yet, but we will.

Really, it's a love/hate thing with Jaws. It is a very well made movie, IMO--there isn't a whole lot of right-on terror, but lots of suspense and tension. Lots of character building. It was a good present because we *will* watch it again.

I'm still not going in the water. And neither will my boys, if I can help it.

We watched the "full" version of this a few years ago, and I think this cut version was missing something.

Definitely not a movie to recommend--the director, Dario Argento, is into gore bigtime and heavy metal soundtracks. Quite honestly, I have never seen any other movies like the ones I've seen of his. Disturbing and weird, and I never quite figure out who the killer even is. Very twisted.

This one is about a girl at a girl's school in Switzerland; a psycho killer is on the loose. The girl is able to control insects, and uses that ability to search out the killer. I think the killer ends up being a teacher's crazy deformed son, who has been putting the bodies of the murdered girls into a big pool in the basement.

So---no one ought to go out and rent this movie on my recommendation; more likely if you hear that a movie you're interested in is directed by Dario, be warned. We have one more of his on our boxed sets, Deep Red, which we've seen before and will probably watch again, but I remember disliking it a lot too--something about a child who drew on the walls; a body walled up in an abandoned house; and of course, a psycho killer somewhere . . .

When this movie started out, it was pretty exciting and had a Big Star, Kirk Douglas, so I thought we'd found a little-known classic. And all in all, it was a okay movie, but it dragged quite a bit in the middle . . .

This was about Jim Fallon (Douglas), a ruthless lumberman who moves out to California to cut down the redwoods. He falls in love with a Quaker widow, whose church congregation lives on the land and wants to protect the trees. Lots of conflict between the Big Money Group and the Save the Trees group, and in the end, I think Fallon learns his lesson and only cuts little trees or something.

He's just really a big jerk, so when he marries the Quaker widow in the end, I'm just not believing it.

We saw a movie based on the same story called something like "The Hands of Orlac" within the last year that was fairly good. This one was too.

Basic premise--famous concert pianist is in an accident; he is in the hospital unconscious, and the doctor tells the wife/fiancee that his hands will have to be amputated. Wife (in this movie; I think it was fiancee in the other?) is in despair, and since the doctor is secretly obsessed with her, he "finds a way" by grafting the hands of a recently killed criminal to the pianist.

The personality of the hands causes the pianist to become a killer--or to think that he is a killer.

Entertaining, strange story. The last time we saw this particular movie, it was pre-kids, so it's been a while. This time, we noticed that Peter Lorre has an eerie resemblance to a child that we know--

DH could barely keep his eyes open during this movie based on an Ernest Hemingway story. It seems like I had to read some Hemingway in college and wasn't too thrilled either; so serious!

My biggest problem with this movie was that I didn't realize until the second day, after reading reviews, that the main character had three different wives. They all looked the same to me, and that kind of made me miss a lot of the point of the movie--the character's trouble with relationships and lack of purpose in life. Hmmm.

The main character, played by Gregory Peck, is Harry, an author. He is dying from a leg wound, up near Mt. Kilimanjaro, wherever that is, pondering the meaning of life, reflecting on past mistakes, etc.

If this movie had moved a little faster and not tried so hard to be so serious, it would have been okay; it did have an interesting story. It just wasn't very well made.

There was a very funny male Spanish Dancer scene though---

And I got some time to finish some knitting (which I haven't been posting lately). Some socks that I may or may not give to my mom, who has been wanting some of my handknit socks, and a baby gift for a friend of mine. The bunny was pretty fun to make, and I may make this a "trademark gift" for a while until I get tired of it.

This movie was okay, but like so many movies, it had this horrible pit of boringness in the middle. And then to add insult to injury, it had a Scooby Doo ending.

A girl's father is murdered, all his blood drained out, and it is blamed on local "vampires". The "vampire expert" is called in to work with the local police. The father's friend and guardian of the daughter is hypnotized, and it turns out he murdered the father because he refused to let him marry the daughter.

And the "vampires" were really actors sent to shake everyone up.

Had Bela Lugosi before he got really drunk and drugged out, and he still looked pretty sharp as a vampire.

I just can't muster up much to say about this movie . . .

Oh my. I can't begin to do justice to the weirdness of this movie. We bought a new 50 movie pack, "Gunslingers", which I chose over "Westerns" because "Gunslingers" seemed kind of eclectic--1930s up to 1970s. And this movie verified that feeling that I had--

This was no western, that's for sure. It turns out that it was set in New Mexico, but it felt a lot like rural Alabama or really anywhere in the rural south. LeRoy, Wilbur, and Melvin are redneck brothers--LeRoy is the leader, supposedly religious and always talking about sinners and righteous, even as he is shooting law officers. Wilbur is a little slow and is always asking for beer. Melvin seems almost normal compared to them; really his only distinguishing characteristic is that he is always picking on Wilbur.

The boys rescue Keema from jail--I never really understood the connection, but maybe Keema saved them from a mine accident in the past? And they go all over New Mexico shooting people and just being nuts, basically.

The soundtrack was bizarre--the theme song was all about Wilbur, and the chorus was just:
Wilbur, "Hey Leroy, give me some beer"
Leroy, "Here you go, Wilbur"
Wilbur, "Thank you, LeRoy"

but obviously it loses something without the music. Another winning song was background music in the Lone Star Bar--"If that phone call is for me, I'm not here".

The boys kidnap a Church of God couple and their deaf-mute daughter to help them escape, and later hijack a church bus--

So, so, so awfully mangy and disturbing; yet another hour and a half of my life lost. But DH said it was eerily like some people he grew up with.

Poor dh was sick last night. We finally had the $$ to go to Lowes and buy a new lawnmower to replace the non-powered reel mower he's been using for a year, and he opted for the Black and Decker M875 electric mower. Yes, it has a cord so it's like vacuuming the lawn, but it does a good job and I think we'll like it. We've just got to keep up our image as the neighborhood weirdos. We don't mind; we know we're really the cool ones, ha ha.

Anyway, he loved his mower so much that he did the entire yard in 85 degree heat, then did all the edging, and washed the cars--I looked out in the yard and he was sitting on the grass, panting. I took some tea out to Mr. Heatstroke, but he was pretty much out for the evening, running a fever and feeling like he was going to pass out.

Sooooo I started the evening playing on the computer, buying Amish 1st grade readers off ebay for my son (they're supposed to be very clean, wholesome, character building stories; I'm excited). But the computer got very dull; I've been spending way too much time looking at curriculum. So I went to the tv room and looked for a movie I hadn't seen in a while--and picked Monty Python. Dh likes MP, but not as much as I do, I guess; they're like old friends. If they just didn't use any bad language in there, I'd watch them more; we need to figure out how to edit that out when we burn my VHS's to DVD.

This movie is hilarious in a naughty kind of way. It covers "life from birth to death" in a series of very irreverent skits. I've seen it about 20 times, so it's all very familiar and cozy. I meant to only watch half and go to bed, but I just couldn't, so I ended up staying up until 11:30 (which is VERY late for me, esp since I had to get up at 6:20 for church this morning) and watched the whole thing.

But it's funny. And Michael Palin is still my favorite, even though he is as old as my dad.

This stars the guy from "Major Dad" and "Simon and Simon" as Wes, a guy who lives with his mom and who killed his brother back when they were kids. Which led to his institutionalization, and his dad committing suicide--

So in the present, Wes is suffering blackouts and a couple of his girlfriends are murdered. Of course, he's suspected, and he certainly is a little freaky--

But not as freaky as his mom, who in the last scene is shown to have kept the corpses of the brother and the dad in the house. His mom had murdered all the girlfriends because Wes wasn't allowed to get close to anyone after taking away her beloved son and husband.

Psycho copycat, but not too bad, considering the low budget; entertaining enough. There was a band in there called "The Bored", and the blackout scenes were really psychedelic. So it passes my okay-test.

This started out really dull and a bad print, couldn't understand what anyone was saying, but it got much better. Quicky little mob film with a funny name, for those who know me IRL.

The Big Boss of a some kind of mobster scam group (racketeering? I am feeling the void of my history education now) dies, and his gang wants a Big Name to take his place. They discover that he has a son, Edward, and track him down--finding that he's a very young, very naive yokel. So they decide to use his name and reputation only, and the whole town is afraid of "Baby Face Morgan". In the meantime, Edward is set up in a the office of a phony business, knowing nothing about the illegal activities that he is supposedly leading.

In his boredom, he decides to start a business protecting companies against the mobsters who are destroying their trucks--so he's protecting against things done in his own name, and it gets kind of kooky.

I lost the point towards the end; somehow everything gets crazy and then resolves itself and he gets the girl, blah blah. Entertaining but not something to watch again.

Fantasy type movie; silly but mostly enjoyable. Charming enough that I could overlook the sappy sweetness and just go along for the ride.

Three successful older businessmen share a large mansion in NYC (or some other major city; seems like NYC). They are lonely one Christmas Eve, and the guests they invited to dinner are unable to attend. They throw wallets out the window, and the people with the two out of three that are returned are invited to dinner--Jean and Jimmy. Jimmy was in Creature from the Black Lagoon, and DH insisted that his wonderful singing in this movie had to have been dubbed, but it was not.

So they could have had Creature from the Black Lagoon the Musical and reached a wider audience :)

Anyway, the three businessmen die in a plane crash, but their spirits return to try and help Jean and Jimmy stay in love and get married. Which of course they do in the end, after overcoming some things, blah blah blah.

Nice little movie, I thought, even though it was so sweet it made my teeth hurt.