Author: J. A.

It reads. It writes. It watches. It researches. It overdoes many of those things!

There Can Be Only Monday! Talking About Highlander… A Lot, Part 23

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Last time: The beginning of this time. Seriously, I had no idea this was going to be a two-parter.

23. Like pulling teeth, these are the dates of our lives (Part 2—le geek, c’est chic)

Just when it looks like this might turn into a real date, Brenda notices the other wrapped present Connor brought—a copy of her book on metallurgy, with a bio stating she works for the police. Busted!

“I have an extensive library,” Connor says by way of explanation (one of my favorite lines in this movie). He tells Brenda about the cop outside as she frantically tries to salvage her plan.

“What are you going to do?” she asks.

“The question is,” Connor retorts,  “what are you going to do? Are you going to turn off the tape, or are you going to shoot me with the .45?” Busted x3!

So far, so exactly like every other conversation these two have had—cagey to the point of ridiculousness. On the upside, can you imagine what this pair would have been like on a dinner date? Five-minute acrimonious hinting about the wine list, secret agendas involving tiramisu, and if we were lucky, Connor cutting a cake with a sword. “There can be only one! … but two forks, please!”

Now desperate, Brenda empties the bullets from the gun—that’ll kinda-sorta come back to haunt her—and makes a last-ditch plea to see the sword. In a way, it’s like a rundown of the movie from Brenda’s point of view: finding the metal fragments, searching the crime scene, realizing she was on to something amazing. “If I could verify the existence of such a weapon, it would be like discovering a 747 a thousand years before the Wright brothers ever flew!” she finishes with such an awesome, goofy smile that I really love Brenda in that moment. People in movies aren’t always allowed to just geek out about things that way unless they’re villains—and even then, Brenda’s interest in the sword  isn’t quite an obsession, the way it would be if she was a movie villain. She just has information she’s excited about and can tell she’s being buffaloed.

Connor is having none of this, and even goes so far as to say, “Don’t you ever think about anything except what you want?” before he leaves. If everyone did that on first dates when he was younger, no wonder the Highlands used to be full of stabby people.

As he storms off, Connor hears the voice of Ramirez again, telling him not to get involved. Here’s a hint: if you do, maybe save the accusations of selfishness till the fourth date. Fifth would be better.

 

Next time: Chance of Disney, or weirdness.

Next time on TCBOM!: You only thought you knew which part of this movie I hated.

Found-Again (Maybe) Friday: Vertigo

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Why Found-Again? An usually good question! When I told my mother I’d added some Hitchcock to the ol’ Netflix queue, she said, “Ooooh. Vertigo. Have you seen it before?” and I had to admit I was stumped: the end of Mel Brooks’s Hitchcock parody High Anxiety borrows heavily from Vertigo, and so I wasn’t sure whether I’d seen the real deal or a cunning imitation that would fool a five-year-old. I’m still not, either.

The Premise: Ex-cop with a well-founded fear of heights Scottie Ferguson (James Stewart) is asked by an old friend to do a spot of surveillance. The subject? The friend’s wife, who is feared to be having a breakdown.

Is our hero being played as a pawn in a web of psychologically complex intrigue that will eventually involve tall buildings? Is this Hitchcock?

First, the good parts: Vertigo is a beautiful, beautiful movie, with gorgeous San Francisco scenery and costumes by Edith Head. It stars Kim Novak, the archetypical Hitchcock blonde, and features Barbara bel Geddes as an adorable artist who’s still sort of in love with Scottie. As someone whose youthful fear of heights once led to hyperventilating in a lighthouse, I expected to be sympathetic to the protagonist, if nothing else.

What I didn’t expect was to be slightly bored as our hero spends an awful lot of time 1) driving around while wearing a hat and 2) professing deep, passionate love for a woman he’s barely met. There are ways to pull this off—I may have mentioned I’m a fan of old-time radio, where plot contrivances aren’t exactly unfamiliar territory—but I don’t think it worked this time.

The Verdict: …Maybe? As someone whose favorite Hitchcock will probably always be an eternal tie between Charade and Rebecca, it’s possible I’m just not the audience for this one.

Might go well with: After the Thin Man, a good stiff drink like the ones all the characters have in abundance—even the artist with the tiny, crappy kitchen.

 

Next time: I’m so glad I’m not a relationship counselor. Related: is a book ever a bad gift?

 

There Can Be Only Monday! Talking About Highlander…A Lot, Part 22

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Last time: Doesn’t anybody in this movie know how to flirt properly? The closest we’ve come is the Kurgan and Candy the prostitute. (And Connor and Heather, I suppose, but I really hate it when she says he’s “all muck and muscle.” Ew.)

22. Like pulling teeth, these are the dates of our lives. (Part 1—who knew?)

I find myself in a bit of a quandary here, as I sat down to do the usual recap-sprinkled-with-speculation thing I do and realized that I have no idea what Connor is hoping to get out of this date.

 As a viewer I know, of course—he’s trying to figure out what Brenda knows, he doesn’t want mortals getting hurt in the course of his business, and he’s fighting an attraction to her. But one of my guiding principles, the reason I even bother suggesting things like Kurgan vs. Loch Ness Monster or spend hours trying to figure out who won the 1536 battle, is that I like the things that happen in movies/TV/books to have an in-world explanation. It doesn’t have to be a good one, mind you, but I assume it’s there. So what is Connor consciously trying to do?

Connor’s already aware that Brenda doesn’t know much about either immortals or the sword, and that the only way she’d learn more is if he told her. I doubt he can intimidate her into leaving him alone: if the Kurgan turning up didn’t put her off the scent, Connor can’t do it. And if he’s going to tell her a bunch of lies, setting up a confrontation the way he does seems like a bad way to open.

All of which may well leave us with “He didn’t want to drink alone,” with associated subconscious subtext.  Okay, then. Let’s go with that.

Brenda is preparing for her date with a loaded gun and a tape recorder, which is the thing to do if you think your date may have beheaded someone. Her apartment is amazing: it’s just possible the NYPD has no money for a camera because she’s been embezzling it all to buy scimitars and Persian rugs.

Connor shows up and hangs around the doorway like Dracula until she specifically invites him in. He even says “Good evening.” While Brenda goes off to put on her enormous ’80s earrings, Connor spots a painting of a kilted highlander on the wall and waggles his eyebrows. It’s really cute.

Showing more forethought than we’ve seen out of him…ever, he immediately catches on about the gun and the tape recorder, and spots something even Brenda didn’t know about: the cops are watching her apartment. When asked, she lies about her job, claiming she’s in museum work. I wouldn’t admit to Moran as a colleague either.

Connor pours drinks from the bottle he brought, and they stand together. “Brandy,” he says, “bottled in 1783…” and goes on to mention a few broad historical facts. Which is understandable, since he doesn’t want to blow his cover, but you kind of want him to say “…bottled in 1783, the year I—I mean, my ancestor— lost all that money at poker and had to wash dishes in a castle in Luxembourg for a summer.” For the sake of the movie, something more obscure than “England recognized the independence of the United States” would have been nice, but it seems to be hitting home with Brenda, who for the first time looks as if she may really be interested in more than Connor’s weapon.

Next time: A small chance of Hitchcock—the big guy, not Robyn.

Next time on TCBOM!: It’s all downhill from here, except for the big geek-out.

 

More bonus goofery: I found some music that goes well with the Kurgan/Ramirez duel, and the official video is even a little Highlanderesque! Enjoy.

 

 

 

Found-Again Friday: In Search Of…

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Why Found-Again? I’ll admit it: I was one of probably thousands of people who sat crying at their desks the day Leonard Nimoy passed away. Seeing him as Spock on Star Trek: TOS when I was a kid was the first time I can remember seeing a character on TV who was valued because he was smart, and it made a big impression on me. (Due to my mother’s unwillingness to deal with my hair, Spock and I also had the same haircut when I was younger, which is a distinctly less heartwarming memory.)

But I also liked the show from my childhood that Nimoy hosted and narrated: In Search Of….

The Premise: It was a weekly look at various longstanding mysteries and outré subjects—and after I saw the Amityville episode sometime in the ’80s, I dumped all my dolls in the closet for quite a while. So it was with the aim to scare myself again that I picked up season 1 on DVD last week.

First and foremost, it’s part of my moral code that I will never, ever say a bad word about Leonard Nimoy. That said, let’s just say his wardrobe on In Search Of… seems to be an homage to Gary Collins’s psychic investigator character on The Sixth Sense TV drama from the same era.

It’s reminiscent of The Sixth Sense show in another way, too: a number of the segments are about psychic phenomena, and it becomes obvious that part of the ’70s was spent waiting for people to unlock the more arcane powers of the mind (by the same token, we can assume cynicism about this had set in by the time Ghostbusters came out). And a lot of the actual bits of evidence presented (specific famous photos of Bigfoot and of Nessie, for example) have since been officially discredited: the program now seems to work better as a time capsule than an exploration, even though we’re still not sure where Amelia Earhart/yetis/aliens/Atlantis might be.

The Verdict: I find myself unsure whether anyone not around for it the first time could enjoy this show, but if nothing else, you have the voice of Nimoy.

Well, you also have unintentional hilarity resulting from the show’s title (one episode ends up being “In Search of…Killer Bees,” which sounds like a terrible idea) and some incredibly dressed 1970s-era scientists. Someone should start a Tumblr with screenshots, because those guys are amazing.

Might go well with: The X-Files; The Sixth Sense; the chips and bean dip I was undoubtedly eating the first time I watched the show.

 

Next time: We all watch Highlander and feel better about our own dating skills.

 

Personal: Jasper

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Incubus and Jasper in 2006.
Incubus and Jasper in 2006.

If you read my Twitter feed, you probably know I lost my oldest cat recently: Jasper was over 17 years old, so in a way it wasn’t a surprise, but I’d somehow got my heart set on 19 to be the age at which I’d be sort of okay if the cat died of old age.

In 1998, my future ex-husband and I heard a sad little noise outside the door of our apartment. I opened it and there he was, a half-grown tabby kitten begging for food. I gave him a little of the kibble we had for our cat, and soon we were on a route the cat took around the building: on the first floor, the people who’d turned him loose in the first place were still occasionally feeding him, and he also had a benefactor on the third floor.

And on every floor he had a name. On the first floor he’d been Princess until certain facts made themselves apparent, then Prince. The third floor called him Toby. To me, he was Jasper.

Jasper

Things continued like that until one day his former owner popped his head out on the balcony below ours. “You gonna take that cat?” he asked.

I said I was, and he handed up the remaining food and litter from Jasper’s brief tenure as an indoor kitten, and I was suddenly the proud owner of Princess Prince Toby Jasper, a cat who loved attention so much he purred if you made extended eye contact. When the FEH and I separated, there was no doubt who was going to take him, and Jasper and I became single at the same time.

He seemed bored, so I got him a friend.

I subsequently apologized.

A few weeks ago, it became clear that Jasper was wasting away. At his next-to-last vet appointment, he was diagnosed with kidney failure. (I’d already suspected it, since I’d seen my dad suffer kidney failure too.) As though he’d heard the diagnosis, in the space of a weekend the cat went from “kind of weak” to not being able to stand on his own. He wouldn’t eat or drink. When I carried him to the litter box, he simply fell over and stayed fallen.

Jasper with Inky, three days before the end.
Jasper with Inky, three days before the end.

As I told them vet who helped put him out of pain, I’d really hoped he’d go on the top of the sofa in his sleep. “It rarely happens that way,” she said.

I never thought I’d be one of those people who had their animal’s ashes in the house, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t put him outside again. So now there’s a little urn that wears his collar, and Jasper is again sitting on the furniture. And I am training myself to say “Let’s go feed the fish!” to the other cat in the morning when I used to say “Let’s go see Mr. J!” and not to turn back to his place on the sofa to say goodnight every night. I never look down to find I’m petting a cat with no recollection of how he got there: Inky’s no lap cat, while Jasper’s spy name was The Insinuator. No one steps on me on the way to find out how much milk is in my coffee. It’s surprisingly awful.

Goodbye, Jasper: you were one of the best.

 

Next time: Something slightly more cheerful.

 

There Can Be Only Monday! Talking About Highlander…A Lot, Part 21

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Last time: Did I mention Ramirez died? Out here in what passes for the real world, I may also have purchased one of these.

Back in the 20th century, Connor emerges from his Fortress of Mope-itude to find Brenda in his antique shop, arguing with the well-dressed woman at the front desk.

This would be Rachel, Connor’s former ward and current friend and employee—and my favorite mortal character in the movie. Rachel is beautiful, seems quite smart and levelheaded, and clearly adores Connor, which helps with those stretches of movie where it’s easy to forget he’s the protagonist. If you do not like Rachel, you should seek medical help, because your heart has probably been replaced with days-old Kraft Singles.

Brenda and Connor spar in their hamfisted fashion: she asks about the Kurgan, then about the sword she’s looking for, and he plays very dumb, steering her toward a display case of silver. (For some reason, antique silver bores the ever-loving…you know… out of me, the art-history geek, so this part seems more aggressive to me than it’s meant to be.)

“Do you cook?” he asks Brenda. “I thought we might have dinner.” Ladies and gentlemen, a man who has had four hundred years to learn how to chat up women! Rachel overhears all this and smiles encouragingly. Brenda will make the date, of course: she’s after a sword.

You know what I mean.

Meanwhile, the cops are talking, and one of them saw Brenda at the antique shop. Uh-oh.

Back to Connor and to Rachel, who is straightening Connor’s tie and trying to do damage control, asking what she should say when people ask about him. “Tell them I’m immortal,” he deadpans, and we segue into a WWII flashback in which Connor saves little Rachel from the Nazis. I’ve heard this part might not have been in the theatrical release, and if so it’s a shame: it’s got lots of action, the outfit and hair are a great look for Christopher Lambert—no Columbo cosplay, no filthy kilt—and Connor gets to save a kid and shoot a Nazi!

This is great! But it’s so good I find myself wondering if modern-day Connor has a vitamin deficiency or something. There’s so much more energy.

Back in the present, Rachel tries to get Connor to admit he has feelings for Brenda, and Connor acts like a cross between a world-weary soul and a kid getting interrogated about his first crush.

“You’re such a romantic, Rachel,” he tells her, then kisses her on the cheek and takes off for his date. He should’ve gone back to his 1940s hairdo first.

 

Next time: Another thing that scared me as a child for Found-Again Friday.

Next time on TCBOM!: The date goes about as well as can be expected, and OH GOD RAMIREZ VOICEOVER.

Found-Again Friday: Candyman

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Long ago, I started my first little blog, in which I mainly wrote about horror things: movies, art, the occasional book, and a little bit of goth culture. When I started Our Cynical Omelet, I decided I was going to try to 1) be a little more dignified and varied in subject matter and 2) make sure I had no fewer than two things per week to write about.

One of those regular features per goal number 2 turned out to be about Highlander, so that was the equivalent of taking goal number 1, killing it, and desecrating its body. Which…kind of brings us to Candyman, in fact.

Why Found-Again? Because I am totally susceptible to horror movies: easily creeped out, easily grossed out, you name it. Candyman is chock-full of both of those things—it’s kind of what Clive Barker does—so I only watch it every other year or so.

The Premise: Doing your dissertation on a hook-handed urban-mythical boogeyman is a phenomenally bad idea. (I could have told the main character that: if you ever want to see a bunch of English professors become horrified about your career prospects, tell them you’re interested in folklore studies. Don’t ask how I know this.)

I suspect Tony Todd isn’t actually the scariest person on earth, but for the duration of Candyman, he absolutely is. The understandably vengeful spirit of a lynched artist, Candyman enjoys:

  • emerging from mirrors if his name is said five times
  • haunting housing projects in Chicago
  • killing people with his hook hand
  • striding around in a big swingy coat while monologuing seductively, and
  • framing folklore-studies majors for murder (sort of) while pursuing them with unholy persistence.

Yes, the unhappy grad student Helen (Virginia Madsen) is in his sights, and all she wanted to do was make a name for herself at conferences and get her husband to stop being such a pompous dick.

Actually, given the end of the movie, I suspect both of those things happened. Let me revise that to add “…while still being able to enjoy it.”

The Verdict: This is, though hardly without flaws, a great horror movie—smart and atmospheric and fascinating and disgusting, occasionally all at once. It helps, of course, that I’ll watch Tony Todd in anything.

Might go well with: Anything that won’t cause repeated trips to a room with mirrors, if you know what I mean.  (Honey is probably also right out.)

 

Next time: I cover a reasonable amount of ground in watching Highlander.

There Can Be Only Monday! Talking About Highlander… A Lot, Part 20

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Last time: I wish Yelp had existed in 16th-century Scotland, because I’d love to see Connor and Heather’s review of their contractor. (Maybe they are DIYers? Using a paste of moss and Connor’s exile tears as mortar seems like something he’d do.)

20. Finally! Part 3: The Quickening, Which Follows The Shut-Uppening

Oh, dear: I get so caught up in this fight I’ve backed myself into writing an entire blog post about maybe two minutes of movie. Ah, well, I am nothing if not dedicated.

The fight continues on up the staircase toward the Epic Finish™, but not before more wall falls down—so much so, in fact, that the Kurgan is distracted and gets run right through the breastplate.You’d think that would take a few seconds of recovery, but he just pulls the blade out and uses it to leverage Ramirez down.

This scene is an excellent illustration of why I will never understand how injuries and recovery periods work on immortals. Does being “the strongest” mean it’s okay to get your throat cut, run through, and have a fall through a beam from an enormous height, all with approximate 15-second recoveries? Right after this, the Kurgan gives Ramirez what looks like a pretty shallow slice across the chest, and it seems to completely demoralize the guy. Why?

By now, of course, they’ve reach the top of the tower, which is still crumbling around everybody. For a moment, the bit they’re standing on looks like the neck and head of a dragon, which is great since that’s the Kurgan’s symbol. When they cut back to it, however, bits have fallen off and it’s just more cheap Freud sticking up in the air…which is everybody’s symbol in this movie (cf. that lovely shot of Ramirez’s codpiece when the Kurgan was slicing on him. I can’t imagine why I keep thinking of Lord Flashheart). The Kurgan runs Ramirez through and taunts him: eldritch lightning flashes!

Then the Kurgan spots poor Heather. What the heck did he think was doing all that screaming, Ye Olde ADT? Ramirez tries to protect her by saying she’s with him, but since he’s about to die, that doesn’t go so well.

“Tonight you sleep in hell,” the Kurgan tells Ramirez, looming menacingly over him. Why don’t I ever get to say things like that at my job? Three guesses as to whether he also gets to say the film’s tagline before Ramirez, blessedly, is silenced.

Then… well. I’ve already talked about the stupid tower remnant: do I have to tell you how the Kurgan holds his sword as the Quickening happens? I bet I don’t. In fact, so great is the force of this completely-not-a-sexual-analog thing that he plummets from one of the few high surfaces left on the damn tower, yet five seconds later is completely ready to grab poor Heather and drag her off.

Heather is by far the character I feel sorriest for in the entire movie, and this isn’t even the chief reason.

So that’s that. While the very end of the scene was definitely bad, every time I watch Ramirez get beheaded I have the same reaction:

And then I remember that the movie frames all this as Connor’s flashback… of events he wasn’t around for, and about which the movie later shows he has limited knowledge. For a second there, I was really getting excited.

Next time: Don’t say it five times, okay?

Next time on TCBOM!: We meet my favorite mortal character, and Connor makes a da-aaate…

Found-Again Friday: Musical Interlude 2

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It’s time for another blast from my listening past, in this case the Celtic/British folk music phase I went through in college.

As you might have gathered from my revisit of Darby O’Gill and the Little People, I have a fondness for all things Celtic, and being a Robin of Sherwood fan sealed the deal: I spent eight years, from age 11 to 19, looking for the soundtrack album by Clannad. Then PBS started showing the occasional Chieftains concert. You know, gateway drugs.

The day I bought my first Chieftains album, I picked up a novel by urban-fantasy author Charles de Lint. At the time, he was in the habit of using epigrams taken from folk artists, and a lot of real-life bands were mentioned in his stories. Couple that with a massive music store (the late Planet Music of Virginia Beach) near my hometown, and the hunt was on! From the fairly traditional…

To the slightly more modernized:

And a lot of stuff from the psychedelic ’60s and ’70s, including this from Pentangle. It gives me chills every time I listen.

(The fellow on the right in this video is Bert Jansch, a folk guitar legend who may get his own Friday music post here at some point.)

Happy listening!

 

Next time: Make your best sword noise for Monday!

 

There Can Be Only Monday! Talking About Highlander…A Lot, Part 19

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Last time: Did somebody call a one-sleeved exterminator? Also, I forgot to mention that they play something very like the string music from Psycho when the Kurgan beats the door in. Nice touch.

19. Finally! Part 2: Slash! Stab! Demolish?

Ramirez starts out strong, slashing the Kurgan’s throat but not fully beheading him. Blood pours down the poor guy’s  Kurgan’s beautiful face and—

You know what? Just assume I’m doing this through the whole damn scene. I’m not proud of it, but it is a fact.

Now then.

The Kurgan manages to defend himself long enough to regenerate his neck a bit, then goes on the offensive. Understandably, Heather screams. By now I’ve watched this enough that every time she does, I automatically add the words “My homeowner’s insurance!”

Meanwhile, Ramirez delivers the kind of wisecracks (“My cut has improved your voice!”) that should prove to doubters once and for all that there are things Roger Moore could pull off that Connery can’t.* They fight up the staircase, and the Kurgan is knocked to the ground through a beam that, in retrospect, seems to be pretty important to the tower’s construction. It’s one of my favorite parts of this fight scene, since the moment he regains consciousness, he is immediately groping for his sword. That’s the kind of focus I like to see in a villain.

The Kurgan regains his feet before Ramirez can descend the stairs, and he laughs evilly—something else I like to see in a villain. This time, the staircase battle causes the tower to actually begin falling down, so to “Why is it there?” and “Why are a couple of young random lovers living in it?,” we can add “What the heck did these people use for mortar?”

More fighting. All the woodwork in the tower collapses. More “My homeowner’s insurance!” More of me acting like the wolf in the Tex Avery cartoon, because not only is the Kurgan punching Ramirez, he’s really enjoying it. As am I.

*Not necessarily worthy things. Just things.

 

Next time: If I knew, I’d tell you.

Next time on TCBOM!: Ramirez! Stops! Talking!