Fatadelic

I went and saw Mamma Mia on the weekend, as I was in the mood for a pleasant bit of fluff. And it met expectations - a fun romp, with ABBA songs.

But what blew me away was Meryl Streep. Who knew she could actually sing? I mean, really sing? Do yourself a favour and watch her emotional performance of The Winner Takes It All. If anyone could make singing an ABBA song Oscar-worthy, Meryl has done it. Seriously.

We did it again. Another unplanned, rather expensive trip into The Vortex and back. Purchases are below the fold (links to IMDB as usual):

Continue reading ‘Return of The Vortex’

Not all men, mind you.

I’m not taking part in THAT stereotype of the fat, hairy-legged, man-hating, humorless feminist today.

Even though I happen to be a fat feminist with hairy legs who has just titled a blog post “I hate men”.

I am not, however, entirely humorless.

Ha. Ha. (See?)

Continue reading ‘I hate men. I can’t abide them even now and then.’

I need to make a confession. My partner John and I have a vice over which we have no control.

No, it’s not drugs or alcohol.

Its DVDs. Hundreds of them. All legit (not pirated). All obsessively catalogued.

We add to our collection in a variety of ways, but we have our preferred source (Hum in Newtown). We call it The Vortex, because we cannot drive through Newtown without at least feeling the intense pull of the place calling to us and our credit cards. It stocks DVDs that are interesting and sometimes hard to get (at least in Region 4 format, although our player can do multi-region).

Anyway, we fell into The Vortex today, and managed to come out with only 6 DVDs to add to the already large To Be Watched pile. Not to mention another 2 on order.

If you are interested, the purchases are listed below. NB: the links are to IMDB

Continue reading ‘We’ve made it out of The Vortex alive!’

OK, I know it has probably been done before, but the recent Book Meme has inspired me to do the same for movies, using the IMDB top 250. Since IMDB tend to list the title in the original language, I’ve listed the English title in brackets where appropriate.

Feel free to take part if you want. Bold movies you have watched and liked (if not loved), italicize movies you haven’t watched all the way through and strikethrough what you couldn’t stand. (And feel free to double up, i.e. strike and bold movies you watched and hated, and italicize and strike what you stopped watching because you couldn’t stand it).

My list is below the fold:

Continue reading ‘A Movie Meme’

It’s happening. It won’t take long now.

First this:

Then this:

Did you know that we have 246 DVDs in our collection? I know, because I have catalogued them all, somewhat obsessively, using a program called DVD Database X (which is a Mac program, but I believe there are similar programs for Windows). It can be kind of clunky, but it is much better than cataloguing in a spreadsheet or access database as it looks up movie data and cover shots in IMDB and Amazon.

And no, the DVDs are not pirated. We feel strongly about that.

We do, however, have a stack of (as yet) unwatched DVDs on our shelves. Either because we buy multiple DVDs at a time or because we don’t have time to watch our purchases immediately. Oh, don’t worry, we will watch them all and the special features too…although by that stage, we will have probably added another 10 new DVDs to the pile!

Here are our past 10 DVD purchases, for example:

• Fahrenheit 451 - watched movie and special features
  Directed by François Truffaut. In the future, books are banned and are burned when found. Montag is a fireman whose duty is to seek out the underground librarians an burn books, however when he meets a strange young woman with odd opinions, he begins to steal books rather than burning them.
• Accatone - John has watched it, but I haven’t
  Directed by Pasolini. After his girlfriend (whom he pimps) is arrested, Accatone goes down hill. He begs from churches and even visits his estranged wife and son in the hope they will help.
• Dogville - not yet watched (although we saw the film in the theatre)
  Directed by Lars von Trier. A woman comes to a mountain village as a fugative. At first they hide her willingly, but soon they start to impose conditions on their concealment of her and she becomes their prisoner.
• Red Desert - not yet watched
  Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. About the depressed and suicidal wife of a factory foreman.
• <a href=”http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/Breaking the Waves - watched movie and some of the special features
  The story of a young bride in a Scottish religious community, whose husband is crippled in an oil rig accident. He convinces her to perform sexual acts with other men and to come back and tell him what she has doen, causing her to be outcast from her community.
• The Idiots - not yet watched (although have seen before)
  Directed by Lars von Trier. A woman finds herself involved with a group of people who pretend to be mentally handicapped. At first she is horrified, but soon discovers that letting oneself be an ‘idiot’ can be liberating.
• Love Nest - not yet watched
  An early movie of Marilyn Monroe’s, in which she has a co-starring role as ‘the other woman’. Should be interesting.
• Of Human Bondage - not yet watched
  Bette Davis and Leslie Howard star in this film. A young medical student falls in love with waitress. She cheats on him constantly, even becoming pregnant by another man and generally ‘does him wrong’.
• The Outlaw - not yet watched
  Directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jane Russell’s breasts. Howard Hughes famously fought the Hays Office for the right to show this film uncensored. The plot (my god, are you really concerned with that?) is a western about Billy the Kidd.
• <a No Man of Her Own - not yet watched.
  Clark Gable plays a gambler who marries a woman (Carole Lombard) on the toss of a coin, but starts to fall in love with her. Gable and Lombard eventually married in real life.

We should have some good viewing there, I think. Even if we never quite get to the bottom of the pile before we buy new ones.