PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 18

Clothes reminiscent of Victorian dolls, with frills, lace, petticoats, and head-dresses. Accessories include teddy bears and parasols. Our first and only feature of the night was last years Kamikaze Girls, an import from Japan, where it goes by the name of  Shimotsuma Story. The movie is based on a novel, which was turned into a manga. The story is simple, two teen girls find friendship and grow some by the end of the movie, with lots of yelling and some head-butting. It's told in a very stylistic way by director Tetsuya Nakashima,who worked in tv drama and commercials. Momoko, pretty in pink above, has withdrawn after the divorice of her parents. Abandoned by her mother, she lives with her loser dad. She has adopted the Lolita life style, to her it's more than just putting on a costume. The Lolita cultural essay page explains it fairly well. Here is a glossary explaining some of the concepts in the movie. Momoko also has great embroidery skills.

I find this whole dressing up culture in Japan to be somewhat fascinating. Elaborate costumes that cost a fortune, a Lolita costume could run $1000. There are special shops to buy them in. The other girl, Ichigo right, dresses in Yanki style, she's part of a tough chick scooter gang, cultural essay number 2 explains some more. These two opposites attract and interact for a long time, or so it seems. The first 80 minutes move pretty slowly even with all the flashy bits and visual gags. The subtitles were fan created and they disappear too quickly. They aren't the easiest to read, some of the story goes missing. Luckily the movie is being released theatrically in the US in September, so a dvd might follow sooner or later. Not for everybody, I find I like it more in retrospect.

We watched the first episode of Kung Fu, King of the Mountain, with Brandon Cruz and John Saxton. Caine finds a burned cabin. A kid is the only survivor, his father is dead and his mother carried off by Indians. Caine walks with the kid to the town where his aunt lives. The aunts family turns out to be scum and Caine kicks the shit out of them. He and the boy get a job from a nice widowed lady rancher. There is romance in the first episode, but the danger of Caine being a wanted man arrives in the shape of a mustache, and he leaves. The kid stays and bounty hunter John Saxton and his mustache fall off a mountain. More walking in the desert. The fights aren't very good and there is rock climbing. We also watched two episodes of Robot Chicken. Funny, odd sketch comedy with action figures animated. There was a funny piece with the A-Team.

Emil and the Detectives

I saw this movie back in the late 60's and had fond memories of it. I just finished the book and thought a rewatching of the movie was in order. Made in 1964 in Berlin by Disney, the movie bares little resemblance to the 1929 novel by Erich Kastner, other than some of the names and most basic of plot elements. Updated to modern day Berlin of 1964 the film, while still fun, is missing the charming affection between Emil and his widowed mother. The opening chapters of the book are devoted to Emil and his mother and their life. In the book Emil travels by train from Neustadt to Berlin to see his grandmother. He's carrying money, to his grandmother, from his mother. When he falls asleep in the compartment, his pocket is picked by Mr. Grundeis, a fellow passenger. Emil wakes up and discovers his money gone. Out of the window of the train he spots Grundeis and gives chase. Broke, Emil takes a tram ticket from a generous passenger, and follows Grundeis from the train to a cafe on Kaiser Avenue. It's here while watching Grundeis that Emil meets up with Gustav, the local neighborhood head-boy, the boy the other kids look up to and willingly accept as their leader. It's Gustav who calls the neighborhood boys together to help get the money back. The brains of the neighborhood, the Professor, organizes the boys into a fairly well organized team, each person is given an assignment and the detecting begins. Communication, tactics, and food are arranged. The teams follow and eventually hassle Mr. Grundeis right into jail. It's doesn't even take 24 hours to catch him. It's told in a delightful style, with a nice bunch of characters. There's a sweetness to the book, but it's never saccharine. All through the book Emil's thought's are on his mother and her struggle to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads, the loss of the small amount of money stolen is devastating to their poor family and it's a heavy burden to Emil. He's a good boy, in every traditional sense, and he fights back for what is rightfully his. And he is rewarded for it in many ways.

The movie version omits the sentimentality of the novel, skipping the mother son relationship. Emil get's his pocket picked on a bus, after Mr. Grundeis hypnotizes him. Emil wakes and gives chase, literally running into Gustav, knocking him and his packages down. Gustav confronts Emil, who is now spying on Grundeis, and eventually learns Emil's story. And this is where the movie starts to build it's more exciting version of the story. Rather than have the boys organically become detectives, Gustav is already a detective, he has a badge, he rescued a cat recently. He calls together his team and they go to work. The movie moves the off screen bank robbery of the book on screen, and involves Emil in it, creating a higher level of jeopardy that doesn't exist in the book. Mr. Grundeis is involved in the big robbery, he's a regular mole, digging the tunnel into the bank. Walter Slezak plays The Baron, the robber gangs leader. There's also Muller, the grumpy guy, he yells alot. There's lot of running around, more yelling, and much tomfoolery with girls.  Pony, Emil's cousin, is much brasher in the movie and more of a presence. In the book the boys are much more in awe of her, everyone's much more polite, in the movie they're not. "Get rid of her," says Gustav. But Pony is not to be deterred, the plucky school newspaper columnist sticks to it and together with the gang of detectives, and the confused and belatedly involved police they rescue Emil and the mole from a watery death. The Baron and grumpy are captured soon after, and all is well. Emil's mother shows up briefly at the beginning and end of the movie.

I enjoyed both versions of this story. They both had a nice take on the story. Both can be enjoyed for different reasons, especially by different people.

Teens, jerks and dicks

Yesterday I picked up the 26th Anniversary Edition dvd of The Jerk and the unrated extended director's cut of Not Another Teen Movie. I watched them both when I got home. Teens won the toss and got to go first. I like a lot of the movies that Not Another Teen Movie parodies, especially ones from the early 90's on, and I like NATM quite a bit. It makes me laugh out loud some times. That's good. I have the original 2001 dvd release and it has two commentaries that are missing here,  and with a cursory glance most of the other extras seem the same. There are 10 minutes of footage pounded back into the movie, raising it's running time to 100 minutes. Since it had been a while since I've seen it I could not tell where the extra footage went in. There's probably some web site that has that, maybe not today, but by the weekend most likely. That's the nice thing about the internet, there are a bunch of people all capturing the background to our reality, and as flawed as their eyes might be the result is some great stuff to down load and save. Good thing I got a larger hard drive. NATM has non-stop jokes, I liked a bunch of them. The IMDb page with quotes for NATM is huge. There is certain amount of gross humor, some good and some not as good, all taste driven. There are a great bunch of actors in this. Jamie Pressly, who I loved in Poor White Trash, plays the horrible, snotty, head of the cheerleaders. Check out Poor White Trash, it's really awful fun. Take that however you want. Samm Levine, who is so great in Freaks and Geeks, is ok here playing a kid who has adopted a Japanese persona for his new cool personal identity. Some white kids acting black make fun of him, luckily most of the jokes are funnier than that, and when one occasionally bombs there's another coming along soon enuff. I particularily enjoyed Randy Quaid as our heroine's dad, a drunken, layabout lost in a fog of alcohol and mental illness since the Viet Nam War. He's just a hoot. There are a bunch of pretty good actors playing the girls and guys at John Hughes High School and they are the most foul mouthed bunch, all except Janey Briggs played by Chyler Leigh. Since Janey is nice to people, has a ponytail, wears black glasses, and favors paint-spattered overalls, she's considered a looser, ugly and undateable. She's also an artist, so, you know she's popular. The rich football guy makes a bet that he can take the worst girl in school and Pygmalion her up so she can win Prom Queen at next weeks prom. He picks Janey. Typically Janey's really cute when she takes her glasses off. I have always approved of swearing on film. I'm not so big on seeing it on the page. More dynamic as audio, on paper they're mostly words with k's in them. Anyway, there are lots of funny jokes to me and there is a sort of happy ending and it made me laugh. Good things in a comedy.

There are nearly no extras on The Jerk. The best is a the trailer. The rest and worst; How To Play the Ukelele and The Lost Filmstrips. Both should have stayed lost. The movie looks and sounds great, certainly much better than the tape of a laserdisc I had. At least you can see it in a widescreen format. I like a lot of The Jerk. The stuff with Steve Martin's family is always great. Bernadette Peters is pretty cute. And the dialog, often great, often funny. I really like the scene where Steve leaves Bernadette and he says he doesn't need anything, nothing at all, except this ashtray,and this paddle ball, and this remote control, but that's all, he doesn't need anything else, except this lamp, etc. So many nice pieces, and a fairly funny story, with a nice happy ending.

There isn't much of a happy ending in Kiss Me Deadly. It's a 1955 Robert Aldrich film. He also directed the original The Longest Yard not the remake.  The Dirty Dozen and Flight of the Phoenix, again not the remake, and some other nice surprises were also his work. He also directed an episode of a series that I would like to see out on DVD, Adventures in Paradise with Gardner McKay. It ran from 1959 to 1962. I loved that show when i was 10-12 years old. I remember it as being so cool. Adventure, fighting, ships, romance and George Tobias, but mostly fighting. In Kiss Me Deadly, there's lots of fighting. It starts after Mike Hammer picks up Cloris Leechman running down the highway, someone is after her. They catch her and Mike, and after torturing Cloris they push her and Mike off the road in his car to die in a horrible fiery car crash. Only Mike survives, then the vengence starts. Mike is played by Ralph Meeker who is good as the not so nice Hammer. He's not a subtle detective, Mike Hammer, he brings a different meaning to the phrase "It's Hammer time." Fists dancing on a face. He's a more brutal, cold and violent man then Phillip Marlowe with Sam Spade somewhere in between. Hammer has a lower level of morality than Marlowe or Spade, he's also very detatched in this story. Mickey Spillane once played his creation in 1963's The Girl Hunters, which isn't a very good movie but it's really fun to watch. And Kiss Me Deadly is fun to watch. It too runs on TCM regularily.

Rats in many shapes

I Just watched Bad Day At Black Rock. It's one of the few Spencer Tracy movies that I have. A letterboxed version runs on Turner Classic Movies pretty regularily, so I made my own dvd from todays airing as a replacement for my tape copy. It looks like there aren't any extras on the storebought version, so I can save some money. Not that I would, I'll just buy something else instead. There was a Criterion laserdisc a while back that had a commentary by the director John Sturges, but Criterion does not have the rights to do the dvd, and they don't sell or giveaway any of the extras they make. It's a pretty good movie.  Spencer Tracey gets off of the train at Black Rock, a little shithole of a town, out in the California desert. He's looking for the Komoko farm. People want to know why, and they don't treat him very nice. Something's going on and the situation gets dire as it all starts to unravel. There's lots of great dialog, it's very noir, and it packs a wallop in it's short 82 minutes. Plus, you get to see Ernest Borgnine get the shit kicked out of him. He's a great creep in this, as is Lee Marvin, both of whom toady for Robert Ryan. He's a big shot rancher, who got a secret, and he's a really scummy rat who turns on his friends. Later, he's on fire. Well worth checking out, a nice combination of murder, mystery and morality.

I just finished Gregory Maguire's Seven Spinning Spiders and it was pretty fun to read. Siberian Snow Spiders, 7 of them, accidently wind up in the forest near Hamlet, a small Vermont town. The spiders start off nice but turn murderous, nearly killing someone. Don't worry, they'll be ok. It's a kids book, aimed at the 8-12 age group. There is a whole series of them, all with numbers in the title. I had already read Five Alien Elves, in which some aliens, thinking that Santa Claus is evil, come to earth to free the elf slaves. They think the elves are turning toys into spys in Santa's secret plot to control the world. Silly aliens, toys are for kids. The mayor nearly has a bad end. He's kidnapped by the aliens. They think he's Santa Claus. In their defense he has a Santa hat. Luckily, especially for the mayor, Miss Earth's class and Lois's dog Reebok save the day. Lots of unusual things happen in Hamlet, there are a lot of great characters, with a bunch of nice quirks, and their stories are funny. There is great sillyness in these books. This is a good thing. Maguire also writes more adult books, a series of fairy tale retellings. I have sampled those but not actually read them. They sound promising, but you never know, a sample is often all you need.

Occasionally I read two or three books at the same time. I was reading these two and finished them about the same time. I thought there was some sort of a connection. The book I picked  up at the Harry Potter release lack-of-party is called Gregor the Overlander and it is by Suzanne Collins. I read the first 40 or so pages waiting in line, and liked it. There were two boys in line in front of me. One of them asked if I liked the books size. I misunderstoond him and thought he was talking about the book at first and I said it seemed ok after 30 pages and I would buy it. It turned out he was talking about the size, which was trade paperback. I said I did, but I wasn't too picky. I asked him why he would ask that and he just was curious. I asked him if he liked that size book and he said yes, he did. I put Gregor aside and read Harry six. I started Buffy - Queen of the Slayers by Nancy Holder at the same time I was rejoining Gregor's story already in progress. Gregor is  an 11 year old New Yorker who's got a 2 year old sister, a mother and a missing father. His dad just up and disappeared a couple of years ago. Boots, the kid sister opens a grate in the laundry room, and slips into the hole. Gregor crawls in after her and they both get sucked down a shaft to an underground cavern with some civilization going on. There are men and giant talking cockroaches, and giant talking rats and giant bats that can talk. The men talk too but they are not giant. The humans have been living there for 400 years, some German guy brought them over from Germany and they settled away from the world. They live in a sort of harmony with the other critters. Until now, when interspecies war breaks out. Fortunately, it turns out Gregor is mentioned in a prophecy. The 2 Overlanders will team up with 10 others and save the world. There's lots of fighting, but it has a happy ending. I did wonder about the violence, there was a lot of killing and several characters died rather gory deaths. So, well done. While Gregor is aimed at the 9-13 year old, the Buffy book is not, yet they both have an insane amount of violence. Queen of the Slayers is the book that fills in the What Happened To Buffy gap between the end of the Buffy series, and when Angel finishes his series a year later. Buffy and the gang leave Sunnydale and have a series of adventures that leave a lot of slayers and demons dead. You find out more about the Immortal, he's kind of cool, but can you trust him? Not one bit, he turns against his friends, to help the bad hellgods and their evil toadies, the vampire Borgias. He chose and sided with the bad guys to save his own ass, offered up his friends for his own safety, what a rat. The same thing happens in Gregor, a human prince sides with the rats to kill off the spiders and the cockroaches and take over the Underworld. In Buffy it's demons who want to take back the earth, and to turn back the clock, to return to their glory days, when they alone walked the earth. That would suck. There is a climactic battle to save the world that corresponds with Angel and companies final fight with Wolfram and Hart, and there is an intervention from the Powers That Be to tip the scale in the humans favor. Buffy, Spike and Angel have a magical spirit baby, which saves everybody with magical goodness. I prefered the Gregor book to the Buffy book.

Friday Night Movies 17

Constantine turned out a whole lot better than I thought it would be based on the buzz. I didn't pick up a copy but luckily Greg did. While it's got a pretty good story and look, there's nothing much new or original in this film. There's a bit of the Prophecy series, a bit of Blade, a bit of Buffy and Angel, some generic film noir and way too many helicopter shots. This is the director's first film, he's been in the music video business and it shows. Keanu Reeves, plays Constantine, a guy who briefly suicided 20 years ago. He's been fighting the forces of darkness hoping to win a spot in Heaven. He's been to H E double hockey sticks and it's no fun. Hell looks like Los Angeles, a much hotter LA with 100 mile an hour Santa Anna winds. Phillip Marlowe used to mention the Santa Anna winds, winds out of the desert that dry everything out and make it hot in the city, they make people crazy. Hell's hotter and it's on fire, baby. It's burning me up. The beautiful Rachel Weisz plays twins, one of which suicides and goes to hell, the other a cop. Peter Stormare is wonderful as Satan in his white ice cream suit. I liked the conversation between him and Gabriel. Gabriel: "Little whore! Swine! Most unclean!" Satan:  [nostalgic] "I do miss the old names."

Keanu's acting style works fairly well in this role. He's a demon fighting cancer-ridden chain smoker who's on a self-inflicted path to hell, I don't think he'd be jolly, especially when practically everyone with him dies a horrible violent death. That's the problem with so many of these good against evil stories. Join up, fight the good fight, and die. Hard to recruite. All in all not a bad piece.

Bad doesn't even begin to describe our second feature, bad could be fun, this was just dead borin'. Mike downloaded the 2005 live tv version of The Quatermass Experiment off some stealin' site. Hooray for the internet. No hoorays for the movie. The original was no great shakes but at least it was filmed, there were some makeup effects and it has a giant blob that gets electrocuted in West Minster Abbey. All of these things were missing from this lack-of-production havin' tv unspecial. They replaced the blob with a possessed building, the so obvious same building where everything is being shot. There is a bit more romantic angst, and Quatermass is just too young. And these are minor complaints when compared to the mind numbing boredom created by this turd of a fim. This is the third version of this story. The first was also a tv version. Six 30 minutes episodes broadcast in 1953. Then there was a 1955 Hammer Film, that isn't as exciting as the next two films but wasn't too bad. It has the giant blob, that gets electrocuted in West Minster Abbey, at least that part's good. Sure glad no one payed to buy a copy, too bad the BBC paid for it in the first place.

Older'n me

I lucked out on eBay the last couple of weeks and won a few Walt  Disney's Comics and Stories. I got one from 1946 and 4 from 1947, and none of them were too expensive, averaging around 9 bucks each. That's just 2 bucks over the cost of the current Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. All of these oldies have covers by Walt Kelly of Pogo fame. He rarely did anything on the inside of a Disney comic but he did many wonderful covers. My two favorite covers of this batch were 72 and 81. I like the bear alot. Kelly had a great touch with the Ducks and animals in general.

These issues followed a formula for content. There's a nice cover, with a one pager, usually reprinted from the newspaper, on the inside of the cover. Then there is a 10 page Duck story by Carl Barks. Barks did the lead story in just about every issue from #32 in 1943 to #297 in 1965. There are 8 page Bucky Bug and The Li'l Bad Wolf stories in 72 and in 82. Those two were the 2nd and 3rd stories for quite some time. What filled out the back half of these 52 page comics were more newspaper reprints. Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse daily and sunday strips.

The Duck stories are the reason I like reading these comics. I like the art on Bucky Bug if it's by Carl Buettner, but I don't like the stories very much, no matter who's drawing it. Bucky Bug has all the dialog in rhymes, it's annoying to me. I really like The Lil Bad Wolf. The antics of Zeke Wolf, his son Li'l Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs usually made me laugh, even if it wasn't out loud.  The art was by several people over the years, most of whom were pretty darn good. The rest of the reprints were usually funny enough. The daily and sunday newspaper Donald Duck reprints were gag cartoons. The Mickey Mouse reprints were both gag strips and stories. There was a time when Mickey's adventures continued on from week to week in the local newspaper. Many of these long stories have been reprinted over the years. Someone has been working to keep this stuff available to the public, unfortunately much of it is in - not English.

Man and Monster

In my search for good comedies with cheerleaders I picked up Man Of The House with Tommy Lee Jones and some cute girls playing cheerleaders. I really liked Bring It On, that's a good clean romantic comedy with lots of girls jumping in the air, and a healthy dose of Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku. Man Of The House doesn't have so much cheerleading, and their cheerteam is not nearly as good as the Rancho Carne Toros, but their special cheerleading powers did come in mighty handy. Tommy Lee Jones has to protect these five cheerleaders. They are witnesses to a murder. Someone killed Curtis Armstrong! Blasted him in the head,these girls were unlucky enough to see it. On the lucky side they all live in the same house, making it easy for Tommy Lee to move in and protect them. He gets a make over. This movie is very much like The Pacifier or Uncle Buck, although Uncle Buck has less shooting. Gruff authority figure and annoying charges. There are some jokes, a bit of action, a little bit of danger, some family bonding, a cell phone up a cows butt, and Tommy and the girls bonding. There's a nice romantic ending. It's average, like it's director, Stephen Herek, just the kind of thing you can put on while your doing something more important, like blogging, or if you just want a nice safe predictable comedy. I like the Tommy Lee Jones fish out of water character, it's not unlike his character in the Men In Black series, except Will Smith, Rip Torn and all the aliens are cheerleaders. And I don't feel to bad about average. Not everything can be exceptional, I certainly don't have the energy for that.

Dogora, the Space Monster, the 1964 Japanese alien invasion movie, was previously released in the US as Dagora, the Space Monster. There is a new widescreen dvd out from Toyko Shock. I usually like all the Japanese giant monster movies, no matter how poor they are. Not that I watch the poor ones as often. They must be punished, no eyes for you, ha. I put Dogora on with the English soundtrack and the English subtitles of the Japanese version. They are very different. It's a nicely odd film, starting off as a weird kind of crime story that turns into a giant monster space invasion movie, with some pretty good collateral damage. All in only 83 minutes, don't believe the box, it lies. There are diamond thefts going on all over the world, coal yards being sucked into space, what the heck is going on? Oh, it's a giant tendril-totin' jelly fish like creature hoving in the atmosphere inhalin' all the coal. Hungry, much? Yep, turns out it's ravenous mutated space cells, needin' energy replenishment. Things get bad when Dogora developes a taste for bridges. What to do? The Earth needs a savin'! I like this film, it's different enough to be interesting, and now I have two different version to watch, either seperately or together. Cool. It's a nice looking print, directed by Ishiro Honda, with a nice lively score by Akira Ifukube. I have developed a taste for his music. He did the music for many Toho movies and most of the giant monster movies. Very marchy. The dvd is sadly lacking any special features, just a trailer and a 2 and half minute photo gallery. It's still a nice addition to my collection, and now I can get rid of the bootleg I got years ago.

Half Bloody Time

I left movie night at about 11:30 pm and got to Border's about midnight, and since I was so late I got the 340th and 341st tickets, which allowed me a book and an audio cd at 40% off. The UK edition, which was shipped by Amazon UK friday, had a price reduction about a week or so before it was released and the price was reduced to 47% off. Since I got such high numbers it took until 1:24 am to get my book and cd's. I looked around to kill time and wound up accidentally buying some more books and a couple of movies. The Potter Party wasn't very interesting, but I did get there three hours after it started. Hardly anyone was in costume. I was going to take some pictures but it was dead boring. People shopping. Seen it. I took the time to read part of a book I spotted in the kids section and liked the look of, and now I'll buy it, but wait until I read HBP to finish it. Now to head home and read Harry. I heard a spoiler on the way home, on the BBC, but it's early Saturday morning there, people probably are done reading the book by now. I'll let you know what I think as I go along, and not let any major plot points out as I go along. That spoiler happens less than 14 pages in, and it's kind of in the background.

2:00 am Chapter 1 - Fudge unexpectedly gets sacked and is now the ex-Minister of Magic. Who didn't see that coming?

2:20 am Chapter 2 - What's going on with Snape and Draco's mother.

2:40 am Chapter 3 - Harry finally puts in an appearance and Dumbledore visits the Dursley house. He makes drinks hit the Durleys in the head.

3:00 am Now for a short nap.

8:24 am Time to get up and have some porridge and tea, very English, eh. And time to get readin'.

8:35 am Chapter 4 - Horace Slughorn, I never heard of him before, he's a new teacher.

8:51 am Chapter 5 - An Excess Of Phlegm, what a title, and Harry's back at the Burrow. I just love the Weasley's, especially Mr. Weasley, but I wouldn't want to marry him. Break up that lovely family? No way! Arthur has a new job and hopefully a raise. Fleur Delacour returns, ohh, she's hot, she still makes Ron swoon.

9:30 am Chapter 6 - Our trio run into Draco in Diagon Alley, words are exchanged. Draco's awful mother is there. She's scum. Finally we got to Fred and George's shop. Yea. They have some cool stuff. Those boys have done well for themselves.

10:20 am Stopped for a bit of tidying up.

10:35 am  Chapter 7 - The Slug Club, ummm, viscous. I would never touch a slug, perhaps, not even, with a stick. Onto the Hogwarts train on page 135. Finally. I occasionally remember my trips on the train. I once had two 36 hour trips, my mother, my brother and me, we had our own compartment, slept there two nights, ate in the dining car, spit out the opening between cars, it was great fun. This was in the early 60's, trip from Winnipeg to Churchill and back a year later, ending my year in the near Arctic. We lived in a house and a house trailer.

10:50 am Chapter 8 - After a bit more tidying up. I had been meaning to put some of this stuff away away since the last Harry book. More Snape, who gets a deeply desired wish fulfilled, much to Harry's dismay. Who likes him? Who thinks he's a vampire?

11:25 am Chapter 9 - Titled The Half-Blood Prince. Now I'll get to find out who this guy is. Everyone gets their class schedule, onto the N.E.W.T. level in the start of 6th year. A clue to the half blood prince? Who the hell is he? No ones telling me anything!

Noon Chapter 10 - Titled The House of Gaunt, I wonder who's that guy, jeez. This is the cover from the $60 deluxe US edition. That's Harry and Dumbledore following Bob Ogden. Bob Ogden, who's that guy? Flashbacks tell the tale.

12:27 pm Chapter 11 - In which Hermoine helps out and Harry flies his broom. Zoom,zoom,zoom. Stan Shunpike finally gets in trouble for lying. Remember that kids, don't lie where people can catch you.

12:45 pm Takin's a break to go out for lunch.

2:10 pm Back from lunch, after accidentally buying more books at Half Price Books. Finished Chapter 12 and half of 13, at the Old Country Buffet, a local graze-a-thon chain that has home style cookin'. There have been some shenanigans in Chapter 12 and Harry has another private lesson with Dumbledore in Chapter 13.

2:40 pm Chapter 14 - Now there's snoggin' and jealously, that's always fun. Everyone seems to be doing it, there's even little birdies.

3:15 pm Chapter 15 - More jealousy. Lots of parties with the new treacher, who knows a lot of important people, he'll tell you. More deep dark secrets overheard.

3:42 pm Chapter 16  - Back to the Burrow for Christmas, even Percy shows up to his dismay, and Harry has a showdown with the new Minister of Magic. Wow. Perhaps young kids growning up today might develop a nice mistrust of government. You know I do.

4:10 pm Takin' a break.

4:25 pm back on the job. Chapter 17 - More lessons with Dumbledore, more back story. Oooh, that Tom Riddle, ee's a nasty little blighter, he is.

5:00 pm Stopped to make somethine to eat.

5:10 pm Chapter 18, more attacks, back to St. Mungo's. People get hurt a lot in the Potter universe.

5:35 pm Chapter 19 starts with hopital visits, there's some Quidditch and more people are in the hospital. That's one tough school that Hogwarts.

6:06 pm Chapter 20  - More of the Tom Riddle back story from Dumbledore.

6:30 pm Time to clean up before company. I have to uncover some chairs that I know were here a few months ago.

9:40 pm Everyone left and it's onto Chapter 21 where all the 6th years are learning to apparate. Magical teleportation, now that would be handy, not having to drive.

10:03 pm Chapter 22 - Something huge in the forest dies and get buried. Harry gets some information for Dumbledore, by being clever. Good for him.

10:28 pm Chapter 23 - This chapter has a lot of soul, baby, it's the key.

10:47 pm Chapter 24 - Nasty curses, couples breaking up, it's still dangerous at Hogwarts. Then there's more kissing. Wow.

11:07 pm Chapter 25 - Harry learns more about the prophecy and Snape, then he's off on a mission with Dumbledore.

11:22 pm Chapter 26 - Wow, that's some fucked up shit right there, let me tell ya. Wet zombies and the Dark Mark too.

11:39 pm Chapter 27 - Draco unplugged, and the worst of the werewolfes. Nasty, those people on the Dark Side, yuck.

11:55 pm Chapter 28 - Now I know who the half blood prince is but people are dead.

12:06 pm Chapter 29 - Brought tears to my eyes.

12:24 pm Chapter 30 -  A good ending...soon will be the time of vengence, but after the wedding.

I liked it. It's a good chapter.

Now that it's done, I guess I'll have to read one of couple of hundred books I bought in the last six months. Been stocking up on young adult and some kids novels to tide me over until the next book. Now it's 1:10 am and I need to go to bed.

Friday Night Movies 16

We watched Shogun's Samurai, a 1978 feature by the same director, Kinji Fukasaku, who directed Legend of the Eight Samurai. This was some what better, but it's no Seven Samurai. It's a fictionalized version of some real events from early 1600's. The Shogun has been poisoned and that leads to a fight for the position between the two sons. The elder, who rightfully should have gotten the post, and the younger who is the favorite of everyone. There's intrigue piled on intrigue and a big ol' heapin' of betrayal. Sonny Chiba and Toshiro Mifune star with lots of other people I don't know. Most everyone gets killed. It's a nice looking movie, be prepared for the slow pace. It just is a good reminder not to go livin' in fuedal Japan, it sure sucks down on the lower rungs of the social ladder and there's just as little safety on the upper rungs. It's a long fall from the top, especially with a sword stuck in some tender bit.

Our second feature was War of the Planets. An Italian mess from 1977 this has to be seen to be believed, there's just too much crap in it to describe. While Sperhauk slept I read through most of it, trying to finish the 5th Harry Potter book, but I didn't miss anything. There is a bunch of spacemen in weird red hats, some aliens on another planet and a weird robot who wants to take over the galaxy. There's nothing as good as that description in the movie. Some inadvertantly funny stuff but not enough for redemption. At least I had a bood to read. I left there and headed to the local Border's to pick up my Harry Potter book and audio CD. More on that.

Funny pictures to make you laugh

I was looking at the Typepad home page and they had this photo album listed in recent updates. There are some funny pictures on it. Me like funny pictures. Laugh to keep from crying.