droolie's corner o' the planet

gotta love the cheap seats

Delightfully, there are places here and there where you can get in to see a movie on a theater screen for only a buck.  Of course, they still get you with the popcorn and bubbly effervescent cola drinks, but it evens out when you figure the price of a non-matinee ticket alone at the first-run theater is almost the total wampum figure of the cheap seats. 

I went to The Hills Have Eyes after reading mixed reviews, which I took with a grain o' proverbial salt, anyhoo.  After all, you'll always get mixed reviews with a remake, especially a remake of a film with a cult following. 

I was first intrigued by Hills after reading a feature article in Rue Morgue magazine.  To be fair, about a month ago, in anticipation of the remake, I rented the original.  Neither is for the faint of heart, and both have things going for them. 

The original wouldn't be quite the same without Michael Berryman as Pluto.  He is the face of the movie.  Originally, there was talk of giving him a bit part in the remake, but it was scrapped.  I kind of wish they had, though.  Kind of an homage.  But I think the casting in the second movie has merit, too.  Kathleen Quinlan is perfect as the mom, and Ted Levine makes a great Big Bob.  I think the old man at the filling station was creepier in the original.  But I'll go with it. Doug was a much better character in the new film, though, being better developed. 

The plot is simple enough.  Family in an RV.  Desert road to the middle o' nowhere, where they get stranded  and left to battle the locals, who are none too keen on their presence.  Admittedly, not so standard are atomic fallout-created cannibals.  Pared down, it really is a no apologies splatter movie.  Plain and simple.  But it's also a taut suspense movie too, from another angle, one with a cautionary message. 

One small gripe is that they don't generally call the cannibal characters by name in the remake, and don't go into the explanation of who's who and how they relate to each other.  So you have to kind of guess who's who to some extent, trying to compare it to the original.

What you do get with the remake though, is an updating that in no way hurts the movie at all.  While the bulk of the film runs quite parallel to the original, especially in terms of the storyline and characterizaton, there are new extras.  The added sequences of the crater and the government town help to convey the message underscoring the story.  And, while the advancements in special effects render many of the attack scenes much more graphic and gory than the original, they do much to enhance the overall mood of the film.  The desert seems lonelier, and more forbidding.  The cinematography in the new film makes it much more striking than the original, and adds to the tension.  If I had to pick a favorite of the two, I think I'd lean toward the remake for this alone. 

Definitely a popcorn flick.  Not a fluffy date movie.  Avoid it if at all squeamish.  But if the genre appeals, not at all disappointing.  And I guess that's what I've got to say about that. 

Friday tidbits

That woosh was my week going screaming by.  Excuse me a sec while I pat the scales back down in place.  :)

Besides the little mundanities of work and sleep and the like (including a couple o' little ebb and flow beasties from the weather shifts), we had a couple of really great guests this past week ~ all the way from Australia.  Really, they were delightful.  We got to take them to dinner at our favorite local place, and my dad even took them to Yellowstone Park.  It was so fun to get to visit with them, and it was really quiet last night now that they've moved on in their travels across the states. 

Dinner with a bunch of buddies from school last night was great, too.  Three of us brought our moms, which was cool, because my mom hadn't ever met my best bud from school and her little critter, who will turn one on Tuesday.  All she's heard is stories of the spiffy little grandma bait.  I got to sit by Jake, who will be two next month, and make him smile by sneaking olives onto his plate.  He's our "token male" of the group. 

I also finished another book.  The Death Collectors, by Jack Kerley.  A few chapters from the end I managed to figure out who a certain someone was that made me want to drop everything and plow through the ending to see if I was right.  I didn't get a chance to drop everything.  But I was right on the "what if", and I think it made the story all the more cool. 

I've decided I need an "idle down and reset" night.  So tonight I'm going to head over to the cheap seats after dinner and catch The Hills Have Eyes.  I'll even admit that it's a 40/60 split.  40 percent for the movie itself, to compare it to the original, and 60 percent for the popcorn oozing with butter. 

Which means it's time to get a quick supper on.  And it's time for me to wrap up these random little bits o' fluff. 

droolie

droolie's reading...

Anybuddy that knows me best knows that I'm a voracious, obsessive reader.  I don't know how to go anywhere without at least a couple of books.  At any given time, I'm working on an average of around 20 books.  I bounce back and forth according to whim.  When I finish one, and I'm "in between books", I get a little fidgety until I settle with another.  And it's a running joke in my family that if you cut my veins open, I'll not bleed red, but the deep, ebony of printer's ink.  :)

Long story short, you're going to hear about a lot of books in droolie's corner o' the planet.  Here goes, with three I finished this past week...

I adore chess.  I've always been fascinated with it, since I was a kid.  The pieces are cool.  The possibilities are endless.  It keeps the brain sharp.  I didn't actually learn to play it until a couple of years ago, though, since no one else in my family ever wanted to learn with me.  I actually learned just so I'd be able to play with one one of the kids at school, as a reward.  I readily admit that in learning so late I will never get anywhere near grandmaster status, and that I'm a decent, marginal hobby player.  I can beat some of the kids at school, and it's great fun.  It's also neat to be able to follow a game and get the chess references in the world of popular culture.  It came in very handy recently when I read a novel called The Flanders Panel, by Arturo Perez-Reverte. 

In no means is this a light, fluff book.  It does take a bit of mental work, but it's really not hard to follow.  Even if you have no prior knowledge of chess, I think it would be easy enough to understand.  The book is primarily a mystery, centered both upon the Flanders Panel itself (a painting depicting a medieval chess game between a knight and a king and an observing queen), and the lives of the art restorer and her counterparts in modern time.  The premise is to discover "who killed the knight", after the phrase is found in the layers of the painting.  To do so, the characters must analyze the chess game pictured on the panel, which ironically is being played out amongst them by an all too real murderer.  The game featured in the panel, while unconventional, is well-explained, step by step, as the book goes on.  I thought the whole thing was quite clever, and very well written.  I think anyone who has an appreciation of chess would enjoy it. 

Okay.  Book number two.  I teach middle schoolers, and one of the best pieces of advice I ever got from a colleague was to read what they do from time to time.  There are many, varied and well-written young adult books out there.  And it's really neat when the kids see you reading the books they do and get excited.  Yesterday's pick was Among the Hidden, by Margaret Peterson Haddix, which had come recommended to me by a whole handful of kids.  This one is interesting, even to a grownup.  It centers around a boy named Luke, who is the third-born son of a farming family.  Since the government has laws limiting the number of children to two, Luke must live a life of hiding, away from all windows and the outdoors,the price of being found out being death.  Eventually, other houses are build near Luke's family, and he sneaks out to meet another third child, who happens to be staging an underground revolution of sorts.  The story offers a fast pace, well-drawn, sympathetic characters, and is deep enough to provide compelling social commentary, despite it's relatively short length.  I'll point out that it's actually the first book in a series of six.  But the ending is well tied together, and it can read just fine as a standalone.  I enjoyed it. 

Once in a while, a person's got to set aside the genre stuff and read a classic, right?  And eventually in my lifetime, I do plan on finishing Moby-Dick.  But in the meantime, I picked up another fish tale this last week ~ Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea.  The only other Hemingway I've read prior to this is the short story "Hills Like White Elephants", which I don't recall being fond of.  But last summer I read Rodman Philbrick's The Young Man and the Sea, and recognizing the parallels, added The Old Man and the Sea to my reading list.  I pretty much loved it.  Hemingway is famous for writing in short sentences, but man oh man, can he pack a lot of picture in those phrases!  Simple is sometimes very deceiving, and this book is no exception.  It's perhaps one of the most richly written books I've ever read.  The premise ~ an old fisherman battling a big fish ~ may be simple, but the deeper meanings, of parallelism to life and perseverance, of mixed rewards, really expand the story into something quite remarkable.  I can see why this book won the Pulitzer.  It's pretty much flawless. 

I promised an intro

I love all these colors!  :)  I've always thought that color was one of the coolest things we get out of life.  Light's little magic trick.  Spiff. 

Okay.  So I promised a bit of an intro, didn't I?  Let's see.  I am 34, teach middle school, have a mom, a dad, two sisters (one of which is my twin sister, and my bestest friend in the world), and no pets (though I used to keep fiddler crabs).  I have brown hair (with natural grey highlights), one hazel green eye, one brown eye, and a sizeable sense o' hoomer, which I seem to have inherited from the forementioned dad.  I adore my grandparents, and terribly miss the three that have passed away.  My passions include reading , foruming, math, chess, cross-stitch, and playing canasta with my twin sibling (online) or my buddy Georgette (realtime).  I also do a lot of crosswords (the hard ones, in ink), and can play a mean game of Scrabble.  I don't watch a ton of TV, but I don't miss Gray's Anatomy, er, Survivor, or the Amazing Race.  I'm also very fond of Bones and House.  My favorite movies include Silence of the Lambs, The Lord of the Rings, Fried Green Tomatoes, and The Breakfast Club.  I also love horror movies, especially psychological horror.  I dislike broccoli, undercooked eggs (gag), and pretention. 

There.  An intro. 

brain splats

Time to jibber and jabber.  :)

Hooray!  It feels like spring today.  It's sunny and nice, and droolie's corner o' the planet is getting green again.  Too bad a person gets stuck inside on days like today. 

I loved House last night.  When they finally got around to discovering which oddball disease was affecting the victim-o'-the-week, I got all excited.  Way COOL to throw the bubonic plague curveball.  And then to top it all off, CNN had a story on a real-life dx of plague just today. 

I suppose one of these ramblings should be a bit more about droolie in general, an overview of sorts.  Next time, I think.  I don't think I'd be my oddball self if I had properly covered the introductory bits the first time I posted here.  That would be, um, I guess, expected.

There's so much more my brain bucket wants to spit out today, but it's gonna have to wait.  There's that thing called dinner, and my guilty pleasure tv shows (Amazing Race, Bones, and Idol).  And a trip outside for a bit, with McDonald's fries (still the best). 

Hope everybuddy is well and content.

droolie

midrin groggies

What is it with the goofy weather, anyhoo?  All weekend it was nice.  On Saturday we're talking 80 degrees nice.  With real sunshine.  Today we have sloppy rain.  And if that wasn't enough, some o' those raindrops are a bit fuzzy around the edges.  Composite drops.  Rain and, well, I'm not intending to say the s-word.  I keep hoping that if I block it out of my vocabulary, it will just cease to be.  :)

I slept a little too soundly last night, and the alarm was just a bit too much of a rude awakening.  If not for the weather, I would've survived, though.  But no...the drippy stuff triggered me.  So tired to begin with got a Midrin chaser, yielding tired, washed out, and groggy.  The migraine was kicked in minutes.  The groggies are still with me.  Phooey on that.  :P~  I'm not much good for anything right now.  I'd make a good paperweight, or a doorstop.  But that's about it. 

Gotta love that Montana weather. 

Happy Easter!

Hello, everybuddy.  :)

I am totally learning new tricks here, figgering out how this all works.  If you see this, I didn't do too badly. 

I probably should have titled this thing "ramblings from droolie's wonky brainbucket".  That would be apropos.  And tonight, wonky it is, as I'm way to overstuffed with ham and cheesy potato goop for my own good, content, and tired.  In all, a very good day. 

Especially if this posts.  :)

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Writing can be very therapeutic, both for the writer and the reader, and blogging has become very popular. On our Help for Headaches and Migraine site, we've started a new blogging/journaling community for anyone who would like to blog about life with headaches and/or Migraine disease. Not every post has to be related to headaches or Migraines. We write about life in general, family, work, books, anything -- as long as we at least occasionally share our thoughts about head pain.

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