S.K.o.S.

Raiders are doing stuff. 2 interceptions for Peyton.

BAAAAAACK body drop on Mike Mitchell

So I only managed to cross two of those off my list, probably the two lowest profile ones. Force Majeure: This is a front-runner for Best Foreign Film Oscar, about a family on a ski trip. They're eating lunch on a mountainside patio when an avalanche begins; it looks like it's going to hit the patio, everyone panics, and the dad takes off running, abandoning his family. The avalanche doesn't make it to the patio and the dad comes back, but now the mom is pissed at him and we get 90 minutes of tension. As far as foreign film contenders, I thought Haemoo was much better than this, but it's not bad. Good examination of relationship dynamics and the male psyche. There is some symbolism (the grimy hotel worker guy pretty clearly represents relationship problems), and it's the final scene, on a bus, that I'm thinking about the most. It seems to send an anti-relationship message, but not sure if I'm interpreting it correctly. They did a really good job shooting that part, though, making a normal bus ride seem as frightening as possible. Glad I saw it in a theatre just for that. The Skeleton Twins: Again, not bad, not great. After Adult Beginners and this, I may have to stop completely trusting that I'll love anything the Duplass brothers produce. Not an SNL guy (only seen Hader in The To-Do List, I think) so I have no strong feelings about the stars... I'd say it was forgettable, except that I've had Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now stuck in my head for about 24 hours now. The way they frame shots to get across the siblings' relationship really stuck out to me. Like the two of them will be having a conversation, the camera flips back and forth between them as they're speaking, and one will be alllll the way on the left of the screen and the other will be allll the way on the right, because they're emotionally far apart. And that changes as the movie progresses.

Despicable Me had opened the weekend before Inception. Seeing them go head to head in their first weeks would've been interesting. In retrospect, because I wouldn't have seen this coming, it kinda makes sense to me that someone seeing a movie in November just wants to chill out on their weekend and be entertained for 90 minutes rather than really having to focus and think for close to 3 hours. In summer, maybe that same person is on vacation and is willing to see something a little more challenging when the rest of their time is pure leisure.

There was also supposed to be something about Cincinnati averaging 150+ rushing yards this year in home games and Cleveland being near the bottom of the league in run defense.

I saw John Wick this week... still gotta see Birdman, Nightcrawler, Whiplash, Interstellar and Big Hero 6. Also wouldn't mind seeing The Skeleton Twins, St. Vincent and Force Majeure. And that's just what's in theaters right now, never mind the stuff from earlier in the year I have to catch up on. Might do a multiplex weekend.

As someone who just couldn't stop going to see them in the theatre every year, I thought the first three were worthwhile (the third one I remember being seriously unsettling, something about how they dealt with Jigsaw finding out he's going to die. Also surgery freaks me out). Past that, don't bother.

3 things: 1. I've barely seen anything at all with Kirsten Dunst, just Eternal Sunshine + this 2. Having said that, I bet the Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia wouldn't be too out of place alongside Viggo 3. Having said that, the idea was that the two of them weren't a perfect couple. I think it was supposed to be a trophy wife sort of marriage that was starting to show cracks.

Also catching up on 2014. I enjoyed The Two Faces of January quite a bit. It's written and directed by the guy who wrote Drive, but it's very different from that movie, more Hitchcockian than anything else. Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst are a couple vacationing in Greece, they run into an American tour guide played by Oscar Isaac, and after a death, all three of them end up going on the run together - but there's tension between all three. Wasn't quite feeling Isaac as a great actor after Inside Llewyn Davis, but I am now! He's so good here, making a great adversary for Viggo. Lots of whispered, clenched-jaw conversations. Only problem is that I could see people thinking it's a little too understated.

It's non-fiction, about the author's experience teaching a creative writing class in a juvenile offenders' prison. Gotta re-read it to refresh my memory for any more details than that.

Who wrote the review for Bay of Blood?

Just watched Stretch. It might be a little under the radar because it went straight to video on demand, but it's good times. Patrick Wilson plays a limo driver in Hollywood who has to come up with some money by midnight to repay gambling debts. Ed Helms, with a Vincent Price mustache, plays the ghost of a dead limo driver who provides unhelpful jibes from the back seat. Chris Pine, sporting a Rob-Zombie-at-his-most-hirsute hair & beard combo, if you can imagine that, plays an eccentric billionaire who may be the key to getting that money. Also, because limo drivers in Hollywood drive around celebrities, there are cameos from a couple of celebrities playing themselves. It's going for R-rated outrageousness, like lots of profanity and drugs, colorful characters like a guy who counts a wad of money with his tongue, and there's a scene where Wilson does a surprisingly good Clint Eastwood impression. I'd say if you liked Crank, but maybe wanted it to slow down just a tad, you'd enjoy this.

Oops, wrong thread.

Ok the list is in the spoiler. There are a lot of "you think that's horror? Really?" picks, and a lack of certain French films, but there are also a couple that I hadn't heard of and sound good. I'm going on a coffee run now if anyone wants anything else.

Probably this? http://www.vulture.com/2013/10/25-best-horror-movies-since-the-shining.html

I thought I remembered another WWE best 2 out of 3 falls match that only went 2 falls. Looking it up, I found MVP over Benoit, in Benoit's last ppv match... but I'm thinking there was something else more recent than that. Am I making that up?

It's getting to be that "there are twenty different movies in theatres that you need to see" time of the year.

I watched The Babadook last night. It was sold to me as being super duper scary, and it's scary, but not THAAAAT scary. I had more trouble with The Descent, to name just one. But, it's really good! It has no jump scares and virtually no gore, but I was still curled up into a ball in my theatre seat, but I had a huge smile on my face the whole time. For a movie where the big scenes are "monster in a dark house," it's a real feast of sight and sound. I would almost recommend seeing it in a theatre if at all possible just to get the full impact of the sound effects. There are a lot of little touches that I think would be lost on a tv. And it uses LOUD NOISES too, but not to startle. There's a message about single parenting too... being a single parent is (I assume) really difficult, and I think the idea is that the Babadook is meant to represent the impulse to just give up on the whole thing.

No, I think someone just decided to have some fun with Photoshop.

Turns out that the security guard who was wounded at the Parliament Hill shootings in Ottawa on Wednesday is someone I went to school with from grade 1 until the end of high school. I'd lost touch with him, just knew he was in some kind of official security job (there's a picture on his Facebook of him working security for Obama, I assume on some sort of presidential visit to Canada) but wow. He had no weapon and tried to disarm the shooter. That's got to be the biggest moment of his life right there. http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2014/10/23/wounded_security_guard_const_samearn_son_hailed_as_hero.html

Come for the statutory rape, stay for the witty double entendres!

We've got movies with people getting carved up and people carving up movies!

Saw Kumiko The Treasure Hunter last night. Rinko Kikuchi gets her hands on a VHS tape of Fargo, thinks it's real because it says at the beginning that it's a true story, and flies from Tokyo to Minnesota to look for the suitcase full of money that Steve Buscemi buried in the snow. Saddest movie I've seen in quite a while. She ditched her pet rabbit before she left I know there were points during the movie where I was thinking "Well, she seems crazy, but she's not - she just got fooled by Fargo" but I'm seeing review blurbs saying it's a character study of a mentally ill person, and that's making me think on it a little more, specifically how much of what the character does is due to her own unbalanced brain chemistry vs. being in a country where she knows no one and barely speaks the language. edit: I think modern Japanese stereotypes might play into it as well. Like if I see a native Japanese person acting in an eccentric way, I assume that's just the endearingly quirky way that the culture behaves, rather than thinking there's something actually wrong with them.

You guys don't have Doritos Roulette yet in the U.S., do you? http://www.foodbeast.com/2014/07/07/new-doritos-roulette-bags-contain-one-extremely-spicy-chip-in-every-handful/ I've never actually had a bag, but I love the concept.

Perversely looking forward to Oilers vs. Hurricanes on the 24th, especially if they're still the only two winless teams in the league by then.