Death Proof not critic proof

I saw the movie Death Proof on DVD. In theaters it was part of a double bill, two movies together called Grindhouse. The whole package was made to look like a drive-in movie or Times Square theater double feature. It was a flop in theaters despite the pedigree of the filmmakers, Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino.

Death Proof is a movie that proves that Quentin Tarantino has no one around him to tell him no. "No, Quentin…there's too much dialogue…" "No, Quentin, this movie is too long by 40 minutes at least." Tarantino has been sort of a darling since Pulp Fiction--still his best movie, in my opinion--and apparently studios or backers are giving him what he wants when he wants it.

One of the saving graces of this film is star Kurt Russell, who continues his string of solid acting jobs and movie performances. The man is one of those actors who can anchor a movie by his presence. I think he's overlooked because he's not flashy, flaunting his lifestyle, keeping himself in the public eye. In this role, he's given the job of seeming to be nicer than his true evil within, and he pulls it off.

He is first seen in a grotesque close-up shot eating greasy nachos. Look at the picture I took off the screen. The scar on his face is fake, but the creases in his earlobe aren't. Those creases are supposedly a sign of hidden heart problems. Careful with those nachos, Kurt.In a great scene he describes to the girls in the bar his history of being a stunt man, invoking old TV shows like The Virginian, and Vegas where he "did the whole third season" doubling for Robert Urich. He pauses and asks the girls, "Do you know any of these things I'm talking about?" and they tell him no. It plants the character in the viewer's mind as being over the hill, stuck in Austin, Texas, after an exciting life in Hollywood.

How did he get into being a stuntman, he's asked. He got in because of his brother. What's his brother's name? Stuntman Bob.

Tarantino does an acting job as the bartender. Quentin, you might be the wunderkind--or former wunderkind--of the directing biz, but please, please leave acting to the professionals. Even Hitchcock was content with a cameo. He didn't try to act in scenes with James Stewart, Grace Kelly or Cary Grant.

The pleasant surprise to me was seeing for the first time beautiful actress Vanessa Ferlito as Butterfly. I didn't think any woman could match Scarlett Johansson's lips, but this young woman has a set of Mick Jagger bumpers to rival any Hollywood collagen job.I was immediately taken by how sexy she is, especially in the scene where she gives Stuntman Mike a sexy dance to the tune of the Coasters "Down In Mexico." I'm going to watch for this beauty in future films. The music is really good, even if the dance scene was gratuitous and could have been easily cut without hurting anything. Except for my chance to see Vanessa Ferlito swing her booty.
The other thing that could have been cut was nine-tenths of the uses of the f-word. Quentin, baby, when you overuse that word it loses all meaning. How about saving it for when you really, really need to make a point or emphasize something?

SPOILER ALERT: You don't want to read the rest of this if you want to see the movie.

This is a crazy script for any director to film, even Tarantino, who wrote it. Two sets of four girls are victimized by Russell's character, Stuntman Mike, and his muscle cars. Too much time is spent in the set-up to the situation. Even though the scenes in the bar drag on interminably, Tarantino doesn't seem to get the hint that less is more. Less talk, less profanity…it'd be better, Quentin. Truly.

The crash scene that causes the deaths of the first set of four young women is one of the best special effects-stunt jobs I've ever seen. I ran the scene on my computer DVD player, paused it and took digital photos of the highlights. (I'm low-tech and don't know how to do screen captures.) The scene is set in four segments, each one beginning with the cars crashing, taken from different angles, and showing the mayhem to each girl individually.The first girl is shot through the air, and hits the ground.
In the second set-up of the same scene, the driver of the car is shown showered with glass from the windshield.The third set-up causes the leg of the third girl, Jungle Julia, to be cut off, and it also ends up on the road in a gruesome shot.The fourth set-up shows the girl, Butterfly, sitting behind the driver having her face taken off by the rear wheel of Stuntman Mike's vehicle, as it travels over the top of the girls' car.Wow! Good clean fun, huh? Even though Stuntman Mike has deliberately run into the car full of girls at 100 miles per hour, his car is a special stunt car, and the driver compartment is death proof. Hence, the title.

OK, after that and a time lapse of several months we're shown another set of four girls, this time in Tennessee. But we're given the same lengthy conversations, all dialogue that sounds a lot like the first set of girls. Tarantino has just got to learn to quit loving the sounds of his own written words. He likes black people, only he likes them to call each other by the n-word. That was already established in other projects of his like Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. He likes black women, especially pretty, young black women.

This time Stuntman Mike's plot to kill the four girls using his car backfires--no pun intended--and they use their car against him. Considering the guy is a stuntman who has faced death many times in a very risky job, considering he's probably been injured many times, and that we have seen him deliberately crash head-on into another car at 100 mph, he seems to have a very cowardly reaction to suddenly being the victim instead of victimizer. To Kurt Russell's credit, he gives it credibility. He does a wonderful job portraying a man who has had his plans turn bad. At one point Stuntman Mike shrieks like a little girl, which is totally out of character, but Russell's believability saves it from being as ludicrous as it sounds.

Tarantino wanted to capture the look of a 1960s cheapie drive-in movie. He made a movie that looks 2007, but with the film quality--faked digitally--of a print run way too many times. Why not make it look like 1966 with beehive hair on the girls? Quentin Tarantino likes to show us he's cool. Cool dialogue, cool characters, cool plot twists, and especially cool music. But he could put a lot more cool into his movies by letting us decide what's cool, and not be hammered by his self-indulgence.

Knows job or nose job?

Recently I read some tabloids and TV entertainment shows are claiming Scarlett Johansson has had a nose job. People, look at this picture. Does this look like a young woman who needs a nose job? I mean, who is looking at her nose?

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The Santa on the cover of this coloring book has something in mind. I'd turn this guy in; there's something creepy about him.
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The other day I opened up a paperback book I'd bought several weeks ago at a thrift store. Being used as a bookmark was this photo of this well turned-out gentleman. I don't know if this is the way he dresses every day, or if he's going for a job interview. Whatever. Love the hat.

When the goin' gets tuff, the tuff get cuffed

A week or so ago on the national news there was a story of a 10-year-old girl being taken out of school in handcuffs. Her mother was outraged, the child was upset, and the school was keeping mum, probably out of privacy concerns. The mom will probably sue the school district and police, but this wasn't an isolated incident, and I wonder how it ended up on the national news. Must've been a slow news day.

I turned to my wife and said, "I see children in handcuffs occasionally." Yesterday on my route, for instance. A small boy in cuffs was being led to a school district police car. The officer arresting him was at least 6'4", and the child was an average third or fourth grade kid. I've seen this scenario repeated at times over the years. I admit the first time I saw an elementary school child in restraints I was startled; I've seen several kids of junior high and high school age in handcuffs. Not so unexpected, there.

I won't find out why the child I saw yesterday was taken out in handcuffs, and I won't ask. The officer smiled and waved as I pulled away from my parking spot, and I returned his friendly gesture. Just another day in the life of a school district cop.

Our police officers have been through the state police academy, and have full police powers. We're the only school district in the state with such a police force, and they are busy 24 hours a day, protecting our buildings and students. I'm pretty sure it's policy to handcuff everyone being taken to a police car, even the elementary school kids.

Once I walked into a school and saw an officer holding a sixth grade boy from behind. The boy had a large kitchen knife in his hand. The officer had his arm around the boy's neck; he had the boy's arm extended fully to keep the knife away from himself and the child. The officer was squeezing the boy's wrist to make him relax his grip. The officer was twice the weight and height of the student and could have just thrown him to the floor and taken the knife away, but he was disarming the boy in a manner that would minimize the danger or damage to the child and himself. The boy dropped the knife and the officer got the boy's arm behind his back where he cuffed his hands together, all in a smooth motion. Throughout the whole situation, which took seconds, no sound was made by either the boy or the cop. You walk in on a situation like that and you wonder if you've been dropped into a movie. Nope, it's real. Life in a school district does have difficult moments like that, and you hope all of them turn out as well as the situation I saw. For the lady on the national news who was upset because her daughter was removed in handcuffs, it's just the facts, ma'am...that's life in a school district.

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Here's a picture of Evangeline Lilly from the TV show, Lost. I stopped watching Lost midway through last season, when I thought it lost its way. I don't have any reason to show you this picture of Ms Lilly except that I really, really like looking at Evangeline Lilly.

Snow Event

The big storm sweeping through the nation this weekend hit us on Saturday. Weathermen have a new phrase they use for this sort of thing: They say "a major snow event," rather than "a big snowstorm." Makes it sound better, but the end result is the same. Here are a couple of pictures of the snow event from the front sidewalk of my suburban house. You tell me, is it an event or storm?Despite the storm, errrr, I mean event, we had some Christmas shopping to do, so Sally and I did some antiquing. She found some Christmas presents for relatives and friends, and I found a box of 1940s Christmas cards.Considering this is a state where winter storms are common, people still get anxious about snow. It's almost better that they don't know a big event/storm is coming. Our weathermen, right up until the storm started pounding us, told us it wouldn't affect us much, maybe fall in the form of rain. It fooled them, it fooled us. Had it been a regular work day I would've had a very miserable day. I've seen many days like this in my life, and I prefer that they come on weekends when I don't have to work, thankyouverymuch.

While at the antiques store, people kept peering out the windows, fretting about what was going on. As suddenly as it had come in, it ended. There was no more snow falling, the snowplows were clearing the streets and the fretful saw they were going to get home that night. The relief was clear. It was like they had been handed a reprieve from the governor.

In the store I was looking at a 1953 high school yearbook from a small rural school. It was owned by a girl named Myrna. It's inscribed inside by her friends, "Hope you have a nice summer," "You are a good friend," etc., etc., just like you'd expect from a yearbook. Then there's a page with the heading, "Reserved," and one single message: "Dear Myrna, why don't you go piss up a rope? Tex" There's always one guy like that in every class, isn't there?

Here's a picture of the corner of my yard, with bare trees covered in snow. It's pretty, but don't stand under those trees.

Pictures Don't Lie

Pictures don't lie is the old saying, but of course it's not true. Pictures lie all the time. Look at the picture above. My granddaughter, Bella, has either grown a third hand, or her little sister, Gabby, is somewhere in the shadow, just out of sight. I'm glad, too, because I thought maybe my gag about the alien abduction in the last blog might really be true.

Do dinosaurs stomp through parking lots? Apparently they do, if you believe this picture.My friend Eddie claims to be invisible. Maybe this is Eddie at a birthday party when he was a kid. Is this kid turning invisible? He is if you look at this picture.
Finally, is Scarlett Johanssen perfect? Is her body absolute perfection, her lips and face a work of art? Well, considering the art of artifice, the foundation garments, makeup, hair styling, collagen treatments for her lips and even a little Photoshopping after the photographer finished his work…despite all that I'd have to say, yeah, she's perfect.

Aliens in the house

I don't want to scare anybody--especially me--but I think we have a UFO mystery at my house!

A couple of weeks ago our granddaughter, Bella, came for an overnight visit. Bella, who isn't quite three years old, has a list of things she likes to do with her grandma, including drawing. She did this drawing which I thought was very unusual.It reminds me of common pictures of UFO aliens and even a couple of flying saucers in the background.

Then on Thanksgiving Bella posed for some pictures and I'll be go-to-hell if she didn't channel Regan from The Exorcist or exhibit otherwise unlikely behavior.Whew. This is a mystery that bears further investigation! I don't believe in flying saucers, UFOs, alien abductions, although I've written about them. Check here for my UFO week columns to commemorate 60 years of flying saucer sightings.

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I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. A lot of people I know took off out of town for the holiday. Here's a guy who has found a creative way of showing folks back home where he's been. I swiped, errrrr, I mean borrowed, these pictures from the blog, Damn Cool Pics.

Package delivery

This is one of those things that circulates around; I got it in a photocopied form. I counted the number of F's and came up with three. I gave it to a teacher friend and she counted six. She also patiently explained to me, "People don't look at words like 'of'." I hadn't even seen those words, and I consider myself pretty sharp. So does this mean I've got Alzheimer's, and need to be placed in the nursing home with my mom?

Arrgh. The aging process can get a guy down. This morning I woke up and headed for the medicine chest and the Advil. Amazing how arthritis can make getting out of bed difficult, when the feet hit the floor, and the floor hits back.

I was going through some old books, and came across my copy of Atlas Of Human Anatomy For The Artist by Stephen Rogers Peck. I scanned a picture of the aging process in men.I bought the book in 1970, when I was closer in age to the guy on the left. Now I'm midway between the guy in the middle and the guy on the right. The most disheartening thing is that people shrink. It's not like I can afford to give away half a head of height when I don't have that much head to begin with.

The best part is that apparently--according to the author/artist--the package in front looks pretty much the same from 18 to 80. And if you think about it, shrinking the rest will make that package look bigger! So much for those penis enlarging pills they're always trying to sell over the Internet. All I've gotta do is age another 20 years and I'll have a willie like a pornstar.

Part-time Polygamist Wife Wanted, Episode 3

My search for a part-time polygamous wife goes on. Right now my wife is pet sitting, and I've been on my own for a couple of nights. If you remember, I advertised for a woman to take care of me while my wife is out of town or with a client's pet. I tell about the earlier part of my search here, and here. I've gotten some pictures, and want to present them to you…maybe you can help me make up my mind.

Maxine Factor says she likes the way subtle touches with makeup can help a girl keep the ol' pizzazz going in a relationship. Yeah, as long as you kiss a guy without him sticking to your face.The Bangle Sisters say, "We're a team. Where one goes, we all go." I'll admit that's mighty tempting, but I only need one woman to handle my castanets.Monica Bluinsky says she is "going through a blue period." No blues…and no periods for me.Pinkie tells me, "I'm just practicing the look I'll give you on our wedding night when I see you naked!" Sorry, honey, but what you'd see would be me disappearing out the bathroom window…with my clothes on.
White-shoes Winnie says, "If you're interested, I'll send a more current photo." Winnie, I don't think I'd be interested, even if the photo was taken after World War II.Belinda the Bad writes, "I'm not really a witch. What I am rhymes with witch."Ohhhhhhhhhhh-kay. I don't think you gals are taking my request seriously enough, but keep the pictures coming. I figure one of these days I'll see something I like.

Actually, I like this. I mean, the raised pinky indicates good breeding, doesn't it? Too bad she also says, "I charge $500 a night…non-negotiable. And for you, I'd probably charge more."

It's a Man's World

It's Veteran's Day today. So happy day, all you veterans, and even veterans-to-be.

Today also marks the 39th anniversary--November 11, 1968--that I was discharged from the U.S. Army after two years. I spent my time in Germany, feeling lucky to be away from where the bullets were flying in Vietnam.

Every soldier, sailor, or marine will tell you that even during wartime there are times of boredom in a serviceman's life. That's doubly true for a peacetime force. When I was in Nuremberg, we had no TV to speak of, since it was all in German. We had Armed Forces Network radio, but I don't remember it being any more than just background. During our off hours we could go downtown, get drunk, get laid, get in trouble. I was a barracks rat; I stayed behind. Getting drunk and getting laid led to that trouble, and that was what I avoided. I just stayed behind and read or wrote letters.

Wow, boring, huh? The PX was stuffed with magazines and books to read. I usually made my way there every few days, stocking up on magazines. A new issue of Playboy, especially one with a story by Jean Shepherd, was a bonus. Shepherd wrote the stories on which they based the movie A Christmas Story. I read all of those stories first in Playboy. I got comics and paperback books and usually kept myself busy with my nose buried in something.

The kinds of magazines I never bought were the types of men's-sweat magazines that were everywhere in those days. I saw them because other GI's bought them and left them laying around the barracks. What I found out about them is that beyond the covers, there usually wasn't a lot of interest. I'm sure the cover artists and the headline writers were the stars on these magazines. Who could resist a cover with a gal in a bikini helping feed a machine gun? Chicks were the main attractions on these covers. Put a babe on the cover and you've got a guy's attention.I love the headlines, "I Conquered The Headhunters of 'Blood Hostage Island,'" "I Was A 'Love-On-The-Prowl' Sin Cruise Girl!" "Showdown in the Garden Of Golden Flesh," "Rampaging Outlaw Angels and their Love-Blast 'Mamas'." What was that? Love-Blast 'Mamas'? In those days, thanks to movies like Wild Angels with Peter Fonda, Hell's Angels were really popular, even iconic, pop-culture figures.Many illustrators made their living doing covers for these magazines. Writers like Mario Puzo, of The Godfather fame, also made a living writing for these rags. A lot of guys read them. Nowadays they're considered collectible. The covers are great. They represent a time and an era when men were macho and women couldn't say 'no!' or were high-stake nymphs.Magazines like these were made-to-order for bored GI's. Like all escape literature, they were cheap and could take a guy away for a couple of hours.Thanks to my friend, David Miller, who found these magazines at an antiques fair and scanned the covers for me. Click on the pictures for full-size images.

Superhot

Did anyone else notice this Sunday funny, Zits, today? Go down a couple of postings of this blog to Saturday, October 27 to read my own version of having a school superhottie, and the effect on me. Click on the picture to get the full-size image.

Objects that return

Yesterday, Jill, a secretary at one of the elementary schools on my route, pulled a Swiss Army knife out of a drawer. "Is this yours?" she asked.

Two weeks ago I'd lost that knife. It fell out of the watch pocket of my jeans. Every time I sat down it would fall out of my pocket, onto the floor. I didn't remember I'd been in the bathroom of that school, but someone had found it there and turned it in. Thank you, anonymous finder of my lost object. Thank you, Jill, for deducing it belonged to me.

I have this crackpot theory, that if something is truly ours it will come back to us. If it isn't, it won't. We've all had lots of objects disappear, never to be seen again. The ones attached to us, maybe by some invisible string, will find their way back. That's the case of the Swiss Army knife on the right, the one with the casing that keeps falling off, and the blade that's been whittled down by sharpening. My wife gave me that knife in 1987 or '88, and it's been lost several times, only to find its way home. Kind of like Lassie, only with an inanimate object.
The knife the secretary returned to me is the replacement for the older knife. I am compelled to carry two things every day, a pen and a pocketknife. Otherwise I'm naked to the world. For the half-dozenth time or so, three months ago I had lost my older knife. In every instance of loss, at some point it will return to me, but I still needed a knife, so I bought a larger knife and carried that for a while. The larger knife is actually too big for the watch pocket, hence the problem with it falling out. I've had a couple of those knives over the years, and they never come back when they're lost. I was completely surprised to get the larger knife back. See, the night before my older knife found its way back to me. I went into my downstairs studio. I have a wooden rocking chair, which used to belong to my mother-in-law, I use for watching TV or reading. My eye was caught as I walked in the room. There was my older knife in plain sight under the chair.

The thing that is most strange is that I sit in that chair every day at one point or another, even if it's only to tie my shoelaces. When I walk into the room I have a clear view of the chair, what's around it, and underneath it. For three months I didn't see the knife. Then I did. I was surprised, but pleasantly. I knew at some point it would return itself, just not when. Or how. What surprised me more was the next day I got its replacement back. So now I have two knives that return themselves to me. Since my OCD requires me to carry a pocketknife, while both of those knives were missing I had bought yet another knife, a Winchester pocket knife, which is in my watch pocket right now. The Swiss Army knives are in a box in my closet, and when I lose the Winchester I'll carry one of the Swiss Army knives again.

I first noticed the phenomenon of returning objects almost 35 years ago. My wife bought me what I requested for Christmas, a Rapidograph pen. For those of you who don't know, a Rapidograph is a technical pen with a non-flexible tip, out of which drawing ink flows in a uniform line. The tips come in various sizes. I wanted to use it for lettering my cartoons. At the time I would sit in an armchair with my drawing board in my lap. We had four cats always jumping on me, and I'd put the pen down on an end table and shoo away the cats. One day I went to use the pen and it was missing. I turned the house upside down, took every cushion off the furniture, looked everywhere, even places in the house I knew I'd never taken the pen. Finally, I gave up. But I was upset. In those days, buying a pen that cost $12 was really expensive for me, since I earned about $2.00 an hour.

One night about a month after losing the Rapidograph, I had a dream. In my dream I saw my refrigerator, and from underneath the refrigerator a signal was being emitted. It was loud in my head, a squealing sound. I woke up from my dream, went into the kitchen with a yardstick, put it under the fridge, and scooped out my Rapidograph pen. I thought then that one of the cats had batted it off its spot on the end table, played with it on the floor and it had rolled under the fridge. Simple. Except that it called out to me in a dream. You can argue it was because my mind was working on the problem of the missing pen, and solved it by coming up with the one place in the house I hadn't looked, and my logical mind would tend to agree with you. But my more romantic, non-pragmatic side would prefer to think that by some psychic bond between the pen and me, it had made its location known. I still have the pen.

The older Swiss Army knife kind of unnerves me. The way I suddenly saw it under the chair is spooky. We don't have cats currently living in our house. The thought of an inanimate object moving under its own power is too creepy to think about. But then, when something truly belongs to you, a loved one, an animal, an object, whatever, however it has to do it, it will find a way back to you.