Tag: movies

yep, still a nerd

In my haste to get something to eat before my lunch hour was up, I totally forgot to include two of my most defining nerdy traits.  So another day, another lunch break… another post.

Playing by Heart
Playing by Heart

The first:  I’m a recovering X-Phile.  In high school and college my dorm room walls were plastered with pictures of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, Mulder and Scully, my favorite FBI-fighting team.  I owned all the episode guides, read all the fanfic (even wrote some of my own, embarrassingly enough), knew all the in-jokes, and desperately wanted my heroes to get it over with already and screw like bunnies.  Yeah, I was one of “those” fans.  When everyone who knew better stopped watching the show in the 6th or 7th season, I was still securely anchored in front of the TV every Sunday night at 9, giddy with anticipation.  Thankfully the show ended in the 9th season, or I might still be defending myself (poorly) to television critics with better taste than I on some obscure Internet forum somewhere.

My second nerdy love:  Jon Stewart.  He’s tall, dark, handsome, and makes fun of politicians for a living.  But before he hosted the Daily Show, he had a small-ish role (alongside noneother than Gillian Anderson!) in a movie called Playing by Heart, which served as my feel-good movie for several years.  It wasn’t a great film by most standards, but it made a certain hormonal teenaged girl cry in all the right places, so it served its purpose.  The feel-good movie of choice has since been replaced by Love Actually, but my love for Jon Stewart and his biting wit continues.

Read and post comments

give and take

Last Friday, instead of doing our usual go-home-and-crash-on-the-couch routine, I decided the S.O. and I should go see a movie.  Free time is a commodity I suddenly don’t have much of, and I’d like to start spending it more constructively.  How, might you ask?  By paying eight bucks to park my butt on the movie theater’s (much less comfortable) couch and watching a freaky blood-fest, that’s how.

The Descent
The Descent

Now, I love a good horror movie.  Ghost stories are my particular favorite, but I’ll watch something gory if it has a substantial plot and is artfully done.  The movie review in the paper said The Descent fell into that category, and so says I:  “We shall go, and I shall not leave the theater until I’ve peed my pants from fright!”  Well, minus the pee part.

The S.O, on the other hand, does not appreciate the finer qualities of waking up in the middle of the night, absolutely certain that you heard something, and knowing that the something in question is a blind, toothy cave-creature that’s come to chew on your extremities.

Go figure!

For those of you who haven’t seen it or heard about it yet, The Descent is about six young women who attempt to navigate an uncharted cave system beneath the Appalachian mountains.  While exploring, they discover that they’re not alone in the cave; blind, toothy cave-creatures have come to chew on their extremities!  It’s really gory, really scary, and evokes a deep sense of claustrophobia, even in those of us who aren’t prone.

As you can imagine, it took quite a bit of persuasion on my part to get the boy to join me, as he does not like gory things, scary things, or tight enclosed spaces as a general rule.  As such, I may have neglected to mention these three elements when suggesting the movie, and I may have gone so far as to say, “Oh honey, it’ll be just like 28 Days Later!  You liked that one!”, knowing full well that the only thing it has in common with 28 Days Later is that it was filmed in the UK.

I’m probably going to hell for that, eh?

Suffice it to say, I enjoyed the movie immensely, and the boy did not enjoy it so much.  Judging from the pointed glare I received from the S.O. upon The Descent’s ending, I’m now going to be forced to watch Miami Vice, in all its macho Colin Farrell glory.  Talk about horror.

The S.O. is going to hold this one over my head for weeks, but I think it was well worth it!

Read and post comments | Send to a friend