Random Movie Reactions...

Here I am emerging once again from the dark abyss that is medical school to the breathe the air of the normal life that includes normal stuff like " fun " , "movies" , "music" etc. If only for a little while..


My God, that sounded lame....

Anyway...Here are some random movie trailers I've seen lately + commentary by me because you just know that I can't shut up.

Tropic Thunder




I need to see this movie. I truly believe that my life will be happier when I do. I'm so happy Rober Downey Jr. has succeeded in achieving his grand "comeback" which I think probably started with "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" and now has culminated with "Iron Man" because he has always been such an underrated actor. In this movie he actually plays a white Australian actor playing the role of a black man..so the least you can say about the man is that he's versatile!

Also, I know I'm weird but I find Ben Stiller to be a very strangely attractive (if short) man . I will go hang my head in shame now.

Prom Night




So like, some people, like , totally thought people needed to see yet another horror movie remake. So this movie is like about this bad-ass-psycho-OMG-stalker dude who's like totally hellbent on killing all these hot teenagers at their prom. Like what a nightmare, right? So all the hot girls are like all running away and tripping over their own totally hot dresses. Then there's the obligatory " Like, omg why don't you just -like- leave me alone? eeeeek". The movie probably ends with just enough leeway for a possible sequel cos like, this is cinematic GENIUS that needs to be totally seen over and over again.

What Happens in Vegas


Cameron Diaz is actually orange in this movie. ORANGE. That is all.

Harold and Kumar escape from Guatanamo Bay




I honestly thought the first one was totally hysterical, so I'm really looking forward to seeing this one. Just fun stoner comedy.
Random Fact : Christopher Meloni (Elliott Stabler from Law & Order : SVU) has a small role her as the KKK leader. He also played "Freakshow" in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. I didn't know the man had it in him to be so funny =D.

Disclaimer: I haven't seen any of these movies. These are my impressions based on this trailer, so no unnecessary whining, please.

I've also seen a couple of older movies recently: Sliding doors and The Descent (Yes, I finally got myself acquainted with Satellite TV once again).

Sliding Doors was a movie I always heard good things about but avoided because I think Gwyenth Palrow is one of the most wooden and overrated actresses in Hollywood. Well, the movie was a fun, interesting little movie and as for Gwennie, I'm not British but I thought that her accent was cringe-worthy. Granted she had a much better accent in Shakespeare in Love and Emma but this is the actress who they gave an Oscar to instead of Cate Blanchett!? *Facepalm*


The Descent was surprisingly good. It was obviously low budget but I thought it was a damn good movie that was pretty gripping from start to finish and I'm a person who literally dozes off in movie theaters if the movie isn't interesting enough. I realized the director was Neil Marshall, who also directed another low-budget movie which I liked a lot and wrote about here before called "Dog Soldiers" which was one of the better werewolf movies to come out in recent years (though I'm waiting to see how "Wolfman" with Benicio Del Toro will turn out - despite Mark Romanek jumping ship which is a damn shame).

As for the Descent, I saw the version with the original British ending which was rather depressing but I think it made the movie overall stronger. Oh and there is a sequel in the works, so here's to hoping it doesn't suck.




That's enough for now. I'm out!

Listening to: The Raconteurs - Carolina Drama

And my guesses turned out to be...

As I sip my coffee and check the Oscar winners, it turns out that my first guess were right in all major categories except :

Best Actress : My second guess ; Marion Cotillard won.
Best supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton won, so I was just totally off course on this one!

And considering I'm a medical student who's always running from one place to another, trying to cram information in my overwhelmed brain, I probably won't get to watch the ceremony during its re-run and see Jon Stewart make inappropriate and awkward jokes. Ah, well!

It's that time of the year again...

Yep, it's here, again! That time of the year where I give you my absolutely random and useless Oscar predictions.

Here goes:

Best Actor : Daniel Day Lewis for There will be blood...a no-brainer, he's got the buzz, the Golden Globe, the BAFTA and The SAG. Plus, he's DDL and everyone loves him.

Won't be surprised though if ...No other guesses, here.

Best Actress: This one is a bit tricky. The competition is between Marion Cotillard and Julie Christie. One one hand, Marion has been getting a lot of buzz. On the other Julie is a legend and not really in need of much buzz anyway. Also, there's the nature of their roles. Marion is in a biopic as Edith Piaf in la vie en rose a.k.a la mome and Julie Christie is playing an Alzheimer's disease patient in Away from her. It's common knowledge that the Academy LOVES both debilitating conditions/handicaps in movies and biopics. Then there's the fact that Marion has a Golden Globe (for best actress in a comedy/musical) and the BAFTA but Julie has the SAG and also a Golden Globe (for best actress).

My money is on Julie Christie, though. That's because the Academy loves old people who happen to be movie legends.

Won't be surprised though if ....Marion Cotillard wins.


Best Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem for No country for old men. No brainer here, too. If simply to make up for the fact that the Academy neglected to nominate him for his amazing role in the Spanish-language movie; The sea inside.

Won't be surprised though if ...No other guesses, here.

Best Supporting Actress: Cate Blanchett as err...Bob Dylan :D. This is another tough one because they're all fine performances but first of all Cate is nominated for both best actress and best supporting actress, so she's likely to go home with an award. Also, she's likely to lose for a second time this year the best actress award for her AMAZING portaryl of Queen Elizabeth. Everyone knows she should have won the first time instead of Gwenyth Paltrow and although Cate has won best supporting actress before for Aviator, I won't be surprised if the Academy give it to her a second time to make up for not giving her an award for Elizabeth.

Won't be surprised though if ....Ruby Dee (SAG winner) or Amy Ryan win for American Gangster and Gone baby gone, respectively.

Best Movie: My first guess would be No country for old men.

Won't be surprised though if.......Atonement wins.

Best Director: The Coen Brothers for No country for old men.

Won't be surprised though if....No other guesses, here.

Movie Reviews

First of all...I'M FREEEEE....*does several awkward little dances* freedom is mine , after 2 pediatrics and 10 (count 'em, TEN) Internal medicine exams over the last 2 months, they finally ran out of exams! I can now sit down and do NOTHING! Or you know...blog , of course!
Here are a couple of movie reviews of movies I've just seen. One of them is kinda new and one is kinda old :


Kinda old : 28 weeks later

Robert Carlyle , Catherine McCormack and directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
I was kind of disappointed by this one. It's not that it's a bad movie , it's just that like most sequels , it failed to live up to its predecessor. Danny Boyle's 28 days later is one of my favorite movies and it wasn't just a horror movie about flesh eating humans infected by a rage virus, it was also about human beings (normal ones...) under extreme situations. It also included subtle and clever political and social commentary. However , with 28 weeks later , it felt like the movie concentrated on the flesh eating aspect rather than the human aspect and even when there was a glimpse of some sort of emotionally engaging storyline , they go off and infect one of the main protagonists halfway through the movie . In the end I felt there was too much gore and not enough story to carry the movie through.
It was a fun movie to watch, just not very memorable.


Kinda New : 1408

John Cusack , Samuel L.Jackson directed by Mikael Hafstrom
What if there were a hotel room ,with all it's creepy familiarity , with all those little soap bars , chocolates and alcohol bottles was actually an embodiment of your worst nightmares?
Based on a novel by Stephen King , here, the main character is a cynical horror novelist who goes in search of actual paranormal activity across the country , looking for hotels/mansions that actually live up to their reputation of being haunted. He gets more than he bargains for when his curiosity gets the better of him after he receives a postcard warning him about room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel of New York.
The thing I liked about this movie, was that all your expectations are likely to be off target. Just when you think something is supposed to happen, it doesn't . Just when you think it's all about to end peacefully, it still doesn't. I really enjoyed this movie, so did my non-horror-movie-fan friends. This isn't the first time Stephen King has based a horror novel on an inanimate object that is pure evil (see Night shift) . They all seem so harmless just sitting there don't they? Mwaha.. haha..hahahaha..sorry I had to do that .
I really recommend this one!

Greetings Earthlings

No , no. The fact that I haven't written anything in this blog isn't because of random experimental alien abduction. At least none that I know of ...but the truth is like, totally out there , dude.

Anyway, the fact is I had a couple of tests in the 2 colossal subjects I have this year ; internal medicine and pediatrics. They both sort of included the entire syllabus, yet strangely enough , they weren't my part of my finals which start in less than 6 weeks. Only in med school do we find this strange proliferation of exams until they make sure they've got you cornered for the entire summer.
In this past week I've discovered that my capacity for staying up multiple nights (till maybe 6 a.m.) with very little sleep is increasing. The fact that I'm walking into inanimate objects all day long is completely irrelevant. As long as I can read , the bruises are just fine. I've also noticed that late at night, around 3 a.m., I seem to recall every single horror movie I've seen and every horror book I've read (plenty of both). The secret to not freaking myself out is to keep making continuous noise. If I sit silently for too long, I start to think that maybe someone /something is whispering my name (something possibly *in the house*) and then ..and then , maybe I'll spot something (let say it's human-like but entirely black, with shiny yellow eyes and sharp colgate-smile-white teeth) grinning at me in the doorway which would probably prompt me to run into my parents room to ask for help except *gasp* , they've been transformed into flesh eating zombies (*braaaaaainssss*) and they're out TO GET ME....this is usually the point where I realize that it's time for another cup of coffee.
My finals start on the 27th of September insha2alah and continue to the first of November. Internal medicine is a 4 day test and before anyone (dares) to ask me the brilliant question : " like omigod, you actually stay there for like, 4 days? " ...No, we don't. It's Just so friggin' big that they decided to examine us 2-3 hrs everyday for 4 days till they run out of material. Did I mention that it'll be Ramadan, one with very long summer days, at the time? As Sue would say, O joy O joy...as my friend S.I. would say , cover me and cry. Our student union asked our Dean to push it back a couple of weeks but the comedian he is at heart , forced him to enthrall us with this line : "Why don't you ask the Mofti to push back Ramadan a couple of weeks..Neeyahahaha", to which medical students in houses around Cairo responded with a collective chant of " Burst into flames! Burst into flames!". The chant didn't work though, we were missing a vial of a virgin medical professor's blood.
We've got some black, black days ahead of us...

On a lighter note, you know that new Ahmed 7elmy movie, "keda reda"? Yeah..aha...don't see it. A friend convinced us to go see it yesterday after the exam , seeing as we could've used a few laughs and we ended up walking out of the movie before it ended. I don't know if it's the fact that I have a mild degree of depression but is the Egyptian threshold for cracking up getting lower by the minute? I wanted to grab the guy sitting behind me in the theater by the collar , shake him and ask him " What are you laughing about!? Huh? Huh? It's NOT funny, it's STUPID! Do you want to be a mindless baboon? Huh? *slap slap*Do you!?Do you!? ". He was well over six feet and looked like he was well-fed , so I decided against it.

I saw this song on scrubs (so typical, isn't it?) and I really like it :



Bub-bye, now.

Movie Review : Morgan Ahmad Morgan aka Another Stupid Summer Movie!

So my friends decided to go watch a movie last week and since it's summer, the majority of movies in the theaters are Arabic ones which I'm not particularly fond of (especially in the summer, when stupidity is especially high in movies whether Arabic or English) but I thought if 9 of my friends want to see the same movie, I can't stick out like a sore thumb , can I ? I wish I would've stuck to my guns though because we ended up watching one of the most hyped summer movies which is Adel Imam's latest : Morgan Ahmad Morgan.
(If you plan on seeing the movie, beware of the spoilers ahead and if you don't feel like reading all of the details, you could always scroll down to the bottom line at the end. )
At the beginning of the movie , we see a plethora of products of a wide variety all produced by the companies of one very wealthy man, Adel Imam's character , Morgan Ahmad Morgan ( MAM).
His first appearance in the movie is to face a little problem with officials from the tax department who were reviewing his records all while seeming quite serious about their jobs. What does he do about this problem? Why, bribe them of course! This basically sets the tone for the rest of the movie where he bribes just about everyone who intentionally or not stands in his way.
MAM has two grown children , who are attending a private and expensive university and are strangely enough in the same year/class despite being born in different countries. His daughter, an opinionated young woman, faces a little problem when she gets into an argument with one of her professors and asks for her father's help of course. On arriving to the University he finds her brother playing tennis with one of the professors, Dr. Gihan (Mervat Amin) and he finds himself quite taken by the lovely Professor on seeing her in her cute tennis outfit. This scene also sets the tone for the Mervat Amin's role throughout the remainder of the movie. It seems like she basically showed up to show off her newly acquired slim figure , her wardrobe and how her face seems to be botoxed within an inch of her life, making it seem quite painful for her to talk and nearly impossible to move her eyebrows out of place.
The Professor attacks MAM in the university Newspaper and accuses him of being a dishonest crook and worried about further attacks from her or anyone else, he decides to run for Parliament . Who do you think runs against him? Why Dr. Gihan of course! (maho mafeesh gheirhom fel balad ba2a). He finds his own employees and children supporting his opponent and actually finds his children using slogans insulting their own father to support their candidate, despite happily spending his money throughout the movie. Anyway, he ends up buying the elections and winning of course being the rich-ass billionaire that he is.
His children sit him down in one scene to tell him that it's sometimes embarrassing when he talks and that he needs to educate himself. Therefore, he decides to go to one of those "cultural" cafes and buy a collection of awful poetry from an unknown writer and publish them in a collection under his own name, which he buys all the copies of and ends up mysteriously winning the national award as the best poet for, to prove to his children that he is cultured and educated. Dr.Gihan invites him to discuss the book and the award at the university, where another professor , the winner of many literature awards is read to attack him. What does he do to get himself out of such a mess? Why he bribes the literature professor of course, with a watch no less . For this magical watch, the professor completely changes his position and sings MAM's praises . Gihan (who he also tries to bribe but fails) still finds a way to embarrass him after which he ends up deciding to go the own children's university to get a real degree after offering a huge donation to the University's president. Like I said, bribes galore.
The highlights of his trip through higher education include lots of laughs provided by Ahmed Mekky and his afro, the perpetually stoned (and nameless) student and a nice little role by El Sa3dany Junior as the leader of the University's religious group(he bears an eerie resemblance to our college's own resident religious leader). There's also a ridiculous number of female college students looking like hookers for some reason , drug use and professors being bribed to give MAM A's in their subjects (except for GiGi of course). There's also a particularly disturbing scene, where MAM still recovering from the effects of a "magic pill" given to him the night before, fantasizes during a lecture that Dr.Gihan is singing Haifaa Wahbi's um.."WaWa" song . Here Mervat Amin acts all seductive and er..stuff while wearing something similar to the pj's I had when I was four and the director thankfully got a (very obvious) body double for her um...."Derriere" shots . Mervat Amin maybe hot for someone well over 60 but she's still a granny and watching a granny go into Haifaa Wahbi mode is just plain disturbing. Still enamored with her, he bribes her fiance (a well educated businessman) to dump her and go off to India to run one of MAM's companies but she still doesn't budge emotionally and insists on how much she can't stand what a lowlife he is (for now, that is) and in an interesting scene, he actually explains to her why he gives bribes and tries to convince her how he's actually being benevolent towards the less fortunate this way. MAM is also caught cheating on Dr.Gihan's test , since she's the only one he can't bribe, causing an argument between him and his children during which he slaps his daughter (played by Basma) after which she goes into what the doctor calls "sadma 3asabeya" or a nervous breakdown ( I guess) where she lies in a hospital unable to speak until her daddy apologizes to her after which she miraculously recovers within minutes.
What exactly is "sadma 3asabeya / enheyar 3asaby" which we insist on making doctors use as a diagnosis in Arabic movies? That's not a medical term and nobody goes into a catatonic state where they can't speak/eat/function because their Daddy slapped them and recover instantly because he apologizes.
Anyway, Daddy promises to make them proud and studies hard till he graduates (barely). He also woos Dr.Gihan by constant and ubiquitous conformations of his love and when he graduates by his own effort finally..can you guess what happens next , kids? Yep, that's right...GiGi finally falls for him and says "I do!" followed by a "Screw You!" from me and most of the people in the theatre.

Bottom line : Silly movie, hazy storyline with ridiculous, unrealistic events and promotes the idea that anyone in society can be swayed from their beliefs by money no matter how strong their principals are. May provide a few laughs by Adel Imam as well as the younger comic actors in the movie but may also end up decreasing your IQ by several points and have you weeping over the 2 hours of your life you just lost.

Happy Birthday, Gary Oldman!

Just a quick Happy Birthday to one of my favorite actors of all time , Mr. Gary Oldman who is one of the best, most versatile and most underrated actors around. He was :

Batshit crazy Stansfield in the Luc Besson's wonderful "Leon: the professional" :









One of the best Vampires in cinema history IMHO in Francis Ford Coppola's " Bram Stoker's Dracula"
(I know that it was a completely romanticized version of the novel but Gary Oldman oozed charisma as Count Dracula in this movie)









Beethoven in the painfully romantic "Immortal Beloved"












Sirius Black in "Harry Potter:The Prisoner of Azkaban"












He's in the next installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman series, "The Dark Night", reprising his role as commissioner Gordon.
He's now 49, here's to wishing he finally gets that damn Oscar ( he should've at least been nominated for at one point) by the time he is 50!
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And A HUGE Happy Mother's Day to my Mommy and All Mommies out there !

We appreciate you deeply even if you don't believe it sometimes ;D!

It's that Oscar Time of the Year.

I love movies.

That's why I have this annual tradition of staying up to watch the oscars LIVE. You see, I must know who wins the moment they win, I can't just wait until the next morning...why...why ...that's sheer madness to me! (yes yes , I know it's pathetic but I wasn't always like this. It's taken me a few yrs to get that way lol).
Problem is, most movies that have a chance getting various awards tend to be released in the later months of the year so that they have a stronger presence in the memory of the academy members. It's simply a matter of "out of sight , out of mind". That's why I still haven't seen a lot of the movies in the awards race because they haven't been released (or have been just very recently released) in Egypt, yet. However, since The Oscars have been sucking for the past few years and you can safely predict awards based on Awards Buzz, good PR , Academy Award preferences and tendencies, previous unfair snubs by the academy and the pattern of awards handed out previously this year (eg. Golden Globes, BAFTAs..etc.) , this year I've decided to give you my very first Academy Award Predictions in the main categories even though I haven't seen half of the movies competing lol. You see, it's widely believed that a lot of Academy members don't see all the movies before voting (as indicated sometimes by who wins), so let's see how good a guesser I am ;) :


Best Actor in a Leading Role:

Nominees:

1-Leonardo Di Caprio: Blood Diamond.
2-Ryan Gosling: Half Nelson
3-Forest Whitaker: The last King of Scotland
4-Peter O' Toole : Venus
5-Will Smith : The Pursuit of Happyness

Who will win: Forest Whitaker. His only real competition is Leo who gave a ferocious , fantastic performance and although I know bad accents have never really stood in the way of awards,Leo's accent was just heinous which annoyed me till the end of the movie.

Who deserves to win: Forest Whitaker. He's a fantastic actor who's been underrated for years. Check out his role in Eastwood's movie "Bird" which won him the best actor award in the Cannes film festival in 1988.

Best actress in a Leading Role:

Nominees:

1- Meryl Streep : The Devil wears Prada
2- Kate Winslet: Little Children
3- Judi Dench : Notes on a Scandal
4- Helen Mirren : The Queen
5- Penelope Cruz : Volver.

Who will win: Helen Mirren is a 100% sure bet this year. She totally dominated the awards season this year. She's sure to be making an acceptance speech tonight. Another fantastic but very underrated actress who actually deserves the recognition she's getting. And Meryl streep is not winning for a comedy mocking Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Ain't gonna happen. Kate Winslet has the record now for the youngest actor ever to recieve 5 nominations. I like her and good for her, except that I'm almost sure that she's shaved at least 5 yrs off of her age ( Lady was not 22 in Titanic nor did she look 19 in Sense & Sensibility and sure as hell doesn't look 31 now.) and I don't think she should've been nominated for Titanic.

Who deserves to win: All bow to Helen Mirren.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role:

Nominees:

1-Alan Arkin : Little Miss Sunshine
2- Eddie Murphy : Dreamgirls
3- Djimon Hounsou: Blood Diamond
4- Jack Earl Haley: Little Children
5- Mark Wahlberg: The Departed

Who will win: Either Eddie Murphy or Alan Arkin. More likely the former because he's won both the GG & the SAG award.
Who deserves to win: Djimon Honsou or Alan Arkin.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role:

Nominees:

1- Jennifer Hudson: Dreamgirls
2- Rinko Kikushi: Babel
3- Adriana Baraza: Babel
4- Cate Blanchett: Notes on a Scandal
5- Abigail Breslin: Little Miss Sunshine.

Who will win: Jennifer Hudson: Buzz Buzz Buzz. Except the Academy might pull one of it's unexpected twists and give it to Rinko Kikushi. Who deserves to win: Rinko Kikushi. She was in a move with the mighty Cate Blanchett and superstar Brad Pitt and outshined them both. She also lead a lot of people to believe that she's actually mute/deaf in real life.

Best Picture:

Nominees:

1- Babel
2- The Queen
3- Little Miss Sunshine
4- Letters from Iwo Jima
5- The Departed

Who will win: This one is tricky. Babel did win best picture at the GG, however a lot of ppl have deemed it overrated. Also, Last yr was Brokeback Mountain's big year and Crash ended up winning an unexpected best picture.I think it'll be either Babel or The Queen.
Who deserves to win:The Queen.

Best Director:

Nominees:

1- Babel
2- The Queen
3- United 93
4- Letters from Iwo Jima
5- The Departed

Who will win: Again tricky. Clint Eastwood won at the GG for Letters from Iwo Jima as best foriegn film and the academy loves to kiss his ass. Martin Scorsese won at the Director's Guild Awards and GG for the Departed and Marty's been snubbed more than enough in previous years. The Queen also has a chance of winning. Since the Academy has a history of trying to make up for previous losses by one overdue award, I'll say Martin Scorcese

Who deserves to win: Marty for the win! You see, I can't get over Jon Stewart's joke last yr at the ceremony : " For those of you keeping score, Three six mafia ; one.. Martin Scorcese; zero.". Give the man an award already!!


I'll be seeing most of these movies within the next two months isa. For now , let's see how well I know how the academy thinks! Off to study till 3 a.m now before the show starts. It's being presented by Ellen DeGenres, so it's sure to bring on a few laughs.

Mmmm...coffee...and popcorn :D.

Cinema rant & some WTF news

So I went to see Blood Diamond today. Fantastic movie! I'll write up a review tomorrow if I have time isa.

As usual, my cinematic experience was a little tainted by a few things that just piss me off to no end whenever I go see a movie :

1- To parents who take their kids to movies that are rated (R) : WTF are you thinking? How is it OK for your kids to see a movie full of blood , violence and cursing ? Besides the fact that this movie was way too complex for a 7 yr old to comprehend and I'm awfully sick of hearing a child asking his mommy what the bad guy is saying when he tells someone to "F**k off!" in the movie. Yeah, mommy why don't you tell him what it means?

2- To parents who leave their kids aged 14 and under go to the movies alone : Again, WTF are you thinking? You let a group of children go off to the movies alone , with no supervision, go into whatever movie they want and that's just OK with you guys? At the very least there should be an agreement upon what movie they're seeing. Besides that, you may want a 3-hour break from your kids, but I really resent the fact that each of my friends and I had to turn around 2 times to tell the 10 yr old chatterboxes behind us to keep quiet and stop kicking the chairs. I ended up practically screaming "PLZ SHUTUP"...which worked for about 5 mins. Even my "evil stare" didn't work and when my "evil stare" doesn't work, you know it's a bad situation.

3- To parents with newborns : We're glad you have a new bundle of joy. No really, we are. I just have something to tell you, as shocking as this might be, if you don't go to the movies in the first 12 months of your infant's life, guess what? It doesn't mean you'll die, it doesn't mean you'll disappear and never be heard from again and it doesn't even mean that you're not as good as anyone else. But since it's your bundle of joy, how about you handle it at home instead of involving an entire theatre audience. I know it takes a village to raise a child, but come on!!

4- To the people who insist on answering the phone during the movie because the balance of the very universe itself depends on you taking that call; where were you guys today? I didn't see you....(plz stay hidden..you make so many ppl happy that way).

5- To people who litter in the movie theatre and leave it looking like a hurricane hit it : Ekhsss...you should be slapped on your hands and made to stand in the corner.

Disclaimer: No, I don't hate little kids and I don't eat them when there's a full moon.

Now the latest WTF!? news :

The fatwa I was so displeased with here , was actually a huge misunderstanding....apparently, he only said that a woman can't be a Caliph but she can be a president.
Of course! Now it all makes perfect se...wait a second...

::runs off to look out of the widow::

nope, we haven't been sucked into another dimension....

or been caught in a time warp...

or....oh, forget it...

George A. Romero

I was just taking a quick look at imdb and I realized that it's the birthday of none other than the legendary director George A. Romero! He's 67.
"What's he famous for?" is what you're probably asking. Zombies, baby!
Anyone who knows me in real life knows that I'm an enthusiastic horror movie fan and George A. Romero movies are required viewing for ppl like me.
His most famous movies are the Zombie-series : Night of the living dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead ( 1985 ) and The land of the Dead (2005), where he actually created a new horror movie genre which is....*drumroll plz*..... the Zombie genre (well...obviously!).
The night of the living dead was actually made on a very small budget of about 100,000 $ without any famous actors. The movie was so scary that some ppl actually ran out of the movie theatre. Be still my heart, my heart be still! lol
His movies besides having a generous amount of blood and gore , also had a good deal of underlying social commentary regarding issues like racism and consumerism.
He's now working on another Zombie movie called The Diary of the Dead and he's also working on an adaptation of the Stephen King novel "From a Buick 8" (great book by the way).

Ok, I promise never to use the word Zombie so many times in a post again :D !

"Sweetest Tongue, Hath Sharpest Tooth"

A few years ago,I saw a movie called "The Company of Wolves" (1984) for the very talented Irish director,Neil Jordon (the Crying game, Interview with a vampire).It's what you could describe as little red riding hood with a twist. It was such a fascinating almost weird little movie that equated puberty and the coming of age with Little red riding hood's journey to her Granny and confrontations with the big bad wolf..
I remember the movie having this dreamy,magical feel to it,I remember how beautiful it's young lead was and I also remember how brilliant Stephen Rea was as usual.The most thing I remember though, was this little poem :

Little girls, this seems to say,
Never stop upon your way,
Never trust a stranger-friend;
No one knows how it will end.
As you're pretty so be wise;
Wolves may lurk in every guise.
Handsome they may be, and kind,
Gay, and charming - never mind!
Now, as then, ‘tis simple truth -
Sweetest tongue has sharpest tooth!

I was fascinated by this poem and even more by the fact that it was present in the original version of Little Red Riding hood written by Charles Perrault, written in the morally decadent period of King Louis XIV. Apparently, Little Red Riding Hood was initially full of sexual connotations and ended with the death of not only Granny but also LRRH. There's actually a certain amount of blame placed on LRRH in the original story for allowing herself to be violated (tricked and killed) by the wolf.It was sort of a harsh moral warning to women against the advances of men. It was later cleaned up by the Brothers Grimm and published in it's modern form (which had actually been banned in some US schools due to it's erotic content!).
It's funny how a fairytale can seem applicable in a lot of different ways in a lot of different time periods.

Well, that was my random bit for the day. Ciao.

Perrault's version :
http://mld.ursinus.edu/Maerchen/perraultenglish.html