Friday, November 26, 2010

Birds in Peril

In my dream last night, I was breaking eggs to prove a point to someone, but I don't remember what that point was. I was startled when one of the eggs broke open and a live chick, surrounded by gooey human looking blood rather than yolk, spilled out.

This lolcat kind of reminded me of the dream.

I thought it might have been brought on by all the turkeys I was killing in World of Warcraft last night--I love how they become roast ready, plucked and headless when you kill them. I noticed I started getting little titles when was killing them fast enough; "Turkey Hunter" for ten within a certain amount of time and "Turkey Dominance" for twenty. I never managed to get to thirty within the set time--the woods were thick with turkeys but I couldn't quite kill fast enough for the timer. But I was mainly doing it because the Roast Turkey was the only recipe I had I could still level up my cooking skill with, and I figured the turkeys would be gone after Thanksgiving. I suppose there are more recipes in Outlands to get above 300, but my paladin's overall level is still just 44.

I loved how the turkeys are called "Wild Turkey." I brought a bottle of Wild Turkey over to my parents' house for Thanksgiving. I went with my family to see Morning Glory, which wasn't a great, but not an altogether bad, film. It was produced by J.J. Abrams, and had the same kind of feel I recognised from his Star Trek movie and his television series Felicity. It's hard to describe, but it's a certain plainness of style, casual indulgence of convention, and focused, sometimes broad, sometimes effective character interplay. Morning Glory was definitely too broad, especially when it came to Harrison Ford's anchor character. I kept thinking about how weird it is that Harrison Ford doesn't just look old now, he looks really old, in a way movie stars don't usually look old. There's something really wiped out about him. He didn't seem so bad in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, though even then he sometimes had that disturbing blank look stroke victims seem to get sometimes. Harrison Ford ending up this way seems incredible unjust somehow.

Rachel McAdams, meanwhile, almost single-handedly saved the movie for me. When it looked like she was going to be the breakout star from Mean Girls, I remember thinking, "Why not that intensely beautiful, elvish looking girl?" Meaning Amanda Seyfried. Now I might have to admit that, in terms of acting talent, McAdams definitely deserves the bigger career. The creative ideas she had with scenes in Morning Glory made whole blocks of intensely banal dialogue and commonplace character arcs a lot more bearable. The stock character obsessed with her job at the cost of her personal life is actually brought to life as a person who's been driven by her ideals while under the gun of a world perpetually letting her down. This is done entirely by McAdams' feverish performance.

The night before, I'd watched Lost Highway again. I didn't realise what a comfort movie that one is for me, probably because I watched it a million times in high school and only maybe four times in the past decade. But in those eerie, quiet scenes in the beginning, I feel tension drain out of my stomach and shoulders and a peculiar sense of "rightness." The weird feeling that Lynch has a greater understanding of reality than anyone, for me. I'll also never get tired of how intensely hot Patricia Arquette is in that movie. She'd never looked as good before and hasn't looked as good since.



By the way, speaking of David Lynch, avoid his web site right now. A hacker has apparently decided to go to war with the guy and there's some kind of virus coming through davidlynch.com which would probably really fuck up your computer if you don't have Avast or another good antivirus running. The site's been down for months, and it's really too bad. Too many assholes on the internet.

No comments:

Post a Comment