Interesting Things

Anna and I are in the process of -- or recovering from -- taking our beloved kitty Gerry to the vet, so have some Things That Are Nifty.

• Nightmare Magazine's 100 Horror Books.
• 11 Zombies We Didn't Want to Kill (from SciFi Wire or Blastr or whatever the hell it calls itself)
• Unofficial (but very familiar) fandom superlatives (from WhoQuotes)
• Marzipan. Icing sugar. Joy.
• Amazing thoughts from Anna Guest-Jelley of Curvy Yoga on home practice.
• And Bradley Harding of Planet Fury takes us through his (hilarious) dark tea-time of the soul when it comes to found footage horror movies.

And just to make sure you have a good midweek, one of the ravens from the Tower of London.

Source: Uploaded by user via Christian on Pinterest

If Only...

So here's the list of topics I was considering writing a post about for the Medical Heritage Library blog for tomorrow...

"Daffodils are pretty." (There are pot daffodils in the room.)

"Why is there a dalmatian on the hill?" (Dog, not person, and the hill is outside my apartment.)

"Why is a mouse when it spins?" (Full points if you get the reference.)

"What, really, is a treacle well?" (No points if you get the reference.)

"If you give a fuck, raise your hand!" (Which has a kind of pleasant Catch-22 ring to it.)

"How can bumblebees fly, really?" (Because why not?)

"And what's up with geese?" (Ditto.)

"Did anyone really understand Lost?" (Additional question: "...or understand the ending?")

"Why did Wash have to die?" ("Because Joss said" is not an acceptable answer.)

"Why do young men wear pants that don't fit?" (Or young women for that matter.)

"Why would anyone watch Gladiator twice?" (Or any Russell Crowe movie other than A Good Year.)

"Explain Richard E. Grant." (Extra points for also positing a theory of Paul McGann.)

"The rise of splatterpunk. Discuss." (Without examples, please.)

"That the SciFi Channel should never be allowed to make anything 'original'. Elaborate with examples." (And the fact that they generally hire one good actor -- David Hewlett, Misha Collins, Lucy Brown, Rhys Ifans -- to try and disguise a heap of shit is not a fact which can be adduced in their defense.)

Unfortunately, none of these could reasonably be said to concern the history of medicine, even at the broadest possible point.

Sad, the burdens which professionalism places upon us...

Monday again, huh?

Anne Lamott, in her great Bird by Bird once describes the first day of the week as "your mute, Slavic uncle Monday." She suggests not starting big things -- no new novels; no screen plays; no house cleaning projects -- on Mondays 'cause, dude...uncle Monday.

And so that's how Monday is personified for me a lot of the time: an out-of-proportionally big guy, in an overcoat that doesn't fit, and huge clown shoes. Except all in a kind of rusty, grungy black. Shaggy dark hair, and no use for language.

In order to give uncle Monday a little run for his money, lets look at pretty things instead, shall we?

My two favorite new Tumblr blogs are all about the pretty things. Lets give some love to "You only lose what you cling to" and brown dress with white dots. These are both primarily photo blogs; the former is colloquially known as "fuckyeah cats lesbians and buddhism" -- just so you know what you're getting into: some of it may be NSFW, but the photography is wonderful.

brown dress is my new favorite photo blog at this point; sometimes the stuff going up can seem a little...posed and slightly artificial to my eye -- my totally untrained, amateur photographer's eye, by the way -- but then there's shots like this and this and this .... oh, and this.

So go forth and look at pretty things and maybe mute old uncle Monday will come and chill out with you for a bit and think about cats rather than glooming in the corner and thinking about cockroaches.

Thoughts for the Soon-to-be-Fan

This is a rebroadcast of a post I originally wrote for the Pursuit of Harpyness. If you've already read it there, apologies; come back on Friday for something more original! (Okay, it probably won't be technically "original," but it will be different.) And I'll try to get my act in gear re: The Doctor's Wife for next week, I swear.

When Anna originally asked me if I would be interested in doing some guestblogging on what I call "the orange blog," she suggested that I could think about writing about Doctor Who companions -- possibly from the original series -- and why they are awesome. This is largely because I spent a lot of time complaining about the bloggers who complained about the length of Amy Pond's skirt. (Short version: who cares about the length of her fracking skirt? If you're staring at her legs, you are totally missing the point. End short version.)

I considered this, but then another friend -- the wonderful Lola -- suggested in an email that a primer for those baffled but intrigued by the Doctor Who universe and fandom might be a good idea. And before I could plan, really, I was already suggesting "rules" and a collection of episodes to Anna via chat. What follows has been cleaned up and expanded, but still.

For those who don't know the series, welcome! The TARDIS has lots of space; find a seat and hang on. For those who do -- well, I hope what follows is at least a little bit funny.

1. It's bigger on the inside.

2. Never lose faith in the sonic screwdriver. And prepare to be charmed by its regenerative capacities. From originally looking like a tire pressure gauge, it now looks like some kind of whacky mini-LCD flashlight crossed with a tire pressure gauge. And it goes "chirp" a lot. Enjoy this.

3. Time Lords. Time Lords are...a real bitch, honestly. In the original series -- 1963-1989 inclusive bar a couple of BBC worker strikes in the '70s and '80s -- the Time Lords were, more or less, supposed to be the magical deus ex machina good guys. The Doctor (no spoilers here) is a Time Lord -- if he is awesome, then shouldn't his planet be just overflowing with awesomeness? Well, yes, and no. If you look closely at the original series Time Lords (I'm thinking here of things like the last part of of the Patrick Troughton episode War Games where the Time Lords force the Doctor to regenerate and exile him to Earth and the first several season of Jon Pertwee's Doctor where he's dealing with the exile and, by the way, having had bits of his memory tampered with also by the Time Lords) they're not so sweet and kindly. They're actually pretty devious, rather self-centered, and capable of being quite cruel. The Doctor makes more than one reference (The Deadly Assassin, The Five Doctors) to the Time Lords' history and how it "ain't all lavendar." In the new series, head writer Russell T. Davies and, in his turn, current show-runner Steven Moffat, have taken that idea and run further and faster with it than I think anyone expected them to. If you're an old series fan (like me) who always secretly thought the Time Lords were probably on crack, The End of Time (the last of the David Tennant specials) will warm the twisted cockles of your heart. If you're a totally new fan, enjoy the cracktasticness of having illusions destroyed.

4. Anything being in the TARDIS other than the Doctor, companion(s), and specifically invited guests is bad. Any sounds, any voices, faces -- if there's an actual physical person, then whoa. If you hear a deep bell tolling (see Cloister Bell) prepare for the deep and sticky 'cause it's gonna get bad in here.

Fifth Doctor.
(Peter Davison.) Note celery.

5. There have been 10 other regenerations of the Doctor. If you don't like this one, there are plenty of others to choose from! but, please: leave others to their enjoyment. Almost every fan has a particular regeneration of the Doctor they consider to be "theirs." It's often the first Doctor you encounter but doesn't have to be (hey, it's a fandom: there are no real rules here!) If you love Peter Davison (5), that's awesome; I'd love to listen to you enthuse for hours on why celery is the greatest thing ever; but, please, don't knock Matt Smith (11) for not being David Tennant (10). And so on and so forth.

6. That being said, the Doctor is, in essence, always the Doctor.

7. The Daleks are small irritable pepper-pots who want to rule the universe. Their history with the Doctor goes back to the second episode of the first season of the series; more about this in a later post. Give thanks to the estate of the late, great Terry Nation who created them that Davies and Moffat get to play with them. They will always come back. They will always be short-tempered. They will always want to rule the universe and/or kill the Doctor. It's just what they do.

8. Sontarans look like pissy potatoes. If you were the genetically modified member of a clone society entirely based on military conquest and domination, you'd be easily annoyed, too.

9. Yes, you can escape the entire Cyber empire on foot, at a gentle stroll. Don't let them concern you unduly.

10. The Master. Just -- remember that name. It will be important and when you need to know why -- you'll know why.

The Master. (John Simm).

11. Okay, here's why: the Master is, along with the Daleks, the Cybers, and the Sontarans, one of the longest-running and most popular villains on the show. He has been through at least two official regenerations (I'm counting Roger Delagado, Anthony Ainley, and John Simm here although there are eight actors who have played the part one way and another) but more bodies than that and is, as Time Lords go, so far at the end of his regeneration rope (having started in the show at 12 back in the day with Jon Pertwee and the Third Doctor), that his rope has given up and gone home (see point 14). He makes up what he no longer has in regenerations through body-stealing and black magic.

12. The Time War. Think of it as Event Zero (for the new series) and almost completely irrelevant (for the old series). To know more, watch David Tennant (10), season 2-4 of the new series. And then, when you understand it, come back and explain it to me.

13. Companions. Used to be called 'assistants' back in the '60s and '70s. Often, though not always, a young woman; often, though not always, a single person travelling with the Doctor, sometimes for multiple series. Serves the function of the audience: asks the question to advance the plot; gets lost/poisoned/captured/hypnotised/drugged; goes and opens the door with "Do Not Open" on it; wanders into places which should not be wandered into; and, in the new series more than the old to my mind, keeps the Doctor a little more in the light than he might otherwise be. Classic companions from the original series include Susan, Jamie, Zoe, the Brigadier, Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith, Leela, Romanadvoratnalundar, Sergeant Benton, Adric, and Ace. (If you want to discuss the politics of skirt length, do it somewhere else.) 

14. Regeneration. Time Lords -- of which the Doctor is occasionally not the last; see point 3 -- get to regenerate when a body is old, worn-out, or too badly injured. They get 12 regenerations. This is old series canon. Steven Moffat may (or may not) be on a road to reinvent this from the ground up.

15. Hey, I came up with 14; I figure y'all get to do some work here, too: what's your 15? If you're a fan, what's the thing you tell your friends when you're trying to get them hooked?

Pretty Things

What do we all need on a daily basis? Yeah, yeah, apart from the whole "food, water, air" triad. Well, one of my yoga teachers (via DVD only, sadly, but that still counts, right?) says, "Space" which is as good a suggestion as any. A bumper sticker on my kitchen wall says, "Chocolate" which is an excellent answer most days. "Whatever the hell gets you out of bed" also works -- unless it's an illegal substance or something which contravenes someone else's human rights.

But one of the things I think we all need more of are pretty things to look at! Who doesn't need something lovely to look at while cubicling the day away? (And I say this as someone who really kinda likes her cubicle.)

So here is a selection of "Pretty Thing Providers" -- i.e., Tumblrs.

WhoQuotes. It's kinda all in the name here, folks, but you get a great assortment of quotes (Whovian, of course) and images on here.

I love classic horror/sci-fi images. And the Swamp Thingy blog meets that craving beautifully; great combo of animated and static images and lots of other fun blogs to find if you enjoy link-surfing (and who doesn't?) It's like a daily Godzilla quotient!

Lazy Self-Indulgent Book Reviews. The Lazy Book Reviewer is neither lazy nor self-indulgent but she does give you some of the funniest, sharpest, most amusing Tumblr commentary you're likely to get: on books, TV, movies, and her dog.

book lovers never go to bed alone. Bookshelf pron. Book pron. Bookstore pron. Are you literate? Do you have a thing for books? Then this is for you. You may wish to put something over your keyboard before you start looking at the images; drool can short out your keys, y'know.

fuck yeah dr who -- while I may not agree with their spelling (I prefer "Doctor" to "Dr."), I love what they do! Old series; new series; it's all here.

Movies In Which Meeting the Family (Or Going on Long Trips) Is Not Good

So this post is really in response to a conversation a few days ago between myself, Anna, Lola, and Minerva.

If you're reading through and thinking, "There must be an in-joke here," you're absolutely right -- there is! But feel free to make up your own.

And these movies aren't in order -- unless you count "what I thought of as I was walking home" as order.

Dog Soldiers. "Why, yes, please come take shelter in my way-the-hell-back-in-the-woods family home. Which is deserted, now you come to mention it. And also smack in the middle of Scottish werewolf country. And...by the way...did I mention....I have really big teeth?"

Carriers. "Road trip! Wait -- what does that little symbol mean?" I've written a whole post about how much I hate this movie, but in terms of demonstrating why road trips will always end in bloody, bloody death, Carriers is a pretty solid example: four charming young things decide to go on an alcohol-soaked road trip -- to...Vegas? Reno? I can't even remember -- and end up as one of the lone surviving groups in an infected and deadly world. You know who ends up living? The whiny younger brother and the truly bitchy self-serving girl. Thanks, movie, for destroying those stereotypes for us. Well done. *headdesk*

The classic, of course, Psycho. "Gee, I guess I haven't checked in on Mom lately..."

In the Mouth of Madness. Weekend road trip to quiet New England town? Sounds fantastic! In search of reclusive famous author? Great! Beautiful scenery? Check! Cosy B 'n B? Absolutely. Demons from beyond the brink of comprehension coming to twist your soul and devour your every thought? Of cou--wait a minute, what?

The Lost Tribe. A gorgeous long vacation in a pleasure cruise -- oops! The boat sank. But look! There's a deserted island just perfect for being a rescue site. What's this weird deserted work-camp in the middle of the island? Why are there bones everywhere? What's that growling noise? Who happened to Ted?! (Plus, this happens to be a truly sucktastic movie. Really just -- really dreadful. If you want to watch this film, do yourself a favor and watch Predator instead.)

It Waits. Awful thing happens. You retreat with your pain to a distant fire-station in the beautiful remote wilderness. And what happens? A huge flesh-eating revenge demon bursts out of its long-buried cave to come play with you. Will you and your helpful pet parrot survive? Well...

Curse of the Komodo. (Yes, I watched it. No, I'm not proud of it -- I was severely depressed, okay?!) Relaxing weekend on spa island? Nope, giant genetically mutated komodo dragons with -- and get this -- infectious disease spit. *sigh* Plus, lets discuss the quality of the computer animation -- if the dragons don't scare you (which they shouldn't) you may very well laugh yourself into a conniption at the "My teenage brother did it last night" quality of the effects.

Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Where do you go to take sanctuary during the zombie apocalypse (Stage 2)? Well, a nice big church would be a good idea, yes? Solid doors, high-up windows, potential for raiding the vicar's cookie store in the pulpit...sound logic all 'round! Until you realise the vicar's living in the church -- with his infected sister -- who he has wired to a chair -- oh, and he's been feeding her. Just don't ask about the wedding catering.

And last but not least (in this version of the list, anyway):

28 Weeks Later. Here's a note for all the rest of you who plan to survive the apocalypse: if you abandon your wife to a horde of flesh-eating disease victims, don't look back. Just don't. Don't go pick up your kids at the train station; don't try to make nicey-nice like this is all fine; and above all, if you do feel the need to try and rebuild the shattered remnants of your family, don't, for the love of God and everyone else in your tiny, disease-free citadel, lie about what happened to your wife. Because, if you do, it will not end well. She will come back; and you will try to kiss her hello; and -- well, to put it simply, have you ever heard of Typhoid Mary?

And to the kids: when you return from abroad to your disease-ravaged and strangely deserted home city, don't go home. Just...don't. Ever.

The Feverish Critic

In that these are all the movies I watched whilst I was sick! Or snoozed through. Although I have removed from the list anything I actually slept through more than 55% of.

Partly Cloudy with Chance of Meatballs. If you enjoy this sort of thing, you may enjoy this.

It made me dizzy.

And the monkey was annoying.

The Land Before Time. Anna and I watched this before she went to work one day. I have a vague memory that this was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid but I find I had no real recollection of it at all. But, damn, is that T Rex persistent! It must be second cousin to the ones in Jackson's King Kong remake -- goal-oriented behavior in a very serious way.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice. The new one. It was...good? I guess? I think I would have had a lot more fun with it if I watched it with my old roommate.

I don't find Nicolas Cage abhorrent and the kid was ok and Alfred Molina was delightful and there just wasn't enough Alice Krige. I mean, if you're going to cast Alice Krige as the maleficent sorceress -- then, by God, I want tons of evil witchy! Opening and closing scenes only = insufficient! I mean, it was a Disney movie. What are you going to say, really? Oh, I know what to say: was the little blonde goody-two-shoes "heroine" a total waste of time or was it just me? I mean, she was actually quite annoying, wasn't she? She seemed really...I hate to say this, but really stereotypically "dumb blonde." Cute and all but...wow. Or is this the decongestant talking and I'm being unkind?

Under the Mountain. I was a little more awake by now and less medicated and this is actually quite good. It's a rather slow, pretty quiet little Australian flick about a pair of twins -- a boy and a girl -- who have to reconcile their differences -- largely over their relationship as well as reaction to a death in the family -- in order to use a (good) alien weapon to destroy (bad) aliens under volcanoes.

Ok, that's the two-cent version and there isn't a whole lot of depth to this movie, to be fair. But there is some beautiful photography of New Zealand and some very nice quiet scares. Weta Workshop did good effects and makeup; octopoidy, slimy, kinda evil -- nice, middle-of-the-road villain. Oh, and someone scouted a great haunted house location on a lake -- full points for that. Sam Neill is fun to watch as always as the helpful alien who's been hanging around for a few hundred years trying to figure out a way to use his weapons against the nasty invading aliens. Real life kicks in every now and then -- check out the family conference after the next-door aliens have melted the front door to get at sister Rachel -- but not so much to derail the story. And the end is very satisfying.

In the Mouth of Madness. This, I really should have seen years ago. And I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be horrified by the general shenanigans and goings-on or by Jurgen Prochnow's hair. What the hell was up with that?

In a more serious vein: John Carpenter. Early 1990s. Cthulhu mythos. Sam Neill. About books. Hell yes.

And it is actually quite good. I'd almost given up on ever watching it after reading some critical reviews that just panned it from one end to the other. I remember when this originally came out and, if my memory serves, a couple of issues of Starlog of which I was a dedicated reader at the time were largely devoted to pictures of Sam Neill running down a slimy hallway.

There isn't, actually, a lot of slimy-hallway-running when you get right down to it, but there are some really interesting conversations about reality and fiction and how and when and where the two might intersect or become each other.

There are also a fair number of monsters and some seriously creepy kids with a red ball. Also a lot of nods to Lovecraft and King (more or less in that order) with the main plotline -- involving John Trent (Neill) as an insurance claims investigator being employed by a publishing house to check out the "disappearance" of their bestselling horror author, Sutter Cane -- taking most of its inspiration from "Call of Cthulhu" and a little bit from It. Cane's editor, Linda Stiles, is practically a walking dissertation on the nebulousness of the horror in Cane's work as she tries to convince Trent to take the case seriously and, as time goes on, to take what Cane writes seriously, too. In order to investigate the author, Neill first has to figure out where he might have gone -- since he turns in all his manuscripts by mail or through his agent and his agent is...unavailable for comment on the question, this involves some serious headscratching.

Sidenote here: it is really satisfying that Carpenter thought to answer the perennial question of all horror films here which is when the heavy brown matter begins to strike the rotating blades, the inevitable question I have is: hasn't anyone in this film/book ever seen a single horror movie in the entirety of their lives? Not even a single late-night viewing of Nightmare on Elm Street? And the answer in this case is: no. Trent is asked this point-blank in reference to Cane's work and he answers quite simply that no, he doesn't like horror or supernatural stuff because he doesn't find it believable. Great! Fine! Awesome. At least there is an answer.

Additional sidenote: Stiles was great. She's half a believer when she takes off with Trent on their doomed road trip and her willingness to deal with what's in front of her as opposed to what she "knows" must be true is heartwarming. It doesn't make her sliding slithering fall any less inevitable, of course, but at least she knows what the hell is really going on.

Once Cane's location is discovered -- after the creep starts to set in -- Trent and Stiles set off to locate an apparently fictitious small town in New Hampshire called Hobb's End. Weird shit happens on the way and weirder shit happens once they hit town. Are Cane's books deforming the town or has the town deformed Cane? Perhaps reality is just straight-up deformed and we've been fighting it all along and now gravity, so to speak, is reasserting itself.

Trent fights the good fight but, as is inevitable with all Lovecraft mythos heroes, loses. Dramatically.

Not to give away the game, but I loved the end. Shades of Danny Boyle all over the place.

"This is goodbye, I think?"

Don't you wish you'd been at that party?

I know these kind of lists are more common around Thanksgiving, but I always do a lot of thinking about year-end summing up around this time -- usually pondering the subject from sometime around mid-December to sometime in the mid-January range. So, despite my girlfriend's despairing cry as she looked through her feeds this morning that, "All anyone's doing is end-of-the-year sum-ups!", here goes with my idiosyncratic, BBC-heavy list. :)

1. Doctor Who. God bless Russell T. Davies, but I am glad for the new series. I am happy about just about everything about it and I am just over the frackin' moon about Matt Smith. I really didn't think I would be, but I'm sold and I am Steven Moffat's bitch. There are quite a few shows that I started or got seriously into this year -- Bones and Supernatural top the list -- and several to which I return regularly -- Spongebob (don't judge), Deadwood (ditto!), Carnivale, the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes, Good Neighbors, MST3K, this list could really just go on -- but Doctor Who will forever have a special place in my list of fandoms. It and Star Wars have kept me from going stir-crazy more times than I like to remember; the Doctor is simply one of those characters for me that I had no choice about: from the second show I ever watched, it was all history -- downhill (or uphill!) from there!

2. Yoga. I have spent the past month seriously concentrating on ensuring that I get in at least 20 minutes on the mat per day -- sometimes a lot of that 20 minutes is spent between a reclining twist and corpse pose but, hey, it's 20 minutes, right? Shiva Rea isn't going to come kick my ass if I don't spend all the time in half-moon. Some time on the mat is better than none; anything is better than nothing; and, as my therapeutic kinesiologist back in Vermont used to say, "Movement is life."

3. Meditation. Over the past year, I'm delighted to say, I've managed to wrangle together something that looks, smells, and tastes very like a regular sitting practice and I love it. It has made the last three or four months much better than they would otherwise have been. Thanks to the teacher whose class I originally took last spring, I have not only been receiving regular acupuncture treatment for a bad wrist and ankle, but also an introduction to a lovely online meditation community. I can't say I spend a lot of time indulging in particularly high-flown conversation on the Tumblr or anything like that, but it is always nice to know it's there. The continual reminder to practice, too, is really valuable if you're like me and tend to put things off.

4. Coffee. I am endlessly grateful for the quality, number, and variety of coffee shops in Boston:

Boston Beanstock, North End.	Crema Cafe, Harvard Square. (My photo)
Cafe Japonaise, Commonwealth Ave.	Kookoo Cafe, Brookline.

Oh, yes, I am, because I am a dedicated and hardworking addict. You can't just drag me by a door with stacks of coffee beans just inside and a menu promising some new, bizarre combination of spices in a latte. Plus there are usually scones, cinnamon buns, muffins, cupcakes, or some other fantastic new pastry just begging to be tried. And the best places for people-watching? Cafes and bookstores. Brilliant free -- or nearly free or damn close to free -- entertainment every time.


5. My friends and my girlfriend. I realise this comes as an element in all these lists but, y'know what? This is my list; if you don't like it; get your own. You guys sent me random emails, pictures of your cat, LOLCats, chocolate, tea, pretties for my computer desktop. You made me tea, bought me coffee, sent me candy, and loaned me books. You followed me on Tumblr, commented on my blog, and listened to me complain endlessly about work. Better than that, you listened, sent good vibes, mailed postcards, helped me out when I needed it, smacked me upside the head when I needed that, too. I thank you more than you will ever know.

Peace, pleasant thoughts, calm and good luck for all our 2011s.

Compassion by candlelight.

( Even if the Doctor goofs and we end up doing bits of it twice.)

Bigger on the Inside...

I'm glad you're all coming with me on this, to borrow a phrase from Eddie Izzard.

So lets get right to it.

Tom Baker and Anthony Ainley
in the Pharos Project.

Keeper of Traken and Logopolis (1980-1981). I have to say, for the dedicated Tom Baker fan -- I must raise my hand here -- these episodes are about as much fun to watch as nothing at all. But they are great season enders, great "era of show" enders, and pretty solid DW into the bargain. Possibly Traken more than Logopolis which gets a bit sketchy towards the end but has pacing and story elements that Russell T. Davies would recognize and, I'm sure, applauds, particularly the end of Logopolis which has a rather Davies-style dirty trick in it. There is a companion in here -- Adric -- who is introduced earlier in the series in Full Circle. Circle is also a good story but...I've never really liked it because a major story element are these fruits that harbor giant spiders that leap out and bite you. This is not something I'm a fan of. So, yes, watch Full Circle to get Adric's intro story but be prepared for the small scuttley things. Both on DVD and I'm pretty sure Logopolis is on Netflix insty.

Cybermen confer.

Since I'm on an Adric kick for a moment, I want to mention Earthshock (1982), Adric's last story. This starts out...weird, and then turns into a nice sound Cyberman story. Not the dorky new series fully-converted Cybermen who can't move above a slow march, but old-school "scary as hell" Cybermen. This isn't the most outstanding Cyber-story ever -- see Revenge of the Cybermen or Tomb of the Cybermen or something along those lines for that. But it's good; Matthew Waterhouse puts in a terrific performance as Adric and everyone else backs him up. His last scene with Peter Davison is great stuff. DVD and I think on insty...?

Autons in the High Street.

Spearhead from Space (1970). Jon Pertwee's first episode as the Doctor. Pertwee was told to come to his audition with any costume ideas he might have; he went into his attic and found a trunk of his grandfather's old clothes: velvet jackets, patterned trousers, old elastic-sided boots, and opera capes. A personality followed on naturally: flamboyant, dramatic, occasionally given to bouts of introspection or introversion, given to the grand gesture -- which doesn't always work but almost invariably good-humored about it. Pertwee's doctor was also action-oriented, in direct contrast to Patrick Troughton's predecessor who had been more inclined to run than to engage in fisticuffs. Pertwee's Doctor was an expert in Venusian aikido as well as pretty good at the odd straight right. Spearhead from Space is a great establishing story and it'll give the new series entrant some background on the Autons. DVD and possibly insty.

The original one-take effect!

Tomb of the Cybermen (1967-1968). There are lots of gaps in the Hartnell and Troughton episodes; the BBC wasn't the best at looking after its films and, frankly, no-one thought there would be much interest in the shows after they were aired. Reels of film disappeared off in briefcases and bags and have been found as far from home as a church steeple storage space in New Zealand (unless that was a missing Z-Cars episode I'm thinking of, but you get they idea. They wandered far and wide is the point I'm trying to make.) So for some "foundational" episodes, all we have are novelizations or scripts. Tomb isn't one of these, but I'm saying all that so you can see why I'm not putting on earlier Cyber or Dalek episodes: they might not exist, or only in bits, and they can be hard to find. This one is readily available on DVD (and insty, I'm pretty sure). Tomb is a fun Cyber-sode, gives a lot of background info about the Cybermen and their planet and their general antisocial tendencies, and has a great dribbling villain. Oh, and you get to see Cybermats. :)

Anthony Ainley and Peter Davison
consider the wall decorations.

Castrovalva (1982). Peter Davison's first episode as the Doctor. I have never really...found my stride with Davison's Doctor. I've watched quite a few episodes but...they never really work for me. However, Castrovalva is awesome DW from pretty much any standpoint. It starts with something freaky and gets weirder from there. There are three great companions -- Tegan, Adric, and Nyssa -- and Davison turns his natural fumbling at trying to follow an act like Tom Baker (who had been in the part for seven years and, for many people, was the Doctor) into a more tentative, thoughtful, sensitive vision of the Doctor than had been around for awhile. And the whole storyline is about the power of narrative and free choice: how can you not get into that? Also available on DVD -- er -- I think. :)

Louise Jameson and Tom
Baker in the Tesh base.

The Face of Evil, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, and Horror of Fang Rock (1977-1978). Okay, three last thoughts and then class is dismissed. We're back to Tom Baker -- I said I was a fangirl! -- and these are the first and two outstanding episodes with my favorite companion, Leela. (I have to say, there may be a tie for "favorite" here -- there's Leela, there's Sarah Jane Smith, and there's Donna Noble. I thought this was a pretty solid original series list until Donna came along.) Face of Evil is Leela's first episode and since she starts off the whole shebang by being on trial in front of her tribe for public blasphemy against their god -- denying his existence in fact -- you know you've got a fairly definite personality on your hands here. Leela's tribe has been going into battle periodically to try and save their god from a rival tribe; nothing ever happens except Leela's people are getting systematically slaughtered. The Doctor arrives -- fresh from the horrors of The Deadly Assassin and having to leave Sarah Jane behind which is just heartbreaking in light of School Days in the new series -- and may have a solution. Or may just make things worse. Weng-Chiang is campy, Sherlock Holmes-inspired Victoriana, including a giant rat and some painfully bad Chinese accents; try not to think about the Orientalism too much and just enjoy the show. Fang Rock is a closed-room murder mystery and incredibly claustrophobic and quite scary. Scared the hell out of me when I was a kid anyway!

There are others, of course; I've left off Image of the Fendahl, The Green Death, The Romans, The Daemons, Masque of Mandragora, Inferno, The Mind Robber, Time and the Rani, The Twin Dilemma, and so on and so on and so on. But I was asked for my recommendations and here they are! (With lots of omissions.) 

So from here....

...to  here...

...I still think I agree with Stephen Fry that there is no sound more indicative of approaching enjoyment than the opening notes of that theme. :)

"I'm the Doctor."

So last week a request was relayed to me via Anna from one of her coworkers who has been watching the new Doctor Who series and now wants to get into the original series.

:)

This makes me happy. I am an old-school fan; the very first episode I can remember seeing I was too young to remember the year or to understand what was going on but it was Planet of the Giants (a rerun, obviously, from 1960-some-odd) and it scared the hell out of me. My dad tried again with Robots of Death in...ooh, the late 1980s sometime? and that was all she wrote. Been hooked ever since. At my peak fandom, I could recite all the companions -- 1963-1989 -- forward and backward, character names, occupations, and actors; all the Doctors, ditto (naturally; that's easy! There are fewer of them!); main villains; and a good whack of episode titles, even those I hadn't seen because, of course, I owned nearly all the companion books. So I could also recite all kinds of miscellaneous facts like that K-9 was largely held together with sello-tape and hatred because, apparently, the dog "puppet" was such a pain in the neck.

I can't -- quite -- do all that any more: if nothing else, I almost always forget Paul McGann and elide the space between Sylvester McCoy and Christopher Eccleston, making Eccleston 8 and Tennant 9 and then I get very confused about Matt Smith. Anyway, my point is that I'm still good enough to remember enough titles to come up with a pretty good "intro fan's guide" and that's what this is.

In no particular order -- certainly not chronological or "best to worst"...and, sadly, may include things that are a little tricky to find. And I discovered while making my list that I had far too many recommendations for one post, so we're going to have a rather Whovian week here, folks, and enjoy, Tracy; you have some sweet viewing in front of you!

Tom Baker and Mary Tamm
contemplate the Key
in The Armageddon Factor

The Key to Time series, made up of The Ribos Operation, The Pirate Planet, Stones of Blood, Androids of Tara, The Power of Kroll (my personal favorite), and The Armageddon Factor (1978-1979 -- the whole season). The last may be one of the weakest in the series, sadly. The writers and director wanted to make a big splashy season ender, forgetting that DW -- at the time -- wasn't a big splashy kinda show. It did better with small and solid as exemplified here in the excellent Ribos Operation, an absolutely unarguable "stop the crime" story-line with a great introduction for Mary Tamm's Romanadvoratnalundar. Last I checked, all of these shows are available on Netflix insty; barring that, they're all on DVD so should be available through regular ol' snail mail Netflix.

Jacqueline Hill, William Russell,
William Hartnell, and Carole Ann Ford
in the TARDIS in An Unearthly Child.

An Unearthly Child. The first episode. November 23, 1963 at 5.20 p.m., thank you very much. (I've heard different ideas about the time, but I'm fairly sure I'm right; I checked with my father and he's reasonably sure he watched it at the time. :)) If anyone wants the explanation for why the new series Doctors -- particularly Eccleston -- aren't "nice" all the time, here's your answer. William Hartnell's Doctor was short-tempered, irascible, selfish, snarky, and prone to emotional blackmail and manipulation. Sounds like fun, yeah? Well, it is. If that isn't enough to excite your interest, there's also Jacqueline Hill's Barbara, William Russell's Ian, and Carole Ann Ford's Susan -- the Doctor's granddaughter, one of my favorite companions. The story isn't anything to write home about -- a simple trip back in time to prehistoric earth -- but watching the roots of the show emerge is worth the clunky -- even for Doctor Who! -- effects and occasionally dull dialogue of the cavemen: "Za will make fire!" "I say Za will not make fire!" "Za will do what he says!" I think this is available on DVD?

William Hartnell and William Russell
threatened by the Daleks on Skaro.

The Dead Planet (1963-1964). Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate! They were at it right from the beginning -- everyone's favorite thing to hide from behind the couch. And the Daleks were there from the start, too, appearing as the main villains in the second show (I'm going by joined-up episodes here; technically, the shows in the original series were divided into multiple parts that aired over a number of weeks.) Planet is long, I won't hide it from you; it goes on a bit, but it sustains interest through having good solid characters -- the Thals who are the "nice" native tribe on the planet that the Doctor, Ian, Susan, and Barbara end up trying to help -- and there's some good debate about whether or not the Doctor and his companions should help: is it right for them just to land on the planet, have a cursory understanding of what's going on, and plunge right in up to the elbows? just because the Daleks attacked them, sort of, should they leap in on the side of the Thals? I think this one also is on DVD...or coming soon?

Sylvester McCoy and Anthony Ainley
face off.

Survival (1989). *sigh* The last episode of the old series. Features one of my other favorite companions, Ace, and a great "villain" in the form of the Cheetah People. There's also the Master -- the second one, Anthony Ainley -- and some creepy ideas about environment forming personality. There's also a very new series-style moment with the Doctor forced to choose whether or not to employ a violent solution. If he does -- well, bad things happen including, possibly the end of the world -- but...it would work. And he really wants to. May be one of the first DW episodes to deal overtly with a real-world problem -- episodes like The Sunmakers before dealt with actual events in a kind of backhanded manner -- but Survival, in so many words, takes on youth violence which still seems to paralyse and stun Britain in a weird way. And John Simm can probably thank the writers of Survival for the fact that he had the opportunity to create his magnificent turn as the Master in The End of Time. On DVD.

Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen
discover the secrets of
the Wirrn.

Robot, Ark in Space, Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the Daleks, Revenge of the Cybermen (1974-1975). Another whole Tom Baker season but is there a better way to spend your time? It could be argued that the answer is yes, by watching whole Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, or Jon Pertwee season, but it'd be a close call. This is Baker's first season and it's amazing. He takes control of the role from the start, making a complete, clean break from Pertwee's action-happy dandy with his opera cloak and velvet smoking jacket and turning the Doctor into a thoughtful Bohemian -- with an occasionally nasty temper. He looks silly -- but isn't. There's a lot of David Tennant's performance in here, one way or another.

Tune back in for Part 2 on Wednesday!

things look bad. send chocolate.

feeling kind of uninspired this week, folks. one of my jobs is ending, my other one is ramping up hours but only for a week or so, and there is continual construction near and about the apartment which is unconducive to rest and relaxation, let alone coherent writing.

so here are some other interesting things for you instead...

an article about justin cronin's new vampire book, "the passage."

a much more positive review of david kynaston's family britain than my own.

edited highlights from the saville report on bloody sunday (the one in 1972 in northern ireland). (and if you're thinking, "gee, you do irish history. shouldn't you have more to say about this enormously important report than a one-line write-off in a links list?" you'd be right. and i do. but i need time to catch up on all the coverage first!)

and some more relaxing things....

lots and lots and lots of pretty pictures of ilm special effects.

some absolutely fantastic costumes (and more) from dragon-con courtesy of jen at the epbot blog who also does the wonderful and wonderfully wrong cakewrecks blog.

and warren ellis's take on the england/us soccer match last saturday.

very very hot things (pt 1)

anna's introduction...

Summer has well and truly arrived in Boston, which means days at a time where the humid heat rises into the 80s and 90s (Fahrenheit) and even after the sun goes down continues to radiate heat up from the ground where we've "paved paradise and put in a parking lot." We don't have a/c in our apartment, so weather like this means breaking out the fans, taking cold showers long and often, downing gallons of iced tea, and falling asleep with damp washclothes on our foreheads like I used to do as a child back in Michigan. The kind of weather that always makes me think of the passage on Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird in which Scout observes:

Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

How to combat the teacake-y feeling? Or at least distract when there's nothing to be done but wait it out 'til the next thunderstorm blows through? (again: I'm reminded of Garnet in Elizabeth Enright's Thimble Summer who lies in her bed every night listening to the distant echoes of thunder in the mountains, from rain that never makes it down to the shriveled plains) Why, watch movies, of course! Movies in which characters suffering from heat and humidity to a greater degree than you are suffering from heat and humidity (a little schadenfreude never hurt anyone, right?)! Movies in which characters are freezing their asses off and can only wish for the warmth you are currently enjoying in surfeit! And of course, for prolonged, multi-part distraction, television shows in which characters suffer heat and cold (sometimes both at once and more besides!)
Hanna and I have, accordingly, drawn up a four-part list of one hundred movies and television shows from which you can choose your distraction in the sweltering months to come. We'll be delivering it to you in four installments over the next month broken down thusly (links to come as posts go live).

Week One: Movies Wherein Characters Are Hotter Than Blazes
Week Two: Movies Wherein Characters Are Totally Chill
Week Three: Television Shows Wherein Things Happen Which Are Hot
Week Four: Television Shows Wherein Things Happen Which Are Cold

Crandall's Savoy Theatre

Photo from the Library of Congress Flickr Stream.

Obviously, as with previous such lists, the movies and/or television shows are chosen completely at our discretion and we reserve all rights to bend, twist, knot, reverse and otherwise alter the criteria of each week and the meaning of each movie to fit our desired titles on said list. We make no claims to comprehensiveness or gravity of thought -- these lists pretty much end up on paper (er, web pixels) as they pop into our heads, with little by way of composition or editing.

Please feel free to add those titles which you feel we have unjustly overlooked -- or merely those which you find help you out in an effort to beat the heat. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy!

Movies Wherein Characters Are Hotter Than Blazes

Jaws (1975)
H: jaws must be right up there in the ...oh, the top three, i'd say, for "quintessential summer movie watching." this first list is supposed to be "movies to watch when you want to feel hot" and this should do it for you. just when you're thinking, "gosh, that water does look nice and cool---" nope, not so much. that water looks nice and sharky. yeah, i know the shark kinda sucks -- it bounces and the teeth don't look right and the tail is a little weird but if you don't at least twitch when it rears up out of the water beside roy scheider, i think you're probably wrong in the head on some level.
A: Hanna finally made me watch this on a warm night last summer during which, if I remember correctly, they were performing horrendous road construction activities outside the window. Luckily, the dialog isn't all this has going for it -- though Richard Dreyfuss does a thoroughly charming turn as the enthusiastic shark expert from out of town, brought in on consultation that quickly turns deadly.






Star Wars (1977)
H: well, the first third takes place in a desert. i think that's reason enough, yes? beyond, you know, just everything else that's right with the movie.
A: Apparently, being of the female persuasion, we're supposed to be watching Sex and the City 2 this summer as the girl equivelant of the dudely Star Wars. Since I was pretty much hooked on the original trilogy the first time Leia appropriated Luke's gun, I cry "foul!" and suggest re-watching all three episodes back to back on a hot summer weekend.
H: everybody remember that scene on the death star when luke approaches chewie with the cuffs and says, "now, i'm going to put these on you---" not his wisest move, right? yeah, picture my reaction to anyone trying to get me to watch s&tc. at least without a healthy dose of irony on hand and, probably, a bottle of wine.

The Adventures of Priscilla Queen of the Desert (1994)
H: "Oh, Felicia. Where the fuck are we." you want to know a fun way to make someone's mind bend? find a genre fan; make sure this process won't make them physically ill and then show them star wars: the phantom menace. then show them priscilla. then ask who they recognize. :) it also works with lord of the rings fans, but often not quite so well.
A: I was introduced to the soundtrack of this movie back when I was about twelve and spent at least one summer listening to it fairly incessantly -- on cassette tape no less! Likely on the Sony walkman I thought (when I got it for my ninth birthday) made me look like a totally cool teenager. Hanna (where would I be without her?) finally sat me down to watch the film last fall and I'm so completely glad I did. Really.

Sexy Beast (2000)
H: "But you're dead. So shut up." i'm tempted to say that i'd pay for someone to explain the bunny in this movie to me but...you know what? i'm not sure i want someone to explain the bunny to me. it's weird and grisly and psychotic and kind of haunting and i think it's fine just the way it is. i never fully realised how creepy the bunny is until i saw this movie on the big screen last year. not to mention how creepy ian mcshane is. ray winstone comes across as quite cuddly by comparison. ben kingsley as don logan is just so far out in left field it pretty much beggars description. really, the best description of his character is the chill that goes over the dinner table when h -- not me -- reveals logan's imminent arrival. there's a table of four adults who have been chatting about their approaching evening and the mere mention of this man who is coming the next day is enough to change all their expressions, body language, voices, the whole nine yards. to say nothing of the scene in ray winstone's house in spain where kingsley and winstone are in the kitchen -- kingsley is out of shot most of the time, an unseen harangue of profanity and accent from which winstone is physically flinching. he's the bigger man -- he outweighs kingsley by a solid 50 pounds; he has weapons all around himself; and he's in his own damn house and he is flinching back as though kingsley is hitting him. it's like watching a badly one-sided boxing match.
A: And Ian McShane is in it! Although only in the London bits. But his character is slightly more understandable than the character he played in the recently-released 44 Inch Chest which was good excepting we aren't quite sure what the title refers to, what happened to the dog, or what the movie was about, really. So back to Sexy Beast which I promise I really did enjoy except that Hanna took me to see it in the Coolidge Corner theatre back when we were first dating? And to be honest, although I remember thinking the movie was brilliant, thinking back on it I mostly remember how thrilling it was that she let me hold her hand in the dark while we watched it.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
A: This was a "me" addition to the list, and I added it mostly for the quote I referenced in our intro -- since it takes places in the hot summer of the South, although that summer stretches into autumn. And when you ask children what they remember about the film, according to Robert Coles, what they remember is not the legal case or the commentary on American racism but the children's relationship with Boo Radley, the reclusive neighbor next door whom they are frightened of and drawn to and who -- in arguably one of the most gripping scenes in the story -- rescues Scout on a stormy Halloween night.
H: to be honest, i've watched this movie only once, many years ago, and i remember very little about it. i remember the courtroom scene -- i remember the last scene with boo radley -- and that's about it. um. this may make me a bad person.

The Fast and the Furious (2001)
A: I defer to Hanna on this one since she has a relationship with cars that, while I thoroughly admire and stand slightly in awe of, I do not intuitively share.
H: i have a theory about movies. it isn't much of a theory but as far as it goes it runs as follows: every movie has a moment that makes it worthwhile. if you run across a movie that doesn't, then you have found a true piece of cheese and you should be able to erase it from your brain. excellent movies, of course, are made up of more of these moments -- you can see how the rule expands or contracts according to need or personal opinion. f&f has several such moments: brian's lunch problems in the first half of the movie; dominic's reaction to the car brian dumps in his garage ("i retract my previous statement."); and much of the end of the movie. it's cheesy, yes; it's simple, yes; but, hey, there's something likeable about these characters; there is something to watch for other than the tricked-out cars.

The Proposition (2005)
H: what a movie. hot. every frame of it leaches heat. it's hot, it's dry, it's desert-baked in a way lawrence of arabia never thought of. it is hard to watch. the acting is sharp -- there isn't a dud note in it, down to the extras that populate the half-horse town. strange, violent, strangely violent, depressing, and hopeful.
A: Yeah, I'm with her on the hopeful, though you really, really have to hang in there till the end to get there. Through a really graphic rape scene (for those of you who can't watch them) and brutal, brutal violence. It's a movie that pulls no punches, but offers some really fascinating moral dilemmas for its characters to deal with -- and refuses to let them off the hook. At all. Meathooks. And you can't get away from the scenery, which is really a character all its own.
H: well, really, if you can't handle the first scene, just don't go further. really. honest advice here, folks. this movie is bloody. nasty. unpleasant. unpicturesque violence. the characters and the story coming through all of that are worth it in my book. the reaction of the townsfolk to the public punishment of an arrested boy alone makes much of the blood, sweat, and tears worthwhile, but there is no use in torturing yourself to get there.

Do the Right Thing (1989)
H: never seen it. er. sorry.
A: This was my pick! My brother Brian, if memory serves, introduced me to this Spike Lee movie a handful of years ago. I've lost the specifics now, but remember the contours involving heat, heat in the city, and the short tempers that inevitably break when the heat is so damn hot you can't remember what it felt like to be cool.

Fried Green Tomatoes (1991)
A: Mary Louise Parker is kick-ass, and really the reason to watch this movie. I mean, okay, there are lots of reasons to watch this movie, but as a young adolescent I mostly watched it to watch Mary Louise Parker kick ass. And cook the bad guy and serve him up for dessert.
H: oh! and there's that great bit where the tiny little cook whangs the awful rapist child-thieving mean dude with the frying pan! i love that bit! so satisfying! plus the bit where ruth dies in the book made me cry when i read the book in college and understood what was actually happening.

Wizard of Oz (1939)
A: To be honest, Oz scared me as a child -- it comes from the same genre of out-of-kilter children's fiction as Raggedy Ann and Andy stories, in which unhinged characters do things you really wish they wouldn't, and punishment is meted out unpredictably and by some sort of foreign logic known only by the story creator themselves. L. Frank Baum was not a well man (possibly he spent too much time holed up in his summer cottage located in my home town, writing about the denizens of Oz). I'm with Gregory Maguire on this one: the Wizard of Oz is not a benevolent man, Oz is not a happy place, and the Wicked Witch of the West is not the one we should be frightened of. That having been said: it's a classic MGM musical with all the bells and whistles, which starts and ends with a tornado in Kansas. What could be more summery than that? Just settle in with a emerald-colored Mojito and enjoy.
H: who wasn't scared by oz as a kid? seriously -- put up your hands so i can fail to believe you. if it wasn't miss gulch, it was the tornado. if it wasn't the tornado, it was the munchkins -- or glinda -- or the trees -- or the witch -- or -- or -- or -- you gettin' my drift here?

The Mummy (1999)
H: there is rachel weisz. there is brendan fraser. there is john hannah. there are just so many things that make this -- and pretty much every other -- stephen sommers movie a great ride. i've never been able to understand why so many people seem to hate what sommers does -- why spend all that time and energy hating something that's so much silly fun? and so good into the bargain? yeah, he clearly loves him the old universal monster classics -- and what's wrong with that? hell, if they really are going to go ahead with a remake of the gillman, i'd vote for sommers to do it any day. at least i could have faith that he's seen it! A: What she said. There's a librarian who (at least some of the time) saves the day, And John Hannah whom I will pretty much follow to the ends of the earth regardless of what he's in, and Brendan Fraser who always looks like he's having so much damn fun. And when you've finished this homage, go read Elizabeth Peters' first installment of the Amelia Peabody mysteries, Crocodile on the Sandbank from which so much of these chracters were so obviously and lovingly pilfered.

Meet Me In St. Louis (1944)
A: Strictly speaking, this a a film suitable for any season as it is set in four parts, Summer, Fall, Winter, and Spring. but again with the pull-all-the-stops MGM musical genre and it opens with an ice wagon, which is how people used to get ice for their refrigerators (ice boxes) way back when, which is fun. It pedals nostalgia like scalpers selling tickets, but as long as you know that's what you're getting it can be fun. And as a bonus, you get the winter bit too--so snow and ice and silly Christmas songs as well.
H: um. never seen this either. but i have seen the trolley song on some documentary about musicals somewhere! that counts, right? A: It totally counts -- the trolley song is one of the best things about it. Oh, and little Margaret O'Brien doing soft-shoe.

Twister (1996)
H: "we got cows!" oh, what a silly movie. what a deeply silly, very wrong movie. and yet somehow so deeply, deeply watchable. not least for helen hunt in a frequently soaked tank top but also for the group dynamic and the kind of cheerfully paced action movie that, lets face it, jerry bruckheimer does so well. does it make sense? well-- -ish. does it follow established scientific fact? well, there's that bit where-- does a lot of shit go fast? and explode? yes. absolutely yes. and there is philip seymour hoffman. and, bewilderingly enough, cary elwes. and the guy from george of the jungle. explain that one.
A: I was traumatized by Cary Elwes being run through the head by an iron T-bar and can now never, ever drive behind trucks carrying long slender things which might fly off the back of said truck and through my windshield. Other than that, great summer fun and some totally adorable Movie Science(tm), including, if I remember correctly, something beautiful involving lots of ping-pong balls taking flight.
H: you do realize, anna, that you cobbled that scene together in your own head, right? it's his driver who gets impaled. And it's through the chest, if memory serves. A: Oh bah.

Fire (1996)
H: i'm out.
A: Oh, sweetheart, I should really sit you down and make you watch this one sometime :)! It's the first of a triptych of films by Indian director Deepha Mehta (Earth and Water being the other two, more historio-political, installments) and tells the story of a woman in a traditional Indian family who falls in love with her brother-in-law's new wife. It's a good messy family drama with, ultimately, a fairly happy ending. 
H: oh, i've heard of it. i've just never watched it.

Murphy's Romance (1985)
H: a romantic comedy from before the days when "romcom" had become one of the worst slurs in film reviewing. A: And at the end of that brief, sweet-sweet era in which gutsy women characters (in this case a woman who's trying to make it on her own with her teenage son after walking out on an unhappy marriage) could win the man without losing the independence that made them great characters to begin with. Oh whither the day?
H: in all fairness, she hasn't "walked out" -- there has been a divorce. it isn't like she's hiding out from "Bad Husband (tm)." A: Hehe. True, I was mostly remembering how he showed up later wanting to hang around and patch things up. The ex-who-would-not-leave...

French Kiss (1995)
A: There's sunshine, I remember that, and cheese. I'm leaving the rest to Hanna.
H: this isn't a very "hot" movie. yes, there are some lengthy walks in the countryside of the south of france where our two protagonists -- kevin kline and meg ryan -- do look very warm, but that's about it. no slogging across deserts; no thirst-defying treks. but it is a very sweet, very funny romantic comedy -- absolutely perfect for a disgustingly hot evening in the real world when you just about have enough energy to get brie, crackers, and a cold beer (or glass of wine, if that's your preference) and lie down in front of the tv with a fan blowing on your head. oh, and did i mention there's a kick-ass soundtrack? and that kevin kline has a french accent? and a black leather jacket? now i have. :)

American Graffiti (1973)
H: god, i love this movie. i really should have been more suspicious of my last ex when i realised she didn't care for it all that much. this should have been a clue. a lot of the people who started out in this movie now own large chunks of hollywood. really, very large chunks. you get to watch george lucas indulge his antique car fetish; his thing with the '50s (which he doesn't try to indemnify or make into a harmless place and time (entirely)); and his fascination with growing up, something i'm not entirely convinced he's ever done which probably makes him a very happy, contented person.
A: It's Wolfman Jack, really. Hallie Flanagan, one-time director of the Federal Theater Project during the great depression once said "The power of radio is not that it speaks to millions, but that it speaks intimately and privately to each one of those millions." Somehow, Lucas makes that point through film, which really deserves a gold star.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
H: everyone in this movie is hot, almost 99.99% of the time. if there's a frame where richard dreyfus isn't sweating, i can't remember where it is. A: Maybe they filmed in Texas in August?

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)
A: This is a hard, hard movie to watch, but absolutely breathtaking in its brutality and (yes) hopefulness, I think. Hopefulness that despite all the overwhelming evil in the world there will be people -- often unexpected people -- who continue to perform small and courageous acts of kindness, justice, and bravery. "Heat" in this context could, I guess, stand for both the intensity of the situation and the burning passion of those survivors who carry on.
H: um. yes. that. go with that.

Hellboy (2004)
A: I'd say it was wrong of us to pack the list with two del Toro films, but really, can't have too much of a good thing and aside from the unmistakable stylistic markers, it really is a world away from Pan's Labyrinth in tone, though I suspect the same underlying fairytale morality underlies both films. Anyway, how could we possibly skip a film that involves a character who's a demon from hell and a young woman with a talent for bursting into flames?
H: and the cats. don't forget the cats. and john hurt. oh! and the seriously creepy clockwork bad guy. can't forget him.

Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)
H: god bless this strange little remake. if i hadn't gone to see it -- in the theatre, no less -- then when christopher eccleston was announced as the 9th doctor, i wouldn't have been able to say: "wait -- but wasn't he the bad guy in gone in 60 seconds?" and thought: "oh my god we are so screwed." and then have to eat both words and thoughts within, oh, approximately, 15 seconds of him showing up on screen in "rose." anyway, the point here is not to hymn the wonders of christopher eccleston as doctor who (although that is always fun!) but if you're in the mood for cheap one-liners, great cars and some unexpectedly good acting -- mostly from eccleston, giovanni ribisi, vinnie jones, and angelina jolie ("hello, ladies---") -- see this. it is hot -- it's so-cal in the summer time: how much hotter do you want? -- and there's also timothy olyphant playing a gleefully numbskulled cop which, after watching him play an entirely ungleeful law enforcement man in deadwood is worth watching the movie for all on its own. there's also a kick-ass soundtrack ("flower," by moby; "too sick to pray," a3, and "painted on my heart," by the cult top the list, definitely) and more leather than you know what to do with. oh, and cars. did i mention the cars? this movie cemented my love affair with mustangs and the shelby. god bless eleanor. :)
A: I'm out on this one...Hanna hasn't caught up with me on my delinquency yet!

Apocalypse Now (1979)
H: i'm out.
A: I'm in, mostly because of Martin Sheen whom I will follow to the ends of the earth in necessary (oh, President Bartlet, I do miss you!) and also because I associate Heart of Darkness with this incredible history of the Belgian Congo I read in undergrad, by Adam Hochshield (Leopold's Ghost) and the two together pushed me to finally watch this movie -- which is basically a remake of Conrad's novel set in Vietnam. With the heat and the subtropical humidity and the sick, twisted imperialism.
H: well, i'm only "out" because vietnam films make me uneasy. what i know about apocalypse i know from film documentaries and jarhead which is deeply disturbing.

Predator (1987)
H: as far as atmosphere goes, note-perfect stifling, hot, and sweaty. about as macho as a movie can reasonably get without knotting itself up so tightly it can't move. i haven't seen rambo which i suspect might out-testosterone this. but this movie also has one of the all-time great, classic, world-beating creatures. who the hell puts together a sci-fi action thriller where you can't see the monster for 3/4 of the movie?! john mctiernan and stan winston. of course, they also incidentally created a franchise with a 20+ year span, but we can't hold them responsible for the second avp abortion. (and i use the word "abortion" advisedly. yuerrgh.) also, this movie falls under my previously mentioned movie rule -- the key moment here is, i think, between, bizarrely enough, schwartzenegger as dutch, the nearly-mindlessly tough commanding officer and bill duke as mac, whose sidekick blain has been killed in an encounter with the predator. dutch, trying to make mac feel better, says of blain: "he was a good soldier." mac pauses for a minute, thinks, looks up at dutch, and says, "he was my friend." A: I remember lots of jungle and rain and cool hunting sequences.

The Painted Veil (2006)
H: out.
A: It's a curious film, adapted from a 1925 novel by English author W. Somerset Maugham. It's a story about an abusive, desperate marriage (adultery on her side, autocratic control on his) between an English debutant (Naomi Watts) and a doctor (Edward Norton) who takes his wife to a remote part of China where they encounter a cholera outbreak and are forced to come to terms with the expectations each of them brought into their hasty marriage. Toby Jones and Liev Schreiber do solid turns as secondary characters, and there is a wonderful cameo appearance by Diana Rigg, who plays a mother superior at a mission school.