Just watched The Messengers, and not much to say about it but "eh." The cinematography was nice, I guess. And I was amused by the idea that there are apparently no cell phones in North Dakota, because "there's no reception out here." I'm sure plenty of people are going, "If only!" There's also a hilarious scene where the young heroine meets a boy shooting hoops with some buds. She asks what they do for fun around there, and he says, "You're looking at it." I piped in with, "And meth!"
But Red Sonja, now there's a movie that, for me, crosses the boundary into so-bad-its-good territory. Starring Brigitte Nielsen, not yet a parody of herself, and asking important questions like: Where do you buy great silver boots like that in the fake Middle Ages?
In the opening minutes, an evil lesbian queen...wait a minute, a what? Yup, played by Conan's Sandahl Bergman! Now, I've seen Conan many times, and I've never noticed anything about her speaking voice. But for some reason, with her face covered in a mask, I kept thinking she sounded just like Katey Segal. I'm not sure if I was more envisioning Peg Bundy or Leela under there. Anyway, she comes on to Brigitte, who rebuffs her, so the evil queen kills her family and then, decides to destroy the world or something. With what they call it a talisman, but it's really a big green globe. Must be a translation problem from the language of the (Hyperborean) Age.
Now, say you've gotten possession of a big glowy orby thing, and you're trying to harness its unfathomable power for your own nefarious purposes. The High Priests of Exposition explain that it gains its power by feeding off of light, and the more light there is, the more it supercharges. So....would your course of action be to take it back with you to the Kingdom of Perpetual Night? Where you'd put it in a cavern filled with candles in an attempt to jump-start it? Or would you walk out into the bright plentiful sunlight just outside?
No wonder these people can always be stopped by a couple of barbarians with broadswords.
I'm reading a souvenir "pictorial essay" about the town where I grew up, and was disturbed to find a picture of myself in the highly secret get-up (ha ha) worn in my capacity as a Job's Daughter. This is a Junior Masons for Girls organization, and the reason I get a huge kick out of Masonic conspiracy stories. The people who believe them must not know too many Masons personally.
I'm also flipping through an oddly disconcerting book by a girl I knew back in Mpls (well, we're both women now, but we were girls then) and having an unexpected conflict about it. On the one hand, I'm biting my tongue really a lot, and the marks are starting to show. On the other, although we certainly didn't know each other well, and I'm sure she doesn't remember me at all, she was always very nice to me on the occasions when we met. I'm experiencing an unexpected burst of tactfulness.
As Sleator-Kinney would say: call the doctor!
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