Month: January 2010

Know What Happens When You Assume?

~ lobablanca

Your party loses a senate seat that was held by a Democrat for nearly 50 years.

I’m so sick of American politics. We will never accomplish anything great so long as we continue to play these petty games. And I’m pointing at both parties when I say this.

What’s even more frustrating is the fact that we’re so stupid that we’re playing along! Even though we’re the ones who are getting the ass-end of the deal each and every time. Do you really think these politicians care one way or the other? Get real. If they win, they get to play the game. If they lose, there’s plenty of high-paying work waiting for them out there as they bide their time before running again. Or not. Makes no difference to them. It’s not like you’re ever going to see them standing in the median strip with a sign that reads “Will Filibuster for Food.”

No, we’re the ones who suffer. But we’ve been completely anesthetized to reason by stupidity. Ignorant, bloviating talking heads on the television and talk radio, obfuscating the truth with phrases like “Obama Death Panels” and “TEA Baggers.”

Okay, here’s an important message to all those protesters who support the “Taxed Enough Already” crusade. Consider this me doing my Good Samaritan duty for you all: STOP CALLING YOURSELVES TEA BAGGERS.

Do you know what tea bagging is? Do you? If you did, you sure as hell wouldn’t be letting your grandma call herself a Tea Bagger. It’s just WRONG. STOP IT.

When are we going to wake up and realize that true change is brought about with hard work, focus, and determination. Not with silly mantras and cutesy catch phrases. And it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s also not going to happen until we pull our heads out of our asses, block out the divisive external forces (fathead commentators, I’m talking to YOU), and start focusing on what is going to benefit us all as that mythical “one nation, indivisible” that we blather on about in that Pledge of Allegiance we all were made to recite as kids.

[Ugh. Don’t even get me started on that…what do 5-year-olds know about allegiance?]

Aren’t any of the rest of you tired of all this bullshit?

How Kara Thrace Killed the Bionic Woman

~ lobablanca
I will smoke you good

Okay, so maybe Starbuck isn’t entirely guilty of this crime of bionicide. But it makes a catchy title, no?

What geekery has me in a lather now? It’s the 2007 attempt to restart the Bionic Woman television series. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I own the 2-DVD set released after this show’s inevitable cancellation. Of all the myriad ridiculous reasons behind my ownership is the fact that it’s awesome to play during my evening workouts. I just finished re-watching the eight episodes yet again. It’s a great sorbet in between my marathon viewings of shows like the new Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek: Voyager.

What struck me as particularly interesting during this re-viewing is how many BSG alumni pop up throughout BW. Of course, there is Katee Sackhoff, she of Starbuck fame, playing Jaime Sommers’s arch nemesis, Sarah Corvus. But Mark Sheppard (Romo Lampkin) played another recurring character, and Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol) and Callum Keith Rennie (Leoben Conoy) made guest appearances. I’m willing to bet there were others who crossed over as well, but I’m horrible at face recognition so these are the only ones I’ve got for you.

Seems like Universal was hell-bent on shuffling some of its BSG viewership ratings over to BW in the laziest way imaginable (of course, I’m sure it helped that the series creator was BSG producer/writer David Eick). Don’t worry about the writing…just make sure that those BSG actors are showcased in advertisements. Seems like Universal felt that loyalty among sci-fi geeks is transferable. Oh, how very wrong they were. Sci-fi geeks are some of the ficklest fans EVAR. Sure, maybe we’ll tune in originally because Kara Thrace and Leoben are there. But you’ve got to give us more to keep us. Plus, I didn’t even know who Kara Thrace was at the time. I was still in my “I’m not getting addicted to that fracking over-hyped sci-fi show” mindset. So those parallels were completely lost to me the first time around.

No, I came to BW because I loved the original Lindsay Wagner show when I was a wee Lobita. I’m still waiting for that series to be released on DVD, but thanks to legal issues between Universal and Dimension (one owns the show, and one owns the rights to the original source material), that might never happen. At least Hulu.com is currently showing the first season.

What I found was a reboot that, like most of the drivel that Hollywood spews out anymore, wasn’t worth the effort. I’d like to say that at least their hearts were in it…but if their “hearts” were anything like their focus, then they were all over the place. Just like the scripts. And the character development. And everything else for that matter. This show needed a lot more pre-planning before it ever headed to the development process. The characters needed way more fleshing out. Some of the characters were so last minute that they needed “Wet Paint” signs around their necks. Perfect example: Jaime’s little sister, Becca. That character was originally supposed to be deaf and was played by a completely different actress. Scrapped at the 11th hour, she instead became some kind of nondescript computer hacker fugitive. But only in the first episode. All subsequent appearances portrayed her as a typical surly teen with severe rebellious tendencies. Of course, I’d rebel, too, if I knew I was around only as a plot device that would just as quickly be forgotten whenever Big Sis needed to go on a covert mission that would inexplicably take her away for days at a time.

Hair? Check. Makeup? Check. Wardrobe? Check. Solid Character Development? Anyone? Oi!

Then there was Jaime herself. The new bionic woman is an early-20s college dropout-cum-bartender? Yeah, she gets all super-duper souped up because of an accident, but we learn in the second episode that her doctor/scientist/bionic savior dead BF had been keeping a dossier on her for years, apparently because he thought she would be perfect as his human lab rat for Berkut’s bionic program. Really? Why? Do something anything to establish right from the start what makes her so special. Besides the fact that she looks great wearing black leather and fighting in the rain with sexy Sarah Corvus. That was their first failure.

No. I take that back. Their first failure is the fact that the very first character we meet is Sarah Corvus. Anyone familiar with BSG knows that Katee Sackhoff thoroughly kicked ass as Starbuck. She equally kicked ass as Sarah Corvus. Every single time she appeared on BW, it was like getting a defibrillator jolt to a rapidly dying show. Sackhoff was literally the brightest spot of the series. She appeared in the first four episodes; the final four were decidedly Corvus-less. And that was when the already discordant show began to seriously unravel. It was like removing a jellyfish’s spine. All you’re left with is jiggly blubber.

[Okay, I’m way off in my biological comparisons right now, but cut me a little slack…my brain is still partially holiday-closed, dammit.]

Bottom line was that Michelle Ryan could not compare to Katee Sackhoff. The guest outshone the star each and every time. In Ryan’s defense, this was a) her first big starring role and b) her U.S. debut. So you put her up against an American actress with several years’ experience under her belt in working on a regular sci-fi series that’s heavy on action, heavy on CGI, heavy on everything that Ryan’s not used to? And you put her into a role that is severely under-developed on a show that is lacking even the pretense of knowing what it wants to become or where it wants to go?

Did anyone actually want Michelle Ryan, or for that matter, this show to succeed? Because, honestly, it’s a terrible show. Jaime Sommers as re-imagined by Eick & Co. is an abomination, an embarrassment to the genre. And that’s a serious shame. I wanted this show to succeed more than any other that debuted that 2007 TV season. I was so stoked about BW that I set my Outlook calendar to remind me when it was airing. I watched every episode during the original airing. Yes, I was 1 of the 12 who was still watching right up to the bitter end. I kept hoping that it would find its footing. But the writers’ strike pretty much knocked the sand-slippery slope that the show was already on right out from under it. Michelle Ryan returned to England, Katee Sackhoff went back to toasting skinjobs, and yet another show that could have been a beacon of brightness for women in a still decidedly male-dominated genre was completely doused.

Ah well. I still have my 2-DVD set. And I will say this: It’s awful, campy goodness that’s so laughably terrible that I easily forget about the horrible things I’m making my naturally sedentary body do for the 45-minute duration of the shows. That makes it solid platinum in my book.

BookBin2010: The Madonnas of Leningrad

~ lobablanca

Finally, my first finished book of 2010. And the beginning of another alliterative feature here at the lair. I really need to stop doing that…I’m going to become the George Lucas of the blogging world with that one-trick pony. Although now I’m rhyming with my alliteration. Wee!

Debra Dean entered the literary scene with this debut novel, 2007’s The Madonnas of Leningrad. The beauty of this novel is twofold. First, Dean is enviably skilled at writing. She wields words with precision and flourish, providing us with a touching and complexly crafted tale. Second is her ability to balance somewhat daunting juxtapositions of war and art, reality and the hazy illusions that remain when memory fails.

The protagonist of the novel is Marina Buriakov. In current time, she is an 82-year-old Russian woman preparing to attend her granddaughter’s wedding. The story, however, is not linear, shifting with sometimes discordant fluidity between the now and a past in which she was a docent at the Hermitage Museum during the siege of Leningrad. The muddle and confusion is caused by the fact that Marina is beginning to slip ever deeper into the maelstrom of Alzheimer’s.

It’s Dean’s eloquence in balancing the shifting of this story that captivated me. At first, the shifting would be separated by chapters, alternating between the now and the past of Marina’s life. But as the book progressed, those worlds meshed, clashed, overlapped, canceled out, and contradicted each other. But, whether through the ravages of the siege or the ravaging of Marina’s memory, there was always beauty in the telling. To be able to still find such things, even in light of horrible events such as war or Alzheimer’s…like I said, that’s an enviable skill.

Final Verdict: This book actually doesn’t belong to me, so I’m not going to be able to keep it. However, I have added it to my list of books to purchase. Dean is a master of language, and this is one of the most beautiful debut novels I can ever remember reading. It’s worth owning simply for the pleasure of being able to revisit the eloquence of Dean’s prose.

Flashback Friday: Pee-wee Herman

~ lobablanca

Say what you will about Paul Reubens…but there was a “train wreck” brilliance to his man-child creation known the world over as Pee-wee Herman. Equal parts kitschy, creative, confusing, quirky, and deranged (dare we even say, perverse?), Pee-wee is undoubtedly one of the more, um, unique icons of our 80s childhoods.

Personally, I love Pee-wee Herman. Pee-wee’s Playhouse was a standard part of my Saturday morning cartoon ritual from the beginning to the end of its 5-season run, and I loved every minute. There was nothing on TV quite like Pee-wee and his cavalcade of insanity: the secret word ritual, the bizarre talking furniture, Jambi (WTF does “Mekka Lekka Hi-Mekka Hiney Ho” mean?), giant underpants!, the kooky neighbors and friends…Miss Yvonne, the King of Cartoons, Captain Carl (Phil Hartman?), Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne?!?). It was weekly weirdness injections in 30-minute doses.

See the little guy to the right of this entry? He’s mine. That was the scooter that Pee-wee would ride off on at the end of each show. The weird helmet came about toward the end, I guess in response to national bike helmet laws that had recently been passed. See? Pee-wee was always trying to teach us positive lessons.

And Pee-wee’s Big Adventure? Don’t even get me started. I watched that movie so regularly, it was like my own personal religion for a while. Why? I have no friggin’ clue. But it had loads of everything that used to make me laugh. Actually, after watching some clips now on YouTube, I realize that it still makes me laugh. Why I don’t own this movie is beyond me.

Know which part used to make me laugh the most? It’s this:

I think I may have just squeed a little while watching that clip again.

Reubens’s legal run-ins tarnished Pee-wee Herman, especially the mysterious 2002 child pornography charges that were somehow related to more explicit charges against Jeffrey “Ed Rooney” Jones. Reubens’s charges were expunged from his record; Jones is now a registered sex offender. Reubens had made an announcement the year prior to these charges that he intended to bring back Pee-wee. Obviously, those plans were curtailed.

Until now. A movie version of Pee-wee’s Playhouse is currently in production, starring a now nearly 60-year-old Paul Reubens. Talk about getting a “no” feeling. I’d much rather watch the original show than this. Netflix currently has the first two seasons for rent along with the more adult 1983 Pee-wee Herman Show. I also just discovered that they have Pee-wee’s Big Adventure for instant watching pleasure.

Hmm. Um, I’ve gotta go now. Very important meeting I forgot I had to attend. Yah. Now it’s time for a Penny cartoon!!

Clarification of Intent

~ lobablanca

Oh, but I poked the bear this time. It’s funny how mention of certain people will bring crazy to the lair like stink brings flies.

Just an FYI: Comments about Sarah Palin bring crazy.

I received a comment through my contact tab that left me feeling a bit…agitated. I’m not going to post it here because most of it was an offensive litany of every type of insult the author could string together in a grammatically offensive way. Call me what you must, but at least do it with linguistic acumen, please.

I will, however, reprint the following line:

Your problem, like most liberal feminazies, is the fact that you hate Sarah Palin because she’s a real REPUBLICAN woman who proves you can balance career, family and faith SUCCESSFULLY.

Okay. Random capitalization issues and the misspelling of the pedantic “Feminazi” comment aside, this sentence includes quite a bit to which I would like to reply (sadly, it also includes several things that I have heard several times before). First, I don’t hate Sarah Palin. I’ll even go so far as to say that I think some of the things she accomplished as mayor of Wasilla and as governor of Alaska greatly benefited her constituents.

Some of the things. Not all. I find many of her political beliefs, statements and actions to be offensive, particularly many of her comments about “real America.” I don’t live in those little “pockets of patriotism” in the middle of the country that Palin prefers to consider more American than those bleeding-heart coastal states. Still, I pay my taxes, I obey the laws, and I enjoy my freedoms, including the ones that allow me to critically analyze what I hear…especially from those with aspirations of leading this country.

So when I hear a politician say things like that, that ostracize large swaths of the country, my spidey senses tingle. You can’t lead a country if you discredit and dismiss those parts that don’t conform to your somewhat limited ideals. And that, I think is a cornerstone of my dislike of Palin: her dismissive attitude toward things that she cannot or does not want to understand. Couple that with her ersatz folksiness and it’s a combination destined to piss me off.

And, no, I am not charmed by her “geegollygoshdarnyoubetcha” wink/wink public persona. It’s something suitable for a local sportscaster-cum-beauty-queen. It’s not suitable for someone who wanted to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. I suppose this is where I reveal myself to still be quite the erudite liberal, but I expect a certain degree of intelligence and decorum from my political leaders. I don’t buy into the idea that my representatives need to be plain-speakin’ folk I want to go hunting and drinking with.

These are people who are representing us not only on the national but on the global stage. I think that’s something that many Republicans miss. It’s not just us here. Our political leaders need to be able to interact with representatives from around the world, with intelligence, with understanding, with diplomacy…not with a fucking wink and a “You Betcha.”

As for the “faith” part of Palin’s masterful balancing act? I question any politician who allows their religious beliefs to color decisions they make that will impact the lives of constituents who may not live according to those same religious dictates. And I’m willing to bet every last penny in my bank account that the author of this comment would feel the same way if the religion in question was anything other than the religion they follow.

Religion is a personal choice that belongs in politics about as much as chili paste belongs in hemorrhoid cream. And if you make or support any legislation simply because of your personal religious choices, you don’t belong in politics.

All of this is a moot point anyway. Palin is out of politics, and I think that her decision to join forces with Fox News has pretty much nailed shut any option of returning to the political arena. Someone serious about a future run at the White House would probably right now be focusing inward, taking stock and improving their grasp of events and information that impacts us all on local, national, and global levels in an effort to balance out their lack of experience. Are we seeing that here? Oh no, you betcha we’re not. She’s a fame seeker, desperately latching on to anything that will keep her in the spotlight until the last vestiges of life have been drained from her seemingly interminable 15 minutes of fame.

I still don’t understand the Palin phenomenon, although I must confess that I strongly believe that she would have long ago faded into the ether if it weren’t for the fact that she’s just so darn cute. It’s the flip side of Hillary Clinton’s campaign experiences. I would describe Clinton as knowledgeable, experienced, articulate, and sensible. The media described her as having cankles. As looking frumpy in her suits. As “who wants to watch her age for the next 4 to 8 years.”

Flip the coin and you’ve got Palin, with her implications that only pampered, privileged people do things like get passports, or her attempts at solidifying her foreign policy experience by citing that she was governor of a state that rested between Russia and Canada. Because, you know, those wacky Canadians are always looking to invade Alaska and steal their polar bears.

But people took her seriously when she said these things. They took her seriously even when she failed to know why there was a North and a South Korea or when she didn’t know what was meant by “Bush Doctrine.” Uh, that’s your boy there, Sarah. Shouldn’t you kind of have an idea about what you’re campaigning to inherit? They took her seriously when she couldn’t even name a specific vote or law or action from John McCain’s political career that supported her overuse of the word “Maverick.” I swear, she used that word so many times, she almost ruined my love for Top Gun. And that really would have pissed me off.

But she looked GREAT each and every time.

Again, it’s all about celebrity and celebreality. We’re far more interested in pretty than substantive. And, yes, before you even say anything, I consider Obama to be another prime example of this phenomenon. Was he the most qualified Democratic candidate? Nope. Was he the best dressed and the most dapper? Oh, you betcha. “Brains before beauty” is so last millennium.

So, there you go. I have nothing else to say on the matter. I wonder if my commenter will feel the same…or if I’ve just poked the bear even more.

Hen in the Fox House

~ lobablanca

Brace yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. I do believe the apocalypse is now in full swing. Sarah Palin has joined Faux News.

My respect for mainstream journalism in this country wanes steadily every passing day. I suppose Fox will tout the fact that Palin, in addition to having “knowledge” about “politics,” also has a “degree” in “journalism.”

I have a degree in “English.” That doesn’t make me the fucking queen.

You know what though? This is a perfect match-up. We live in a country in which utterly insipid things are considered newsworthy (and I think Palin definitely fits into the “utterly insipid” category along with all the other media-whoring piffle). The one radio station dedicated to local news sent me a “breaking news” update this weekend to inform me that Jay Leno’s primetime show was being canceled. It’s all about celebrity and celebreality in this country. So any wonder the beauty queen would get signed to Fox? They need some way to compete with the cheerleader over at the CBS news desk…although a little warning: The cheerleader drew blood the last time she met the beauty queen. You might want to keep them separated.

DVDregs: 28 Days

~ lobablanca

So here is where I start off this new feature in which I go through my DVD collection and put to the test all the movies therein that are infrequently/never watched, to determine whether they get to stay or go. My DVDs are in alphabetical order, with numerical titles appearing first. So we start off with the 2000 Sandra Bullock movie 28 Days.

Obvious Loba reason for owning this movie? Sandra Bullock. I don’t own very many movies that could be considered “chick flicks,” but a lot of the ones I do own are more than likely from Bullock’s oeuvre. She’s funny, beautiful, doesn’t seem too wrapped up in herself, gravitates toward characters that have universally recognizable flaws and strengths, she’s kind of a hometown girl (she hails from Arlington, Virginia), and she knows how to drive a bus. Okay, maybe not so much that last one. But she also has two strong links to the Trek universe:

  1. One of her co-stars in 2000’s Miss Congeniality was the ever awesome, the one and only Captain James Tiberius Kirk, William Shatner.
  2. In 1990, she was cast as Tess McGill in the sitcom version of Working Girl, with Nana Visitor, she of “Kira Nerys” fame, playing her boss. See, here they are:

    Look at those outfits. Look at the hair. Look at the dot matrix printer paper. Oy.

Trek links are always bonus points in your favor in the Loba universe.

All that being said, with as wonderful as Bullock can be, she also has quite a few…less than stellar movies under her belt. Two If by Sea, Speed 2: Cruise Control, Hope Floats, Murder by Numbers, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous. These are the ones that immediately come to mind. I haven’t seen any of the movies she’s made since 2006’s The Lake House, so I don’t know about the new stuff.

But what about 28 Days? Bullock plays Gwen Cummings, a NYC-based writer by day/drunk by night who is sentenced to, surprise, 28 days of rehab in lieu of jail time after she crashes her sister’s wedding limo into someone’s house (which happens right after she ruins her sister’s wedding by falling ass first into the wedding cake). I remember this movie being marketed as a straight comedy. That decision gets a big “FAIL” since a lot of the plot is quite heavy, emotionally taxing…and predictable. If you’ve seen one Hollywood-cliched movie about drug or alcohol abuse, you’ve seen this movie.

And that’s quite a shame, because this movie had the potential to be wonderful. It had a great cast. In addition to Bullock, there were Elizabeth Perkins, Steve Buscemi, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Viggo Mortensen, Diane Ladd, Alan Tudyk…all amazing actors who have done fine work throughout their careers. And they do fine work here under the direction of Betty Thomas, who used to have cool points in my book for having directed the funny Brady Bunch movie, but has lost all credibility now that I see her latest directorial effort is Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel. Screenwriter Susannah Grant seems to be the queen of chick flicks, having also penned Ever After, In Her Shoes, and Catch and Release. She also wrote Erin Brockovich, which I very much enjoy, so I’ll cut her a bit of slack.

Not much though.

It all really comes down to is the fact that this is a story that has been told many times before, and will continue to be told many times again. This telling wasn’t particularly fresh or surprising, and doesn’t ever make you feel the deep connection with any of these characters that I think they were striving to make.

DVD Special Features: There’s a commentary track with Betty Thomas, editor Peter Teschner , composer Randall Poster (I think), and producer Jenno Topping. It’s a relatively solid commentary at first, with ample amounts of technical talk and behind-the-scenes stories. It did seem, however, that they all sort of ran out of things they wanted to say and were still talking simply because they had to fill out the rest of the track. Also included is an HBO “making of” special, which was cute and quick and filled with plenty of sunshine-pumping and smiles; a bunch of “clips” from Santa Cruz, the fake soap opera that played a prominent role in this movie (I have to admit I didn’t watch all of these; I hate soap operas, so this bored/irritated me very quickly); additional “Guitar Guy” songs; deleted patient testimonials; actor biographies; theatrical trailers; isolated music score; and “how to make a gum wrapper chain.”

All in all, there’s a nice selection of special features on this DVD, which is pretty impressive for a movie released in 2000. Sadly, though, the special features ride on the shoulders of a not-so-impressive movie and simply aren’t enough to tip the scales in favor of this one.

Final Verdict: As much as I love Sandra Bullock, and as amused as I always was to see this sitting right next to my copy of 28 Days Later (which I originally thought was a sequel to this movie because, yes, I am that stupid sometimes), I’ve got to release this one. It’s a movie that I might stop to watch for a few minutes if I saw it on television, but there was never a moment in this movie that grabbed me as something I would ever want or need to revisit in its entirety.

Also, one more thing: The poster for this movie is a prime example of what I hate most about a lot of recent designs. What about this poster tells you anything more about this movie than the fact that the designer wanted to showcase Bullock as the star…and they just discovered the lens flare filter in PhotoShop? Boring, boring, boring.

Poster Picks: Coraline

~ lobablanca

This wasn’t the next poster that I was planning on analyzing, but I couldn’t help but be mesmerized by it when I first saw it. I don’t think this was ever an actual movie poster. I think it’s the design created only for the movie tie-in release of Neil Gaiman’s book. It’s the cover on the version that my parents gave me for Christmas.

I love this design so very much.

First and foremost, it’s all about the circular patterns in this poster. I’m already very drawn to designs that focus on curves and circular patterns. I’m fascinated by all the implications of the circle…the concepts of completion, wholeness, fullness. The ouroboros and its representation of eternal return. Or just how cool it looked as a tattoo for Dana Scully. So to see such a skillful repetition of circular themes in this poster makes my heartstrings sing.

It’s also quite provocative, indicative of an artist skilled at weaving the symbols of mythology throughout their design, particularly symbols that evoke the mythologies of feminine power. Most prominent is the fullness of that amazing moon. Anyone familiar with mythology knows there are myriad implications behind the presence of a full moon: lycanthropy, lunacy, increased fertility…some have ascribed this latter to a correlation drawn between the 28-day cycle of the moon’s waxing and waning and the menstrual cycles of fertile women. The power of the moon is also strongly associated with witchcraft, an association that Wiccans have thoroughly embraced through many of their practices and rituals.

The imagery of the moon here definitely invokes that sense of witchcraft, especially when combined with the image of our young heroine, Coraline, with her makeshift divining rod and her “familiar”…the mysterious black cat leading her onward. Everyone knows the superstition about black cats, right? Okay. How about the divining rod? This is a tool utilized in what is known as, among other names, “divining,” “dowsing,” or “water witching.” Whatever is our little water witch going to do with her divining rod?

Another aspect of this moon that I find particularly interesting is the image of it shining through the gnarled, curled branches of the tree, which look very much like wizened fingers reaching down to ensnare Coraline. I love the juxtaposition of the moon in all its fertile fullness with the ancient, withered tree. The tree may somewhat occlude our view of the moon, but the moon also reveals the truth of the tree’s sinister intentions toward Coraline, the strength of its light in no way completely impeded by the leafless, twisted arboreal form.

One more thing about the moon: Notice the image overlay of the button. What on earth could a button have to do with this story? Nice bit of foreshadowing, which is repeated in the more obvious appearance of the button in Coraline’s name at the bottom of the poster.

Finally, notice how the strange slope of the land leaves you feeling askew and off-balance. Look at the precarious position of the house in the background, or how the sharp incline has helped raise the tree to such a high and foreboding level above Coraline. And how the cat glances back, front paw slightly raised, tail curled in a questioning hook. Coraline, however, does not glance backward. She is looking forward, focused on whatever it is that has brought her out on this dark night full of shadow and mystery.

At the very bottom of the poster design, we get the name of the movie, the book, and the heroine. Again, there’s the button as her “O” and the cat’s now exclamatory tail forms her “L.” We also see light shining through a doorway, another clue as to what transpires in this tale.

Have I read too much into this design? Probably. Too much arcane information floating around in this noodle of mine. Plus, I have the added advantage of having seen the movie twice and having now read the book. So I’m able to bring that to my interpretation of this design. Regardless, however, I have to say this is one of the best poster designs I have seen in a long time. I think it’s utterly brilliant and I wouldn’t mind adding it to my collection at all.

Flashback Friday: Tim the Flying Bird

~ lobablanca

Come fly with me...let's fly away!

Ah, Tim. Timmy. You sexy piece of plastic and rubber. You were my desire, my need, my oasis in the desert, my ambrosia, the sparkle in my eyes, the spring in my step, the key to my heart’s contentedness.

Okay, not really. You were just that cheap hunk of plastic that they used to bribe us stupid kids into participating in all those awful school fundraisers.

There’s a flashback right there. Remember school fundraisers? How craptacular were they? My name’s not Willie Loman and I don’t have a case of Fuller brushes, so why on earth would I need to go banging on people’s doors in the middle of winter, trying to persuade them into buying a sausage log or those horrifyingly chalky chocolate bars from me so my school could repave their parking lot? Plus, I can’t believe that schools would actively encourage us to go up to strangers’ houses like that. Talk about the ultimate in pedophilia delivery service.

Memory shiver.

I guess they don’t really do that anymore, though. I know that schools still have fundraisers, but I can’t ever recall having a kid come to my door, trying to sell me something. No, now they leave it up to their parents to bring their sales brochures and forms to work to guilt unsuspecting coworkers into buying a roll of Sally Foster wrapping paper or a Yankee candle. Or two. Okay, maybe three…but I’m not buying anything else, dammit!

So where does Tim the Flying Bird fit into this scenario? Well, every year, the same representative from the same organization would come to our school. Our teachers would usher us into the church auditorium, where we would file into our respective pews, all grades from 1st through 12th (the wee little kids in nursery and kindergarten were spared the marketing indoctrination). And for the next hour, the representative would go through all variety of insane machinations in an attempt to fire us up about the prospect of yet again freezing our asses off for another fundraiser.

Part of every schlocky spiel was Tim the Flying Bird. The representative would start talking to us about how awesome it would be if we all could meet a certain sales quota…say 50 sausage logs or 100 cheese crocks shaped like cows wearing hats (no, I’m not making these items up; yes, they are as disgusting as they sound). And if we met our quota, we’d get something awesome. Something extraordinary. Something miraculous.

We’d get Tim!

Honestly, I wonder if anyone else out there recognizes this thing. When I did a Google search for pictures, this was the only one I could find that looked like what I remember as Tim the Flying Bird. He came in two color schemes: this blue and white one and a yellow bird body with brown, red, and yellow wings. The wings had little spokes that fit into the bird body in a rather flimsy way. And there was a rubber band on the inside of the body that you’d wind using the crank on Tim’s bum.

The whole time the sales rep would be psyching us up verbally about the quotas, he’d be on the dais, winding away on Tim’s crank. And then he’d release the bird. Away Tim would soar, flapping all around the chapel, carried by his cheap diaphanous wings and the sugar-coated shouts and trills of hundreds of kids in excitement overdrive.

Can you imagine? A chapel full of kids, all worked up into a frothy frenzy over this? Talk about a good sales pitch. We’d march out into our respective neighborhoods, hellbent on meeting our quotas so that we, too, could experience the sheer joy of owning our very own Tim.

I must have owned at least five of these silly things, if I owned one. I remember standing on our back porch, winding Tim’s crank and releasing him into the yard. He’d flap and flutter for however long the rubber band could keep him aloft…and then crash to the ground with a crinkly thunk. After a while, one of two things would happen: The rubber band inside would break, or he’d land on something that would puncture one of his wings. And that would be the end of Tim’s flying days.

Funny the flotsam that I retain from my childhood. Some days I can’t even remember the password to my online time sheet, but I can still remember Tim. He was silly, he was cheap, he would be ridiculed and mocked by today’s computer-savvy kinder. But he was fun for a while. I kind of wish I still had a Tim. I bet he’d be really fun at staff meetings.

The Four Faces of Toni

~ lobablanca

I’m so glad that Hollywood is finally leaving behind all those sad, disturbing portrayals of Multiple Personality Disorder. You know, like Sally Field’s Sybil or Joanne Woodward’s Eve White…er Eve Black…Jane? Stop this crazy thing?

Anyway, now we’ve got a far funnier, far lighter take on this disease, now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder. You know, because a lot of the classic mental illnesses needed a bit of pizazz to liven them up a bit. It’s not manic depression! It’s bipolar disorder! Now, what can we call schizophrenia? How about “Can You Hear Us Now?” Syndrome?

Am I sounding a bit flippant? I do apologize. I think, however, that anyone who has lived with a severe mental illness in their life, whether their own or that of someone they love, develops a bit of a gallows humor when it comes to discussing such things. It’s been a part of my life since I was 10, and I have a wicked sense of humor about it, as does my family. It’s a coping mechanism, a way to process the fact that sometimes horrible things happen and there’s no real way to “fix” any of it. Just tame it with pills, temper it with therapy, and accept that it is what it is.

Besides, it makes for a great ice breaker when you can tell the story about how you spent part of your 16th birthday in a locked ward, sharing cake with schizophrenics.

Anywho. So this show, United States of Tara, is all about Dissociative Identity Disorder, or DID. The titular Tara, played by Toni Collette, houses several distinct personalities within her: Alice, the hyper-happy housewife who’s like Donna Reed on Speed; Buck, the grizzly beer-bonged Vietnam vet; and T, the 16-year-old nympho-minx who gets away with a hella lot just because she happens to “look mature for her age.”

Here’s the happy “family” all together: Buck, Alice, Tara, and T.

Buck is Tara’s protector, the Alter meant to keep her safe from the memories of whatever trauma she survived in her adolescence that left her fractured into all these different personalities. He also keeps safe those Tara loves; he surfaces when there’s trouble in Tara’s life that she is simply ill-equipped to handle. He’s a lefty with a mean right hook, gruff and offensive, but secretly kind and caring. Alice is the Ladies Home Journal ideal of femininity and motherhood. She surfaces whenever Tara is unable to deal with her children or her marriage. She’ll bake you some muffins, mix you a martini, and wash your mouth out with public restroom liquid soap if you’re not careful. T, probably the most obnoxious of the Alters so far, is a foul-mouthed sex-crazed teen, possibly Tara’s exaggerated way of reclaiming her right to express herself freely, unshackled by the chains of whatever repressed trauma left her this way.

Just for the record, Buck is undeniably my favorite of the Alters.

It’s a delicate dance, this show, dealing with unfunny truths in a wickedly funny style. When I first heard about it, I was