Happy Halloween!

Have any of you noticed that completely new movies are running on cable TV? This excellent horror film House of the Devil was on one of my HD channels this week. It was very creepy. I didn't know it was a new film until I looked it up on IMDB. It faithfully recreates the feeling of the "girl in peril" films of the early 1980's. The suspense got to me. I was watching it alone when everyone was asleep and I kept having to switch on the guide to minimize the picture to get some relief.



My husband and I watched this classic The Devil Doll this week. It was good! Lionel Barrymore cross-dresses to foil his enemies.



I tried to go through the guide on my tv and find old movies to tape. TCM is showing a LOT of Boris Karloff. They aren't so great..

Here's another really great classic. Ever seen Haxan? It is a 1922 Danish "documentary" about the legends of witchcraft in western Europe. The imagery is unforgettable. Since it is such an old film it has this weird authentic look. Calling it a documentary is pretty much a stretch since it seems to me an excuse to stage creepy and shocking stories of superstition through the ages.. Anyway, it plays on IFC pretty regularly and it easy to get at Netflix.



Is it just me or is everyone sick of vampires? I got through just two of the Twilight books. What a pathetic girl. Those teenagers are supposed to be smart and they have the dumbest conversations ever... Zombies are way more fun. Did you see Zombieland?



I'm not into the popular torture movies that are out lately. I also don't like it when these are stories of real life murderous rampages, that's too upsetting. I like ghosts, hauntings, good vs. evil, foreign horror, classic horror, and horror with comic relief. I also experience movies intensely since I am a strongly visual person, so I like to see this genre on my television where it isn't nearly so scary. Also, feel-good movies all the time are too saccharine.

Click HERE for an interesting article about why people sometimes choose unpleasant experiences.

Oscar Memoriam Montage

I love the Oscars and I thought that this year's show was a good one. Some of my favorite parts of the show are the montages of past films because I like to see how much I can recognize. This year they did some weird staging of the "In Memoriam" segment so we couldn't really see it on our televisions at home. Here is that part the way they should have shown it. Thanks to Roger Ebert's blog for posting this.

Halloween!

Here are some Halloween movies I've recently watched.

Freaks. The ending is shocking and the whole thing is memorably creepy and strange.


Cat People. Not really too scary, more of a moody film focusing on psychological tension.


No vintage Halloween movie fest is complete without Vincent Price. His films are always fun, but I usually forget the plots. He always plays the deliciously evil villian mastermind.


Silent Classic, Nosferatu (1922)


I actually like the Werner Herzog remake Nosferatu, the Vampyre better. The ending is changed from the original and is even more haunting.


I don't know why FOX doesn't run the Simpson's Treehouse of Horror on a continuous loop:


Is it all in her mind? Classic haunted House film The Haunting


Ever had mice in your basement or revenge fantasies? Willard is the film for you!


There are so many great Halloween movies! Have a fun day!

edited to add: Yipes! It just occurred to me that my daughter is a mouse for Halloween! (See Willard, above)

Fridays at the Movies

Yes, we already saw HSM3. That clip is from the HSM2 which played on tv this summer. This sequel was good, although Troy and Gabriella are a bit too much for my taste. I like the Sharpay character (movies like this need a fun villain) and she was pretty scarce this go around of HSM. The audience in our theater squealed at the opening shot of Zac Efron and again later on when he took off his shirt. Our cineplex canceled the showing of whatever it was that was supposed to be playing in one of the theaters and filled it up with overflow ticket holders for HSM so I predict this will get a #1 showing when the receipts are tallied at the end of the weekend.

The place was awash is squealing little girls. Our poor son was dragged along and declared it the worst thing he's ever seen and insists that we owe him a movie. Twice they "punished" a character by making him go paint sets and hang lights which was exactly what I used to do in theater in high school. On the crew, we worked 5 days a week for several hours after school and all day long every Saturday. I'm pretty sure we had way more fun backstage, but nevermind about that.

I love it that musicals are making a comeback. They really are fun. This one isn't nearly as fantastic as Mamma Mia, but we had a good time. It did make me long to see Grease again. That was my favorite as a kid.

I love the week of Halloween because the movie channels show all kinds of vintage horror. If we had TiVo I would really be in b-movie horror heaven. I don't like to see scary films in the theater, because they are too strong. Actually I don't really want to see any horror films that date much later than about 1980. I like them better if it is all sort of stylized and unreal or very dated. A couple years ago I saw Suspiria on IFC. That one boasts what is probably the creepiest theme music ever. I was going to embed a videoclip, but the ones I found were kind of gory for a crafty blog. Some of you might have preferred to watch that than High School Musical 2, but I'll let you do your own You Tube search.

Here are some not at all scary ghost pins I made that same year I saw Suspiria. They are not inspired by the movie:

Rant

Gadzooks! I really want to rant about my seething hatred for the frozen-faced, scrawny, sexless, speech impaired actress Nicole Kidman, but um... dang.. where is the camera?!

I crocheted some cute thread crochet Cubs logos. Go Cubs! But I have to deal with my camera first.

Seriously, I really hate NK and her ex-husband is no better. She's probably sort of a nice person, but she's ruined every movie she's beeen in (except "To Die For", "Dead Calm" and "Flirting". I liked those from long ago) I've hated Tom Cruise since Risky Business...

These are the things I obsess over when I'm alone in the house. I just accidentally watched "The Invasion" and it was already terrible before they cast Ms. Kidman in the lead role. How does that woman have an Oscar? Her way of acting distressed is to cover her eyes with her bangs since the expression doesn't register on her face anywhere. She is the same age as I am and I don't really have any wrinkles so what is her problem?

So I've ranted anyway... Anyone else have inexplicably popular actors or actresses they avoid watching like the plague?

Ebert and Siskel Nostalgia

I miss Siskel and Ebert. (Do people outside the USA even recognize these two?) As a Chicagoan, I watched their show all the way back to their local PBS days when they were saving the aisle seats and "Spot the Wonder Dog" would make appearances. I'm pretty sure back then they didn't even use their thumbs, they just gave films a yes or a no recommendation. I get my love for film and movies from my mom. When my brother and I were kids, we were not allowed to speak or make any kind of noise when the show was on. Of course my brother and I also hung on their every word (I did anyway) and loved the show best when they disagreed and started making personal cracks at each other. Witness the hilarious controversy about the merits of 1993 films "Cop-and-a-Half" and "Carnosaur".

It always used to seem to me that Roger Ebert had more fun at the movies. (He liked "Ferris Beuler's Day Off" while Siskel thought it was irritating.) My husband and I both actually also sort of liked Cop-and-a-Half. 1993 was during our pre-children 5-6 films-a-week phase.

Gene Siskel passed away in 1999 and Roger Ebert suffers from various medical difficulties that leave him unable to speak. The show "At the Movies with Ebert and Roeper" has been dropped by their distributer. I'm not nearly so fond of the chemistry between Roeper and Ebert, but I do like Michael Phillips and I hope the show will live on in new incarnations.

Mr. Ebert still reviews prolifically and has an enjoyable blog. He posted nostalgia about the end of "At the Movies" and his days with Gene Siskel. He put up these fantastic out-takes from their show showing how they both held the other in utter contempt but also loved and respected each other:





Once in the mid-1990's my husband and I were driving on the highway outside Chicago going toward Indiana and we passed Roger Ebert. He was driving a cool looking older Land Rover and he was unmistakable because the license plate was Illinois "Thumbs Up". My stomach actually did flips and I wanted to roll down the window and say something, but thought better of it. He was driving at the appropriate speed in the center lane, in case you were wondering. We were in a hurry to drive back to our home in Michigan and passed him on the left.

I've never spotted Oprah here, but once I saw her make-up guy shopping at my local Target. My stomach didn't do any flipping over him, but I chuckled. Another time my mother-in-law was looking at the same elaborate floral greeting cards as indy-rocker Liz Phair.

Punch-Dancing

Have you every felt such anger and frustration that you need to find a quiet place and punch-dance 80's style? Yeah, me neither, but it sure is funny in the movies!



That clip is from Hot Rod which we saw last summer in the theaters and just rented last weekend. It was really funny with goofy laughs throughout. Our kids also thought it was hilarious. It's PG-13, so it is mildly inappropriate. I like the theme of kids (well, these are adults, but they seem like teenagers) working hard on a big project. The cast seems to be having a fun time and we laughed even more than we have at some of Will Farrell's popular movies. SNL's Andy Samberg was great. Even Roger Ebert gave Hot Rod 3 stars.

The 80's music reminded my husband and I that we need to rent Footloose with the original punch-dancing Kevin Bacon:


Flight of the Conchords also paid homage to punch-dancing:


Got any guilty pleasure summer movies to recommend to us? Our Netflix queue is a little bit heavy with classic Japanese cinema lately. The kids aren't really into those..

Videos and an Update

My summer goal is to get at least one of my new quilt tops quilted on my home sewing machine. My camera is not cleaned out of the pictures from our trip because our summer weather has been too beautiful for sitting at they computer. If you've been to the theater lately you may have seen the preview made fun of in this video.

This video from The Onion is also funny:

High School Tony Awards Honor Nation's Biggest Drama Club Nerds
I was a theater kid in High School so it brings back memories. I never ever did any acting and never wanted to be onstage. I was in the band and on the Tech Crew. As the crew, we sometimes used to joke that our shows would go so much more smoothly if it wasn't for those danged actors getting in the way. If theater kids were considered nerds, I suppose the tech crew was really low on the totem pole, but life is much more fun if you let your geek flag fly!

Anyone watching Swingtown on CBS? I had to take my post about my connection to the show down because I was uncomfortable about all the hits I was getting about it. (I happen to have grown up in the same neighborhood at the exact same time as the creator of the show who loosely based the show on his childhood recollections.) My blog was coming up on the first page of google searches on the topic of the show and I prefer the coziness of supportive crafty blog readers to the snarky judgement of pop culture blogging. My Chicagoland Craft Collective friends wanted to know, so I'll say that the unhappy judgemental woman angrily baking pies is not my mom! I'm also not the young girl who ran away because her mother is more focused on her coke fueled affairs. However, the map she drew to her woodsy hideout is nearly accurate! I don't remember anyone's dad being an airline pilot but lots of people were traders at the commodities market. Our train station does look like the one in the show, but riders to our neighborhood would come out of a spooky underground tunnel which was covered in graffiti in the 1970's.

Jumprope Quilt

It's going to be fun and scrappy and a little bit retro. I love it! I think I said something about working in more subtle colorways for a change, but what can I do? I am drawn to high contrast playfulness.... If I was into garment sewing, I can say that Free Spirit fabrics would be excellent choices. This cotton is very soft and light.

After all that talk about procrastination the other day... I finished writing my Craft Critique article yesterday and it is several days early. When I get started on something I often do not quit until it is finished.

Next weekend is Mother's Day and mom and I talked our husbands into taking us to the Amish country in Indiana. It is a fabric and antique shopper's dream. I'm so excited! More fabric! I feel like I can justify purchasing some because I have actually been making quilts lately. The guys and the kids will probably watch sports, read books and swim at the waterpark/swimming pool.

We're going to see Iron Man now! I'll tell you how it is. (EDIT: It was very good, although far fetched as comic book movies usually are. It was really not a family movie, but we weren't the only family in the theater. My daughter thought it was good but she really didn't understand it. My husband and son give it two thumbs up.)

Quilt Top Finished!

I love and adore this one! The pattern was incredibly easy, but I think it looks fantastic. Most of the fabrics are Tina Givens' Zazu for Free Spirit.

Here is the whole layout. I took a very blurry picture...


I left it on the bed yesterday and when my husband came home and saw it all laid out he said he hoped this was our new bed quilt because it looks so fresh and cheerful in our room. Unfortunately, it's not big enough, but we can use it as a topper for awhile. I think the angular cuts down play the florals. My dear husband says he is comfortable enough with his manhood to enjoy pink and blue florals here and there in the house.

Have y'all been to the movies lately? Today we took the kids to see "The Forbidden Kingdom" with Jackie Chan and Jet Li. It was great fun. I do like martial arts movies and I think they do not qualify as typical action movies. This one lacked the poetic beauty of Hero or Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but it was fun for all of us.

I also saw "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" one day this week when my kids were in school. I thought it was very funny. The other 4 people in the theater on a weekday morning and I were laughing quite a lot.

Last night we got to the DVD of "Atonement" that has been waiting for us for awhile. I had low expectations even though it was nominated for an Oscar. My husband and I both liked it and we didn't think it was nearly as darkly themed as "No Country for Old Men" or "There Will Be Blood". Once upon a time hubby and I saw about four movies a week in the theater.. sadly those days are over and we have to wait until the films come out on DVD and we can shoo our kids upstairs to watch them.

Oh yeah and how about tax scofflaw Wesley Snipes? What an idiot. Nobody likes paying taxes, but we all have to pay, unless we've established some sort of unconventional, off-the-grid, barter-for-services lifestyle.

Felt Food Swap

I don't have to keep the secret anymore! Here's what I made my partner Kiiss over in Malaysia for our Craftster Play Food Swap:

First, this hamburger, with embroidered sesame seeds on the bun:

Here's an inside view. That is supposed to be ketchup on the burger:


The pattern was in this book ISBN 9784529042659 (or maybe 4529042650 at YesAsia..).

I also did some felt strawberries which are super easy. You just use a half circle of felt and stitch up the straight sides.. maybe I'll do a tutorial on that. The cherries are made from wool roving. I would have made more cherries, but I hardly had any red roving left!


I also have always wanted to make felt s'mores and here was my chance:


I also sent her the toast I made a few weeks ago for my Using Japanese Books Tutorial.

I am totally loving felt right now. I spent all day nursing a headache and stitching little monkeys and pirate island appliques.

OOh.. must quick hit "publish" John Adams is starting on HBO.

Edited to add: Abigail Adams is one of the most significant American women to ever live. She participated in many rich intellectual discussions with her husband and advised him at all aspects of his very public career. Why then in this HBO movie is she relegated to lovingly gazing at her husband (or longing mournfully at his absences) as he performs his political duties? This really irks me.... I know it's a film series about John Adams, but really... Why put her character in the story at all if they wont be fair about her contributions? Anyone else watching this on HBO? What do you think? My husband read most of the biography on which the film is based, but he didn't finish it. He observed sheepishly, "Um.. it's really really detailed about John Adams..."

Guilty Pleasure Movies

Today we take a break from cute or pretty little sewing projects for the trailer for the latest DVD we rented.



Yes, it's that CGI animated Beowulf that pretty much bombed at the box office. My husband and I thought it was great fun and totally not serious in any way. We recommend viewers get in touch with their inner 13-year old boy in preparation for viewing it. I am able to do this pretty easily given my interest in video gaming and that Conan the Barbarian is one of my absolute all-time favorite movies.

Here's a clip from Conan The Barbarian and yes, that is California Governor Schwarzenegger delivering one of my favorite movie lines ever:


Actually, I think this and Terminator are the only Schwarzenegger films I really like.

I truly mostly dislike action movies, but not as much as I detest courtroom scenes of any and all kinds. I am an insatiable film lover. I want to see pretty much everything good or bad, highbrow or lowbrow, foreign, domestic, philosophical, pulp, historic, melodramatic, silly, fun, even boring because boring movies help me get to sleep at night if I can get past the inexplicable questions about why the director made this total nonsense. We do have to wait for these things to come out on television or DVD because of the demands of family and it is important that we watch our budget.

My search for those video clips reminded me that my husband's best friend from childhood became a professional wrestler, Twin Cities Legend Rick Rice. He's the one with the mullet haircut and long spandex pants.

Sewing Machine Song

Did you see this on the Craftzine Blog?


I can relate.. The sewing machine "a girl's best friend...At night I get so weary that I never get out to play".

I did get out tonight to my Chicagoland Craft Collective Meeting. It' so much fun with a great group of people. More about that tomorrow.

Totoro

Ever seen the film, My Neighbor Totoro?



This 20-year old film is still amazingly undiscovered by far too many people. It's from the great Japanese film animator Hayao Miyazaki. Almost all of his films are wonderful, but this one is quite special. If you are steeped in Disney, it is much more low key and quiet than those films, but the adventure is more real and palpable than in our familiar animated features. That clip is in Japanese, but the film is available in a dubbed English version. My 10 year old son was sure he'd hate it, but then got caught up in the imaginative sequences and it's a favorite for our family. I was going to post the clip of the scene where the little girls are waiting for the bus with Totoro, but it's so charming, I don't want to give it away.

HERE are the opening titles which have cute animation. This morning I made a connection... that singer is the singer on the potty training song, "She is a Super Duper Pooper".

Today our plan is to get up the rest of the Christmas decorations except the tree, eat something homemade for supper and watch Totoro together.

New Camera!

Yay! Thanks to my hubby for getting me just what I wanted for my birthday including a homemade chocolate cake with raspberries. My daughter picked out a funky necklace at the craft show and my son got me Simpsons dvds that we can watch together.



Photo taken with my old camera.... I thought I wanted a nice SLR, but maybe changing lenses isn't really my thing. This one has better more user friendly settings than my old one. We actually did some research and this one has some top ratings. Hopefully it can take brighter more detailed shots!

and completely outside of crafting... Roger Ebert says this video is the greatest YouTube video of all time. See if you can name all the movies. Roger did, sort of... from his AnswerMan column: "I got them all. Not always by title, of course. A lot of them I correctly identified as, 'Oh, yeah, that movie!' "



I'm pretty sure I've seen all 100 of those movies, or at least 90 of them. How about you?

Simpson's Movie

Well, The Simpson's movie finally opened and we all had to see it. There were many funny parts including an hilarious sequence with a naked Bart skateboarding through town and another always funny Itchy and Scratchy. The laughs didn't come quite as often as they often do on the TV show. I wish they'd done a few musical numbers and showcased more favorite characters like Apu and Mrs. Crabapple.

That's my own Simpson's avatar up there visiting the Simpson's house. Not surprisingly, their messy home resembles my own, although it is more likely to be me with napping with yummy doughnuts than my husband.

Make your own Simpson's avatar at the movie's homepage.

Can you believe that there are still some people who think The Simpsons is a bad influence? It's the best social satire around.

Some great quotes I found in a google search:

Mr. Burns: I'll keep it short and sweet -- Family. Religion. Friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business.

Homer: You don't like your job, you don't strike. You go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way.

Bart: I smell a museum.
Homer: Yeah, good things don't end with 'eum,' they end with 'mania' or 'teria.'

Ralph: The doctor said I wouldn't have so many nose bleeds if I kept my finger outta there.

Homer: You know, my kids think you're the greatest. And thanks to your gloomy music, they've finally stopped dreaming of a future I can't possibly provide.

Lisa: Do we have any food that wasn't brutally slaughtered?
Homer: Well, I think the veal died of loneliness.

Troy McClure: HI. I'm Troy McClure. You may remember me from such self help tapes as 'Smoke yourself thin' and 'Get some confidence, Stupid!

Troy McClure: Hi. I'm Troy McClure, you might remember me from such driver's ed films as "Alice's Adventures through the Windshield Glass" and "The Decapitation of Larry Leadfoot."

Homer: Are you saying you're never going to eat any animal again? What about bacon?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Ham?
Lisa: No.
Homer: Pork chops?
Lisa: Dad, those all come from the same animal.
Homer: Heh heh heh. Ooh, yeah, right, Lisa. A wonderful, magical animal.

Ed Begley Jr.: I prefer a vehicle that doesn’t hurt Mother Earth. It’s a go-cart, powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction.

Leonard Nimoy: Hello. I'm Leonard Nimoy. The following tale of alien encounters is true. And by true, I mean false. It's all lies. But they're entertaining lies. And in the end, isn't that the real truth? The answer is: No.

I do regularly miss the new Simpson's shows when they are broadcast, but we all are addicted to the reruns. My kids always run out of their media time (90 minutes/day) and then sneak onto the stairway when I watch the episode that's broadcast while I cook supper. I catch my son when he can't keep from laughing out loud.

Back to crafting tomorrow....

Happy Birthday Julie

I was going to post about some Mexican embroideries my Grandma did long ago, but they'll have to wait because the irresistible aroma of molasses cookies is wafting through the house.

My oldest dear friend Julie is turning 40 tomorrow. These are her favorite cookies. Well... I don't know that for sure, but she likes it when I bake them. We've been friends since the 6th grade. Back then, we were in the band together, but she was much better than me and eventually made it into the jazz band. They made her play jazz french horn, so she didn't get much experience. We quadruple dated to the prom. 20 years later, she married her date, and I was escorted down the aisle with my prom date who stood up for her husband.

Back in junior high, we used to take the train into Evanston with our friend Nancy and go to inappropriate R-rated movies (and *gasp* unrated ones too) at the now closed Varsity Theater. I always told my mom we saw James Bond pictures when we really watched things like A Clockwork Orange and David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth. Truth is that I didn't understand those films at that age anyway.

More recently, we took Roger Ebert's film class through the University of Chicago. This was before Roger's illness and we watched all of Buster Keaton's hilarious silent films. Roger Ebert had a way of ruining all the gags by explaining them before we watched them, but it was really fun. We signed up the next year, when it was going to be all about the French New Wave cinema. Roger Ebert got sick and we had a substitute teacher who switched the syllabus so every week, it was another film with a depressing French death...

So tonight it's dinner at a French cafe with our old friends from high school and bowling afterwards. I love bowling... and French Cafes...and of course, old friends..

Happy Birthday, Julie! You ROCK!