Incredibly Strange 24 hour Movie Marathon 2009: the 10th anniversary

I nearly missed out on the 10th annual Incredibly Strange Movie Marathon.  I wasn't paying attention to when it was going to happen this year, but I found out a few days in advance that it was going to be on Halloween. I was sad to find out that it was sold out. No tickets were being sold on the NZ eBay, TradeMe.  The day of the event, I joined the Facebook fan page, and found that some members had tickets available. I managed to get a ticket and attend for my second year in a row. I blogged about this event last year, but it was stuffed in with lots of other interesting stuff, and I left out some important details.

For example, one of the cool things about this movie marathon is that the Hollywood Cinema has a balcony.  This is where I sit.  Also, they are sponsored by V energy drink, so they give you free cans of it.  The seats are moved from the central floor of the theatre, and people are allowed to bring in bean bag chairs.  I brought in a pillow. In addition, you are allowed to bring in food. This is useful because the breaks are usually short, and there's mainly just carbs and caffeine in the lobby. 

The following is the list of movies shown, in order, and my comments. 

1. The Secret Four 1952

Film noir. Good crime drama.

2. Zombieland 2009

A clear highlight of the marathon. Like it was made just for me. They managed to make a film that was both familiar and novel. Loved Bill Murray in it.

3. Roadhouse 1989

There are some hysterical scenes in this movie! An homage to the recently deceased Patrick Swayze.

4. Forbidden World 1982

 This was an able attempt to repeat the success of Alien (1979).  Amusing and rediculous, taking itself far to seriously. Good stuff.

5. Vice Squad 1982

Another, and not the last, 80's film. This was a good film, despite the repeated scenes showing us was a "heart of gold" the prostitute has, and the evil pimp played fabulously by Wings Hauser.

6. Paranormal Activity 2007

What a disappointment this one was, but it has gotten pretty good ratings. The film begins rather slowly, and after watching night after night of some little thing happening in their bedroom, I began to hope that the couple would die soon.
7. Maidens of Fetish Street 1966

I groaned when this film was introduced as being similar to Moonshine Woman, from last year, but this was surprisingly watchable.

8. Mill of the Stone Women 1960
I napped during the end of this one. Reminded me of the old Vincent Price House of Wax.
9. Night Train to Terror 1985

This was amusing and gruesome. 3 separate stories tied together by God and Satan debating the afterlife of different people, involved in some crazy shit. Some mind-bending mid-80's pop and breakdancing that is extremely incongruous.

10. The Visitor 1979

I also napped during this one.  Normally I'm a big fan of movies about evil children, but this was too complicated, with the whole alien visitor aspect.

11. The Informant! 2009
Really good story and capable acting.  Amusing as well. Incredibly Strange- not so much.

12. Creature from Black Lake 1976

Bigfoot movie! Pretty fun to watch. Sadly I fell asleep for the final fight/escape scene, but awoke to the final thrill of the film- I won't give it away.

13. Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf 1985

The best part about this movie is that at the end, we see the scene where the evil werewolf master bitch tears off her top repeated about 20 times.  Boobies.

14. Commando 1985

Arnold! Totally gratuitous violence, but set in a lovely garden, so that was nice. I hated the kid in the movie, totally spoiled brat. She is superficial to the story anyway.

I've previously posted on the Mt Eden Prison, which immediately next to the Boston Road train station. It's an awesome old building, so I'm really sad to see that some chucklehead spraypainted, badly, some illegible shit. Generally I am a fan of grafitti, but this crap is just pointless, ugly, vandalism.

So now, instead of noticing the cool little plants that are growing betwen the rocks in the wall, I get mad about the ugliness.  Supposedly, there are CCTV cameras operating 24 hrs, so with any luck, they caught the offender. I have no idea how the paint is going to be removed, with the surface being so uneven. 

Spring 2009, or October doesn't feel much like Halloween.

Spring is full on here, and the weather has been outstanding- well, minus the rain and wind, but it can't be nice all the time.  I hung out a few loads of laundry to dry on the clothesline, bought a few plants to replace the seeds that didn't sprout in my garden, made lemonade with lemons from my trees, and bought fresh strawberries and asparagus that are recently in season. 

We recently made some big purchases.  We bought a front-loading washing machine to reduce the amount of water we use, save our clothes from agitator abuse, and use less energy. We also got a new computer, another Dell, because the one we brought with us to New Zealand 3 years ago is on its last legs, so to speak. Darin uses it for work, so it's important to have a computer he can rely on.  Also, some new cookware has been purchased. The old stuff is still functional, so it will go up to the garage in Maungaturoto for use there. We have a propane camp stove up there that we use when we stay up there.  We were last there with about 24 bulls browsing around and vocalizing their unhappiness at our arrival.  Fortunately they respected the electric fence around the garage, and the dogs stayed away from them.  

Also, on that same visit to our "farm", Ruby hunted down, caught and killed a possum.  I was worried that she was bitten or scratched, but I couldn't tell if the blood on her was hers or the possum's. She had one small scar on her elbow, later, to show for it. After her gleeful, vicious, murder, she located the tree where another was located, and Darin shot it out.  This brings the total possums killed on our property to 3.  By the way, notice the pistol grip on the .22 rifle he is holding in the photo above. A change in NZ law required that he get a different firearms license and buy a new storage case.

So Halloween is just a few days away, and I don't have any plans. So I sent an email to my friends and asked if they wanted to dress up like a zombie with me and go on a pub crawl on Halloween. Only one of them emailed back to say he was busy. I probably won't do it on my own, because that's just not as much fun.  I've attached a picture from 2004, when we lived in San Diego, of me with my crazy friend. We had a lot of fun, but the drama was just too much. So when I moved to New Zealand, I vowed to myself, no more crazy friends.  But I haven't even met anyone crazy here, so that must mean that I am the crazy friend. I am sort of okay with that, because I know I'm, well, eccentric is probably a good description (deviant is too!).  I could also be considered an iconoclast. One of these days, if I am ever rich, I will buy about a hundred precious moments porcelain figurines, and make a video of each one being destroyed in a different way. Anyway my craziness or lack of it is not really the point. To me, the point is that people need to be reminded to be adventurous and playful and step out of their circle of comfort once in awhile, damn it! I need a crazy friend again, I guess. Even if I don't make a batch of fake blood and dress like a zombie on Halloween, I still may pull out the old severed neck application I'm wearing in the dead nun outfit (above). It looks pretty realistic. 

I saw District 9 a few weeks ago, and enjoyed it.  I had recently watched Dead Alive (also known as Braindead), one of Peter Jackson's early movies, and found several similarities. For example, the young man who strives to please the mother or father-in-law, when in fact he is being manipulated by her or him, the sympathetic treatment of the zombies/aliens, the beautiful girlfriend/wife who believes in him, and of course the fun gore splatter scenes. I am really looking forward to seeing Zombieland, which is getting good reviews, and REC2. Both REC and REC2 are Spanish films, the second to begin immediately after the events at the end of the first. This film was remade as Quarantine in the US- I haven't bothered to see this, as REC was just THAT good. 

I've been reading a fair bit lately too.  I read Guilo (Golden Boy in the US)  by Martin Booth, which is a memoir of a childhood in Hong Kong, which is really fun to read, and well written.  I also read most of The Opium Wars, which was enlightening because many places in New Zealand are named after the British men responsible for the atrocity that was the Opium Wars: Auckland, Palmerston, Wellington, and  Napier. The book was overall rather dry, so I didn't finish it. It starts out well, with a horrifying description of British and French military burning and looting the Emporer's Summer Palace, China's extensive collection of buildings, art, and gardens.

I've just finished Julie and Julia, which was fun to read. Not too many of the books I read can make me giggle audibly, but this one did. I'm looking forward to this movie also. I was glad that it didn't end like I predicted it would. It made me think back to my early cooking experiences, which typically involved a box of Hamburger Helper, Rice-a-roni, or a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. Life was so much simpler then. Now I have two boneless veal legs in my fridge, and only a vague idea of what to do with them, having never cooked veal before. In my defense, this is NZ veal, they are byproducts of the milk industry and were two for $25. What I really wanted was lamb shanks, but at $15/kg, that was a bit too dear. I am a huge fan of lamb now, whereas when I lived in the US, I don't remember ever eating it.

I love Minneapolis, MN

Darin and I had a two week holiday in the United States. Flights were mainly uneventful, but we decided we prefer Air New Zealand to Qantas. We flew Qantas this time, and the service just wasn't as good, and the entertainment system was having problems. The trans-pacific film festival was cancelled, but I managed to see part of Grand Torino and most of Milk. Milk was really good. Oh yes and part of He's Just Not That In To You, which was... meh, who cares. We flew out of John Wayne airport in Orange County, and the security there SUCKED! I got pulled aside for extra searching because I had a nearly empty but full size tube of toothpaste in my bag, and I didn't take off my shoes before going through the metal detector. When I went to board the plane, they wouldn't let me on because the security hadn't stamped my boarding pass after their search. They had to have someone come and do it all over again, at the very last gate in the terminal. I was afraid the plane was going to leave without me and I'd be trapped in the freaky OC. Fortunately, the woman who did the second search was very nice, so she escaped my wrath.
Our flight landed late in the evening in Minneapolis, so we stayed at a hotel near the airport and Mall of America. We met our friend Rob and went for breakfast at a restaurant in the mall. It was pretty empty for a Saturday afternoon. After a bit of shopping, we moved into our hotel in the city. I like downtown Minneapolis. Too bad the streets were all torn up with construction.

Another old friend, John, was playing with the White Iron Band at an event called Beerfest. The band plays beer drinkin' party music. That's John on the fiddle.

Beerfest was uncomfortably crowded, and the servers would only fill your glass to a line on it, about 1/3 cup at most. I was happy to see Rogue Brewery there, from Oregon, serving Dead Guy Ale. So we headed back to the hotel for a change of clothes and a few swigs of Darin's homemade whiskey, before heading over to the original Buca di Beppo restaurant for some tasty Italian food.The following day, we met John and his family for lunch, then a bit of shopping at Penzey's spices and Big Brain Comics. Big Brain is a totally awesome shop, and I could have spent all day in there. I bought a few books, including Studs Terkel Working, a Graphic Adaptation, which is really wonderful. I also got Acme Novelty Library Nineteen by Chris Ware- I adore his work! and also Palestine by Joe Sacco, which I've heard good things about.
That's John again. Too bad we don't live closer, I'd love to hang out. It was great to see other friends from Fargo. We lived there for 21 years, and made some great friends. Next post: Fargo.