Stream a Little Stream

I love Kindertrauma's Stream Warriors posts because they tell me what disturbing, non-sucking movies are available to watch instantly on Netflix. I think I'll be a copycat, as is my wont, and start my own series of streamer reviews.

The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover is the equivalent of walking into a fabulous-looking mansion and discovering it's littered with human shit. A bunch of classless English gangsters with increasingly repulsive revenge tactics and the lead gangster's tormented wife gather at an opulent restaurant for dinner every night, where their Gautier-designed costumes change with the color of their environment to synch moods, the wife goes to great lengths to continue an affair with a patron, various adorable poochies wander outside, and a bleach blonde eleven-year-old sings soprano at the sinks before the gangsters torture him into unconsciousness:


The movie is gorgeously shot and staged to clash with the base, grotesque behavior of the characters. Having the good silver out doesn't matter when Tim Roth is vomiting on it. With all the slicing up and stripping of dignity that the gangsters do to the undeserving, it makes sense that the movie ends with the wife forcing her husband to cannibalize the roasted corpse of her murdered lover. Bon appetit! Three and a half stars.


Otesanek, a bit of horror/surrealism from the Czech Republic, is about a childfree couple who, because the husband is stupid enough to carve a tree-stump baby in jest while his wife is in shambles over their dual sterility, and because the wife's batshit-crazy waves are apparently strong enough to animate objects, become parents to a flesh-eating tree monster. No tenant in their building (or meddling visitor) is safe, even after the parents have locked the monster in the basement; a neighbor tot "adopts" the monster and keeps it fed, which at one point involves leading the pedophile who's stalking her to his death (she accomplishes a lot in a day).
She also has to work to outsmart a prophetic fairy tale that says her elderly neighbor will lay the death smack on the monster with a garden hoe.

I think the theme of the movie is parenthood as a disease. The ever-growing tree stump monster is disgusting, violent, and uncommunicative, and is ruining its parents' marriage and already meager sanity, but the parents' love and devotion hang on and ultimately cause their deaths. The monster's appetite is never satisfied, it leaves skeletal remains in its wake, and it ends up in cahoots with another child, the only one who really understands him. Sounds like the suburbs to me! Three stars.

Hurricanes and Goslings

Welcome to an informal late Friday night/early Saturday morning version of cocktails & dinosaurs because I don't blog enough, I have a stomach full of fabulous Foodswings nachos and a cold refreshing Indian Pale Ale.

Celebrity News:

• Ryan Gosling is a real life hero, but that was way back in June so let's move on. (via EV Grieve)

• January Jones is apparently a terrible person. I'm still trying to figure out who she is and why I care.

• Jimmy Fallon is a psychic that predicted hosting Saturday Night Live in 2011 all the way back in 1998. This video gives me chills. I nearly took a baldwin in my pants.

• If you had any question at all as to whether or not Nick Cave was the sexiest man alive, I think this letter to MTV should put them all to rest. (via kottke.org)

• Taylor Momsen is retiring from acting... (looks like someone has been getting career advice from Amanda Bynes.)
  But seriously, I can't believe the girl who taught me how to shake 'n bake has chosen to no longer share her unique gift with the world again. Come back, Taylor, we need you! I have a tofu cutlet that needs a crunchy exterior and you're the only one who can show me how.
  

Celebrity Feud of the Week:
Okay, so get this... Anthony Bourdain comments on a few Food Network chefs/cooks in a recent interview with TV Guide and happens to call Paula Deen "the worst, most dangerous person to America." Not completely shocking considering she's the woman who gave us the recipe for bacon cheeseburger meatloaf in a world where childhood obesity has nearly tripled in the last 30 years and heart disease remains one of the leading causes of death.
She responded with,"You know, not everybody can afford to pay $58 for prime rib or $650 for a bottle of wine. My friends and I cook for regular families who worry about feeding their kids and paying the bills . . . It wasn’t that long ago that I was struggling to feed my family, too." Interesting, how she turned Bourdain's comments about the American health crisis and her "unholy connection with evil corporations" into a conversation about feeding a family on a budget, which last time I checked a classy rice and bean dish was a lot cheaper and healthier than a hamburger topped with a fried egg and bacon and sandwiched between two donuts, but I've been proven wrong before.
Bourdain's point remains valid. She's selling a lifestyle and it just happens to be a lifestyle that's killing millions of Americans.

Blog of the Week:
Have you ever lost a pen or found a pen? Well then, I've found the perfect blog for you! I found your pen

Stupid Movie Idea of the Week:
Okay, so... Mushroom cut from No Country for Old Men and Leather Face from Texas Chainsaw Massacre meet in a sort of When Harry Met Sally kind of romantic comedy.

Recipe of the Week:
VEGAN Deviled Eggs (via vegansaurus)
I cannot wait to make these for my next party!!!

To all of our Northeast American/ Canadian readers, stay safe this weekend as Hurricane Irene works her way up the coast we can't afford to lose either one of you.

A Good Horror Movie Made After 1992? NUH UH.

It's true. After 15+ years of avoiding new horror releases because they're, you know...this, I read a recommendation of the 2008 direct-to-DVD release Trick' R Treat on Kindertrauma and thought I'd check it out. It's currently streaming on Netflix so give it an instant nosh while you can; it's a ghoulish, blackly comic, straightforward collection of overlapping stories that would be right at home in 1989. There are dashes of CGI, which subtracts one star, but the performances and running theme of sweet revenge balance things out. Plus, we all know it's not Halloween until a curly-haired teenaged dumbbell is vomiting blood onto the school principal's front steps.



Side note: A great opportunity to check out an adult Anna Paquin before she became "Always and Forever Sookie".

My Girl Crush

I'd like to take a moment to talk about my new girl crush, Alison Brie. If you are not familiar with her, you need to start watching Community on NBC right now.



Okay, now that we're familiar with the show, let me explain why she's awesome. Aside from the fact that she was in an episode of Hannah Montana (which gives her instant blog 'scuse me? cred), her twitter feed is a constant source of entertainment for me. I'm having one of those Rebel Girl things with her character Annie on Community. You know, it's like she has the hottest trike in town and I just want to be her best friend, yeah.

Speaking of twitter, did you know that Annie Edison's boobs have a twitter account? I really wish Annie's boobs would tweet more. I'm just saying...

Hormonal Bitch? Lap Up Some Cow Torture

The New York Times ran an article on July 21st announcing the end of the "Got Milk for your PMS-ing Whore of a Girlfriend/Wife?" ads that drew the ire of sexism-sensitive types.


The ads perpetuate the assumption of our cock-controlled society that women are the only ones to experience hormonal upheaval that makes life hell for their significant others. Okay. Where are the ads with the haggard-looking career woman frowning over the caption, "I'm sorry I forgot to DVR the Jets game. You're right, I'm totally a stupid c-word. How 'bout an ice cold Miller?"

To ice the cake, these are effing "Got Milk?" ads. The ads that for 18 years have shown a variety of celebrities staring with bedroom eyes after their upper lips have been smeared with the fluid produced after cows are raped by machines. Health! Fun! Despite numerous contradictory reports urging women to focus on plant-based, animal-friendly, anti-carcinogenic treats rather than fat-pumped dairy products to mitigate the symptoms of PMS, Goodby, Silverstein, and Partners decided to launch this misogynistic series of ads. After the shut-down, Goodby made sure to state to the press that he thinks the campaign has "served its purpose" and that a similar ovary-hating campaign that his firm launched in 2005 was allowed to survive because "it was a different world in 2005". 'Tis true.

Cornholio Returns!

By now, everyone knows that MTV is bringing back Beavis and Butt-Head. Check out this sneak peek footage from this week's Comic Con. Nearly fourteen years have past since we've last seen these two and time has yet to age them or their humor.

Get More: Beavis and Butt-Head, MTV Show

I thought maybe the return of Beavis and Butt-Head would mean the return of some music videos to the channel that put the music in music television, but it seems like the new shows will just have them critiquing shitty reality shows instead of music videos. 'Tis a shame. I guess I'll be okay with it as long as they are ripping Snooki a new asshole.

Between Beavis and Butt-Head and 120 Minutes coming back with new shows, Nickelodeon rerunning classic shows from the 90's, and this new training bra, my awkward pre-teen era nightmares are haunting me.

I Hate the Seventies

When America looks back on vintage decades, its concentration is solely on the good: the soaring power ballads, the chic fashion, the Valium, the rotary phones, etc. But, as Henri Matisse said, "What I dream of is an art of balance..." Don't we need some bitching to pair with the nostalgia?

Let me begin to fulfill Matisse's dream by reviewing the 1973 John G. Avildsen film Save the Tiger. The movie screams "seventies era": We've got a teased-haired receptionist operating a soundboard and speaking in a nasal Staten Island-y accent, a moon-eyed hippie-era leftover informing Jack Lemmon's Harry Stoner that she just happens to have "some really great grass", a prostitute pouring what appears to be blood-colored candle wax on a john, and so on. It all adds up to nothing in a meandering drama that can't be saved by strong acting.




Stoner horrifies his wife by reminiscing about professional ballplayers of the '50s with a fervor skirting hysteria and tells the hippie hitchhiker that he's thirty-three when he could easily pass for sixty, and the audience stares blankly as his bizarre behavior is barely explained (is it all from stress over his failing business? Is he being tormented by prophetic nightmares about starring in The Odd Couple II?)

Ancillary characters mention Stoner's snappy gray suit roughly 19,874,284 times. Fine, the movie wants to remind you that fine threads cover a wreck of a human being, but why is he a wreck? Why is he suddenly tormented by WWII flashbacks rivaling Lifetime movies in terms of cheesiness? We're talking stuff a half-step above this:



The focal point of the movie is the decision of Stoner's and his colleague's to hire an arsonist to torch their warehouse and send insurance dollars their way. The movie ends before the action: no perfect-scheme-gone-wrong, no tense aftermath, nothing. The movie's final payoff is Stoner watching some obnoxious kids in a playground baseball game. Fine, not all dramas have to take the traditional route, but if one isn't going to, it still has to work to engage the audience. This movie consists of compliments on a silk suit, a guilt-ridden call girl who is never fleshed out, and a wife who keeps saying her husband should see Dr. Frankfurter. Grade: D