Queue Tips: Let's be Frank.

Every year, I have to call PSE&G to repair the heater.  There's always some part they need to change.  The first time someone came and fixed it, I gave him a tip because that's what you should do.  The next year, something happened again, and I tipped the guy also.  But then a day or two later, it broke again, so the guy came back to do some more work.  I don't think I tipped him the second time.  Then it still wasn't working so they had to bring in a couple of more expert guys.  And they seemed to fix it.  So I tipped them.  But then something else broke so another guy came a few days later.  After that, I was like, nah, I'm keeping my money.

Anyways, last year one of the guys said it was time to replace the whole thing and get a new one.  We had replaced so many parts at that point.  He called it a Frankenheater.  And this year, it broke again and the PSE&G guy said he couldn't fix it.  The property manager sent over his HVAC guy and found the issue to be the rollout switch this time.  He was a Devils fan so I tipped him.

Anyways, coincidentally because it was recently Halloween, I had been watching a lot of scary movies, including a bunch of Frankenstein films.  I kind of somewhat saw that there was another new one that was made recently, but I had seen so many already that I wasn't interested.  Then I somehow learned that it was directed by Guillermo del Toro so I decided to check it out.

It turned out to be great.  It was about two and a half hours long, and I enjoyed the whole thing.  It was certainly different than all the other previous films.

I didn't expect it to be set in the North Pole, for example.  I don't believe there was an Igor character, unless I missed it.  And in this one, the monster turns out to be well spoken.  Oh, spoiler alert, by the way.

With all the snow in the beginning, I think it's interesting that there is a lack of ice during these stories.  You are dealing with rotting cadavers, after all.  Freezing them in some way would probably help.  Although I don't know what the capabilities were in those days.

I didn't realize Christian Convery was in this.  He was the kid in "Sweet Tooth".  I didn't recognize him and then just saw his name in the credits as the young Frankenstein.  (Not to be confused with the movie "Young Frankenstein".)  Of course, he had grown a bit.  And his voice also changed.  Not sure what his natural hair color is, but it was also darker.  I thought he had a good performance.  I also liked the decision to just keep him as the same actor even though some years should have passed already.  In a way, it looks like his character just stayed short during his teen years.

I have never read the novel by Mary Shelley, but I have read summaries of it.  I don't remember every detail though.  So I don't know the whole story about the old man in the cabin.  Whether it was in the book or made up by the filmmaker, I liked where they went with it.  It made so much more sense than just a random visit like they show in other films.

The way it ends certainly makes a sequel possible.  But I like that they didn't make it seem like something more was coming.  It still seemed like that was that even if you do wonder what happens to the characters after.

Queue Tips: House it going.

Apparently, "A House of Dynamite" is not a spinoff of "House of Cards".  Or "House of the Dragon".  Or "House".  It's actually a movie about a nuclear missile attack on the United States.  Only nobody knows who is attacking and why.

So there's all these military people and politicians involved, and it's all tense and everything.  Maybe I wasn't really paying too much attention, but I didn't notice there were much scientists or mathematicians or scholars being consulted for their expertise.  Like, for one thing, they seem to know the trajectory of this missile and where it would land.  Now I'm not a rocket surgeon, but couldn't they then track where that missile came from?  Wouldn't that give them a clue?

I would hope that if this were to - God forbid - happen in real life, firstly, there would already be intelligence and warnings about it.  Secondly, there would be competent people handling it and quickly investigating.  Again, I guess I wasn't really paying much attention but it seems like all these characters are just shrugging their shoulders like iono.  

It's supposed to be all tense and everything.  And I guess that's why the director decided to use the shaky handheld camera as a style choice.  It's moving around a lot, panning from one side to the other and sometimes it goes out of focus.  And there's a lot of cuts.  Death by a thousand cuts.  I just found it annoying.  It can be good for some films, like in the Bourne series of movies, I thought it worked well.  I didn't check the credits but I wonder if this is the same director.

Anyways, apparently they decided to intercept this missile, I think by shooting another missile at it.  And apparently it missed.  And that was the whole plan.  There was no Plan B.  Like, really?  Not even an inkling of what you might do next?  A shot in the dark?  A wild guess?  Now, it wouldn't be me, but wouldn't somebody out there have been willing to jump in a jet and fly into this thing and save the country and potentially the world?

One thing I did notice right away though is the Prudential Center in Newark. specifically, the Citizens Tower entrance.  That was pretty cool.  That is where the New Jersey Devils play, and I recognized it right away.  We go there quite a few times a year for hockey practice and games for my kids, and of course, to watch NHL games.  So that was pretty cool.

I think ultimately though, I couldn't really get into this movie, to be honest.  I could not suspend my disbelief.  It was hard for me to forget that these fictional characters were not actually in charge of the country and that the real people are actually out there in government.

And lastly, do we really need end credits to be over ten minutes long?

Queue Tips: We don't need no education.

I saw "An Education" many years ago when it first came out.  I remember it as being one of the films that year that was being considered for awards and stuff and that is how I heard about it.  It was kind of a bit perplexing to me because it is about a relationship between a young girl and an older guy.  What was puzzling to me was that all the characters in the movie were just kind of okay with it.  And what was even more disturbing was that the audiences at the time didn't seem to care either.

In the beginning, the girl's dad started off being against her being with this guy.  And then he just kind of decided that it was okay.  And the mom was mostly just silent about the whole thing.  I don't think they even asked much about who this guy was and how they met and what his intentions were.  Not that they should even have had to.  She was in high school, and the guy was like ten years older than her.

They met because one day he coincidentally saw her standing in the rain with her cello, and he was so concerned about the instrument that he offered to give her a right.  Like he would do the same if she wasn't attractive or young.  And she just goes in this stranger's car.  Her character was supposed to be sophisticated and I guess mature for her age?  But she couldn't look past this lame pick up attempt.

Anyways, she then goes to a concert with this guy.  They are there with a couple of his friends.  They are a couple, of the same age.  So you juxtapose that with this guy in his late twenties or early thirties going to the same event with a high school girl.  But you see nothing wrong with it.  And this couple is constantly suggesting they do more stuff together and that the guy will take her to do all sorts of things with her.  They don't question why he is with this girl.  She was fifteen.

When I first watched this in 2009, I kept wondering if this was a normal thing in England?  Or at least at that time period?  Rewatching it now, it is even more cringy.  What am I missing?

One of the films I watch every fall is "Rushmore".  This film is also about a fifteen year old who falls in love with an adult.  Here, the adult tells the child that they should not be together.  Attraction has nothing to do with it because of their age difference.

Looking up info about the movie, it seems like it may have been based on a true story.  Someone wrote a memoir of her affair with an older guy.  And I guess that kind of makes it more acceptable?  Or maybe the point is that we are supposed to feel uneasy watching it.  And we are supposed to wonder why no one is putting a stop to it.  That it might actually be possible for this minor to be failed by so many adults around her.  This is supposed to be a coming of age story, and in the end when she finds out the truth about him, she learns a life lesson.  She gets an education first hand even though her parents and the other adults should have looked out for her.

Queue Tips: Six seven

I watched "Mickey 17" recently, and I surprisingly wasn't that much lost even though I haven't seen the first sixteen yet.  It must be very popular to make it to this many installments.  The challenge is how to make sure it doesn't get stale.

Anyways, it turns out this is not a Disney movie.  Nor is it a documentary about a teen film star who was born around 1917.  Nor is it a sequel to "1917".  That would probably be "1918".

I don't typically like narration in films.  I get that it's necessary sometimes.  Maybe they really did need it in this movie.  But I don't know.  I kind of prefer figuring stuff out instead of being laid out for me.

Overall I liked it.  I like Joon-ho Bong films.  Or is it, Bong Joon-ho?  Not sure.  The Korean guy.  "Mother" is probably still my favorite.  "Parasite" maybe ties it or a close second.  This one was more of just a fun watch, kind of like how I felt about "The Host".  I did not really like "Snowpiercer" and "Okja" though.  (Okja keeps being autocorrected to Okra lol.)

The performances were pretty good, I think.  I didn't instantly recognize Robert Pattinson, even though he somewhat looked familiar.  I try to ignore or forget credits and posters, but I remembered it was him after seeing the names at the end.

The storytelling was good, too.  The problem with stories where anything can happen is that inevitably something has to happen.  So you have all these expectations of sort of wondrous possibilities and then you end up with just this specific string of events.  Which in this film is I guess okay.

I liked the diversity in the cast.  It was cool seeing Stephen Park in a film.  I would like to see more of his wife Kelly Coffield Park though.  It would be awesome to see them in the same project.  Maybe someday in the "In Living Color" movie.

What do you call those frozen creatures that can withstand suspended animation?  It definitely looks like the creepers in this film were based on that.  Can you remind me what they're called?  Its nickname is something something bear, but there's a more official term.  Anyways, I thought that was a good choice.  There was sort of a scientific basis to it.  They also addressed potential viruses and diseased they might encounter in foreign lands so I liked that aspect of it.  The VFX itself though was not that great, just as in the director's other films.  They were just all right.

I wasn't crazy about Mark Ruffalo in this, either in his performance or the character itself.  He just seemed like a one dimensional bad guy type.  Toni Collette was just kind of there.  Should have given the role to Kelly Coffield lol.  

Spoiler alert in case you haven't seen it, but the reason the character is numbered is because he is a clone.  Kinda sad that so many others had died before him.  Many they should have had not that many.  Only like, Mickey six, seven maybe.

Queue Tips: No Kidding

I saw "Kidding" at some point many years ago, in our last place before we moved.  We had cable then, and I don't remember if Showtime came with it or if it was during some kind of a free promo week.  I didn't know Jim Carrey was in it.  I'm not sure I actually had even heard of it.  I was just channel surfing.  I may have mixed it up with "Crashing", which I also saw when I was flipping channels.  There were a couple of comedians in that latter show, so I think that's probably what led to my confusion.

Anyways, I didn't really watch the whole episode.  I just recall thinking it would be funny but not really laughing.  And then I probably looked for something else to watch.  Or one of my kids probably bothered me to put something else on or something.

I checked out the series again recently.  It was kind of depressing, actually.  I'm glad I didn't have this on during the pandemic five years ago.  Thankfully, I had cut the cord after we moved so we no longer had cable.  There were a bunch of shows I checked out during that shutdown period, which didn't turn out so good for my mental health.  Among them were "The Twilight Zone" and "Mad Men".  

Why was I watching these cynical shows at that time?  I should have put on something more upbeat but for some reason those were what I chose.  I think they affected me really negatively.

The show is all right.  Obviously, Jim Carrey has shown that he can be a dramatic actor.  I just don't really identify with the characters or the storylines.  And I didn't really care what happened.  That is, after each episode, I wasn't curious to find out what would happen next.  The actors all had really good performances, but I just could not really get into it.  It was nice to see Kelly Coffield Park in it, and I wish she had been on more or had a bigger role.

And it's not exactly like I'm not interested.  Nor do I find it boring exactly.  It's kind of like I guess having a conversation with a random acquaintance.  They tell you a story and give you details and talk about people you don't know and what happened to them.  And you kind of entertain them and don't want to be rude.  And you're kind of invested enough to want to find out how it turned out.  But after you go your separate ways, you pretty much forget about it.

But yeah, we no longer have cable.  Or even regular TV.  When we first moved here, I didn't get around to scheduling the service right away.  And the kids managed great without it.  They were reading books, playing outside and interacting with each other.  So I decided we should just stay that way.  Little did I know their mom would subscribe to Netflix and get them devices.  That's probably worse than sitting in the living room watching the boob tube together.  

Queue Tips: I scheme, you scheme.

I was kind of a Wes Anderson fan.  I liked most of his movies.  I was really excited when "Moonrise Kingdom" came out.  I had only watched it on video, and I regretted not watching it in the theatre.  My older kid Rusty was still too young for it at the time it came out, but he had watched "Fantastic Mr. Fox" and really enjoyed.  In fact, we had watched that movie over and over.

Later on, we watched "Isle of Dogs" and liked it, too.  So did my younger one Dusty.  And we watched that over and over.  Rusty even got into this phase of wanting to play the drums and tapping the beat from the movie again and again.

So when "Asteroid City" came out a couple of years ago, I thought it would be a good film to take Rusty to.  We don't go to the movies a lot, and I had a lot of high hopes for this one.  I wasn't too crazy about "The French Dispatch" but I thought he would bounce back with something better.  It would be the first non animated Wes Anderson film for him to watch.

Earlier that summer I took him to see the Spider Man movie.  Spoiler alert: it turned out to be a cliff hanger.  I asked him if he knew that, and he said yes.  So I told him he owed me.  And this was the payback.  He had to come with me to a movie of my choice.

So he didn't ask much about it.  I just told him the title.  I don't think he looked into it or anything.  He probably did hope he would like it.  He was not that excited, but overall he didn't complain either.

At some point during the screening, I think he whispered to me that it reminded him of "Fantastic Mr. Fox" or "Isle of Dogs".  I actually don't remember what he specifically said, but he did recognize the style.  

When I heard about this latest film, "The Phoenician Scheme", I wasn't too excited about it.  I knew I wasn't going to watch it in the theater.  And I'm glad I didn't.

For his previous movies, I really did enjoy the composition and camera movements.  And the deadpan delivery of the actors' lines was interesting before.  But this time around, the novelty has worn off.  It felt like Wes Anderson trying to imitate himself.  I commend the actors for their trust in the director, but I didn't really find their performances enjoyable.  Not that they were bad but the emotionlessness of it all also made me feel nothing for them.  And I've kind of gotten tired of stories about rich, powerful people.  I just don't identify nor empathize with their problems.  I much prefer the characters in the previous works, who were more ordinary and closer to everyday people.

Queue Tips: Monty Python's Flying Circus

I think it was Thursday night when I put on "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" for Rusty.  He liked it, but at some point, he said, "We should watch "Monty Python's Flying Circus" again.  I said I had the DVDs but I would have to find them.  We watched another episode of Fry and Laurie, and then he asked again.  So I said, okay, let's see if we can find it on YouTube, and we did.  The shows were cut up into seven minute segments for some reason, but other than that, they were pretty good.  We only got through a couple of episodes though before bedtime.

I realized it had been about five years since we watched the show.  It was during the Covid lockdown when I decided to put it on for them.  We were all home all day and we would watch shows and movies when we had time.  Rusty's school gave them assigned work, and he would breeze through them and be done in an hour or two.  And Dusty was still in preschool and had no homework.  

It's kind of amazing how time flies.  We only really watched it once through, I think.  And then we watched the films again.  I'm pretty sure we had already watched "The Holy Grail" and "Life of Brian" by then.  Probably multiple times.  But I don't think I put on the TV show again for them.  Partly because there were so many episodes and I thought it would take a lot of time.  There must have been other shows that I wanted them to see.  I do remember putting on "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Back to the Future" around that time.  So I think I just wanted them to watch more other things.

As I had said multiple times before in this blog, a lot of things make me sad.  And Rusty remembering the sketches kind of gave me that melancholy feeling.  Or nostalgic, in the literal sense, the kind with pain involved.  I just kind of felt bad that he seemed to really love this show and yet I failed to show it to him again until just now.  

I did buy him a Monty Python book though back then around that time.  it contained the transcription of all the sketches.  I didn't recall him reading it that much back then, but he actually talked about the differences from the show to the page.  He actually got up and searched for the book, but couldn't find it.  I helped to look, but didn't see it either.  He seems slightly worried that it's lost, but I assured him it must be somewhere in our messy house.

Saturday night, I finally put the shows on again on and we watched them.  There were a lot of laughs.  Rusty is studying French so when there was a part when the Pythons were speaking the language, he understood what they were saying and kind of translated for us.  There were a lot of laughs, but we couldn't get through all of it before bedtime.

In the morning, the two boys were in the living room hanging out.  I asked them if it was Monty Python time, and they were like, nah.  I can't remember what they were watching, but it was come cartoon.  At least one of them was "The Grinch".  I was slightly disappointed, but I let them do their thing.  I went out for a quick run.

Later in the day, I sat in my office and did some work.  I like being able to do work when I want to, and in the weekends, I sometimes do it.  I figure I sometimes do personal stuff during the weekday so it balances out.  And I don't feel bad about doing one or the other.  In the afternoon, while the two were in the middle of a chess game, Dusty's friend came over and he went outside to play with him.  When he got back that evening, Rusty put on "Ocean's Eight" again for the umpteenth time.  He had never seen the previous films, but we had that one DVD and apparently he liked it.

I wrapped up my work and joined them.  They kind of didn't want to stop their movie, but I was like, nope, it's Monty Python time.  They didn't argue, and we watched and soon we were laughing again.  I gave them both a cup of milk.  We ended up playing chess, Monopoly Jr. and Scrabble.  And they stayed up past their bedtime.