Something New - a substandard recap

The plot of Something New can be said to be formulaic. I mean, it does adhere to the general four-step plot outline that romantic comedies are made of:

Step 1 - boy meets girl under contrived circumstances. One of them immediately fancies the other whilst he/she doesn’t give a toss.

Step 2 - despite the initial issues they fall in love

Step 3 – along come the MISUNDERSTANDING which causes them to fight, and part ways.

Step 4 -  they realize they can’t be apart and they make a (usually public and embarrassing) declaration of love and get back together just in time for the credits to roll - over some festive scene.

Now if you think I’ve gone and spoilt the ending of this movie I say to you, come on, give me a break you silly person, you knew that was going to happen.

This movie however does give us something new – in that there’s a bit of a role reversal and the issues faced by the couple aren’t the usual frivolous "oh i didn't tell you my real name in the beginning so now i'm going to have to stick with Johnny Fannybanger and lie to you for half the movie" sort. 

Our female lead Kenya Mc Queen (Sanaa Lathan) is some sort of financial whiz working in the big leagues and on her way to a possible partnership at her firm. She displays her commitment to her career by always dressing for work, even on a Saturday, and acting like she has the proverbial rod up her arse. A co-worker, Leah, who’s going to get married soon and worried that Kenya is perpetually single, offers to set her up with a friend of hers -  Brian  - tall, hot, newly single and an architect. Kenya dismisses the idea because she doesn’t do blind dates. (Over the course of the movie we will be introduced to a whole lot of things that  Kenya “doesn’t do”).

After work, Kenya catches up with her girlfriends for dinner and drinks. It’s like an all black casting of sex and the city. Men and relationships are the topic of conversation and the girls wonder whether it’s time they steered away from the notion of the IBM (Ideal Black Man) and tried to live it up a little.

Perhaps emboldened by this conversation, we see that Kenya has changed her mind about a blind date with Brian the architect. She gets to the rendevouz point, only to discover to her mortification that Brian is tall, hot and WHITE. I think I should mention at this point that Brian is being played by Simon Baker and that lest my laptop explode from the combined Sanaa/Simon hotness I have decided to screencap the movie using muppets.

Kenya, possibly horrified at the thought of being seen with a white man on a date, makes an excuse and leaves.

Gaaaaah! Er, I mean, it was nice meeting you but now i have leavaaaaargh! 

Brian seems more amused at her reaction than annoyed. I, on the other hand, am wondering whether it would be a good idea to keep a bucket of water handy for the duration of the recap.

While at Leah’s engagement party (or something) Kenya expresses her admiration for the garden (she’s recently bought a house and the garden is a barren wasteland) to Leah’s mother. She immediately introduces her to the landscaper – who for some reason has been invited to the party - and turns out to be Brian. ("I thought you were an architect?" "Landscape architect.") Clearly overcome by guilt for her behavior at the coffee shop, Kenya tries to compensate by hiring Brian to tend her garden er... do up her backyard er... there's no way I can make that sound clean is there?  After a few scenes to establish Kenya’s uprightness and Brian’s insane hotness easy going attitude, Brian takes on the job and immediately moves in with his crew to start work.

I hope you don't mind, I brought my dog along. Oh you don't do dogs? That's okay, neither do I. 

At this point, the movie decides to give us a bit more insight to Leah’s family. Her brother Nelson turns up at her place, with his bimbo of the week tagging along and proceeds to let us know that he’s  boorish as well as shallow by referring to Brian as ‘the help’.  Having heard of her blind date, Nelson also asks Kenya whether she’s “sleeping with the enemy”; she quickly puts him straight saying it was just a date and that nothing happened. A little later we meet her parents; her father is a doctor and her mother a socialite. Clearly the family is held in high regard within the black community and they have strict notions about not muddying the waters, if you know what I mean. 

That Nelson, always with a chick on his arm

 Kenya and Brian, bond a little, albeit clumsily. He’s too easy going to be put off by her stiffness and in a frank discussion one night she admits after some probing that she wouldn't consider a relationship with a white guy, stating that it’s a “preference, not a prejudice”. Brian points out that it may be her preference to be prejudiced. Like I said before, the movie is not frivolous. Where necessary, it takes the bull by the horns.  (And for reasons I’d rather not disclose, I now regret using that metaphor.) We get scenes from Kenya’s workplace that show us that bigotry is somewhat rampant in the workplace as well, as far as certain clients are concerned. The movie also introduces us to the term Black Tax – the fact that you have to work harder to get things if you’re black.  But where relationships are concerned, the fact that it’s the blacks who are being racist in the movie is a reversal that is rather interesting.

One day, in effort to loosen her up, Brian drags Kenya off on a hike. Inevitably, it rains, they get wet, huddle under a tree, make out and I die a little inside. The ride home is strained, Kenya clearly regrets her momentary weakness and she tries to regain her aloofness and shoo Brian off. Predictably he comes back and sigh, pardon me while I take a moment here to weep silently for a few minutes.

The next morning, it's all mushiness and bran crackers till Brian comments on her hair – she wears a weave  - and she gets pissed off  and tells him it was all a mistake and fires him. Kenya then meets up with her girlfriends and confesses her lascivious liaisons with the landscaper. Though initially shocked, they're glad the Kenya is finally getting some.  And they tell her to let herself have some fun. "you don't have to marry the guy", they say "For once in your life get some good old fashioned sex" 

Girrrrrl, you needs to let it flow. 

So she gets her weave taken out and  goes back home just in time to intercept Brian and to tell him not to go.

oh hai, i got my hair done. we can has sex? kthx

Despite their differences, Brian and Kenya seem happy together. It’s only when they go out – and they only seem to hang out with her friends – that he is out of his element, often being the only white guy in the room. Her friends are wary of him and though he tries to blend in, it never quite fits. But when they’re alone, the chemistry is obvious.  Being with him allows her to loosen up a little and she literally and metaphorically lets some colour into her life. 
Meanwhile, the garden having been completed, Kenya throws a party. This is the first time that her family is meeting Brian in the role of boyfriend and her mother deals with it by not acknowledging it. Nelson, it turns out has scouted out  a suitor for Kenya and brings him along to the party and introduces her to the very suave Mark Harper (Blair Underwood). Kenya’s mother is soon to nudge her in his direction, pointing out his obvious suitability – he’s certainly IBM material.

by the power of my pin striped suit, i will woo you fair maiden

Soon enough, Kenya and Brian give in to the strain of the relationship, fight and break up. Immediately afterwards Kenya starts dating Mark and when Brian comes around wanting to patch things up she says no, she’s seeing someone. And yes, he's black. 

but i loves you Kenya! i yearn for you to the ends of my amazing blonde curls! 

(The woman is mentally ill, methinks. How could anyone resist someone so hunkalicious as Brian? If I showed him the door, it would only be as something to lean against. )

Anyway, a whole lot of nothing later the movie decides to move into step 4 and Kenya realizes that Brian is THE ONE and ditches a predictably snooty event to run off in search for him. Here, the movie would have us believe that f she doesn't declare her love for him that very same day that all hope is lost. Well, I suppose in a way it is, because when else is she going to be able to flaunt the relationship in the faces of the pinnacles of black society all in one go? She’d have to wait another year to gather all those people together under one roof. So I guess it's today or never and all the running around and wringing of hands was necessary.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well and we end with the Kenya-Brian wedding where we finally get a small glimpse of his side of the family, well, his father anyway. The credits aren’t rolling yet, but you’ll have to excuse me now, I think my hair is on fire.

Sex and Death 101 - a hellishly long recap

I've been putting this one off for a while. Probably because I liked this movie and it's harder to recap something you actually liked. As a vehicle for Simon Baker to diversify, well, I'm not sure that it works. But then again it looks like he's having such a lark doing this, you feel like saying hey, let him have this one.  

As the movie opens, we’re shown a room that looks like a typical holywood representation of a post-mortem spiritual retreat. Three men in grey suits gather round a strange door-like device set in the wall that has just spewed out a number of flash cards. 

pick a card, any card, no not that one, the other one

One card in particular seems to interest them (I'm still thinking they're auditors of souls or something but no, they turn out to be extremely corporeal beings later on). "Who the hell is Roderick Blank?" says a Patton Oswalt shaped agent. "That would be me" says Simon Baker, whilst penciling in Narrator under Work Experience in his CV. We immediately cut to Patrick Jayne Roderick Blank prancing (there's a lot of prancing in this movie) along a street that looks suspiciously like a movie set. We follow him as he walks along, beaming at everyone, and then out of nowhere we're struck down by a huge wave of exposition that takes us completely unawares.

#Fact - Richard has a secretary called Trixie who is a lesbian.

#Fact - Richard is soon to be married.

#Fact - there's a femme (non)fatale by the name of Death Nell quietly terrorizing  the city (she doesn't kills her victims, merely puts them in a coma by injecting them with coma serum) (no really, that's a thing). 

#Fact – His fiancée is one Fiona Wormwood who he seems to be settling for because she's clearly not a nice person.

#Fact - he's a big shot at a fast food chain called Swallows (oh yes, it goes there, just you wait for that juxtaposition).

So while all this is going on Richard is on the phone with Trixie who's going through his emails. He's about to sign off when she starts reading the last one. It's a list of names and she at first assumes it's a list of invitees to the wedding but then it turns out it's a bunch of girls’ names. As she starts reading it out to Roderick, each name turns out to be a girl he's boinked in the past and listed in chronological order. And it turns out the list doesn't end with Ms Wormwood-soon-to-be-Blank, in fact she's just number 29. The list passes her and ends at a giddying and possibly STD inducing 101. Naturally Roderick is intrigued at the thought of possibly passing up 72 lays for the sake of nuptial bliss. On the other hand,  the list is probably a hoax put together by his friends but before he can process anything further than the next two names after Fiona's, he's ‘kidnapped’ and dragged off to his bachelor party. 

look at some of these names, who the heck is called owlglasses?

At the party he’s clearly phoning it in because c’mon, he's still obsessing about the trail of tail he might be missing out on should he get hitched. His friend Zack advises him to stop looking for a way out of the marriage and just make it through the party, get married and live subarbanly ever after.  Towards the end of the party Roderick dragged off to be locked into a room for the traditional 'grand finale' with the stripper.  Neither of them actually plan on following through on tradition but somehow something leads to one thing  and he ends up having accidental sex with her. "Accidental sex?" you ask, "What, she slipped and fell on his dick?". "Yes" I reply, "that's exactly what happened". 

what, you though i was kidding? that's literally what happens

During this up and down process he finds out that her real name is Carlotta Valdez (a.k.a. number 30 on the list) and boom! he realizes the list may be on the money after all.

The movie now takes a break to show us Death Nell luring her next victim - a guy who runs a newspaper stand and likes to dabble in a little bit of voyeurism on the side. Our Nell seems to take her pickings from the not so gentlemanly sort. She’s played by Wynona Ryder and I wonder whether you could also summon her by saying “Death Nell” three times.

you'd have though a peeping tom would pick a less conspicuous costume

The day following his sexual enlightenment, Roderick is trying to break it off with Fiona. She obviously doesn't take it well and he relents and patches things up. But at this very moment, he notices an advertisement in the paper - one stating that a certain centerfold by the name of Cynthia Rose is having an autograph signing session later on in the day. (Is this an actual thing, where centerfolds sign pinups?) And would you believe it, Cynthia Rose is number 31 on the list. After sending off a pacified Fiona to her bachelorette spa party, he goes off to the magazine signing thing and manages to rescue Cynthia from a stampeding nerd-herd. They proceed to hang out for the rest of the day (no sexy times yet) and after learning that he's about to get married Cynthia asks him to do her a favour and she seals the deal by saying "don't worry, it'll end in sex".

yeah, that's a deal maker alright

Roderick obviously agrees to this deal and against the advice of Trixie, who seems to play the buddy role to Roderick in the movie, goes off to execute said favour - which turns out be dinner and a sleepover at her father's mansion while playing the part of 'presentable man' in front of daddy. Here, the movie decides to borrow a page from the sickly inappropriate school of drama and accomplishes a predictable and painful situation involving people sneaking around in the night trying to have sex while a leprous grandmother sleeps in an adjoining room. You know what happens; I’m not even going to go there. I don't like what you did there movie, you made me sad, and I refuse to talk about it. Suffice to say that our centerfold was named after her (suddenly deceased) grandmother. I also lament the fact that Simon Baker is not convincing as a Stiffleresque figure and the physical comedy just doesn't work. Look, let's just forget this whole scene and move on.

Roderick comes home to find Fiona in the process of leaving him in the hope that he will stop her. (Yes, really.) He however doesn't and she leaves. Cue the agents in grey descending in on him, rendering him unconscious and whisking him away to the white room. They introduce themselves as Alpha, Beta and Patton Oswalt (well, okay, Fred) and they then proceed to tell him about an oracular computer and how it sent out random email to lots of people. In pretty much everyone’s case, it just sent out a date - the date of their death - but in Roderick's case it decided to send him a different sort of list; a list of all the women he has and ever would have sex with. They try to convince him to keep mum about the whole thing, tell him that breaking it off with Fiona was the way to go and tell him to go forth and fornicate.  BUT, they say, forget about the list – burn it, bury it – but do not let it dictate the terms of copulation.

Roderick of course ignores all the advice except the serial sex part and goes out to bed his way down the list. I can almost forgive the #31 debacle for it allowed a brief grin inducing scene with regard to #32 where he scrutinizes her passport pre-penetration to verify her identity.  The movie is perplexing because one minute it acts somewhat intelligently and the next second it goes for obvious gut wrenching pleas for laughter like this:

i did warn you that this would happen

One night while at a club having drinks with his office mates a celebrity lesbian couple disturbingly named Bambi and Thumper walk in. 

with names like that i'd have expected more fur and less wings

Trixie of course is highly excited and primps up to go get their autograph but the woddland wenches have eyes only for Roderick for sure enough they're next on the list. Incidentally, would a gay couple's ideal threesome be with a straight person from the opposite sex? But then again three people from the same sex  and sexual inclination would seem a bit excessive. Anyway, i digress.  Things go interestingly at first, as you would expect, but then it gets a bit freaky - I can’t possibly describe everything that happens so here’s a blurry picture, now leave me alone, there are internal conflicts I need to deal with right about now.

at least be grateful that i spared you the flimsy boxers

 Meanwhile Death Nell has picked another victim and whaddaya know, booked a room adjoining the room being violated by Roderick and the non-Disney-endorsed duo. Her victim however falls to his death before she can render him comatose and Roderick’s and Nell’s paths almost cross when he crawls onto her balcony during his escape from the loco lesbians. This last escapade convinces Roderick that the list is a bad idea and with Trixie’s moral support he buries it in his back yard. But he implores her to let him have just one more name and she compromises by telling him that it’s a “Dr. M-i-r…”

look, you try taking screencaps when people wont stop moving

Roderick, making an effort to move on, is once again sidetracked when he strikes up a friendship with an ex-veterinarian who seems to be lusted after by the entire local pet owning male population. Her name happens to be Dr. Miranda, obviously she must be the "Dr. M" from the list. But he takes it slow, they become quite pally and he settles down to enjoy the (what he thinks is a) romance without rushing the sex. Unfortunately Dr. M doesn’t seem to be so into either a romance or any bandying of privates (insert joke about  a  veterinarian who doesn't want to bone). Frustrated at being repeatedly friend zoned, he finally gives in and digs up the list to affirm that she is indeed next and finds that the next name up is actually M-i-r-abella. Since he really cares about this Miranda chick he tries to beat the list. He even goes back to the agency for help, but Alpha tells him firmly to stop being a ninny and that it’s never going to happen. It also gives Patton Oswalt a chance to use the words “intercourse buffet” and “blowjob on a stick”. While this discourse is going on, the agents suddenly get alerted to the fact that Death Nell has taken down a whole fraternity in Fresno. Apparently when a serial killer (or non-killer) hits the double digits they call in the Men in Grey. 

Later on, in a series of events too blahworthy to set down, Miranda dies in a freak accident.  Roderick is distraught and for a brief moment it looks like he is going to defile a corpse just to break the predictions of the list but thankfully he gets distracted by something shiny (no, i'm not kidding - look, I can't make this shit up) and walks out to immediately find comfort in the arms of Dr. Mirabella Stone, who works as a plot contrivance  at the same hospital. 

and she's not even a pathologist from what i can tell, so why is she lurking outside the morgue? 

After the brief and boring Miranda interlude, Roderick throws caution - and his pants-  to the wind and ventures forth on a salacious spree. I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say that the movie stays true to all possible clichés and allows the list to include among other things a midget, a homeless person and a man. Meanwhile, the authorities find out Death Nell’s real name (she’d left her driver’s license behind at the scene of a crime) and her face and name are plastered all over the TV screens. Roderick, on seeing the news, realizes to his horror that she’s the last name on his list – he’s going to die at the hands of Death Nell! (yes, the fact that her victims don’t die is ignored from hereon.) He runs off to the agency to be told that they’re planning a coup and as soon as the oracular computer computes Death Nell’s exact location - which it’s bound to do in a few weeks – they’ll close in on her and he will be safe. So the same people who earlier told him that there was no defying the list are now trying to help him do so. Tsk Tsk, movie, for shame.

So all Roderick has to do is hold off from having sex with the 20 women who stand between him and Death Nell. The movie makes this out to be a Herculean task. If you ask me, having sex with 20 different women within the space of 2 weeks would be the difficult thing, not the other way around. But looks like Roderick needs to distract himself lest he slip and mistakenly has sex with someone so he takes up a few hobbies, cycling being one. It’s during one of these cycling trips that he meets with a pothole related accident, is rescued by a bus containing a virginal bible group who then proceed to take turns forcing themselves on a supine Roderick for some voluntary deflowering. The bus contained 19 girls, not 20, so for a minute Roderick is jubilant - till he remembered the lady bus driver who also decided to cut herself in on the deal. So in one fell swoop the number of obstacles between him and Death Nell went from 20 to zero. (The movie doesn’t explain how on earth one man is able to have sex 20 times in quick succession. The movie takes poetic license to a whole new level in order to move the plot along.)

 it's not like they were catholic schoolgirls. just a uniform  wearing bible group, so that's okay then

Okay, we’re almost done here. The supercomputer finally pinpoints a location and the agents go in and take position, awaiting Nell’s arrival. Roderick is told to stay put, but he’s tired of all this having his life path decided for him business and he sets out to meet his maker (or in this case Nell) head on. Unable to get into her hotel, he walks into a nearby diner only to run into Nell, temporarily off the clock. They strike up a conversation, and he volunteers to be his next victim. They get along quite well and he professes an admiration for her poetry (she writes little couplets at each crime scene). Asked why she does what she does, she tells him her story.  Apparently she was in an abusive relationship, married to this sadist who made her play dress-up and then well, you know the rest. Then one day, she’s set free; he slips on a pencil and erm, dies (there’s a whole lot of death by slipping in this movie) and she goes off on a pilgrimage to rid the world of perverts, one prick at a time.

After they each share their story, they realize that they’re both tired of being where they are and who they are.  So, somewhat predictably at this point, they make a coma pact. The nicely orchestrated final scene shows them popping the pills in each other’s mouth and settling under the sheets below a spray painted “The End”.

Of course that’s not the final scene, the final scene is when we are shown that they seem to have woken up, (and pretty quickly too since they haven’t aged a bit) got married, had a kid and are in the midst of living happily ever after. Interspersed with these scenes of domestic tranquility is a  clip of the coma victims waking up, one by one. So the world’s population of sex offenders is once more replete. In closing (well, almost) we are also shown two capsules on their nightstand implying that they didn't take the coma-inducing-pills after all BUT the movie clearly shows them taking something in the earlier scene (see above). So did they take them and spit them out again? Goddamnit movie, why must you contradict yourself so?

sigh. here's another picture. now lets pretend i wrapped this up

One last thing. Remember I said I liked this movie? Well, contrary to the tone of this recap, I actually did. It wasn't an amazing movie, but it did try to steer away from the formulaic plot. Of course it didn't do a very good job of it, but still i'd like to give it points for trying. Also, there was this to be happy about:

yup. there's always this to fall back on. 

Not Forgotten - not a recap

ah yes, the big facey facey school of movie poster making

It's a bit difficult to recap a movie when half of the (and also, annoyingly, the more interesting) conversation took place in Spanish and the subtitles were missing. I don't even know whether the movie came with subtitles. For all I know it didn't, and people were supposed to just get what people were saying, just like they were supposed to get the movie as a whole. As a vehicle for Simon Baker’s shagworthiness the movie was 100 percent on the ball. As a movie that was to provide a decent story however, it failed. Still, I’ll settle for the former if I can't have the latter so it’s not like I’m complaining or anything. 

proof of shagworthiness: Exhibit A

The plot can be summed up fairly easily. Jack Bishop (Simon Baker) is married to Mexican hottie Amaya (Paz Vega) and he has a daughter, 11 year old Toby (the ever wonderful Chloë Grace Moretz) . Toby mother has died of cancer when she was still small and the only reminder seems to be a slightly macabre photo of her which Toby keeps by her bedside and kisses goodnight on a daily basis. Jack seems to be an upstanding citizen – he works in the bank, is a member of the chamber of commerce (I think) and also the coach for Toby’s soccer team – and a reasonably okay dad. Amaya and Toby seem to get along, with Amaya genuinely taking an interest in the child. Then one day during soccer practice Toby goes missing and the rest of the movie takes the predictable turn of vigilante dad looking for his missing daughter while the authorities pick at belly button fluff. 

During the course of the movie we encounter a flashbacks of a guy getting rather brutally snuffed by a couple. If you've ever seen a movie before in your life you'd  straightaway jump to the conclusion that it's Jack doing the killing. This of course hints at the fact that Jack may not be quite who he seems to be - he seems to be capable of even greater amounts of hotness than evidenced in the present, for one thing. 

dark haired Jack is hotter than blonde Jack

There’s also a lot of Mexican mysticism thrown in, which is fine, but it does get a bit repetitive. But then again, it allows for this:

look, there were no subtitles. this is the best i can do.  

In the end Jack has to face his past (which is clearly not forgotten) (by anyone) in order to find his daughter.  Apparently all the killing and what not is related to him being some form of debt collector. Though how killing the defaulters helped the creditors is not explained. Also, mugshot artists in Mexico are clearly more competent than their american counterparts as is evidenced here:

¡Ay, caramba!

Although we see Jack reaching into his past as a last grab resort to finding his daughter, it’s still not clear how he eventually discovers the truth. But then clearly I missed half the plot unraveling due to my linguistic disability so maybe it makes sense after all. But one thing I cannot come to terms with is the final plot twist. I can understand someone holding a grudge but surely there are easier and more effective ways of wreaking vengeance.

In closing, I’m still not quite convinced that no cockerels were harmed in the making of this movie. 

The Ring Two - a recap

Before watching The Ring Two as part of my quest to watch every movie Simon Baker has starred in  I decided to (logically) watch The Ring. I've seen both movies ages ago but though I remember being scared pantless while watching The Ring I couldn't remember anything about the sequel (after watching it again, I realize why). Now I’m not going to write a recap of The Ring because, well, then I’ll be dead in 7 days and we can’t have that now can we. So onward and away with this wondrous recap of The Ring Two. 

(If you're reading this, please note that I'm going to disregard the fact that you may or may not have seen The Ring.) 

As the movie starts we see that Rachel (Naomi Watts) and Aidan (nobody cares) have moved from the city to a small town in an effort to ‘leave everything behind and move on’. Of course the very gesture assures us that there will be no moving on. Oh wait, that’s not how the movie starts. The movie starts by showing us a couple of high-school kids who have apparently just got together. The girl seems a bit wary of the boy’s advances because apparently he has not noticed her throughout high school and now has suddenly shown an interest in her. Having shown us these high schoolers, and gotten them talking, the movie then decides to order a pizza and go sit in the comfy chair and not really go anywhere much for a while. Anyways, it turns out that the boy’s motive for getting hitched was purely to avoid a horrifying death at the hands of the VHS of Doom. We learned in the earlier movie that the only way to avoid a watery and hairy death was to make a copy of the tape and make sure someone else watches it. So being an intended victim and knowing the way out (and knowing, we know, is half the battle) he takes his brand new girlfriend over to his parent’s place, sits her down in front of the TV and tells her to watch this tape. Seriously, that’s his plan. And he expects her to go along with it. His “plan” (which was no plan to begin with) is foiled for two reasons (a) he absurdly waits till two minutes before the deadline to put the plan into effect (b) he picks someone who clearly does not consider a 2-minute horror clip as an acceptable form of foreplay. After taking approximately 15 hours to show us this prologue, the movie decides to finally move forward.

Rachel it turns out has procured a position at the local newspaper. The newspaper is being run by Max (Simon Baker) who has left New York (which he loves) to come back home and take charge of the family business. I mean, I assume it’s the family business. A lot of assumptions went into the writing of this recap simply because I couldn't be bothered to verify anything. Max walks into Rachel’s office where a huge deal is made about how she keeps the door closed. If this was a romantic comedy then by the end of the movie Rachel would have turned into a warm and loving person who keeps the door to her office open. But this is not and the whole thing is possibly just a metaphor for how she has secrets but we don’t care because did I mention that Max is in the room now? He’s a bit upset at how she’s re-written an editorial that she was merely supposed to copy-edit.Though how he can expect anyone to gather enough wits about them to proof read documents when the fluorescent light is glinting off his curls is beyond me. Rachel it appears is made of sterner stuff than I am.

I'll edit your copy Max, I'l edit it till you walked bow-legged

The same evening, the news story about the dead teenager (see the plan that failed above) breaks and what seems to be the whole newspaper gathers at the crime scene. Rachel gains entry to the coroner’s van where she is horrified to discover that the boy has died with the mark of the ring monster on him (grayish skin, gaping mouth, distorted face).  She breaks into the dead boy’s house, retrieves a VHS from the tape deck, immediately comes to the conclusion that it’s the VHS of Doom and burns it. Apparently any tape sans label is clearly one of THOSE tapes. That night Aidan has a nightmare about the ring monster (a.k.a. evil Samara). But when Rachel questions him he shrugs it off. (May I say here that Aiden who was quite likeable in the first movie is decidedly annoying in the second?) Right about now the movie realizes that it hasn’t been acting very ominously so it decides to throw in a spot of foreshadowing and makes Rachel tell Aiden that “all you have to do is call my name and I’ll follow your voice." adding “even if I have to come right down into that nightmare with you”. Oh we can’t possibly imagine why this could be important later on, wink wink, nudge nudge.

The next day Rachel and Aiden are at a flea market and they bump into Max. Or, rather, Rachel bumps into Max while Aiden wanders off taking photographs of random things. 

and then, and then, fzzzzt pffftbbl fink

It gets a bit hazy at this point because Max’s pecs are straining at his shirt but when I regain consciousness Aiden is in a bathroom where all the toilets are flushing as a harbinger of the ring monster. Sure enough, evil Samara appears and Aiden freezes to the spot, repeatedly takes photographs of her and that’s where a distraught Rachel finds him, still clicking away seemingly at nothing. Evidently the whole ‘call my name and I’ll follow your voice’ is not a hereditary thing because throughout the movie Aiden pointedly ignores Rachel while she runs around calling his name.

They go home, and stuff happens and more stuff happens and none of it is either interesting or scary. They get attacked by stags (stags? deer with antlers?) on the way home from the flea market, Aiden has another nightmare of sorts and his body temperature drops, you know, stuff like that. All this convinces Rachel that she needs to get out of there so they make a run for it, er, inexplicably down to her office at the newspaper. Everyone is still at work though it’s clearly quite late in the night. No one seems intrigued by Rachel hustling a blanket-wrapped Aiden into her office. Max, who has heard about Rachel's car being the victim of a stag party, offers to help and Rachel allows him to. Help in this instance appears to consist of going over to his place and running a hot bath for Aiden because hospitals are for pussies I guess. “ Shouldn't he be at a hospital” Max asks, aptly voicing our precise thoughts. “No, he’ll be fine” says Rachel wanting to move the plot along. “I’ll go home, get some things, then we’ll leave here” she says to Aiden, mere moments after he’d told her that “she can hear us, she hears everything” (“she” being evil Samara). And she conveniently disregards the fact that geographical displacement is not a deterrent for this creature.  Rachel seems to also continuously forgets the association between water and the ring monster and forces Aiden into the bathtub against his will. 

just to prove that I didn't google only screencaps of Simon Baker

Then she asks Max to look after him while she runs over to their place to get some clothes and stuff, you know, as mothers are wont to do - leaving their kid who’s clearly scared shitless with a stranger and running off on unnecessary errands. A lot of water related drama which I’m too bored to relate ensues, and finally FINALLY Max puts his foot down and makes Rachel take Aiden to the hospital.

Obviously the hospital staff jump to the conclusion that Rachel has been abusing and/or neglecting her son what with the bruises and the hypothermia and the coma. Rachel of course does her part in reinforcing their suppositions by escaping from an interview with a psychiatrist (seriously, she jumps out a window) and going off to investigate er, stuff. Before she runs off there is a scene where she tries to explain to Max what’s going on. But she mistakenly assumes that he has seen The Ring and knows what she’s talking about. She ends up by showing him Aiden’s camera where all the photographs show evil Simara standing behind Aiden. After she leaves, we see Max walking towards Aiden’s room purposefully but I think that's just a scene the editor left in and hoped no one would notice because, well, for the same reason this sentence has no proper ending.

Rachel makes her way to the Morgans’ (the couple from the previous movie who adopted Samara a.k.a. the ring monster before she became the ring monster) house - which seems to have magically moved from the island (where it stood in the first movie) to the mainland and there she discovers a clue to the identity of ring monster’s birth mother. She follows the clue to a nunnery where she leans that Simara’s mother tried to kill her baby and was then institutionalized. Rachel goes forth to the institution (incidentally, all these places seem to be a half hour’s drive away from each other) where she meets Evelyn – mother monster - and learns that she tried to kill her baby to - dun-dun-dunnnnn SAVE it. (Gosh, will this movie never end?)

Aiden meanwhile wakes up, induces the psychiatrist trying to interview him to kill herself and walks home. The movie decides to show us what we figure out even before the damn thing started – that evil Samara has inhabited Aiden’s body during the water works at Max’s house. Max then comes around to Rachel’s place, because the script said so. He attempts to take a photograph of Aiden and Aiden says no, he will promise to tell Max what’s wrong if he promises not to take the picture. Max agrees because it's not like he could have taken the photograph while Aiden was in a coma at the hospital or anything. 

Rachel returns, finds her monster child and a Max who has ceased to be. Determined to save her child she drugs him and then drowns him. If she feels any trepidation towards killing her child to save him (or taking life lessons from an institutionalized crazy person) it doesn’t take up more than two seconds of screen time. She does manage to exorcise evil Samara from Aiden’s body and to revive a waterlogged Aiden without resorting to CPR. And they live happily ever after, till two minues later, where they walk over to the living room and there is evil Samara doing her thang and emerging from the TV hands outstretched. Rachel painstakingly vanquishes her to her watery grave – in one fell swoop negating everything that took place in the previous movie – and returns to Aiden, proving that he only has to call her and she will come to him (unlike him, who never comes when called).

Book of Love: a recap

WARNING: I know nothing about writing movie reviews. This post contains all sorts of spoilers so should you still decide to read then on your own head be it.
NOTE: I initially meant for this to be a review. then one of my multitude (read 2) of readers  pointed out that i had given away almost all of the movie so i changed the title to 'recap'. 

David (a beard sporting Simon Baker) is a teacher; he teaches history (focusing rather heavily on Cambodia) at a girl’s school. He is of the cute professor variety and passionate about his teaching material (read Cambodia).

You can talk Cambodia at me any time 

 There is the obligatory crush-interest established early on with one of the girls in his class. (Note: this plot element really doesn’t go anywhere.)  He’s married to Elaine (Frances O'Connor), she’s pretty, petite and an event planner. The movie doesn’t really show her at work though so we will just have to take the movie’s word for it that she plans events for a living.

this was a nice smooshy scene. 

I really like how we were shown the relationship between the couple, and their own personal characteristics with subtle peeks at them just, well, being. There was no exposition; really there was a noticeable lack of conversation into the first quarter of the movie, which was nice. In one of the earlier scenes, Elaine is making ice tea. It looks like it’s a hot day, she’s sucking on an ice cube and then she spits it back into the jug of ice tea. And in that simple gesture we feel that these people have been married for a while, they’re comfortable with each other, and perhaps it’s a bit boring as well. He checks himself in the bathroom and sucks in his gut; she’s shown at her yoga classes doing advanced moves so we know that she’s probably more into fitness than he is. We figure that he was probably quite hunky back when they first met but he’s kinda slipped a little now. I love that about this movie, I love how it allows us to interpret a lot of things  - and it’s not so subtle that you only realize these things after it’s all over, but it’s not in your face enough to be jarring and annoying.  We see them making love, and we also see that she’s the one who usually initiates it. We sense that certain little changes in him may be an unspoken irritant for Elaine.

On the same hot day they go for an ice cream and their server is 15 year old Chet (Gregory Smith). (Earlier on in the movie we are shown that Chet’s a swimmer and that he also gets bullied a bit. Again, these plot threads are not perused.) It’s hot and the air-conditioner in the shop is busted but the kid is still in a sweatshirt so David suggests he take it off and as he laughingly does we glimpse his abs and we notice that Elaine notices too. Oddly, the couple takes him under their wing and he of course being in lust with Elaine from the get go is quick to agree. David is just befriending him – the kids has no family to speak of and no friends either it seems - though I expect Elaine has more than a friendly interest in him. Why anyone would think it’s a good idea for a young couple to hang out with a 15 year old is beyond me. Then one night David sleeps through his wife cheating on him – or rather she would have if it hadn’t started raining – thus waking him up from the hammock where he was sleeping. Then the next morning while he’s waxing lyrical on  oh, say, Cambodia, at school, Chet comes a calling on Elaine and steamy adulterous statutory-rapy sex ensues.

That evening she tells David and he is devastated. The scenes showing David being devastated are handled rather nicely. There’s a scene of him breaking down in school the following day that is just heartbreaking but then, THEN the movie decides, enough of this touchy feely crap, let’s spaz out! And it all goes rapidly downhill from there. David bizarrely decides to keep an earlier promise to Chet for all three of them to go to Disneyland. Why the other two don’t point out that this is sheer madness after everyone’s pretty much had sex with each other is not specified. The movie just decides to show them all looking uncomfortable and Elaine's initial apologetic and shamefaced demeanor slowly turning into disgust at David. Because c’mon, he’s supposed to get upset, get mad, be withdrawn, shout, rant, beat up the kid - any of those reactions - but taking him  to Disneyland wasn't probably what Elaine expected. You don't just say "you fucked my wife" to someone and then in the next breath offer to take them to Disneyland. Anyway, inevitably a fight breaks out, more weirdness ensues, David gets stabbed in the leg and they all go home.

don't. ask. just. don't. 

In the end I think everyone goes their separate ways. There’s a subplot involving a lesbian couple who are close friends with David and Elaine and who want David to be the sperm donor for their baby. This plot thread brings some sort of closure to David and I guess the movie wants the other two to be happy as well so they are shown to be if not happy, at least content, each in their own space.  

This was a Sundance movie, so I did expect it to be quirky. But surely you can make a quirky movie without it descending into the ridiculous and allow the characters to retain at least some of their dignity. There were several really nice moments in the movie; the scene between David and Elaine on the steps, when she sings Book of Love to him, and the whole ‘revealing things instead of talking about it’ element I wrote of before. But in the end, all I took away from the movie was (a) the conviction that Simon Baker should never ever wear any other form of undies besides boxers and (b) people who make indie movies need to realize that weird and unnatural does not equal “woah, neato situation man!”.

Book of WOAH!

Watched Book of Love. Got an eyeful of Simon Baker's nethers. I shall be incoherent for the rest of the week.

kthxbye 

Fantasy That

Up till the time I got married, I had been a serial reader. I chain-read, sometime two or three books concurrently, and couldn't even begin to imagine quitting, or even pausing for that matter. The only time I had actually been forced to stop was when I was cramming for my O/levels - see my mum was convinced I was going to flunk and she proclaimed a no-books-till-exam-week-is-over decree. THEN to add insult to injury she told me that Vijitha Yapa was having a book sale, that she was going to let me go with my father and buy whatever I wanted BUT on the condition that I promised I wouldn't read them till after the exam. now picture this - not only couldn't I read, but she had actually bought me three new books, ones I hadn't read before, and then told me I couldn't read them. So I cheated. I didn't read them, I HAD promised after all, but I read and re-read the blurb on the back of the books till I pretty much had them committed to memory.

Anyway, where was I? Right, the marriage thing and the no reading after that thing. Yup, so I get married and now suddenly there's this man in my bed (well technically his bed since I had moved in with him) and there was no me space in which to lounge around and read all day. And there were things to do! Meals to cook, clothes to wash, sex to have and by the time I crept back to my side of the bed (yes, I had to have a side now) there was no time to read. After a while of course the chores eased up (there was less sex) so I got some reading time in. But that lull in reading I think scarred me for life.
To get to the point of this post - there is a point, I just took the scenic route - when it comes to what I like to read, I think my favourite genre is fantasy. Now for me, the love of magic, and all things fantastic started with Enid Blyton - what could be more fantastic than the Magic Faraway Tree and the wishing chair? 

I have no idea who that upside down policeman is

Then later, I discovered Lewis Carrol and understood whimsy even before I could spell whimsy. And I still maintain that the best fantasy is the stuff targeted at kids. Case in point - I like David Gemmel but I wouldn't read his books over and over again. Well, okay, I would but maybe 3 times over at the most. On the other hand, I have read the Narnia books at least 7-8 times over and I'm sure I'll read them some more before i get senile. A lot of it has to do with the fact that kids' books are an easy read. You don't have to wade through paragraphs of descriptive text to get to the dialogue, everyone's name is more or less pronounceable, and the book can be easily finished in a day. I love children's books. My absolute favourite fantasy series? Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain.

Alas, no picture of Hen Wen

 It has stellar characters, it's dark - sometimes frighteningly so (the cauldron-born scared me shitless), it's funny and it has an oracular pig. (I rest my case. You can't argue away an oracular pig, it's not possible.)
“But what about Terry Pratchett?” You ask me, aghast at my slip. I was focusing more on what i read in my formative year - I was introduced to Terry Pratchett a bit later in life. That a whole other post. I think what i love most about the Discworld books is that they look like they were writtenm for kids, but really aren't yet sound like they were when you read it.  “What? That doesn’t make any sense” you say. “Does too” I respond. “How?” says you. “Just” says I, succinctly proving my point. 

And that's it. (Yes, really, that's it. I can't think of anything more to say and i don't have anything witty to end it with. Look, don't scroll down, there's nothing there.) 

Rhymes with Baby-Maker

Look at the smile. Just look at it.

Those who know me and love me despite it are aware that as of late I am completely and utterly blotto about Simon Baker. I have already warned them that an intervention may be needed and I’m quite sure that should it come to that they would not skimp on the home-made banners.  

Anyway, what I really wanted to write about was this insane blog  I stumbled upon written by a lady with exemplary taste. She had (wait a moment while I writhe in jealousy)...(okay, done) actually MET HIM, shaken his hand, tugged at those glorious blonde locks and quite possibly drooled on his jacket. Now I had been going through a bad phase of insomnia, had slept a total of 6.5 hours in 3 days, and my thinking was a little bendy. So I thought it would be a brilliant idea to write to her. A fellow Simonite after all (note: Simonite rhymes with Vegemite  - maybe notify Nicole and Keith for future reference) so what could go wrong, right? Well  I went ahead and did it before I lost my nerve. I quite honestly thought that that would be the end of it. But when I got home and checked my mail, she had replied! And it wasn’t a cease and desist letter – it was an awesomely complementary email. And here’s the best thing sports fans; she, a PUBLISHED AUTHOR, thought I was funny. Now tell me I’m funny and you’ll have me flat on my back in 2 seconds. So you can imagine how chuffed I was, am and will be for the foreseeable future.

p.s. how does one writhe anyway? I always imagined a snake like movement where you stick your neck out and and sort of squirm. 

p.p.s.I don’t know whether I’m allowed to post her email to me here, but here’s what I wrote to her, in all its Simon-worshipping glory: 

Hi Kerri,

I have never in my life emailed a stranger. Yet I’m doing so now. This may be partially due to the fact that I’m extremely sleep deprived but mostly because I googled "Simon Baker is awesome" and it directed me to your blog. Why exactly did I google "Simon Baker is awesome" you ask? Well, (a) because he is and (b) because my best friend is sick of hearing me say it so I thought google would be more sympathetic.

I am ashamed to say that I didn't know of Simon Baker's existence till three weeks ago. A friend had given me Season 1 of The Mentalist but since I had a huge collection of movies accumulated in the "to watch" folder on my laptop  I had never got around to checking it out. Then three weeks ago I was laid low with a nasty flu and I needed a distraction but didn't have the stamina to keep watching for the length of a movie and I decided to give this Mentalist thing a go. The rest, as they say, is dust bunnies in Simon Bakers Hoover because from that point on I was hooked, I was smitten, I was overcome to the point of madness (the flu might have contributed) and once I had shaken off the illness I set out on a mission to watch every single thing Simon Baker had ever starred in. 

Needless to say I finishes all four seasons of The Mentalist in record time. I'm currently halfway through the last season of The Guardian. I re-watched The Devil wears Prada and asked myself how on earth I had not latched on to him when I first watched it all those years ago. I remember rooting for Adrian's character way back then. What kind of mentally challenged creature had I been in my not so distant (not so much) youth? Anyway, now I know better. 

I got such a kick out of reading about your meeting him on set. After reading your blog I have firmly told my best friend that I am NOT mental and that it's a perfectly natural phenomenon to be completely besotted by Simon Baker. 

In closing I would like to assure you that the church of Simontology has a new member. 

On a less facetious note:

I love your blog. I wish I could write like you but I can't so I've resigned myself to reading awesome writers instead of aspiring to be one. 

Madhuka

p.s. I didn't know how to end this - "regards" would be too formal "love" would be insane and "cheers" would be pretentious since I'm not British so as you may have observed I have chickened out and just written my name.