rain

The rains have returned. The winds have blown through and the rain is back, at last.

Every so often, we get these air inversions that really screw things up. The lower air is colder than the upper air, so all the nasty car fumes and other pollutants build up, and build up, and build up. I've been running the HEPA filter full-blast the last couple of days all day to help indoors, and that has certainly been better, but it's so much nicer now.

We walked down to the shops today, bloated with turkey, to rent one of the two bad movies for today's cinematic suck-off. This time it's Mosquito vs. Battlefield Earth. Right now, we're on Mosquito, featuring laughable giant mosquitoes, a field-guide survey of hickdom, and dialogue like this, which I quote:

Token Black Man/Air Force Guy: "I'm a meteorologist!"
Neanderthal-headed white prick: "Ah, a weatherman!"
Token Black Man/Air-Force Guy: "No, the real kind - meteors! I chase 'em down for the Air Force!"

Army-fatigue-wearing bank-robbing cracker, "Earl": "Well maybe we have done something wrong, and maybe we haven't. But our paths have crossed now and you've just come to the end of yours."

And some of the best day-for-night continuity errors since the last Ed Wood flick. Some of these scenes, in fact, I think even Ed would have been saying, "Y'know - we really should do that again."

Also, they apparently wear highly flammable clothing, only the kind recalled by the Product Safety Commission. It's too bad MST3K is gone, because this thing is a laff riot.

In other news, yesterday, we had our annual Murkworks Thanksgiving, with nine people, counting us. It was fun, it was soooo muuuuuch fooooood. I ate too much and feel six. Er, sick. But conversation was fun and jenga was fun and silly trivia games are fun.

Anyway, that's the end of part I, so I'm going to post a leaf picture before Round II.


Lake City Leaves (1)

Battlefield Earth in progress

First 10 minutes:

Slow-mo count: 8
Screenwipes: 5
Flashbacks: 1
Screams of NOOOOOOO!: 2
Level camera shots: 0

It's gonna be a loooooooong movie.

Suckoff II, Part II: Battlefield Earth

First, the raw numbers:

Slow-mo count: 20 (Note: multiple flashback sequences in a single scene continuity count only as one.)
Screenwipes: 20 (All. The. Same. Kind.) (Stop inexplicably halfway through after constant use earlier. Anybody know why? Did they change directors mid-movie? Did they just say "ah, fukit?" until the last two at the end?)
Screenwipes WITH inexplicable slo-mo: 1
Flashbacks: 2
Tiny, weird flashback: 1
Screams of NOOOOOOO! (from film): 4
Screams of NOOOOOOO! (or similar, from audience): 1
Instances of Kang-and-Kodos-like laughter: 7
Emphasis echo of lines: 3
Things randomly on fire: 1
"Never marry a Greener": 1
"THEY'RE KILLING US!": 1
"We're not gonna make it!": 1
Alien ships shaped like "Male" astrological symbol: 1
Discovered air-force airbases still functioning after nearly 1000 years: 1
Discovered nuclear warheads still functioning after nearly 1000 years: 1
Inexplicable alien midgets: 1
Borrowed pieces of Klingon headgear: 2
Hair styles stolen from Rick of The Young Ones: 1
Methods of shipping stolen l00t, cribbed from the Rat Pack: 1
Scenes done better in The Matrix: 1
Scenes done better in every other film ever made: Several
Audience cruelty to cat (by lying about quality of film): 1
Apparent Hubbard hate-on for the city of Denver, Colorado: 1

Level camera shots (CG): 3
Level shots (real): 1 All the rest were at sharp angles. Almost the entire film was shot in tilt-o-vision. Seriously, WTF?
Women on screen (real): 2
Women on screen (alien, servile): 1

Now, the votes:

The winner, or perhaps loser, by unanimous and vigourous vote: Battlefield Earth. The only place it was even tied was number of intentionally funny moments: Mosquito's television reporter named Alan Smithee; Battlefield Earth's, "We can't possibly have flown over all these lines without seeing at least one of them!"

In fact, the consensus is that of all the films we have seen so far in this series, Battlefield Earth is the worst. We now have an argument ongoing over whether Battlefield Earth is actually worse than Event Horizon; our EH viewing was in a theatre, where its neurotoxic effects were much more strongly emphasised. It's possible that BE, in theatre, would have had similar impact - but we can't know that without a second viewing, and I assure you, that won't be happening.

I personally found a strange effect in that I was the only one of the panel (kathrynt, spazzkat, annathepiper, myself) who felt more neural damage from Mosquito than Battlefield Earth. I can't explain that. Perhaps I was stunned completely enough by the first film that I hit a lower limit in possible damage without unconsciousness.

I do know one thing, though. I now feel extra good about having made clam jokes in the Norwescon newsletter when John Travolta showed up to do autographs. ^_^

okay, that was neat

We just (well, a few minutes ago now) had a lightning strike that looked EXACTLY like a high-powered flash going off outside our side door (which is super-creepy for me in particular) and then a thunderclap that is the loudest I've ever heard. Between .2 and .3 miles away, max.

Godt dammit that was skeery.