Canceled

Scarlett and Brent came over for Thanksgiving, and since the weather was particularly fine, we ran around in the backyard with a ball, as we understand this is in the spirit of the holiday. We are calling it touch football, but do not own a football and the players were a male ballerina, a hairdresser pianist, and two SF nerds, all on the same team. One of us was wearing striped knee socks and a large fake fur coat, like an Edward Gorey character. I won't say who. Turns out touch football involves a lot of standing around while somebody else holds the ball, drinking french press coffee. Later, we put the pro football game on television, as this is also in the spirit of the holiday, but on a television on a different floor than we were. On the floor we were on, we were drinking french press coffee.

On Saturday, we had Second Thanksgiving with AJ and her James, for which Ciro made pumpkin ravioli and bombardino. The bombardino turned out very well, which has set up a conflict: bombardino or mulled wine for Christmas? The answer is not both. They'd be dreadful together. Oh dear we must cancel Christmas.

Primeval Whoopie Cushions

Finally saw The Cabin in the Woods and was underwhelmed. Richard Jenkins was (As always) excellent, but the movie felt like fan service signifying nothing. When most of my enjoyment is expected to come from simply recognizing other properties, I'm mildly insulted; I'm too smart to pat myself on the back for being able to remember brand names. But I'm on record as finding pastiche intolerable.

Nick Pinkerton's review in Esquire sums up my larger criticisms, so there's not a point in rehashing them. I will add: oh, the visual muddle.

It would be too much to say I hated it; mainly I felt like I was reading last week's Doonesbury strips. Given the film's ambivalence about its own tone, and its combined hatred of its characters/audience and desire to lionize/flatter them, I was unable to approach the story as anything but meta-commentary; given that the film's meta-commentary was neither subversive nor on-point, my main food for thought has been the movie's overwhelmingly positive critical response.

Does it show most print film reviewers are 40 and older, and not aware of how distant in time many of their formative horror experiences are, and how atypical? Does it indicate a lot of horror doesn't screen for critics? Does it suggest a pronounced shortage of supernatural horror, such that a substantial audience is relieved even to be acknowledged?

Is it a film that needed to be seen in theaters? Was the positive reaction a reflection of dissatisfaction with this summer's film season, which I had thought was one of the strongest in years?

Was this a PR coup, a combination of loyalty to Joss and the pro-feminist idea of Joss (who to his credit makes great efforts to be feminist but to his detriment is too convinced of his own feminism to see the ways he isn't) and press agents standing up before screenings to implore people not to spoil the twist, which primed everyone for the idea that there was a twist and they saw it coming because they were clever rather than because it was telegraphed and not a twist? All of which made them feel like part of a conspiracy and one of the good guys, the first half of which is thematically appropriate to the film although the second half isn't?

Amber, who starred in "Aperture," came very close to playing the lead, and I wish she had. Nothing against the girl in the film. But Amber would have been better.