The Importance of Being Idle

Various Random Musings

Well, this morning I was supposed to have an appointment at the jobcentre (plus! mustn't forget the plus) but the person I was supposed to be seeing was away 'on holiday'. This is especially irritating because yesterday I called to make sure the meeting was still on, and was told that it was. By way of consolation I got to talk to another woman, who had just taken early retirement and didn't care about the jobcentres rules and regulations at all, and was to be found frequently tearing up official forms, destroying letters, and generally messing with the system. She was pretty funny, but no real help at all, and certainly wasn't what I'd actually gone there for in the first place.
I totally forgot to buy the picture hooks I wanted to hang the lights in here, which was a shame as that was pretty much the only other thing I was supposed to do on my journey into town this morning. I should mention that the lights over my bed are even more awesome than I reported yesterday; not only are they pretty, but they provide enough illumination to read by (and I would assume do other things by, although with my girl in Canada it seems unlikely that I'll be confirming that anytime soon), so they're a real success.
This afternoon I watched a movie called The Yin-Yang Master which Stu had sent to me, and I have to say I really enjoyed it. I won't pretend it's a work of art or anything, but it was really good fun, and reminded me of nothing so much as those old Ray Harryhausen adventure movies for reasons I'm not sure make any sense. It was cool, okay? And it was also free, and free and cool is about the best sort of cool you can get.
I also discovered that I actually had a copy of a documentary called The American Nightmare (about the horror movement of the 70s, although it technically starts in '68 with Night of the Living Dead) in The Hills Have Eyes two disc set. I've been umming and ahhing about buying Tobe Hooper's remake of his own Toolbox Murders, purely to get the doc (which is on there too), so I'm glad I didn't. I suppose it's always possible that the Toolbox Murders is worth seeing in its own right, although I'm not holding my breath there. Anyway, American Nightmare is a really cool little documentary about the social roots of the horror movie in the 70s, and the kind of factors which (conciously or otherwise) influenced the subjects of the time. I guess it's this edge of social and political commentary which makes 70s horror the best (for me at least), although we seem to be turning back to the more hardcore again after the commercialisation of the 80s and irony of the 90s. Its weird, I wouldn't consider myself a gore-hound or anything, but I do have a deeper appreciation of horror movies (good, bad or indifferent) than almost any other genre, and I couldn't really tell you why. In fact I'm on something of a John Carpenter kick at the moment in anticipation of Escape From New York being released on DVD on Monday. When Carpenter was good, he was a god amongst men, but when (as of late) he's been less good, well... he still gets my respect and I would argue is always worth seeing. Any man who had directed a single one of Hallowe'en, The Fog, Escape From New York, Assault on Precinct 13 or The Thing, would have a place in (my) cinema history, but to have directed ALL of them, not to mention Dark Star, Big Trouble in Little China (it's all in the reflexes), Prince of Darkness, In The Mouth Of Madness (sadly not available on DVD as far as I can tell), Starman (red means stop, green means go, yellow means go very fast), They Live! and Vampire$ as well, some of them lesser Carpenter to be sure, well that man has a massive cinematic legacy. In fact of the group of horror directors from the 70s, I would argue that Carpenter has the greatest body of work (in terms of quality and influnence), his only possible challenger being David Croenenberg, and much as I like Croenenberg I LOVE Carpenter, so we all know who I'd vote for. Not that there is a vote, but if there was...
Wow, how'd I end up there? See, told you I was a Carpenter fan.

posted by BadMonkey @ 8:00 PM