Alaskan Cruise 2017 - Day 3

July 8th - Our first full day at sea.

This morning's view from our balcony

A couple of hours later and the surface of the water is ridged/rippled

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Hands down (or hands on) is 1988's Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.  Starring Cassandra Peterson as the titular (you're welcome), one-and-only Elvira, the movie never fails to make me laugh no matter how many times I watch it.

"You know what your problem is?  Chastity Pariah"
"*gasp* I thought that cleared up"
Available here
Image from www.impawards.com

When her great aunt Morgana passes away, she leaves her sweet ex-tv-show-host niece Elvira her small-town gothic mansion, her poodle Algonquin, and a whole heap of trouble.  Elvira has a great headlining act she wants to open in Las Vegas, but she desperately needs $50,000 to bankroll it.  If only she could sell that house!  Unfortunately, things aren't as simple as they seem in sleepy little Falwell, MA.

Just watch the trailer:

This is definitely a fun-for-fun's-sake movie, and Cassandra Peterson constantly delivers the one-liners and double entendres, having perfected her character for years as the queen of late night B-movie horror flicks.

I can't recommend it enough.  Christ, it's a good movie!

So, Apparently This Is A Thing Now...

...a disgusting, disgusting thing - I feel like I need to rinse my mouth out just from looking at the sign.
Spotted at the concession stand of our local IMAX theater - no, I didn't try them.

Funny What You See On TV

I left the tv on the other day while I was working around the house.  At one point I walked into the room and saw this, so I had to back it up and make a short video of it.  :)

Movie Day At Home

I made a big batch of homemade Texas Trash (spicy chex mix; recipe below) and we just let whatever came on tv flow through us:  Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, St. Vincent, It's a Wonderful Life, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch. It was a good day. 

Texas Trash

6 cups corn Chex

6 cups rice Chex

4 cups wheat Chex

3 cups pretzel sticks (preferably broken in half, but not necessary)

2 1/2 cups peanuts

2 cups Cheerios

3/4 cup butter - melted

5 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

1 tablespoon seasoned salt

1 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon onion powder

1/2 - 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (to taste)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.

Combine cereal, pretzels and peanuts in a large roasting pan.

Melt the butter, then add the spices to the butter. Mix well.

Drizzle the butter mixture over the dry ingredients, then toss to coat evenly - best if done by hand.

Bake for 1 hour, stirring thoroughly every 15 minutes. Enjoy while it's warm if you like, but allow to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.  Enjoy!

L.A. Trip - Day 8: E.T. And The L.A. Philharmonic At The Hollywood Bowl

Just like everything else in L.A., there's extremely limited parking for the Hollywood Bowl.  So we headed back to Hollywood & Highland again to catch a shuttle - for $6 each round trip, it was definitely the way to go (because parking at the Bowl was a nightmare).  We got parked and it took us a minute to find the shuttle pick-up area.  When we did find it there was already a shuttle bus waiting which quickly filled.

This is the scene outside the Bowl.  Yes, that is someone just getting out of the car in the middle of the intersection as two officers "direct" traffic.

The Peanuts Movie

My new desktop wallpaper:

The Peanuts Movie

Check out the trailer and other photos/videos/posters/shop at http://www.peanutsmovie.com.

When I was in elementary school I would repeatedly, and I mean repeatedly, check out the hardcover Peanuts comic strip books from the school library.  It's from those books that I learned what the words "quaff" and "sarcasm" meant.  I also had my own books (I don't know how many times I read "It Was a Dark and Stormy Night".  I had a Peanuts bedspread, puzzles, and one of these:

"Melted plastic popcorn" Snoopy.  In a dark room your could shine a flashlight through it and it would project "stars" through all the little holes.  Photo via Pinterest.

Robot & Frank

Just finished watching Robot & Frank from my Netflix queue.  To be honest, I wasn't too excited to watch it, as I thought it would be way too schmaltzy.

It was actually really good.  Frank Langella was terrific and the rest of the cast included Susan Sarandon, Liv Tyler and James Marsden.  I highly recommend it.

Them!

Thought it was just due to the rain, but they're all over both bathrooms and in the kitchen now.  Have people coming to spray tomorrow.

Love this movie though, have ever since I was a kid - Them!

Take Shelter

Just finished watching the movie Take Shelter. Very good. Another film I would recommend (together with Melancholia) if you want to watch a truly unique vision of how individuals might act if they thought they knew the end was coming.

Ho Hum Prometheus

Saw Prometheus. It. Was. Ok. Great filmmaking. Good story. Good scenes and set pieces. Not enough time given to character development and motivation, plus scenes are disjointed with no lasting emotional resonance from one to the other. I was also shocked at the number of standard interplanetary health and safety precautions the "doctors" violated and the speed with which they violated them (I'm not that big of a nerd, but everyone knows not to take your helmet off and handle alien biological material at the same time).  It's a good movie, but if Ridley Scott had put 30 more minutes into it getting me to connect to the characters it would have been great.

Prometheus

Prometheus tonight in IMAX 3D. So. Very. Excited.

My Favorite Things - Part 2

Some of my favorite movies:

Gosford Park
I could watch this movie every week and not get tired of it. The inner workings of a shooting party at an English country manor are on display in Robert Altman's film. The murder/mystery plot is an excellent vehicle to deliver fully fleshed-out characters, expertly portraying the roles and relationships of the house's staff and guests.

L.A. Story
Steve Martin is a genius, and one whose talents are not solely relegated to comedy. While L.A. Story is a great, smart, silly comedy, it's also a magical and powerful love story. The love on the screen is equally shared for his co-star and ex-wife Victoria Tennant, and for the city itself. You'll laugh and cry; the latter mostly caused by the former.

Amelie
I was already a fan of director Jean-Pierre Jeunet from his beyond-excellent film, The City of Lost Children. Amelie is his masterwork. This is the Parisian version of L.A. Story; no less magical, powerful or wonderful than its American cousin.

The Fountain
Darren Aronofsky's film was originally set to have a much larger budget and much larger stars, but that would have resulted in a much different film, which I am thankful didn't happen. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz's love spans a millennium as he goes beyond the ends of the earth to save her. History, science and science fiction come together to tell the story of a man determined and devoted to keep his world from falling apart. Aronofsky would go on to direct The Black Swan.

The Fall
A dark motivation drives a visually striking fairy tale. A hospitalized, suicidal stunt man creates a vivid, fantastic story for a young girl as an enticement to garner her assistance in his demise. The juxtaposition of the real world and the main character's motives/manipulation compared to the fantasy world of the story and the girl's innocence makes the film emotionally complex. The child actress is perfect at being a child instead of an actress, which causes extreme emotional empathy at the film's/story's climax.

Blades of Glory
Pure silliness. I laugh hard whenever I watch this movie. Two disgraced male figure skaters with opposite personalities find a loophole that will allow them to compete again as a same-sex pairs team. Aside from his Saturday Night Live work, I'm not really a Will Ferrell fan, but he is outstanding in this film and Stranger than Fiction.

A Nun's Story
Audrey Hepburn as a young woman entering the convent and attempting to adhere to its ways and habits (get it? nyuk, nyuk) while struggling with her own personal desires. A serious movie treated with dignity and respect.

Young Frankenstein
Talk about comic genius! Mel Brooks and Gene Wilder and Marty Feldman and Cloris Leachman and Teri Garr and Madeline Kahn. Ridiculous and sublime.

Kwaidan
A collection of Japanese ghost stories filmed with minimal dialogue and mostly subtle dread. Released in 1964 and available as a Criterion Collection dvd.

Brazil
Terry Gilliam's masterful futuristic black comedy fantasy of bureaucracy gone wrong. Well, much more wrong than is customary. In addition the film shows the dangerous things that can happen when you start believing in yourself and pursuing your dreams.

Signs
It's a shame what M. Night Shyamalan did to his career after this movie, but oh well. (The Village was mostly decent). Signs is a dark lesson in faith brought on by an alien invasion. The impending dread leading up to the invasion is masterful. With some truly terrifying moments allowing the viewer to actually experience what it would feel like to know, not necessarily to see, but to know that malevolent aliens or monsters were within a stone's throw, watching and waiting.

Contact
On its surface Contact is a film about discovering that we are not alone. Jodie Foster is a SETI (look it up) researcher who discovers a signal, and creepily, instructions, from another galaxy. The quest to decipher the signal and whether or not we should follow those directions inform the rest of the film. At its heart, the movie is about the dichotomy of belief into faith versus science, and explores each with an intelligence not seen before in film.

Ok, I could go on and on, but this was originally only meant to be a top 3 or top 5 list. Instead it's the top 12 of ? I'll have to break this into installments.

Attack the Block

Here's a pic.

Caffeine Is A Drug

Had caffeinated coffee this morning - now I'm flying. I don't know what drugs are like, but if you do them you should just try switching to decaf coffee for a while then have two large cups of fully leaded. It will put you over the moon.

On a side note, I highly recommend the British alien invasion movie Attack the Block. Watched it last night and it was a lot of fun.