Screwball

By and large, I often find that I like old movies more than I like new movies. Old movies took risks, showed flair, and didn't rely on computer generated anything. New movies are formulaic and, as a general rule, the only flair they show is visual and computer generated.

And then we have the old Hollywood tradition of the 'Screwball Comedy'. These are the fast-paced ones where no-one stands still for longer than three seconds, people are talking over each other, and there's often a romantic subplot.

These I tend to avoid - both old and new - because the sense of humour usually relies on one's ability to suspend disbelief to the point where one accepts that such a collection of idiots could ever exist. They aren't representative of the real world, they're not even a caricature of the real world - they're way beyond that level of craziness. The new ones are broadly better than the old ones, simply through better pacing. I can't often watch these movies because I tend not to laugh... either the humour isn't there, or it's the sort of thing I might have found funny as a teenager, but not now.

And yet one of the movies in my birthday present Cary Grant collection was a 'screwball comedy' by the name of Bringing Up Baby. Cary Grant is a guarantee of value and quality, right? And his co-star was Katherine Hepburn, so it should be awesome, right?

How can I put this?

It seems that this is considered "one of the greatest screwball comedies ever made" but, whether it's the fault of the writers (not so much in terms of dialogue, which is occasionally pretty good, just poorly executed, but the plot itself is ridiculously implausible), the director (although Howard Hawks is responsible for some true classics) or, God forbid, the cast (and I don't just mean the two stars - everyone is uniformly terrible), I actually hated this movie, and I rarely hate movies.

Let me set the scene: A zoologist (Grant) is putting together a Bronosaurus skeleton, but one key bone is missing (count the number of times the phrase 'intercostal clavicle' is spoken in the movie). 'Tomorrow', he is set to marry his fiancée, but almost immediately there's an obvious problem: He hints that he wants children, she believes his work is everything and that no domestic entanglements should interfere (quite the turnaround!). They are trying to secure a $1M grant from some rich person, and the zoologist has to play golf with the potential donor to grease the wheels...

...Only that's not the donor, it's a legal representative of the donor and, while on the golf course, the zoologist runs into a woman (Hepburn) who could generously be described as 'eccentric' or, more accurately as 'dangerously insane'. It starts off small: she mistakes his golf ball for hers (and really doesn't see why it should matter if she's playing the wrong ball)... Then she mistakes his car for hers, and drives off with it (something similar happens later on, forcing me to wonder if car theft could possibly have been that easy in those days). She later turns up in the restaurant where the zoologist is due to have dinner with the donor's representative and causes further chaos by mistakenly walking off with another woman's purse, then handing it to the zoologist, causing an arguement to erupt between him, a psychiatrist and his wife...

...And it just gets worse from there. Somewhere along the lines, the missing Brontosaurus bone turns up, then gets buried and lost by a dog. The titular 'Baby' is a very tame leopard, mistakenly received by Hepburn's character when it's intended for her rich aunt (who turns out to be the mysterious potential donor). Then a very aggressive leopard is taken from a nearby circus to be destroyed because it's caused too much trouble... but gets released and then lost by Hepburn's character because she's mistaken it for her leopard. This is that moment when someone normally says "hilarity ensues"...

Essentially, we are expected to believe not only in 'love at first sight' (which I can manage, jaded though I am), but that the pathalogical lying and blatant disregard for others exhibited by the 'eccentric' is somehow made acceptable because she's fallen instantly in love with the bumbling zoologist with whom she's only ever argued... and then that, in spite of everything, he's just daft enough to believe that a couple of nightmarish days, in which it's been implied that he's a stalker, that he's insane, he's been arrested, and generally inconvenienced at every step by this woman, that he'll realise that it's the most fun he's ever had, and that he should ditch his fiancée and take up with the nutter.

It's one of those films where no-one lets anyone else finish a sentence, and I was frequently left begging the characters on screen to, just once, please, listen to what the other person is saying. The whole sequence in the police station was utterly infuriating, with a Police Constable (somehow equivalent to the sheriff, in that he's elected, it seems) who doesn't believe anything anyone tells him unless he hears it over the telephone. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd ended up arresting the entire town for not being who they claimed to be.

The whole thing is a sequence of irrational mistakes, misunderstandings, unbelievable coincidences and outright lies that make virtually no sense. I guess there has to be one duffer in every collection and, with barely a single truly funny scene (there was one line that almost raised a smile, if only through Grant's exasperated delivery) Bringing Up Baby would seem to be the one for this collection.

It's kind of a shame, because my friend had hoped to find a collection that featured something like North By Northwest... and that would have been a worthier addition to this collection than Bringing Up Baby.

Oh well... Time to get on and do something constructive, I guess...

Muggy

The weather in my Birthday month tends to be pretty grim. In fact, it's a very unusual year when it doesn't rain on the day. Yesterday was about the first properly summery day this month, while today is overcast, and frequently showery.

Some of those showers have been quite heavy, though all of them have been mercifully brief. In between showers, I have managed to empty my bins and complete my restocking (mostly) but, for the most part, I've been wanting to stay indoors, despite the heat and humidity.

I'm not sure whether it's me, or just the buildings I've inhabited, but the interiors always seem to be hotter than the exteriors on a hot day, and colder than the exteriors on a cold day. I'm sure there's some scientific formula to explain this phenomenon, but it's a real pest...

My burn is progressing nicely... if that's the right word. Having stuck a plaster over it to keep it safe while I slept, I removed the plaster this morning to find it had stuck to the wound. As I peeled it off, the damned thing started bleeding - which is the one thing it hadn't done up until this morning. I'm also finding that index finger isn't as flexible as the rest... and I'm hoping that's just because of the state the wound is in... if it heals up and I'm still not as flexible, it could get troublesome...

It Would Appear...

...That my conscious foolishness is exceeded only by my unconscious insanity: While sleeping last night, I decided to tear open the blister on my left index finger. When I woke up immediately afterward, it didn't feel too bad, but by the time I got up, it looked kind of raw and nasty underneath.

And it's not exactly comfortable, either...

In its own special way, this is probably even more daft than that time I woke up smacking my head against the pillow and found I'd given myself a bleeding nose, many years ago. No blood with this, but... what kind of fuckwit tears open a burn blister?

Foolishness

OK, be honest: What kind of moron, with a massive burn blister on an index finger, would decide that it was a good idea to start fiddling around with a TransFormer that was covered in square-edged panels?

While larking about with one from the new movie, I realised that something felt... wet. It didn't take me long to realise that meant I'd sliced open the blister... and, really, I mean sliced open - no mere prick here. There's an opening about 3mm long, and the damned thing just keeps seeping.

It doesn't look bad, or feel bad... it's just rather damp. Hopefully it's still on the way to healing, and it'll only take a couple of days to sort itself out.

Spoke Too Soon

When I said yesterday's scalding incident wasn't serious, I probably should have kept an eye on my fingers for a little longer. Before I went to bed, the burn on my index finger had started to balloon, and it's even more noticeable today...

From around 9am


From around 2.30pm

I'm pretty sure the blistering barely changed overnight, but over the space of about five and a half hours, while I've been pottering about, the index finger blister has filled completely, while the tiny one on my middle finger has faded. My index finger is quite uncomfortable, and typing is a little irritating... but it could have been a lot worse.

And, let's face it, I've had only a couple of self-inflicted burns in my entire life, and only a couple inflicted upon me, all minor. The two that were my fault were molten sulpher in GCSE Chemistry (so, about 20-25 years ago) and this one (chocolate sauce, fresh from the microwave)... and that probably says a whole lot about me. The two that were not my fault were an accident in my A-Level Chemistry Practical exam (the teacher/invigilator decided to interfere, and moved my Bunsen burner just at the wrong moment, but it only resulted in the loss of some hair from my hand) and a deliberate act with a cigarette by a former colleague (while out clubbing - he didn't actually intend to burn me, but he was holding the cigarette a bit too close to the back of my neck). That says more about those responsible, I guess...

Good Luck : Bad Luck

Still not quite back into the blogging frame of mind... Turned 37 during last week, too... Wow.

So, today was a bit mixed. Started out well enough, with a trip down the road to restock my cupboards and fridge, and my return to the flat coinciding with the postman's arrival. He had nothing for me - my two birthday cards arrived last week - but, returning home after my second local shopping trip, I chanced to spy the ParcelForce delivery man.

On my first trip out, I found a ParcelForce delivery card downstairs, alerting me to the fact that they'd tried to deliver yesterday (but I hadn't let them in because I wasn't expecting my buzzer to go at 5pm, so I didn't bother answering it), so I intended to stick around at home as much as possible, getting all my shopping done early, and locally. When I saw this guy returning to his van, carrying a package, I gave chase... In a way, it was kind of like those moments in movies where the hero sees his quarry in the busy streets, and drops everything to give chase... Only I didn't drop everything (£20 worth of food shopping? Are you kidding?), I didn't have to run far to catch him in his van and, at around 11.30am, the suburban streets of my locale were hardly busy.

Producing the delivery card was not enough to prove my identity, however, so he had to follow me back up to the flat - opening my front door was proof enough, thankfully! - before handing over my package... Which turned out to be one of this year's TransFormers Collectors' Club exclusives - Animated TransTech Cheetor.

He's pretty darned cool, but a couple of things let it down: The head mold is quite good, full of character, but the lack of black linework means it doesn't quite look as 'Animated' as it deserves to... and the socket for the neck's ball joint is far too near the chin, so he doesn't have the same extent of protruding chin as the artwork. Still, the Animated Blurr mold was an excellent choice - being, as it was, somewhat derived from the designs for TransTech Cheetor - and the colourscheme is a nice middle-ground between the Animated stylings and Cheetor's Beast Wars/Beast Machines appearance. I wasn't interested in yet another Classics Seeker, so I didn't bother ordering G2 Ramjet (the garish colourscheme was another dealbreaker) and wasn't sorry about that even after it sold out... This is one Exclusive that's definitely worth having, though.

Despite having received this package, I decided not to venture out again, though I still need to restock in a couple of areas of my fridge. Instead, I watched a couple of films from the collections I was given as a birthday present by a friend.

Charade, starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, is an excellent thriller... it seems to have served as a template to many more recent movies which have lacked both the charisma of Charade's leads and the complexity of its central double-cross. It's rare that a contemporary thriller will keep me guessing past the first five minutes. Charade actually kept me guessing right up to the end - it's a very involving story made all the more charming by the brilliant performances of Grant and Hepburn and, despite being an out-and-out thriller, it has a sense of humour that was perfect for its time and which is sadly lacking from Hollywood's more recent output. The oddest thing about the Cary Grant collection I got is that two of the three movies I've watched (from a total of four) aren't billed as Cary Grant movies - he's playing second fiddle to Mae West in one, and Doris Day in the other, and the DVD menus haven't even been altered from their respective collections.

The Seven Year Itch is - I'm embarrassed to say - only the fourth Marilyn Monroe film I've ever seen... I have caught Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and River Of No Return on TV while I've been home, and watched another movie from this same DVD collection - How To Marry A Millionaire - earlier this week. She was clearly a fantastic actress, above and beyond her breathy bombshell roles, and had good comic timing. One of the special features on the disc includes an interview with the writer of the stage version, who opines that casting Marilyn Monroe in the film switched the focus of the story away from the adulterous man (except he's not in the movie version, thanks to the censors) to the object of his desires. I'd have to disagree... Tom Ewell does a brilliant job, and makes me wish I'd been around to see the stage version.

I've been generally distracted lately, not really focussing on anything as much as I should, and it was only a matter of time before I was going to suffer for it... This evening, while serving up my dessert - a chocolate orange sponge thing straight from the microwave - I managed to spill some of its red hot sauce on my finger. I got it under the cold tap quickly enough to prevent any serious scalding, but there is a very red patch just behind the fingernail of my left index finger... and, while it doesn't hurt, it's not exactly comfortable...

Not So Much A Recurring Dream...

...As a recurring situation within a dream.

Imagine, if you will, a disparate group of people who meet in the home of one of the group. They're not friends, as such, but perhaps share a common interest... Though no-one may know what that is, necessarily. Inevitably, tensions arise between some members of this group. Some members may actually be dangerously insane.

On at least two occasions, I've found myself dreaming of just such a group. In that group, there is one guy who, for the most part, remains silent. Woe betide you, however, should you try to gain his attention, or if he engages you. The first time I dreamed of this group, I was on the periphery, and not really noticed. I don't remember who was the focus of his attention - none of the other characters really did much - but that attention was threatening, edging toward violence.

This time, however, he decided he liked the look of my (nondescript, Timex Expedition) watch, and removed it from my wrist. I objected, wanted it back and so, by way of 'compensation', he offered me a bracelet that could have been made from shark's teeth. I recalled that he'd mentioned at a previous 'meeting' that this bracelet had been a gift from his brother, so I demurred... surely it had sentimental value?

He got up and left the room, seeking "a second opinion", since he felt his offer was wholly appropriate and generous but, in 'the other room', I could hear him ranting, eventually reaching the conclusion that perhaps he should just kill me.

Naturally, at this point, I started weighing up my escape options. I'd have to pass by that room to reach the exit, then there was a long walk (or, more likely, flat-out run) down the road to properly escape. I was basically terrified (though outwardly behaving as if I couldn't hear any of the conversation going on in 'the other room'), certain in my belief that, while I didn't know this guy, based on my previous encounters, he was perfectly capable of flipping out to the extent that he might actually do someone physical harm.

Over a very basic wristwatch.

Just because he'd taken a fancy to it, or simply wanted to assert his superiority.

In the end, I just woke up, but was left feeling uncomfortable enough that I didn't want to go back to sleep.

I did, though... and then got up earlier than I have in a long time (except perhaps last Sunday), showered, did the washing up, then started my laundry.

And it's not even 9.30am