A few words about some movies and a book

I wrote three more articles recently for Sequart. The first one delves into why Pretty in Pink still resonates with audiences thirty years after its release. The second looks at life lessons from the ridiculously underrated Michael Keaton flick The Paper. The third is my exploration of the key themes in Stephen King's novel The Shining and how Stanley Kubrick took the film in some other directions.

I wrote about The Shining after finishing the book a week or so ago. I've read plenty of King's books over the years but had avoided that one due to my immense respect and love for Kubrick's film. I always thought that King's book couldn't compare—even though it's the source material and that's a fairly backwards way to look at this. Silly me. The book is definitely one of King's best, at least that I've read (my favorites remain Salem's Lot, The Stand, and all of the Dark Tower books). It was a trip reading this book after becoming a parent, too. It's really all about the dark underside of families and how even parents with the best intentions can feel frustration in their weakest moments. Hopefully not to the level of, you know, chasing your kid through a haunted hotel with an ax (in the movie) or a mallet (in the book). That's just unseemly.

Great book, great movie. Happy to have read it finally. Now I've moved on to reading Garth Ennis's Preacher and my goal is to burn through the entire run of the series (thank you, public library for having them all!) before the AMC show starring Dominic Cooper starts this spring. We'll see how that goes. Maybe I'll even write about it.

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All I Want For Christmas: Phoebe Cates's Monologue in Gremlins

Joe Dante's 1980s classic Gremlins will always be a subversive Christmas favorite. From Spike exploding in the microwave to Mrs. Daigle's "stairlift to hell", the movie is packed with deliciously transgressive moments that turn the holly jolly season right on its ear. None are more memorable, though, than Phoebe Cates delivering her legendary "worst thing that ever happened to me on Christmas" monologue. It's a jaw-dropping, tour-de-force moment, a truly horrific story that's also one of the most darkly comic moments in Christmas movie history. Cates really shines during this scene. There's no denying just how seminal that scene of hers in Fast Times at Ridgemont High was for a generation of young people, but her speech in Gremlins is equally important and a wonderful showcase for her serious and comedic acting skills. Here's the speech, in its entirety. No Christmas season is complete without at least one viewing ...

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Margot Kidder and the Childhood Crush That Will Never Die

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"Opium Wars" by Zoe Lund

She wants there to be more of her. More space taken by her body, More decibels conquered by her voice, More time by her wakefulness, More equations by her addition. She wants more, I want less. Her blade is rusty, musty, sweaty and vain. I like it clean and sharp and dark-bright. She traffics in surplus, I bare my essentials. Her world is elastic but brittle. Mine is bony but moonlit. Hers flows, she ebbs. Mine ebbs, I flow. She dies in life, I live in death. —Zoe Lund, “Opium Wars”

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Double Feature: Michelle Pfieffer and Al Pacino

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