#3: The Master of Suspense

I don’t really know how it started – but it probably began late at night – technically early morning. I have no idea why I was still up, but I was flipping through my meager number of channels, looking for something to watch for a short while. The only thing on besides infomercials must have been the old movie on CBC – a blonde woman with an updo, sitting in a boat, “crossing” a body of water – an obviously fake background, but hey, old movie, whatever. It all seems so benign – that is, until a seagull swoops down and takes a nice nummy swatch of skin from her forehead. Okay. Weird. But cool. Enough to make me look up just what movie I was watching. And I decided then that – next chance I got – I’d rent The Birds and give it a proper watch. That’s when I started loving Alfred Hitchcock films.

This appreciation of Hitchcock is something I can’t quite explain. When it comes to movies, for the most part, I’m a fantasy/sci-fi junkie – I like being sent to worlds I can’t visit on my own. I’m also not a fan of horror movies – I haven’t seen many, but I feel the ones I have were poorly acted, predicable, and a sorry excuse to spew blood and gore all over the screen. But Hitchcock movies are different somehow. Yes, they’re older, and therefore more strictly censored. In a way, though, that makes them better. They’re all about what you don’t know and what you can’t see – and what you make up in your head about what’s really happening is far more intriguing (and sometimes terrifying) than anything that could be splashed across the screen. I also believe these films were made in a time when movies weren’t just produced for profit, and directed by a man who planned everything so meticulously and thought everything out so well that the final product is nothing short of classic – and something everyone should see.

I haven’t seen every Hitchcock film out there – not even close – but I’m working on it. In the time being, though, you might want to check out these ones yourself:

#2: Hearts, Keys and Paopus, SOLDIERs and Weird Moons

Originally Posted: December 3, 2009

The 1st Day

It was otherwise an obscenely boring day, but I remember it quite clearly. My parents were shopping for a clothes dryer. My brother and I were tired of watching them do so. So we trekked down to Zellers and went video game shopping. He bought Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, I bought Kingdom Hearts – my first real video game purchase since my SNES days. You see, my other brother had just gotten himself a brand spanking new PS2 – and for the most part, we don’t share tastes in video games, so if I wanted to end my six-year video game drought, I had to find something of my own to play. And to a 16-year-old Disney freak, Kingdom Hearts seemed like a safe bet.

On my first day playing it, though, I was a bit apprehensive. Who were all these androgynous anime-esque characters with weird names? Where were all my beloved Disney characters? And why the HECK won’t they let me off this stupid island? It took a little while, but eventually I got what I came for – and so much more.

#1: In My Fortress of Solitude...

Original Post Date: September 12, 2009

The first thing you should know is that I’m not a rabid comic book geek. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read a single superhero comic book in my life. What I did do, however, is see the original Superman movies near the end of junior high – probably the summer of 2000. Superman III and IV were crap, but the original movie was awesome (especially given its age – though admittedly the 70s corniness occasionally shines through), and Superman II became my favourite superhero movie ever (remember, this was before 9/11 and the sudden influx of superhero movies that followed). I don’t know why I ended up liking Superman in particular (especially given the existence of Tim Burton’s Batman and the illogic of Superman being able to hide his identity with ugly glasses), but for some reason, I did.

Aiding and abetting this (at the time) infatuation, was Smallville, which showed up on TV in Fall 2001. Superman in high school – and gee whiz, I’m starting high school too (I love teenage logic)! It was pretty much love at first sight, and looking back, the first season wasn’t all that bad (as first seasons go). Clark likes Lana Lang, Clark can’t have Lana Lang because Lana Lang’s with Whitney Fordman (and she wears a kryptonite necklace – you can see what that would lead to), Whitney Fordman hates Clark, Lex Luthor likes Clark a bit too much, Chloe Sullivan and Pete Ross are oblivious meteor-freak magnets that Clark constantly has to save – and round and round we go. It was shallow and repetitive fare, but it was good shallow and repetitive fare.

Ambling Preely – A Preamble

I started making posts like these way back in September in my Facebook Notes, then realized that I really didn't have a very wide audience in that arena. Though I'll keep up the tradition there, I figured I could expand my horizons (and – fingers crossed – get a few more readers) here. So, without further ado – my purpose, my mission, the reason why we're all (more or less) here:

The Original Preamble:

I’ve seen a few other people try this in their notes – write about something that could be considered trivial but matters to a greater or lesser extent to them – blogging, I guess. As a stewing pot of mounds of useless trivia, I think about less-than-important things all the time, and yet I usually have no sounding board for these random thoughts, so I tend to drive myself crazy batting them about all day long until I find a listening ear who may – or, usually, may not – know what the heck I’m getting all excited about.

So… this is supposed to be not only for my benefit, but also for yours. It’s unbelievably frustrating to discover wonderful obscure things out in the big wide world that – it seems – no one else has heard of and/or no one else cares one lick about. People usually don’t know what they’re missing, and I hate when they end up missing out. So whenever I find something amazing (and bear with me, amazing usually means some sort of sci-fi/fantasy thing that reeks of geek – but NOT always) that I think other people should have a look at, I’m going to talk about it here. So even if you aren’t as over the moon about the subject at hand as I am, please be supportive, give it a read, and leave a comment so I feel like I’m actually accomplishing something while I waste time. ;->

On with the show.