Orphan: Orphanarium, Part Deux

One of the first movies I blogged about was the Spanish horror film The Orphanage. So it's only fitting to make my last movie blog about the new horror movie The Orphan. Except, of course that this has no connection with that Spanish film, and I'm not going to stop blogging as far as I know.

Other than that, there's a real poetry here.

Let me just say up front that this is a really, really solid horror flick. I mean, great. Up there with Drag Me To Hell but completely the opposite in tone: Deadly serious.

There was one problem, however: It's mid-summer, it's a horror film, which means it's hard to see it without there being a large percentage of assholes in the audience. And our showing had more than the usual amount. It's always male teens, of course, whose concept of masculinity is so poor, they feel compelled to prove it by "acting tough" during a horror movie. Half the audience was texting, too.

Really, I should have known better. And I do, but I forget because I'm not all that tied into "summer" and I usually go to the local art house where the big peril is the old folks.

Anyway, back to the movie. This is part of the "Bad Seed" genre, where a young couple (the annoyingly familiar-but-not-quite-identifiable-to-me Peter Sarsgaard and Vera Farmiger) go to adopt a child to compensate for a recent stillborn.

There they meet the delightful Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman) who makes rather good oil paintings and sings old show tunes, while not really blending in with the other kids. John and Kate (yes, that is the parents' names) decide to adopt this quirky kid and bring her home.

Where she immediately sets about killing all who stand in her way. OK, not really. In fact, the initial treatment she receives from her peers (and older brother) is pretty awful. Still, you're not quite sympathetic because she really does come across as malevolent.

The movie escalates bit-by-bit as Esther reveals more of her true nature and is required to take more and more drastic means to cover up her crimes. She's also clearly driving a wedge between John and Kate.

You know, I dislike this genre almost as much as I dislike "House of Usher"-type movies (i.e., movies where it's apparent from the start that the characters are doomed); I think it's kind of a cheap shot to jeopardize children and put them in the position of evildoers. (Roger Ebert, who gave this movie 3.5 stars said something similar about the late Gene Siskel. I think it's kind of sweet of him to bring his old partner up.)

Yet, this is a genuinely great horror flick; It manages to present many of the common genre tropes (murderous children, weird sexual overtones, etc) but without falling into the merely unpleasant or icky--the usual fate of such films.

Yes, there is a twist to this film. It occurred to me almost immediately but the movie rather adroitly made me forget about it until about the third act, by which time there were only a few ways the story could go and still make sense. Often after the big reveal, horror movies kind of peter out and coast along, but this one kept going right up to the very last moment.

A huge amount of credit has to go to the young actress playing Esther. (Sure, her Russian accent comes and goes, but it would in real-life, too.) Alternately beautiful and charming, and cold and psychopathic, she bears the brunt of conveying the horror. Kate must be believably menaced by Esther, and this comes off nicely, though the script gets a lot of credit there for not relying too heavily on any particular trope.

That is, when you have a menacing child, there are only a few ways to go to string the movie out, and this one hits them all, but none of them ridiculously hard. Farmiga is not entirely credible due to past history, but the movie doesn't rest solely on that. And she realizes Esther is off in a serious way, but not one that would justify drastic measures until the end. And then there's the whole social issue of "troubled children".

Again, that very delicate balancing act of "well, that's creepy" versus "well, that's just downright unpleasant".

Also true of Sarsgaard, who must be the bland, committed father who is unaware that he's being manipulated by his new daughter. (All fathers are manipulated, of course, it's just the unaware part that's bad. Heh.) Margo Martindale ("Dexter"'s woman in search of the perfect key-lime pie) plays the dull, easily manipulated psychiatrist--sort of a mandatory part for this kind of movie--infuriatingly convcingly.

The siblings (Jimmy Bennet, Aryana Engineer) do an excellent job as well. Interactions with other children are another way that these movies can go off the rails, but the dynamics are handled excellently and rather lightly, in the sense that the movies stays especially focused on Kate and Esther, rather than Esther and her siblings.

A lot of care and thought went into lighting, shooting, music, editing--nothing looks "phoned in". All-in-all, a very watchable horror flick. Not super-violent, but nonetheless very "adult themed"--not for kids. Two hours long, too, without feeling as long as some 90 minute horrors I've seen.

The Boy commented that he wasn't into it--I think he was especially distracted by the jackasses in the audience--but that it kept drawing him back in. That's about right. The movie really did overcome the bad audience.

Director Jaume Collet-Serra and writers David Johnson and Alex Mace don't have much in the way of credits, and at this point in my life I'm inclined to regard this film as kind of a fluke where everything comes together just so. Nonetheless, I'll be watching to see what they do next to see if they can duplicate their success here.

This joins the ranks of our "Best of 2009": The Brothers Bloom, Up and Drag Me To Hell--and it lacks the last's lame horror ending. So, you know: Check it out.

Conversations From The Living Room, Part 21: What, me, contrary?

Me: How about we watch Lilo and Stitch?
The Barbarienne: I hate that movie!
Me: You've never seen it!
The Barbarienne: I hate it!
[I cue it up anyway. The Barb watches entranced.]
[Half-way through.]
Me: So, do you like this movie?
[She shakes her head "No."]
[Movie ends.]
Me: Do you still hate this movie?
[She nods.]
Me: Should we watch it again?
[She nods.]

Kevin Smith and The Haters of Twilight

I follow Kevin Smith on Twitter because, well, why the hell not? I like his movies (warts and all, I almost feel obligated to say) and his live talks are simply awesome. (Wait, what are we saying now, Darcy? Superhot awesome sauce?)

Anyway, he's at ComiCon right now and partaking in all the nerdiness therein. (I did go to the L.A. Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror convention as a kid and realized I was not as big a nerd as I thought. And it wasn't fashionable back then.) Anyway, he reports on Twilight fans being booed and points out the stupidity of that on a number of levels. Perhaps the most telling of which is: why the hell do a largely male population want to chase a bunch of teen girls away?

But nerd pride is severe. One simply can't be seen liking the wrong Star* franchise. There's probably some peer pressure but more than that, there's a need to feel better than others. Not just nerds, of course; you see the same thing among sport fans, whether they hate baseball and love football or the other way around.

Smith's certainly not afraid to rip things he doesn't like, so his message of peace across nerd factions struck me as kind of nice. (Especially given that he did take heat for it, and surely knew he would.)

And Away We Go!

I was sort of leaning toward seeing the dark S&M Nazi dissection movie Death In Love, but it seemed really inappropriate for The Boy and the more I looked at it, the more I suspected the few IMDB ratings that put its score in the 8s were from the cast, crew and family members of the cast and crew.

So, instead I took The Boy to see Away We Go, which opens with Burt performing oral sex on Verona.

Oh, well.

In fairness, it's a plot-crucial moment, and more funny than anything else. We learn a lot about the two characters both individually and their relationship with each other. So, it's one of your rare, non-gratuitous oral sex scenes.

It's also cute, as is the whole movie.

I was somewhat reluctant to see this movie, because it was directed by Sam "Taking Out The Trash Is An Existential Crisis" Mendes. And it does scrutinize the whole family thing, as Mendes is wont to do.

But let's scroll back a tick: This is the story of Burt and Verona, a 30-something couple that has just discovered that they're gong to have a baby. Verona's parents are deceased, and Burt's parents (Jeff Daniels and Catherine O'Hara) have chosen this moment to take a two year trip to Antwerp.

Lacking any local support, Burt and Verona are now free to travel about the country in search of some kind of family role model.

That's right people: It's a road picture.

And it works! What's nice is that it doesn't work just because Mendes is a fine director and the actors (Maya Rudolph of Idiocracy and John Kasinski of "The Office") are very believable, but because the characters they're playing are very likable. Flawed, certainly, but very likable.

They doubtless represent a big chunk of the post-Boomer generations, too. With no real imperative to do much of anything, no real parental guidance to speak of, and an unprecedented amount of freedom, Burt and Verona are not the first to realize that they've got a kid coming and they'd better get their act together before it shows up.

Part of what makes them likable, though, is that they begin this long journey in an effort to figure out the best life for their child. And not in a everything-has-to-be-perfect way, but in a what-is-a-family way.

Their journey takes them to a family that just sort of hangs together because, well, that's what families do. They're sort of an unlikable group, but you do feel a kind of empathy for them.

Then we meet Verona's younger sister, who's a bit more adrift than she is. After that, it's Burt's cousin, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal (who reminds us that she's a lot more believable as an insufferable New Age-y shrew than a Assistant D.A.) who nurses her kids well past the usual age, and shares a family bed (and more!) with the kids.

And so it goes. There isn't really a "normal" family here, but that's to be expected. And as awkward and uncomfortable as many of the scenes are, we always have Burt and Verona's ambition to do right by their kid.

This really was a pleasant surprise: lightly humorous, sweet and hopeful. I found myself slightly annoyed by the acoustic guitar folk music that's mandatory in these films, but that was probably more due to the previews leading up to this movie that looked and sounded just like the preview for this movie.

The Boy really liked it, too, way better than Revolutionary Road, and he brings a new understanding to his viewing since he had his movie class. We both agreed that the comedic and other light-hearted aspects made this a more watchable movie. And I thought it actually made the serious parts more profound than the relentless despair of the DiCaprio/Winslet vehicle.

It won't get the plaudits, though, so you'll have to be a little more aggressive if you want to actually catch this one.

Economic Mayhem in America

Years ago I was in a writing group, which was fun and educational. What I learned, primarily, is that there's a good reason most people are unpublished and/or unknown. That reason is usually that they're not very good (and I class myself in that category). But there were other reasons, too.

There were, for example, some excellent poets. But, you know, poetry. Some good writers wrote really unmarketable stuff. One guy wrote a very good episode of "The Golden Girls". (Hard market to break into.) Then there was Paul, who wrote plays.

Paul's play--the one that I read and later he actually managed to put up a few years later--was an interesting look at racial tensions in upstate New York, in which he used a clever device of showing two stories at the same time, where alternating scenes were in the different time frame. (And he cued it in a very plain way, making it easy to follow, which is the real trick.)

He's been doing short films since at least the early '90s, making me look like a schlub, and it looks like now he's taking on the financial situation with his series Economic Mayhem In America. (He's got collaborators, mind you; I don't mean to say it's all him. He's just the guy I know who's involved.)

If you have seven-and-a-half minutes, check it out:

Part 1. (About four minutes)

Part 2. (About three-and-a-half minutes.)

I'm particularly impressed by the technical aspects. There were elements of Public Enemies which were harder to look at. Not bad for $500. (I wonder if that scales: Could he make a feature for $6,000?)

As I said, check it out and forward it, blog it, retweet it, whatever.

Conversations From The Living Room, Part 20: Lord of the Flies

[the Barbarienne has something cupped in her hand]
...
"This is my pet fly!"
[I lean in. She does indeed have a fly in her hand.]
"You do!"
"His name is Jeremy."
...
"Jeremy loves me. Jeremy hates you."
...
"No, Jeremy loves you."
"Good?"

Theory: Obama Is Stupid And Lazy

Now, don't get your knickers in a twist. I don't mean to suggest that the President does not have an average intellect. Possibly even an above-average, though seldom exercised, intellect. I'm not speaking of low IQs here, but of stupidity. (The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential, who work with brain-injured kids are fond of pointing out that there's no cure for stupidity.)

He might even be a genius, though I've really seen nothing from the man to suggest that he's anything more than a competent parroter of other people's words. I don't believe for a second that he actually wrote those books; writers write pretty much all the time. But lack of achievement is no disqualifier of genius. This is neither here nor there.

Because even geniuses can be stupid about things.

Let me see if I can support this potentially controversial theory. See if you can follow my byzantine logic here.

First, I'm going to assume the position that Obama is, more or less, exactly what he seems. A sincere fellow traveler who is not feigning surprise when someone suggests that FDR's wild spending and experimentation didn't actually end the Great Depression.

Therefore, Obama genuinely believes that what he's done and what he's trying to do isn't going to harm the economy, or at least isn't going to harm the economy so badly that it won't rebound against his party in 2010, and himself in 2012. (I don't subscribe to the notion that he's deliberately trying to harm the economy to force us into socialism, as Althouse describes Rush Limbaugh as saying, although I think Teddy Kennedy has expressed such sentiments.)

Let's look at some predictions versus actuality, courtesy of Michael at Innocent Bystanders:
As any smart politician knows, when pitching a plan with such short-term predictions, you predict the worst-case scenario for if your plan doesn't pass, and predict what you think will actually happen with or without your plan.

Get it? That way, if your plan does nothing but line your cronies' pockets and feed the political machine, you'll get credit for the better-than-worst case scenario. And, you know, we're lucky when politicians only line their own pockets versus when they actually try to do something (like push sub-prime mortgage loans, help out banks or provide universal education and health care).

There's no way that he expected to be standing here, mid-summer, with egg on his face.

But, okay, he's a true believer. He thinks government spending--even just the unfocused, delayed throwing of money about--solves problems. That's just ignorance.

But now he's thrown money around. He's "bailed out" various industries. He's seen the effect. He's continuing to push for economy-damaging plans, though, and arguing that they'll actually improve the economy. (Some have argued, because things should be this way, liberals believe they must be this way.)

Now, there's plenty of history to look at here. You can look at the effects of government spending, at the effects of tax cuts, at protectionism, at unions, and you can see what these things do. You can also see these things at work all over the world today.

This is where the stupid comes in. Because in order to take in all this information and use it, you have to be honest. Now, you almost never hear about honesty as a factor in intelligence, but it is. You hear the phrase "intellectual honesty" like there's a difference, but honesty is honesty.

The left loved to attack W as stupid on these same grounds. But rather than talk about him, I think it's more useful to look at Clinton. Clinton followed a similar trajectory, on a longer curve, but he was smart enough to take credit for conservative policies pushed through by his Republican Congress when they worked. He was smart enough to pronounce the era of big government being over.

Now, his motivations may have been entirely selfish. There's no doubt that some modern Presidents seem to look at things in terms of lookin' good for history versus doing what's right. But I doubt very much that he was unaffected by the policies he saw working. (And, gosh, aren't both Clintons awfully quiet on the health care issue?)

Perhaps Obama is just slow: It's hard to give up cherished beliefs no matter how badly they fail in practice, and he'll eventually be forced to confront reality--say, if the nation takes away his majority in 2010.

But my theory is that he'll continue doing what he's doing. No matter how much evidence piles up against his beliefs, he'll stay the course.

That's stupid.

The other half of my perhaps controversial theory is that he's lazy. His idea of work appears to be going on TV to read a speech that someone else wrote. Charges of inexperience abounded in the last election, but even his defenders were at best able to defend him with descriptions of impressive sounding positions he had achieved, rather than things he had actually done.

Not that I don't admire this. I work very hard at being lazy. But apparently being President is a lot of work. You have to study constantly. Protocols, histories, and all manner of things from massive industries to peculiar local customs. Any time you take off gets scrutinized--even if you're not taking time off, but working remotely. (Well, okay, Obama's not a Republican so he doesn't have to worry about that.)

But I haven't seen any indication that he's done any of this homework. In fact, a great many of the gaffes we've seen--like running out and getting the British PM a bunch of DVDs he wouldn't like and couldn't use--just seem to come from not having bothered to study.

The more serious problems, like the business of pushing through laws no one has read, seem to come from relying on lawmakers' competence and general good-hearted, fellow traveler status.

I mean, in order to ram through a bill like the unwritten health care laws, you have to have a whopping faith in some unnamed lawmaker to write a clear and cogent description of a hugely complex and detailed area of society. Or you have to just not care.

And that's just stupid. And lazy.

But we should be grateful. A truly smart, hard-working socialist (or communist, why split hairs?) would have cut the payroll tax, slashed regulation, changed the mark-t0-market rules and "saved" the economy. (The government, of course, is the biggest suppressor of the economy, so it can "save" it by backing off.)

When the economy rebounded, our smart, hard-working politico would have pretty much free rein to set up whatever he wanted. Who would have the mojo to challenge him?

Kind of a chilling thought. But maybe it's not always a bad thing that politics seeks destructive, short-term solutions.

UPDATE #1: Evidence in support of my theory provided on July 22nd, 2009. Obama has a press conference to bolster his health care plan in which he takes the opportunity to call the Cambridge Police stupid--after saying he didn't know all the facts in the case. He had to have believed that this was going to boost his popularity. What's more, since he arranged all the questions in advance, he had to have specifically picked this topic and worked out his answer in advance on the basis of believing that America shares the far left's contempt for police and wanted to hear that from the President.

I mean, look, I have mixed feelings about the police. On the whole, I thnk they do a good job. But I also think they're often more protective of each other than the job. But I don't want to hear the President weigh in on this! It's almost up there with the President going around to foreign countries to apologize for America's actions. The President is supposed to be an America booster; it's minimum spec for the job!

Misadventures In Homeschooling

"Long ago people were so poor..."
"...they could not afford legs for their pants."

Harry Potter And The Sixth Movie In The Franchise

Well, we're in the homestretch as far as Harry Potter movies go, though the bastards have decided to milk the franchise by splitting the last book into two movies. As if you couldn't possibly do the story justice in 2 1/2 hours, you need a full five to tell it.

But that's a problem for next year. Or the year after that, depending on whether they decide to drag it out even further.

Now, about this latest movie, The Half-Blood Prince. Well, wait, before we get to the latest, I have to assume that you're aware of the whole "Harry Potter" world and its inconsistencies. 'cause the world ain't getting any more consistent. (Like, how, in the fourth movie, all three forbidden curses were performed in a classroom; in this movie, a non-forbidden spell nearly as fatal as the death curse in the fourth one turns up. And an incredibly fatal potion is brewed as a casual class exercise.)

But, really, you should be expecting stuff like that by now.

You should also be expecting this movie to follow the increasingly dark trend the previous four sequels have followed, and it does, big time. The Flower and I have a running gag that started with the biting candy from the fourth movie: "Harry just can't get a break!"

And Harry doesn't get much of a break in this one. It's literally darker, too, with very few bright days, so that even the lighter moments--and there are actually quite a few light-hearted moments, probably more so than in the previous film--still feel like darkness is weighting them down. John Williams' Teddy-Bears-Picnic-esque theme is completely gone, except for some echoes in Nicholas Hoopers' gripping score.

I was somewhat reluctant to take The Flower to see it, in fact, but she brushed off my concerns and really seemed completely unphased throughout the movie. (There's even a bird that dies--or appears to--and she was disappointed by that, but not upset. Maybe she's growing up?)

You should know that there is a major character death in this film. The Flower, apparently wise to the ways of the sci-fi/fantasy/horror story, was fairly confident the character would come back in the next movie. But even when I assured her that the character wasn't coming back--I think that's true--she was okay with it.

Your eight-year-old's mileage may vary. (Of course, if your eight-year-old is frightened, that might offer a respite

Anyway, this darkness is kind of interesting in contrast with the rampant sexuality in the movie. Don't get me wrong: There's nothing graphic about it. The movie is just rife with teenagers and love potions (as if those were necessary), and some light snogging ensues. This also did not trouble the eight-year-old, though she found much of it silly.

Meanwhile, there's a whole lot about this film that is truly excellent. The camerawork is the best of the series. The establishing shots are breathtaking, a few scenes look like they're from Romantic era paintings, and director Yates (on his third Potter film) is increasingly confident. (Or perhaps he's just being given more freedom with his successes in the previous films.)

There's also a lot of richness in this movie. Most of the tedious exposition has been gotten out of the way in the previous five films, and the characters are well-established. The kids are better actors, too, and while the story needs to focus more on the main ones, it's a shame that so many of the peripheral kids are barely in the film. (Never mind the adults, who can now add the great Jim Broadbent to their rolls.)

I'd give a special shout out to Tom Felton (Draco Malfoy) and Bonny Wright (Ginny Weasley) who get some meaty, if not huge, parts they acquit themselves well with. I missed Katie Leung (Cho, from the previous two films) both as an actress and as a character. Did their relationship really end because she was forced to tell about the secret room in the previous movie? Seems unfair.

The action is brisk, too. The movie really flies by, despite the nearly two-and-a-half hour running time (not counting credits). The plot is...well, the plot. It works because the director stays focused on the simplicities as much as possible: Threats large and small abound, and survival is a tenuous thing.

The big reveal is very nearly stupid, however. If you're super-sensitive to spoilers, you may want to skip this paragraph, but what I'm going to "spoil" is the entire basis for all the movies prior to this, at least as I have understood them. Ready?

The big secret Harry uncovers is that Voldemort used some magic to preserve his life even after shuffling off his mortal coil in the battle with Harry's parents. Stunning, eh? Didn't see that coming. If you were Dumbledore. OK, it's a little more detailed than this, but really, given that Voldemort spent the first four movies re-incarnating, you'd think a trivial stroll through the library's Restricted Spell section--a stroll that apparently any kid can take, would've revealed this mystery sometime during the previous 15 years of Harry's life. Or at least the last five years.

As I said, you kind of have to be used to this stuff by now. None of the movies make a lick of sense (and I understand the books aren't much better in that regard). But this movie does leave things in a very precarious spot indeed. Along with a path for resolving those things.

The Flower did not rate it with her favorite, The Prisoner of Azkaban. (She likes it when Harry makes the Aunt blow up like a balloon.) But she wasn't displeased. The Boy liked it, too, though it doesn't comport with his economic sensibilities.

And I liked it, too. I sure wish they weren't splitting the last book in two movies, though.

Conversations From The Living Room, Part 19: If You Don't Know Me By Now

"Of course I will. I'm your Dad. It's my thing. It's what I do."
"I thought not wearing pants was your thing."
...
...
"That, too."

Sugar, Sweat and The Vanishing T-Zone

Our experiments in snake-oil continue apace. The Boy slipped a bit in his adherence to the program, so we've kind of been hanging fire for a couple of weeks. Even so, he's using half the per-meal insulin he was a couple of months ago, and starting to lower his daily insulin.

The interesting thing to me is how exact the predictions have been. Just as predicted, his blood sugar dropped low, and he had to lower his insulin. Then it came back up, so he had to raise it again. Just as predicted, he started spilling sugar in his urine; when it stopped we were to lower his insulin till it started again. And the cycle of stopping and starting was supposed to speed up, which it has done.

He's still not quite in the zone where things are really kicking in, which is a sort of frightening thought. Although diabetics are controlling for high blood sugar, the short-term danger is from low blood sugar, which can happen if his pancreas suddenly starts creating insulin while he's injecting insulin. (We've had a few rather low readings since starting this, but mostly The Boy has been very aware, very cautious and very diligent.)

Meanwhile, I've had a few interesting phenomena arise. My weight's held steady after dropping those 20 pounds (and the doctor looks concerned about me dropping more) though even though my weight hasn't changed in a month, people seem to be noticing more. So, I think something is happening. (I haven't gotten to my mom's gym for a fat test yet.)

On anther front, my "T-Zone" vanished, sort of. This is kind of amusing, because I can't seem to find anyone who remembers the "T-Zone" commercials. If you have oily skin (which I always have) but you have dry skin over your eyes, and down your nose, you have a "T-Zone". I forget what they were advertising, exactly, but it was probably some sort of moisturizer. (No, I didn't do anything about it. Why would a guy care if he had a "T-Zone"?)

Well, mine started getting extreme (as had happened occasionally before) with all kinds of dry, flaky skin, and then, over the course of a week, it started shrinking, until it was sort of an "i-Zone". Now it's just sort of the dot (the tittle, technically speaking) over the lower-case i.

The doc says, "Oh, that's just vitamin A deficiency."

Also, I'm sweating. I've never been a sweater. Em. I've never been one who sweats. I mean, sure, when working out in 100 degree heat in our tiny dojo back before it got A/C, I did some sweating. But not as much as other people by a long shot.

The theory being batted around at the time had to do with playing a lot of sports as a kid and developing your sweat glands at a young age. It's not a crazy thought, really: The body does a lot of things in reaction to activity. (You're not born with hip sockets, for example. They're created by the action of crawling.)

The theory might even be true. But my doctor offered another theory, since she has lots of guys who are suddenly sweating a lot: The body doesn't sweat because it's dehydrated.

Well, duh.

That's one of those things that's so obvious when you think about it, you feel stupid for never having thought of it yourself.

Weirdly, I've written a fair amount of (unpublished) fiction. At one point, when I took stock of what I had written, I became aware of how much I wrote focused on water. People being thirsty or dehydrated. (I even thought at one point of collecting all my water-themed stories together to make a movie.)

Wild, huh?

Even more interesting, according to this program, once you're up to snuff, your body actually makes most of what you need. You only take a couple of calciums (which are not in our foods, unfortunately).

You vs. MacDonald's

One of the homeschoolers I follow on Twitter linked to this analysis of home cooked versus McDonald's burgers on a cost basis, coming to the conclusion that you could make McDonald's burgers more cheaply at home.

In fairness, the guy breaks it down correctly enough to say that you could make 16 burgers more cheaply than you can buy 16 burgers from McDonald's. But then you have to eat 16 burgers. Granted, at that size, you probably could, or a family of six could, anyway--but would you want to?

There's a dual edge to this, too, that makes it kind of a pointless effort. On the one hand, if you're making burgers, why are you making them MacDonald's style? Could you, really? Wouldn't you be tempted to get a slightly better cut of meat and use a little more of it? Put on a crisp slice of lettuce and beefsteak tomato (instead of just catsup)?

What's more, if you really are going for Micky D's style, you won't make it. Your children will tell you all the ways your burger is inferior to one of those enriched-flour encased quarter-sized patties. Or, at least, that's what kids did back in my day. (They'd also trash your ravioli if it weren't Ravioli-Os.)

You'll eat (at least figuratively, maybe literally) any mistakes you make, too. And the amount of time you spend prepping, cooking and cleaning up is going to well exceed the cost in time of going to the nearest franchise.

These days, you're unlikely to be able to beat a fast food franchise for overall cost. The exception might be El Pollo Loco, because they're rather expensive. (Their chicken is a lot closer to real food, which doubtless factors into it.) There is something to economy of scale in this case. Even if you can achieve the economy of scale that allows you to make 16 burgers at once, you're probably not going to achieve it on the same scale as the billions of burgers.

On the flip side, you can't hardly miss beating them in terms of quality. And you can be very selective about where you economize.

Everybody Must Get Stoned

Ah, women. Can't live with 'em. Can't beat 'em to death with rocks.

Oh. Wait a tick.

It's Iran! And the movie is The Stoning of Soraya M., based on the 1986 true story of an Iranian man who uses Sharia law to handle his marital issues in a creative manner. That is to say, he conspires to have her convicted of committing adultery.

I sort of have to be a little flip here because this is a grim story of an unfortunately common experience in Iran and other Muslim strongholds, and you know from the get-go pretty much how it's going to come out.

The build-up felt slow to The Boy but this is a story I think is done well, and reflects one of my favorite narrative flourishes: Even with the outcome being known in advance, a good storyteller creates suspense and a desire to see a different outcome in the audience. (I'm not a Stephen King fan, but he does a good job of this in Carrie. And, of course, that Shakespeare guy.)

There isn't really a lot to talk about, movie-wise. The acting is quite good. You'll probably recognize Shoreh Aghdashloo who is (in essence) the narrator, and Soraya's Aunt. You might recognize Mozhan Marnò from her work in Traitor or from the refugee camp scenes in Charlie Wilson's War. And so on. (American movies about foreign cultures tend to have the same A-List actors from that culture, so it's practically shocking that I didn't recognize anything from Kite Runner.)

There are a few directorial flourishes, and a little music, but mostly this is a spare tale, plainly told.

And, frankly, it pissed me off. I mean, when the opening scene has Aghdashloo running to the river in a black burka, it reminded me so much of The Life of Brian, I had to smile. The Life of Brian also has the greatest stoning scene ever.

And it made me think of what I was saying in my last MMA post. There is a fate worse than death, and the Irianians opted for it 30 years ago. I mean, come on! The stunning similarity between life in Iran in 1986 to (an admittedly faked) portrayal of life in the year 1 reminds one that, in the year 1, the Persians were probably ahead of where they were in 1986.

I was actually sort of jarred by the presence of an automobile. Occasionally there are shots of men in modern-ish clothes. And a radio. Otherwise, this story could've taken place centuries ago.

I mentioned it pissed me off? It did. Big time. The men in this movie are evil, weak, cowardly and stupid. There are bookends with Jim Caviezel (of Jesus fame) who is the only male in the movie approaching heroic. It would make me ashamed to be Persian.

The women are more varied. Some are happy enough to be tools of a genuine patriarchy (not like the one we allegedly have here), and most are convinced of their own helplessness. Zahra (Agdashloo), though more acclimated than the other women to freedom, also seems to know Sharia better than they do, and how and when to push against the order.

The visceral reaction I felt at times was rather unusual for me. Soraya's husband was a good example of a guy who "just needed killin'", as they say in Texas. And I kept thinking that women should be champions of the second amendment. Also, I kept hoping someone would stick a knife into that guy.

When a bus rolls in at the climactic scene, I wanted it to plow through these worthless men.

It's not that kind of movie, obviously, but it would make a great primer for a Persian Death Wish or Rambo. A more transparent and gross miscarriage of justice would scarcely be possible.

In my more phlegmatic moments I reminded myself that there are similar stories in the Western world. I don't know of any wholesale "get out of marriage free"-type situations like those set-up by Sharia but Ancient Greek culture had some interesting oddities in that regard. Still, that's a long time and a lot of apocalypses ago.

But this goes on today! Needless to say, there's an awful stoning in this picture. A true, horrible depiction. Where Kite Runner gave us a scene of wide-scale social insanity, an impersonal lynching by a huge mob in a massive modern arena, Stoning gives us an intimate, awful, close-up look at an innocent woman being killed by her family and friends.

The framing story actually pissed me off more for reasons I can't say without a spoiler. Nonetheless, a good movie about an awful story.

Out of Touch?

Amazon has a sale on "kids and family" DVDs. I'm busily digitizing the massive collection I already have (minus a huge stack of my favorites that was stolen) so I'm not in the market for any more at the moment.

But I browse.

Victor/Victoria? OK, I guess so. It's sort of harmless in its decadence. Grumpier Older Men? Didn't they reprise the whole "driving the pigskin bus to tuna town" bit from the first one in that? I really wouldn't want to have to explain that to The Flower. Pleasantville? I love that movie! But there's a whole lot about sex in that movie. I mean, Joan Allen masturbates in the tub, very conspicuously.

It's not like there wasn't sex in movies when I was a kid. In fact, there was pretty much sex in all of them (unless they were G-rated, and even Ken Berry and Karen Valentine were mackin' in those Disney flicks). But they were sort of extensions of the usual "mushy parts". People kissed, then they got nakedish, then they rubbed up against each other aaaand--cut to the next scene that actually advanced the story.

I've often said that people who claim there's more sex in PG movies now just don't remember the '70s (and early '80s, since the sex scene requirement seems to have stopped with Top Gun). But there is a difference today. There's a lot of detail in the sex scenes, even when they're not shown.

I wouldn't argue that this is a bad thing, by itself. The '70s and '80s approach to sex scenes was sort of juvenille. Fleeting emotion, no communication, no protection and no consequences (except for the early '80s spate of abortion movies). Everyone was supposed to know about sex but nobody was ever supposed to talk about it.

But the sex scenes of the era (at least in retrospect) seem sort of innocent, easier to see as that extension of the kissing then the messy (if more realistic) approach of today. Less appropriate for children, I would say.

But maybe I'm out of touch. Maybe parents would show their k--

Wait.

Caddyshack? Really?

OK, it's Amazon, not me.

That Kind Of Year?

The Transformers sequel has just broken the top 100 of all-time Box Office receipts holders (for adjusted dollars). I'm not sure what that says about this year. Nothing good, I expect.

Last year, the only movie to crack the list was The Dark Knight, which made it all the way to #27. The year before that, Spiderman 3. The year before that Pirates 2. You have to go back to 2004 and Mel Gibson's curiously uninfluential (in terms of Hollywood productions) Passion of the Christ to find a non-sequel.

If you ever wondered why studios make so many sequels, that'd be why. I'm sort of impressed that there are movies in the top 100 that don't have sequels. But I guess that's problematic in some cases.

I mean, what're you gonna do? The Eleventh Commandment? Titanic 2: The Lusitania?

I should shut up. I'm probably giving somebody ideas.