#ffd text posts

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The year is 2040. Michael Bublé is doing a series of performances in Vegas. On December 1st, his set list switches to 90% Christmas music, just as planned.

His set starts with an empty stage and familiar backing vocals: ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom boom-boom ba-boom... Then. With no marketing, no press release, no social media teasers, the spotlight reveals Ryan Reynolds on the mic, and he launches into Santa Baby in a slutty, purring voice.

Michael Bublé joins him onstage, crooning along in a duet. The lyrics are a blend of Bublé's cover and the original, with both men switching between "baby" and other pet names, and every instance of "Santa, buddy" has been changed to "Santa, Daddy." It's the redemption of the century.

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If I had a nickel for every time an increasingly isolated protagonist was riding in a van with an unorthodox but happy family and musing on their place in the world while the family sang along to a David Bowie song, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't much, but it's weird that it happened twice.

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We just finished Slumber Party Massacre, and y'all? That was rough. I so often frame the badness of a movie with the perspective of "X part of it was good, what a waste," but this was just depressingly lackluster top to bottom.

But! It's Halloween, the pizza was delicious, the candy is plentiful, and we have another horror movie lined up. Scream! For me it's technically a rewatch, but it's been long enough that it's fuzzy (and I have more genre context these days), and for co-mod it's brand new. Wish us luck!

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Okay, at some point I’m going to write a more thorough review, but I have to post about this while it’s still spooky season. 

Dracula: Dead and Loving It is a truly fantastic movie. I was reluctant to give it a shot because Leslie Nielsen was central to the kind of comedy that I found uncomfortably awkward as a kid, but he’s so great in this! He does one of the best Lugosi-esque Dracula accents I’ve ever heard, and he has the confidence and sincerity necessary to pull off portraying a comedic Dracula. There are a few jokes in the movie that fall flat for me (and of course ymmv), but overall there’s a blend of silliness and wit that I found to be fun as hell. 

The whole cast gives superb performances (special shout-out to Peter MacNicol as my favorite Renfield since Dwight Frye in 1931), the sets have a charmingly theatrical feeling, and the stunt work (for the over-the-top physical gags and dance scenes) is brilliant. Is the movie perfect? Of course not. But it’s an earnest love letter to the decades of Dracula media that precede it, and everyone making it clearly appreciates that source material. (When setting your expectations: it’s more akin to Young Frankenstein than it is to Robin Hood: Men in Tights.)

I can’t oversell the spirit of this movie. It’s campy, it’s fun, and it’s sincere. There’s no contempt for the genre, no modern referential jokes to pull you out of the period, and no one in the cast is acting like they’re too cool to be in a Dracula comedy. I can rattle off a lot of potential reasons that this movie didn’t find an audience when it came out, but I think that anyone who generally enjoys Dracula adaptations and wants to watch a comedy should give Dracula: Dead and Loving It a chance.

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Yesterday, my co-mod and I watched The Terminator. Which was fitting, since of course yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the release date, but I didn't know that when I put it on.

I was scanning the shelf for what to watch, saw The Terminator, and thought, "Oh, perfect! We watched The Rock yesterday, so now we can watch Michael Biehn in a movie that's Good rather than Fun."

We watched it, had a good time with it, watched another movie, and went to bed. I spent a lot of time outside yesterday, so between that and how late it was after the second movie, I didn't spend much time on tumblr. I didn't get around to documenting watch diary posts until today, so I just now saw the anniversary posts.

I know it's a coincidence, but wtf??

Anyway, this is a very bewildered blogger wishing a happy 40th anniversary to The Terminator!