Dark Shadows and Final Moving Preparation

Today, Dad took me to see Dark Shadows, which I was hoping would be quirky, a little dark, and richly entertaining, after seeing many of the previous Tim Burton and Johnny Depp in Pale Makeup movies.*

Sadly, while the visuals were riveting, the story and mood seemed to be all over the place. The movie seemed to go from quirky and fun to horribly depressing way too quickly at many points. I am not averse to movies having a balance of funny, scary, joyful, and sad, especially darker movies like Tim Burton's works. But it is annoying for the mood to switch from scene to scene, without any sense or rhythm. The lack of a cohesive storyline made this feel worse.

At times, the plot seemed to serve visual show-offs (explosions! blood flowing from paintings!), rather than the visuals serving the plot. This was also an issue in Repo! The Genetic Opera, which uses a lot of unnecessary blood and gore, but in Repo the strawberry red blood, even in excess, still serves some purpose. The organ repossession scenes in Repo highlight the brutality of GeneCo, the company which orders them. But the visual effects in the Collins mansion in the final scenes just seemed over the top for the sake of being over the top. I was hoping for a neater resolution towards the end of the film, and instead got bleeding paintings and later splashing waves, without little more tying it back to the introduction than Depp's moody narration. Oh well. There were some good lines, most of which were in the theatrical trailers, and Depp does look surprisingly good in the Moody and Pale look.

The other main highlight of the day was finishing my packing. Dad managed to fit all of my boxes into the back of the new family car (it's a hatchback; the previous car was a very petite sedan). This means we don't have to rent a monster car or van, which is wonderful because now my parents can entertain themselves by playing around with the new car's audio features (including connecting to Dad's iPhone's music library). And I can listen to them go on about how they should probably read the manual for the audio features, but let's try this button and see what happens.

It will be a fun trip to Philadelphia.

* Edward Scissorhands, Sweeney Todd, Corpse Bride (even if it was technically a clay representation of Depp). If you haven't watched them, the basic look was a powder white face with dark eye circles (done with dark brown and black eyeshadow), sometimes accented with blood or scars, and dark clothes.

Silly Things I Learned from…

Grey's Anatomy:

* Doctors never use on-call rooms to sleep.

* Surgeons are so special that they can take care of all their patients' needs and never have to ask their patients' nurses about how they're doing.

* Anesthesiologists, nurses, physical therapists, social workers, orderlies, food service employees, custodians, and chaplains all wear invisibility cloaks.

* HIPPA doesn't exist; surgeons can discuss patients' medical histories in the cafeteria, elevators, hallways, each other's houses, etc.

* Female surgeons are required by law to wear eye makeup at all times.

* Surgeons who disappear for several hours without explanation are never reprimanded.

* A mentally stable, responsible surgeon who happens to be pregnant is suspect of being "crazy" because of her hormones.

* Nurses only need to be consulted when you're looking for a brain dead patient who could be an organ donor for your patient. 

Desperate Housewives:

* Property values never go down in neighborhoods where there have been several murders, a few stalkers, a hostage crisis, and fugitives.

* Freelance illustrators and plumbers can easily afford to live in upper-middle-class suburbs.

* A man who has been incarcerated for embezzlement can easily find a job again in business.

* Selling your Dolce & Gabana dresses and fancy sports car are signs of financial distress.

* You can hide that you're getting chemo until you get sick at your child's school play.

* Busy moms never wear sweatpants at home, and they never go without makeup.

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (includes spoilers):

* French women can perfectly coordinate their outfits with the interior decor in their homes, offices, and stores.

* Getting married at 16 to the 20-year-old guy you love is ridiculous, because you don't know about love and besides, your mother doesn't like him.

* Getting married at 16 to a 30-year-old guy you hardly know is absolutely fine if your mother approves of him and he's rich.

* When you run into financial troubles, don't tighten your budget. Sell your prized pearls.

* Don't bother telling your boyfriend that you're marrying another man before he comes home.

Disney movies:

* You don't have to even talk to someone to know that you love them and would be willing to give up your family, home, and friends for the rest of your life to be with them.

* Kissing someone will bring them out of a coma if you really love them.

* People whose only friends are animals can have normal social interactions with other people.

* Being emotionally abused by family members won't leave you with any emotional scars.

* Sleeping in strangers' houses is totally safe.

* A princess in a traditional Muslim kingdom is allowed to wear a belly shirt.

Revisiting Childhood Ghosts (Or Hand Dryers)

Over lunch today, my dad remarked that if my mom raised me on her own, I wouldn't have watched any Disney movies (except 101 Dalmatians). My mom is strongly feminist in a very 1970s Ms. sort of way, so she objects to Disney's portrayal of women and Indians (in Peter Pan; she didn't watch Pocahontas with me when it came out). I understand her points; you'd have to either be seriously racist or blindfolded and wearing noise-cancelling headphones to think Peter Pan portrays Indians fairly. But I think children pick up on much more on what's scary in Disney movies (and anything else they watch) more than sexism and racism. 

For example, I hated Pinnochio (and haven't watched it since elementary school) because of the scene when the boys turn into donkeys. Listening to a melody repeated in a particular Disney short (Mickey and the Beanstalk) made me feel annoyed, and then uneasy. I still can't stand the opening of the "Mysterious Theatre" skits that used to be on Sesame Street. As a young child, I was most afraid of certain noises, such as the noise of hand dryers and hair dryers, so I think what bothered me about Mysterious Theatre was the thunder crashing and creepy music. 

I used to have trouble understanding facial expressions and emotions as a young child (I was diagnosed on the higher-functioning end of the autism spectrum), which I think made a lot of movie villains less scary. Even noticing anger was beyond my understanding, which would have certainly reduced the scariness of pretty much every villain on film. I wish I could remember the point at which emotions started to "click" for me; I can't even pinpoint when I no longer had to have special education teachers in elementary school, but it's become so clear to me in recent years what a difference they made, and I think that's something to be thankful for. 

What Movie Would You Bring to a Desert Island?

After another afternoon spent in a cycle of watching kids at the art table, cleaning up, coloring, playing solitaire, and watching the waiting room's featured film on repeat, I began to wonder what movie(s), if any, I would willingly watch on repeat during the surprisingly frequent quiet moments during my volunteer shift. That is, the times when there are no kids in the waiting room, or the kids who are there are either too old for coloring, not interested, or very shy.

The afternoon movie, to put it gently, wasn't particularly good. It was a direct-to-video Snow White movie, with outsourced animation that was roughly equivalent to the animation in Saturday morning cartoons. Not the kind of animation in a cartoon like Spongebob Squarepants or TaleSpin (which are both respectable cartoons), but the kind of animation that makes Disney's direct-to-video sequels look good. The voice actors didn't even get credits.

Clearly, I would not bring this movie to a desert island. Probably, I would bring Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, which you could watch with or without sound and still enjoy.

What would you bring?