the good, THE BAD, the ugly

A note to toy manufacturers: Please inspect all angles for defects in a toy's character.

Crap I want but don't need

The Peacock Carte Postale Pillow Box Collection
I never got into the French style, but I can get into these.
Mulberry Muse

Peacock Coins on a Chain Necklace
Perfectly simple and ace for most outfits.
Earth Sea Jewelry

Drag Me To Hell

I was almost embarrassed to watch this movie, I was not impressed by what I had seen in the trailers and figured it was going to bare a horrible resemblance to House of the Dead by Uwe Boll, and no one wants that. Very quickly I realized that this movie had a lot more to it than I thought. What did it for me was the vibe the movie held, somewhere between Tales From the Crypt and Evil Dead. It’s real charm was in the fact that it acknowledged what it was and had fun with the genre without taking itself seriously.

We open to a brief preface to the curse which has been placed on a young boy who stole a gypsy’s necklace. Doomed to be dragged to hell, nothing can stop the demon attached to person who has suffered the wrath of a very angry gypsy.

40 years has passed since the fate of the thieving boy, and we meet our next victim Christine Brown, a loan officer who is applying for the Assistant Manager position and has to show her stuff to beat out her brown nosing co-worker. When a crusty old woman in desperate need of a manicure and a fresh set of dentures comes to beg for an extension on her mortgage, Christine decides to grow a pair of balls and denies the extension. But waiting for Christine after work is much more than a pissed off Eastern European with a milky eye. The old broad attacks Christine and takes a button from her coat and curses it before giving it back.

Shook up from the attack, Christine asks her boyfriend Clay to take her to a fortune teller where she learns that there is a dark spirit attached to her. With some skepticism they leave and Christine goes home where once alone she begins to experience strange sounds and shadows which only intensify the longer the curse is upon her. Returning to the fortune teller it is revealed that she is followed by a Lamia that will torment her for three days before taking her to hell for eternity.

Christine is desperate to remove this curse and soon begins to lose control as the torture intensifies and Christine resorts to more and more vile acts to save her soul.

The movie was well done and impressed me more than I thought it would. It mixed the perfect amount of frights with just a pinch of camp that will leave you shaken and laughing. If there’s one thing you will take from this movie is that a toothless gypsy will take every opportunity she has not only to put a curse on you, but to gum your face as many times as she can in 90 minutes.

the good, THE BAD, the ugly

You know, for kids.

And for those of you who need a little help figuring this one out, please see below.

Crap I want but don't need

sun silk embellished racer back tank by ADAM


blue terry 'Off Shore' one-button jacket by Priorities
Perfect for summer in Boston, and guaranteed to not get me written up again at work for inappropriate summer attire... don't ask
Both items found at Bluefly

Outlander

In my endless quest to find a movie comparable to the action and cheese factor of one of my favorite SciFi movies Doom, I have found many frogs. Thinking this one no different than all the others, I put aside my expectations and got to work watching Outlander, a movie I had never heard of. With a slow start and questionable effects akin to the SciFi channel, I was hesitant to give it a chance. Jim Caviezel gave his lines like someone who just woke up from a nap, and at one point the speed button was hit to make it appear as though he was running faster. Thinking this a big fat stinker, I began to truly enjoy this mess.

The movie opens with a space craft rocketing for earth and crashing into a lake. Escaping the wreckage and crawling to land is a space dude played by the guy who was Jesus in that movie by Mel Gibson. After consulting his space computer he finds he is in Norway in 709AD and is smack in the middle of Viking town. He puts a suction cup to his eye and rapidly learns the Norse language which sound a hell of a lot like English. His first spoken word is “fuck,” so I knew that I was going to enjoy this.

Picking up his fancy gun, he does a few gay ass tricks with it and heads off to the woods in search of the shit that will shortly be hitting the fan. He comes across a village in destruction, blood and claw marks are everywhere but no bodies are left. A passing Viking from a neighboring tribe takes him for the one who destroyed the village all by himself and drags him back to his place where we learn the strangers name is not “The-guy-who-played-Jesus-that-one-time” but is Kainan, and he hails from an “Island in the North”. To add a proverbial cherry on top, he explains that he is hunting a dragon that had stowed away on his ship when he was happened upon. No one believes him obviously and he gets beaten up.

No worries, the very impressive dragon makes its appearance at the colony and wreaks some havoc on those fur wearing newly converted dragon believers. Well, Kainan is welcomed into the fold and the king’s daughter who’s a real pistol, takes a shine to him. Eventually there is nothing left to do but to go hunt that bitch down, so being a real kick ass astronaut, Kainan leads the soldiers into the mouth of darkness to eradicate this little problem. Oh, and did I forget to mention that Ron Perlman is in this? For just a few scenes but I love him just the same.

Not the pinnacle of movie making, but it had an interesting feel being a Science Fiction story in a medieval world. It oddly reminded me of a video game called Too Human which also took a look at Norse history with an intergalactic backdrop. I was not disappointed with Outlander, but it did take the first 15 minutes to get over the way Caviezel gave his lines, and to really revel in the action. The dragon effects did not disappoint, nor did the blood splatters that occasionally would fall on the camera lens, man I love me some gore.