Category: Humor and horror

Ayn Rand at the movies

“101 Dalmatians”
A wealthy woman attempts to do her impoverished school friend Anita a favor by purchasing some of her many dogs and putting them to sensible use. Her generosity is repulsed at every turn, and Anita foolishly and irresponsibly begins acquiring even more animals, none of which are used to make a practical winter coat. Altruism is pointless. So are dogs. A cat is a far more sensible pet. A cat is objectively valuable. —No stars.
“Mary Poppins”
A woman takes a job with a wealthy family without asking for money in exchange for her services. An absurd premise. Later, her employer leaves a lucrative career in banking in order to play a children’s game. —No stars.

There’s more here.

MacBatty

I just discovered that Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters was made into a movie. It’s not the Discworld novel I would have chosen — Granny Weatherwax is my least-favorite of Pratchett’s recurring characters, and I’d have preferred a good adaptation of The Light Fantastic ((The title was deliberately chosen to annoy Robbo.)) — but it’s still funnier than most alleged comedies. Chrstopher Lee is a resonant Death, though his voice doesn’t have “all the warmth and colour of an iceberg.” Although Wyrd Sisters is animated, Nanny Ogg’s abundant presence renders it not quite suitable for children. She sings a bit of her hedgehog song, too.

Groucho gets wyrd

There are some things in the movie that I don’t remember from the book.

Update: It turns out that a lot of Pratchett has been dramatized, and much of it is available and inexpensive — downright cheap, sometimes, if you buy used. I just ordered these:

The Colour of Magic (which also adapts The Light Fantastic ((“You know when we were flying and I was worried we might hit something in the storm and you said that the only thing we could possibly hit at this height was a cloud stuffed with rocks?”
“Well?”
“How did you know?”)) )

Soul Music

Hogfather

There’s also a Discworld calendar, but since I already have four other 2015 calendars ordered, I think I’ll pass.

Boo, boo, etc.

It’s Halloween today, right? Time to get the bag of chocolate out of the freezer.

There’s a fine line between spooky and silly, as Frëd illustrates in this footnote to American history.

*****

There’s a lot of anime suitable for Halloween, from the many iterations of Ge Ge Ge no Kitaro (including in particular Hakaba Kitaro) to Soul Eater and Hozuki no Reitetsu. If I had to pick just one, though, it would be Kenji Nakamura’s Mononoke. Here’s one of the two-episode stories:

The entire show is on YouTube, but it’s available for such a reasonable price that there’s no excuse not to buy your own copy of this probable classic. ((I don’t declare anything a “classic” until it’s at least ten years old, and Mononoke is from anime’s year of wonder, 2007.))

*****

Boris Karloff drinks tea.

*****

If you’re looking for a proper Halloween post, Isegoria has a bunch of them.