fine whine

Jessica came home from work today to find an entirely unexpected, and incredibly sad surprise: our cat had died.

In the year and months since we first adopted her she'd become a member of our household, and she will be missed. We'd spent enough time with her to discover some of the nuances of her personality and enjoyed just spending the time.

Now we just have pictures, and furniture and carpets covered with her fur. I live without the hair, but I'd like to have recorded more of her liveliness and stuff.

Call it the geek's regrets: had the cat and the gadgets, and hardly ever put the two together.

She loved stalking the elusive laser pointer dot, and would launch herself across the room in futile attempts to catch it. I'd discovered that she would leap up against the curtains of our patio door, and would bounce on her hind legs attempting to reach her luminous prey. Then she would tire, somewhat, and I'd aim the beam lower, giving her an easy 'kill', and would turn it off appropriately. Then, for her troubles, she'd get a cat treat. I'd meant to capture this with my camera, it being capable of reasonably sized movie clips of good quality and length, but I never set it up and took it. The two times I'd shot any video of her at all was just a proof of concept, and have long since been deleted from my memory card for their seeming mundanity (and obvious display of amateur cameraman-ship) at the time. I hadn't taken many good photos of her, or even gotten much practice at bad to decent ones. Her eyes were always facing the flash, or the shutter set too slow, and the results were never quite up to what I wanted out of my pictures.

And the sounds she made. Even before having a cat in the house I'd wanted to hear (and record) the sounds of the odd pidgin bird-language they 'speak' whilst perched on windowsills, watching their feathered friends outside. I'd heard her once or twice making the noises from our windowsills, but any time we took her outside (moments she always seemed to relish with great abandon, or at least she did the grass she'd eat while out there) she would ignore the birds and squirrels and other animals, wanting only to stroll around the yard and nibble on the grass here and there.

For years her former owner had, from what we had heard, kept her inside. De-clawed years before, she had little reason to spend much time outside anyway, but times we'd had her near doors she'd made it obvious that she was interested in getting some fresh air once in a while.

Of course, it was, again, probably the fresh grass that she so eagerly wanted, but either way she wanted out. Within a week of her first bold forays into the back yard, we'd procured a leash and collar, and determined that they could easily be attached to a garden weed-puller to create an impromptu hitching post, around which she would sometimes make a circle, the radius her leash, chowing down on the grass at all points along the circle. Other times she would use her leash to create a veritable obstacle course for Jessica and me as we tried to do gardening or yard work, with the ever moving trip line attached to her neck that would trigger a surprised yelp and quick apologies with a snag of the toe.

But other than then, she was relatively quiet while we were outside, except when she was outside alone and wanted to be let back into the house. Inside she could be loud or soft, depending on her whims and whether we were mimicking her back.

For a time I'd try to preempt her "meow"s with ones of my own, and she seemed as confounded as she was apparently determined to out-meow me. Other times we'd be in one room of the house and she'd be in another, and we'd hear yowling that seemed to be some form of echolocation, as though she relied on sonar to find us. I never once was able to see her making these sounds, so I have no idea how these big, otherworldly noises came from such a small cat.

And then at nightfall, once we were in bed and had closed the bedroom door, she'd often plead with us to open it to let her in, so she could walk around our heads and sleep at the foot of the bed, or lying under it. She wasn't the sort of cat to curl up on top of our bodies, or faces (thankfully); she just wanted to be near us.

Which is a big reason we'll miss her. She wasn't always looking for outright affection and the display thereof, she just wanted to be nearby. And sometimes to rest her head up against one of our legs. And when she couldn't do that, well, she'd cry out. I'd often considered leaving a microphone running at night to try to capture these odd sounds, but never had. Again, the regrets.

I'm going to miss her. We only had her for just over a year, and she'd become part of many a routine and ritual around the house. Playing with, and tormenting her had become an always-present entertainment option, and we had no shortage of new toys to try on her, milk cap rings and ribbons and yarn and laser pointers and flashlights and toys and radio controlled cars, among other things*.

Old as she was, she didn't stop learning. She picked up on a lot of stuff around the house, such as the sounds of every possible food in the kitchen (and treats elsewhere), and how much of a pushover I can be when a cat wants to go outside, or down the basement stairs. I had no reason not oblige her, after all.

The house was happy with her in it, and now it's quiet. Rest in peace, Yantar. We'll miss you.

* One fall day Jessica came home wearing a pair of Holloween cat ears, and as soon as Yantar saw her her back arched, her fur stood on end, and she started hissing. Jessica cracked up as she realized that Yantar thought her to be another cat, and we spent the next hours (and days, and weeks) donning and doffing the ears to see the reaction we'd get. I hypothesized that the ears had the correct silhouette to trigger Yantar's intense dislike of any other cats, and even though Jessica was obviously not cat-sized, the cat-shaped ears were enough to trigger that instinctive reponse. I further hypothesized that she'd likely not get over this reaction, but was proved wrong as time passed and Yantar's response changed to almost meek "meee-ehhh" of some surprise but nothing stronger. She'd gotten used to the ears.

Permit me to again point you toward All Consuming. While it allows members to designate books, albums, and movies as "worth consuming" or "not worth consuming" (or, neither, though that's not the way it's supposed to work), but that two -state system (well, three) isn't enough for my tastes. Some stuff is not not worth consuming, in my opinion, but I'm not so fond of it to actually claim it to be actually worth consuming.

I'm not willing to commit, I guess.

But some stuff I watch and read and hear is, in fact, well worth watching or reading or hearing, and I'm not afraid to say so. So that's when I use the easy-to-use tagging capabilities of the site, and have tagged such master works "fantastic". That link leads to a list of some twenty or so of them, and I'm working on a way to find all of the others. I've added Batman begins to the list (so bowled over by it as I was by it), and it's just one among a good many other movies and books that I've enjoyed consuming recently.

So I'm still not playing favorites, but I'm willing to show some favor and shower the superlatives. I may yet develop a heirarchy, from "crap"* to "adequate" and so on, up to "excellent" and with "fantastic" or perhaps something superior at the top. But not today. I'm willing to pick just the topmost for now.

* And you can find a list of the ones I deem to be "crap" in a similar, easy fashion. Like clicking "crap" in the previous sentence, or this one.

I've found a movie more deserving of the "worst I've seen all year" honors than High tension, much to my chagrin*.

House of 1000 corpses just did not appeal to me. Much the opposite, in fact.

I'm not so prudish or of such high standards as to be offended by the film, but many a time it came very close to doing just that. Mostly it was just disgust and annoyance that would characterize my reaction, and then apathy. I didn't pay much attention to the middle and last bits, just because I didn't care about the people on screen, wasn't interested in the gore or impressed by the effects, and could have done without the weird video effects interludes/jump cuts that littered the whole thing. Whatever technical merits it may have had weren't enough for me to overlook all of the other demerits, and I suppose it is a failing of my tastes and preferences that I couldn't enjoy the misguided attempts by schlock-rocker Rob Zombie in what is probably a labor of love, well regarded by its cult of fans. I'm just not among them.

* If not for the fact that this could well keep the title all year, I'd consider adding a "worst movie I've seen all year" list for the rest of the year, implemented as a simple blog or some such. I may still, since it's really just laziness so far keeping me from doing it. I've contemplated the idea since the first half hour of House of 1000 corpses, and started browsing around for appropriate PHP scripts to use, but soon got distracted even from doing that.

There are so many good things I'd like to say about the old BBC series 'Allo allo..

Too bad I'm too busy laughing my ass off.

Without a doubt, Batman begins is the best movie I've watched this year.

Boy, that joke never gets old*.

It's very well done, and puts most, if not all, of the recent superhero films to shame. Chris Nolan and David Goyer spare us many of the conventions the previous incarnations have inflicted on the moviegoing public: the delightful but hokey 'POW' 'BAFF' and 'ZOWIE's that lent the '60s TV series its camp and charm, overly gothic Gothams, plastic nipples, blacklit and neon-clad street gangs, K-car police cruisers, ridiculous villains and pithy one-liners, and Danny DeVito. Gotham resembles a normal city, albeit with more shadows and a train system redolent of art deco and the so-called Silver Age of comics art. But plausibly so. Could it be a subtle dig at Spiderman 2 with its elevated train action sequence? Probably not.

The effects work is top notch, with only minor missteps in with swooping swarms of bats and scary, shaky POV effects shots, but in each case they get the job done. The miniatures work with the new Batmobile is exemplary, and the entire chase sequence is equally cool and engaging. The characters are interesting and believable, and the actors portraying them do a fine job doing so.

That said, I have some minor quibbles. Batman's voice sounds a bit odd at times, as though in persona he's taken up a carton-a-day smoking habit or is deliberately trying to sound tougher. Or maybe the Gotham air's more abrasive the faster you breathe it, and he probably takes in his share of bugs and airborne particles whilst swooping through the streets. At least he talks out the front of his mouth. Katie Holmes, on the other hand, doesn't. She's apparently always been inflicted with this odd sideways-speaking bit, and it's only the more distracting when she's got those big closeups. I don't recall seeing it in Go and wherever else, but this is also the biggest role I've seen her undertake so far.

Gary Oldman, on the other hand, speaks like, well, a native, however one of them is supposed to sound.

And then there's Michael Caine. I realize that there are few British actors available for the Alfred role (Michael Gambon and Patrick Stewart being the first two I would name, followed by Christopher Lee and Ian McKellen) but couldn't he have been coached to sound a little more, oh, Jeeves-like**? He's got his same accent from Goldmember and The Italian job and even The man who would be king, and I can't imagine Alfred ever uttering "I figger..." the way Charlie Croker or Peachy Carnehan would 've. Michael Gough certainly never did, and as the one stable feature of the previous recent features he had always performed admirably.

I am, of course, overlooking the fact that Christian Bale is, in fact, Welsh.

Based on what I know of his preparation for other movies with eleven or twelve letter names (The Machinist and Equilibrium), I don't doubt that he brushed up on his close combat skills, effort that is all but wasted due to the incredibly quick editing of most of the fight scenes. Nolan's a relative newcomer to action (more than was in Memento, at least), but if they let him helm the inevitable sequels, I'm sure he can only get even better.

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing him try.

* Just like the "Remember, you're [whatever]ing for two," with which I chide my pregnant co-worker, about once a day. Comic hilarity every time.

** Having recently watched some of Jeeves and Wooster and re-watched Gosford park I think I can recognize the stereotypical British butler/valet/manservant diction. Stephen Fry, of course, isn't nearly old enough for the role, but he could've helped Michael knock out some of the cockney here and there, I'd think.

That honor goes to High tension, or as it is known in its native France, Haute tension.

Vive la difference.

Anyone watching it expecting to see something different would likely end up as I did, disappointed and annoyed. At the risk of giving too much away, it's about a woman who brings her friend (who fantasizes about her...) home to meet her family at their country home, and the carnage that begins when a large stranger appears and doesn't let up until the last few moments of the film.

I suppose it's a technical achievement in this day and age of CGI effects to have a film supposedly done all in-camera with splattery, gory fake blood, but that really just makes it a stunt, not something necessarily worth watching. If I were a fan of the genre, I might call it a refreshing return to form, or a sentimental slasher or even some sort of retro masterpiece, except that it's no masterpiece.

Against my better judgement, I'm not going to ruin the ending* but failing that, I don't have much else to say about this movie. It's stylish, but I can't help but see parallels to other movies. The most prominent, though undoubtedly the least intended, is the whole spooky truck bit which seems to be lifted from Jeepers creepers, except that it was a major (driving) force in the plot in that film, and here it fulfills a throwaway cliché, the car chase that would be requisite if it were an action movie. I suppose the slasher genre has its car chases, but I don't recall much gore in Bullitt or (either) Gone in 60 seconds.

Going back, I only have one unanswered question that doesn't make sense (beyond the normal suspension of belief) but I'm not really interested in watching it again to see the subtleties. There are dead people, but this is no Sixth sense.

* Lots of people get killed, in gory fashion, and then, before it's over, there's a twist. Or did I just give it all away?