Tag Archives: movies

Where’s My Head At?

Posted on June 23, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

OK, so I had three real Mohawk Valley posts this week.  You didn’t think that was going to continue, did you?  I didn’t.  Anyways, today I’m tired and hungry and haven’t gotten all my stuff done yet (not whining, just giving you the picture).  I just went through a couple of pages on Facebook looking for fun pictures I could share.  The pictures may seem unrelated and my commentary disjointed, but, hey, it’s Non-Sequitur Thursday.  Just go with it!

I went first to a page I recently Liked (actually, more than Like, I LOVE) B-Movie Mania.   While scrolling down, seeing all kinds of cool stuff, I noticed the poster to one a great cheesy movie I saw years before I ever wrote about them or even blogged about anything, The Thing with Two Heads.

I always thought it should be called The Guy with Two Heads.

If I ever come across that movie in cable or find it on DVD, I’ll write a blog post about it.  It’s fun!

In my search for more fun pictures, I discovered a new (to me) Facebook page called the  Trash Cinema Collective.  Ooh, do they have a lot of fun stuff!  Where to begin?

It’s one of those movie posters that looks like it could be the cover to a pulp fiction paperback from the ’50’s.

Ah, if only I had see this movie when I was young and straitlaced.  I might have gotten some tips on how to be more popular with the boys.

Another instruction manual from which I may have benefited.

I finish with an actual pulp fiction paperback cover.  I once had a catalog of a company that sold post cards of these covers.  I sent away for some and eventually sent them all to folks who appreciated them. How I wish I still had the catalog and could order more!  Hey, I wonder if they are online?  Is everybody online?  Once again, I show my internet ignorance.

On the brighter side, I see that I am over 300 words.  I call that respectable for a Non-Sequitur Thursday.

 

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Why Can’t I Celebrate Father’s Day Like a Normal Blogger?

Posted on June 19, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Let me preface this post by saying that I have a terrific father.  He is fun, he is funny, he gives great advice and he is always there for me.  However, I wanted to make a kind of a different Father’s Day post, perhaps involving pictures, so I thought I would discuss a couple movies in which fathers play a key role.  Spoiler Alert!  I may give away a few salient plot points along the way, so if you have never seen The Wolf Man or Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte, you may like watch them before reading this.

Last night we watched a movie involving a rather sad father and son story, The Wolf Man with Claude Rains and Lon Chaney Jr., as the father and son, respectively.  Chaney returns home, because his elder brother has died.  There is a nice scene where Chaney and Rains discuss how they don’t talk about their feelings and so are not that close, but that they are going to try to do better in the future.  Then, of course, Chaney gets turned into a werewolf and comes to a bad end, and it is very tragic, in addition to being a scary monster movie.

“Holy crap, I DO look like hell first thing in the morning!”

I can’t find a good shot of Claude Rains, but here is Lon Chaney, Jr., looking stunned and horrified at what he has become.  Bela Lugosi also has a small but pivotal role.

Not as slick as when he played the Count, perhaps, but, still, Bela.

Another movie I watched recently in which the father plays a pivotal role, although not nearly as large a role, is Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte.  In fact, Victor Buono, as Charlotte’s (the incomparable Bette Davis) father, is listed as Guest Star on the DVD cover.  He is an extremely important character, however.  In the opening scene, he orders Charlotte’s married boyfriend to break things off with her.  When the boyfriend is subsequently murdered, the father whisks Charlotte off to Europe, so she is never forced to face charges for a murder she may (or may NOT) have committed.  Dear old Dad is dead for most of the picture, but his shadow looms over the proceedings.  One thing that cannot be denied is that he loved his daughter, and she him.

Clockwise from top left: Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland, Joseph Cotton, Mary Astor, Victor Buono, and Agnes Moorehead.

And, just for me, here is a shot of Davis, chewing the scenery divinely:

“Don’t you tell me to hush!”

I know, you all thought I was going to talk about Atticus Finch or Spencer Tracy.  I don’t know why you thought that, but never mind.  I will repeat that my own father is an awesome human being, and I wish a Happy Father’s Day to him and all fathers.

 

 

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When in Distress, Vampires Often Help

Posted on June 16, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Earlier today, a friend at work gave me some icy-hot (it was Equate brand) to rub on my knees.  It seemed to help.  I have spent most of the rest of the day wishing I had something similar to rub on my attitude.  It’s not even Bad Attituesday!

It is, in fact, one of those days when I disprove one of my own rules: that writing begets more writing.  I just finished and emailed out two articles for Mohawk Valley Living magazine.  Shouldn’t I be all raring to go and write my blog post now?  It turns out, not so much.  I was just futzing around Facebook, looking for pictures, because that always seems to be a good fallback post.  Of course nothing appeals.  Maybe I should look again.

When in doubt, look for monsters.  Here are a couple of pictures from Mark of the Vampire.  I found them on a page I Like called Murder, Madness and the Macabre, Our Favorite Nightmares.

Bela and friend.

I gotta get me a dress with sleeves like that.

I’ve seen Mark of the Vampire a couple of times.  I can’t believe I don’t have it on one of my horror collections.  Maybe my husband will buy it for me for my birthday (he usually reads this blog, teehee).

I’ll throw in another picture of Bela Lugosi to round things out (you know how I like to include three photos).  Here he is from Dracula in 1931.

“I bid you welcome.”

He was fine, yes.  I haven’t seen an old horror movie in a long time.  Perhaps that is the ice-hot for my attitude I seek.  At any rate, it couldn’t hurt.  We’ll call today a Non-Sequitur Thursday post (although the title I have in mind is more of a sequitur) and drive on. Thank you for tuning in, and I hope to see you all on Lame Post Friday.

 

 

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Run then Rationalize

Posted on June 12, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

As soon as I started my run today, my legs were not happy with me.  I had been up and had coffee but nothing to eat.  Well, if I would have eaten something, I would have wanted to wait a little while for it to digest, and then it might have been to warm and I’d have had plenty of time to talk myself out of it.  I told myself I did not have to run as long as I ran yesterday.  After all, last weekend I ran 67 minutes Saturday and only 45 Sunday.  I had upped my time by the recommended ten percent to 74 minutes yesterday.  It might be a good idea to ran the same today, but I do not always follow the idea course in my running.

I wasn’t going to run any hills, either.  I had made up my mind to that, although I confess I was not as comfortable with that decision. There are a lot of hills on the Boilermaker (that is the 15K road race in Utica, NY, I am signed up to run on July 9, for anybody just tuning in).  I don’t have to run hills EVERY day, I argued.  A little voice in my head said, “Oh, just start running, you’ll talk yourself into it as you go.” As soon as I started running, my legs informed me that we were NOT going to run any hills and we certainly were not going to run for an hour and fourteen minutes.

Cutting right to the chase, I’ll tell you:  I did not run any hills but I did run for an hour and fourteen minutes.  I crossed State Street and ran on a bunch of streets I don’t usually run on, so it was a very interesting run.  I’ll have to walk it sometime with my Tablet and take pictures to share.  I probably won’t be doing that today, though.  It’s not that my legs would object (they LOVE to walk), but it is supposed to be close to 90 degrees and sunny today.  I’m kind of a vampire.  I admire a sunny day, but it doesn’t pay me to get too close.

As I was running, I was narrating in my head.  It seemed pretty interesting at the time, but now I’m not so sure.  Then again, it is Wrist to Forehead Sunday.   I think this brief description of my run will suffice.  Now you have time to read other blogs.  Isn’t that generous of me?  Yes, yes, I know, that is only a rationalization, but rationalization is not always a bad thing.  To prove this I will end with a quote from the movie The Big Chill:

Jeff Goldblum character:  Don’t knock rationalization, where would we be without it?  I don’t know anybody who can get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations; they’re more important than sex.

Tom Berenger character: Nothing’s more important than sex.

Jeff Goldblum character:  Oh yeah?  Ever go a week without a rationalization?

If I do not have the lines exactly right, sorry.  I don’t have a rationalization for that, but I hope you will forgive me.

 

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Lame Lycanthropy (Look It Up)

Posted on June 9, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

And the moon is full! Or was that last night?

I like to make a silly post on a Friday.  For newcomers to the blog, the official term is Lame Post Friday, and I often indulge in random observations and half-baked philosophy.  And I repeat that bit of definition perhaps a few more times than is strictly necessary, but you’ll have that.  On this particular Friday, I am taking a vacation day, so I am feeling a little giddy.  I’m just going to type in some silliness and get on with my fun day.  I saw the above photo on my Facebook news feed this morning and said, “ooh.”  It ties in with another photo I downloaded some days ago.  I downloaded it with the idea that I would eventually find other pictures to tie in with it for a blog post and, as you see, I was right!  I love it when that happens.  Now let’s see if I can find that photo in my downloads (must figure out how to organize those downloads; as you know, I am not computer savvy)…

Oh no!  I found it and it is not the photo I thought it was!  It is the Mummy, not the Wolfman!  How could I make such a mistake!  How lame is that!  Wait a minute, it’s lame.  That fits right in.  It’s even kind of random.  I’ll go with it.

Mummy, Werewolf… Compare and contrast. Discuss amongst yourselves.

I downloaded two other Werewolf photos, to round out the post.  I had been looking for one, because, you know, three’s the charm, but I could not decide between the movie poster and a humorous one, so I went with both (is that a run-on sentence?  I don’t care if it is).

I guess it’s the disc cover, not the actual poster, but I think that’s OK. Or is it just more lame? Either way.

The movie had an excellent cast, although I find it rather sad.  I’ll have to do a post sometime on the profound nature of horror movies.

I do not recommend an adversarial relationship with one’s stylist.

It looks as if he doesn’t want a shave and a haircut (two bits), and I can’t really blame him.  He has only to wait till the moon wanes.  And doesn’t that make you wonder what would happen if he did get a haircut as the Wolfman, then the moon waned.  Would his face be like all cut up?  His head completely bald?  I’ll have to do some research on lycanthropy (my computer is underlining that word, but I looked it up in Webster’s and it is correct).

Incidentally, I got the first photo from Dracula’s House of Halloween and the last two from the Wolfman facebook page.  I stupidly do not remember where I got the Loveboat photo and I am too lazy to try to find out.  I did mention this is Lame Post Friday, didn’t I?

 

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Posting from the Couch

Posted on June 5, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Earlier today I remembered (and posted on Facebook) my personal rule for myself (as opposed to my personal rules for other people, which we won’t get into right now) that on Sundays it is OK for me to be completely useless.  It occurs to me that this is the source of my Wrist to Forehead Sundays: the conflict between the fact that I am useless and the nagging suspicion that I ought not to be.  I suppose a blogger could take a day or two off in the course of a week, but we all know, that’s not for me.

I’m thinking I will eschew Wrist to Forehead Sunday and begin a feature called Sweats and Sweetie Sunday.  I reach the bra off, sweats on portion of the day very early on many Sundays.  Additionally, my husband Steven is usually off work by one in the afternoon, and we almost never have the same day off, so Sunday is our day together.  We do get silly (what a surprise), so I will feel free to get silly on my Sunday post (which will differentiate it from the other days a week not at all).

Today is National Cheese Day. I thought I would like to mark it by watching cheesy horror movies.  However, we could not think of one we really wanted to see today.  I was actually in the mood to watch something like The Postman Always Rings Twice.  During our great discussion about what movie to watch (we would probably watch more movies if we spent less time deciding which movie to watch, but there’s no point in chasing dreams), we started suggesting movies substituting “cheese” for one of the words in the title.  And can I just say, movie makers who make movies with one-word titles are most inconsiderate.

Our suggestions included Cheese on Haunted Hill, Cheese on the Orient Express, All About Cheese, The Bride of Cheesenstein, Plan Cheese from Outer Space (which we just recently watched), Grosse Point Cheese, and His Cheese Friday.  Finally we settled on The Postman Always Rings Cheese.  It is not a cheesy movie, but it could be argued that the characters are a little sleazy (but I shall not argue that, because it would be too much trouble on Sweats and Sweetie Sunday).  Now we are watching Hush… Hush… Sweet Cheese.  Steven had to ask if it was Hush… Hush… Sweet Cheese or Cheese… Cheese… Sweet Charlotte.  It was the former, because in my On This Day in Facebook, I noted that I had made a blog post with just that title.

As an additional note:  Cecil Kellaway is in both of our movie choices for today.  That makes it a Cecil Kellaway film festival.  I hope my blog post has entertained somebody.  As for myself, I am going to continue to sit on the couch and enjoy my movies, cheesy and otherwise.  Happy Sunday, everyone.

 

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Mid-Week Movies

Posted on May 25, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

I KNOW I just two days ago did the picture thing, but who wants to see another post about me whining that I can’t think of a post to write? As I was looking at Facebook, trying to think of SOMETHING to write about, on my On This Day, I saw this and said, “Cool!”

I gotta get me a bra like that.

This is Man Bait from 1952.  I have never seen it, but I love the poster.  The funny thing (to me, anyways) is that I found it on the Facebook page Classic Film Freak.  I do not feel this looks like a classic.  It looks more like one of those B or C (for cheesy) movies I love.  No matter.  It is an awesome poster and I wanted to put it in a blog post.  Naturally I did not want to put just one picture in my blog post.

Returning to Classic Film Freak, the first thing to meet my eye was a poster with one of my all-time favorites:  Boris Karloff!  Yay!

He looks mad!

I never saw this one either.  It is from 1936.  I wonder if TCM will play it sometime.  I’ll have to watch for it.

Another Classic Film I somehow missed.

I thought Buccaneer’s Girl from 1950 tied in with Boris Karloff, because it starred Yvonne DeCarlo, loved by many as Lily Munster.  I see now that the film is even more closely related, as it features Elsa Lanchester, title character in The Bride of Frankenstein.  Another movie for me to seek out, I think  (Buccaneer’s Girl, I mean.  I have  The Bride of Frankenstein on DVD, of course).

It is funny that I am suddenly seeing movies I want to catch.  I recently read a blog post decrying the loss of video stores and telling Netflix a thing of two.  I am not on Netflix nor have I any idea of how to stream anything.  It was Ben’s Bitter Blog, one of my favorites.  It lets me tap into my bitterness, which I usually try to keep out of my blog (you know, because of that “totally fun” line in the subtitle).  I guess I am actually a little bitter now that I did not make a better blog post.  Then again, this is Wuss-out Wednesday.  Guess I’ll hit Publish and drive on.

 

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Movie Monsters on Melancholy Monday

Posted on May 23, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Good evening and welcome to another Melancholy Monday.  I make no apologies for my mood but neither will I inflict tiresome explanations on my patient readers.  Instead, I think I will cheer myself up by posting a few horror movie pictures, if I can find them.

Right away I hit pay dirt on a Facebook page I recently Liked called B Movie Mania.  A quick browse through their photos and I have four sea-themed photos to share.

Hubba, hubba.

Who could resist the Creature from the Black Lagoon on Loveboat?  How did I miss this episode? I used to watch Loveboat every week!  No, I never had a date in the ’70s.  Are you surprised?  Would I have accepted a date with the Creature from the Black Lagoon?  I think so.  Standing next to him would bring out my eyes.  I’m not one of those people who are prejudiced against inter-species dating.  However, I’m also thinking he could never forget Julie Adams, and how could I compete?

I think this one was a sea monster, although I admit I’m no expert.

I don’t know what movie this creature is from.  He does not look familiar to me.  He looks to me as if he’s coming out to say, “Could you keep it down, folks, decent monsters are trying to sleep!”

“Ah, can we talk about this?”

An alien encounters a sea monster!  How cool is that?  Again, I don’t know what movie.  I’m don’t even know how to research such a thing.  I daresay I am not clever enough to figure it out, and I’m quite sure I’m too impatient to try.  I end on a silly note (and I’ve been so serious so far!).  I’m not even sure this one is from a movie, but I like it.

“Hey, big guy, do you come here often?”

I don’t see why monsters shouldn’t have fun, too.  Now that I have alleviated my melancholy with a little nonsense, I shall sign off. Happy Monday, all.

 

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Monsters on Monday

Posted on May 2, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

My brain does not feel up to any Middle-aged Musings nor yet Mental Meanderings, so I went to Facebook and looked around for some pictures to share.  Eventually I found my way to a page I like called Famous Monsters of Filmland.  Who doesn’t like monsters?  Oh, I know there are some that don’t, but I just imagine they were put off by today’s headline.  I amused myself my downloading a few classics.

“I bid you welcome.”

One of the most debonair of monsters is Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula.  I’m thinking Dracula reached his height point of sexiness with Frank Langella in the 1970’s, but I never saw that movie.  I’m just going by what I heard.

The new spokesmodel for Norelco?

We go from sexy to shaggy with the Wolfman.  I don’t know what movie or actor this is (I suppose real bloggers research these things and here we come to the ugly truth about me), but I liked him.

Ranking high in the annals of bad first dates…

I can’t help by notice there is a dearth of good female monsters.  The Bride of Frankenstein, despite being the title character, had an embarrassingly small part in a sequel.  I find that a little sad, especially given that she was portrayed by the wonderful Elsa Lanchester.

Oh, Julie, your date is here!

And here is the Creature of the Black Lagoon.  I think his body is scarier than his face, but that is one scary body.  Official Julie Adams (who played the object of the Creature’s desire) is another page I like on Facebook.  She seems to be a very gracious, classy lady.

The scariest one!

I think I have used this photo before, but I wanted to close with Nosferatu, which gets my vote for the scariest movie ever.  And I see I am approaching 300 words.  I don’t think that is bad for a brain-dead Monday.  I hope to see you all on Tired Tuesday.

 

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Typing on Tired Tuesday

Posted on April 19, 2017 by mohawkvalleygirl

Yes, I have used this picture before, but it is SO what I am feeling today.   Yes, I made it through Tuesday. It was not a terrible Tuesday.  It was definitely a Tired Tuesday.  I have done everything I intend to do today except make my blog post.  So here it is.

We had another rehearsal for Who Shot JS? the murder mystery to benefit the Herkimer County Historical Society.  It is sold out.  Woohoo!  We’re a hit and we haven’t even done anything yet!  At least, we have done a lot, regarding writing, rehearsing and getting ready, but the ticket-buying audience has seen nothing yet (as in, “You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!”).  This is going to be great.

Tonight’s rehearsal was at the Herkimer Elks Club, where the performance will be.  After rehearsal, two other cast members and I went into the bar and had a drink.  Yes, I drank and am typing.  One glass of Cabernet Sauvignon!  Sheesh!  We chatted up several Elks.  My friend Kim and I are considering joining the club.  You know how I love to be in the club.

Well, now that I have put one picture in my blog, I feel I should put in another.  I wonder what I can come up with.

Seriously, watch this movie.

OK, here it is, another movie trivia question.  What movie is this from and what is the dialogue involved?  I think regular readers will find it very appropriate for me.

 

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