Today's Amendment: I am tired.

Thank God I have a vay-cay coming up soon. I am feeling tired and ready to kick up my heels. I can't believe it's only Monday. Seems like this weekend sped by and here I am again, working my ass off. I can say I am glad the weather has finally warmed off. I had to break down and turn the AC on. It was hot as a motherfuck in here on Saturday afternoon. Which brings me to a couple or three or four reviews:

*Little Children

SPOILERS

So I was sitting here on Saturday afternoon feeling supremely lazy after cleaning the house and I popped in a copy of Little Children I rented. WTF. Honestly. I sat here for 2.5 hours watching that crazy shit and was quite disappointed by the ending. The weather outside seemed to be mirroring my confusion because when I started the movie, I was under a blanket. By the time I finished, I was sweating and had to turn the AC on to keep from roasting to death. The film is basically about a group of people living in a suburban area and how childish they are. There's also a subplot about a pervert/child predator who gets out of prison and comes back to this town to live. It's a jumbled up mess of married people having affairs, a cop who takes out his rage on the pervert, the pervert being unable to control his impulses and snobby housewives. I usually enjoy Kate Winslet's acting and that's the main reason I rented this. Blah. I was not impressed. Kate's character, Sarah, is trapped in a crappy marriage with a man who'd rather j.o. to internet porn than spend time with his family and Sarah generally treats her poor child like an unwanted burden. She meets Brad, a house-husband whose wife works as a documentarian. Brad's failed the bar exam twice and apparently neither wants to be a lawyer nor to get out of the house and work. They both feel trapped and undervalued. They strike up a friendship that grows into a sexual affair after Brad finds a book of love sonnets that Sarah has written in and placed his photo inside. All of this culminates in Brad proposing that he and Sarah run away together. But when the night of the planned escape comes, Brad bails on the plan because he skateboards with a group of teens and breaks his back. Brad stays with his wife (as far as we know) and Sarah goes back home to her husband. Rather an anticlimax. Perhaps the novel was better but the movie was ho-hum for me. I felt like I'd been tricked after spending the time investing in the characters only to discover that they stay in the same old relationships. I think I'd rather have a depressing conclusion where someone dies than to have such a dud.

*Dracula - Louis Jourdan version

SPOILERS

My parents have told me several times about a BBC version of Dracula they saw on PBS many moons ago. Lo and behold, Netflix had this version of Dracula starring Louis Jourdan so, based on their recollection of it, I gave it a spin. I have to say, goofy special effects aside, it was a good film. And it has some genuinely creepy, disturbing moments. In fact, I'd say it wasn't scary so much as unsettling. There's a particular scene where Lucy is looking out a window and she sees Dracula emerge from a fog. Louis Jourdan is dressed in a top hat and tails in this scene and he looks like an old school undertaker. It's very flesh-crawly. The infamous scene where Dracula scratches a gouge in his chest and asks Mina to drink his own blood is also creepily done in this version. I really felt like Jourdan plays Dracula with a sort of Mephistophelian/Satanic flair. I think he would have made a great Mephisto in a stage or film version of Goethe's Faust, for that matter. The furnishings of Dracula's house are also well done in this treatment. Again, it's not so much scary as eerie. Harker's escape from Dracula's castle is good. He finds Dracula, of course, in his coffin and attempts to behead him with a shovel. Jourdan looks at him in a way that I can only describe as smug condension mixed with amusement as if to say, "Really? You were actually stupid enough to believe this would work?" He smiles at Harker and goes back to sleep. I thought that was a good highlight of Dracula's power and his confidence in intimidating Harker. I would recommend it, especially if you are not familiar with the films of Jourdan.

*Dracula - the Langella version

SPOILERS

In keeping with the Drac theme (since Netflix keeps denying me my fix of The Saint), I rented the Frank Langella version of Dracula. I had high hopes because I'd read so many positive things about it and because I am a fan of Olivier, who plays Van Helsing in this version. Well . . . I disagree with all the hype. I didn't care for this version much at all. It wasn't terrible but it wasn't great either. I didn't think Langella was an attractive Dracula and since so much of the hype was focused on him as a sex symbol, I felt like I missed the boat on that one. And the heavily feathered John Travolta hair didn't help matters any. The plot of this version is not based totally on Stoker's Dracula but borrows a lot from the play written by Deane and Balderston. The characters you see will have familiar names but the structure and purpose of them will be different. Some of the scenes were quite good-- when Van Helsing finds his daughter down in the cave beneath her grave, for example, I thought the make-up and costuming was fantastic. I don't think I've ever seen a being so pale (and I've seen a lot of pale-ass people in my life, so that's saying something). But the scene where Dracula preys on Lucy and makes her his vampire queen, well, it just didn't butter my bread. It's supposed to be this super sexy, erotic moment and it didn't get me there. At all. My tastes can be weird, though, I admit this. That's like most of the chicks I knew who watched The Apprentice thought Trace was dreamy. He didn't do a damn thing for me. I was hot for Piers. So, ya know, take my attraction factor with a grain of salt, but Frank Langella in 70s hair didn't get me aroused. I suppose this version is meant to be a bit campy so watch it through that lens and don't take it too seriously.

Ok. Better go to bed now. And wait on these damned thunderstorms to blast me out in the wee small hours.