Movie Clip Wednesdays: Favorite Fantasy Movie

I could also call this Ironic Much Wednesday, or Moi's Mid Week Oxymoron, because fantasy has got to be my least favorite genre in literature, film, what have you. Science Fiction, I'm fine with. Fantasy, that's another story. That's weird languages and whole new earths and hirsute species of sub-humans with names I can never remember, much less pronounce in my head.

I must be one of the few people on the planet who has never read The Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings trilogy (although I saw the films, which I think are great, but maybe we should just put that down to Viggo Mortensen and move along), and only just recently, after spending a tense month galloping through The Girl Who Played With Fire, decided I needed something light and spotted one of S.B.'s pieces of Nerd Lit, as I call it—a book co-wrote by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I had no idea these guys were so huge.

However, there remains a handful of fantasy type movies that I like. John Boorman's Excalibur for one, because it's so seamlessly, beautifully shot. The Wizard of Oz is another. In fact, it's probably one of my favorite movies of all time, or, rather, my favorite movie of a certain segment of time: the years between when I was old enough to focus my eyes on a television screen and, say, about 13 years of age. When I was little, I would throw an all fired up hissy fit if for some reason my parents didn't get me back home in time after Sunday dinner out the one time a year it came on television so I could snuggle under my blanket with my teddy bear, my thumb, and scare the living crap out of myself.

To this day, I think The Wizard of Oz is a great film—shot in that gorgeous, super-saturated Technicolor you just don't see anymore, with wonderful music, song, and dance; some truly creepy sequences mixed in with the right amount of tear jerking; and a heartfelt theme balanced out by a wee bit of subversive thought. Plus, there were those shoes.

Unfortunately, You Tube disabled all the clips, but if you click below, you can watch one of my favorite scenes, the one where the tornado hits Dorothy's home, taking the viewer on a literal and figurative journey from her simple black and white Midwestern existence to a technicolor fantasy world that is at once strangely wonderful and downright frightening.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhPu5AHDMHM

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To see what the other nerds, er, participants chose, click over to Milk River Madman's place for Favorite Fantasy Movie Clip Wednesday:

Dinosaur Down

Haiku Mondays: Crescent

Photo courtesy NASA/JPL Space/Science Institute

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Leached from sunlight’s grace,

taunts the fulsome moon. At last,

fortnight passed. God bites.

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K9 is guest-hosting Haiku Monday this week.

Head over to there if you'd like to toss your 5-7-5 into the ring.

Double, Double, Toil For Your Troubles

Just when you think the world is getting way too 21st century pragmatic and progressive, a story like this comes along to remind us that Dark Age sensibilities still poke at the furthest corners of our civilization.

Apparently, in an effort to raise revenue to alleviate Romania's economic crisis, Prime Minister Emil Boc (how very vampirian), backed by President Traian Basescu (who names these people?), has decided to slap a big ol' tax on the income of his country's witches, fortunetellers, and fringe folk who otherwise make their living capitalizing on Romania's reputation as one of the most superstitious countries in the known universe, outside of perhaps Northern California.

Apparently, these dudes have never read Macbeth. Piss off a witch, and they strike back with a vengeance. “We do harm to those who harm us," sayeth one old gal, who goes simply by the name of Witch Alicia. "They want to take the country out of this crisis using us? They should get us out of the crisis because they brought us into it . . . my curses always work."

At last report, the witches had settled upon an ancient spell involving "cat poo and dead dog" to curse Romania's president and every member of the government. They also plan to hurl poison mandrake into the Danube to further strengthen their spell.

"This law is foolish," said another witch over the telephone to an AP reporter (apparently, her powers of telepathy were on the fritz that day.) "What is there to tax, when we hardly earn anything? The lawmakers don't look at themselves, at how much they make, their tricks; they steal and they come to us asking us to put spells on their enemies."

Pass the Fresca and the popcorn, Party People, and just think of how awesome it would be if this actually worked.

Move Clip Wednesdays: Favorite Movie Set in Winter

I don't know whether it's because I was born, raised, and remain living in the West, or whether it's simply because I'm an American and therefore come packaged with a certain segment of my DNA that is compelled to long for the wilderness, but when I dig deep and really think about where I would feel most at home, the place I always come up with is Alaska.

I've never been there. I know little about it and if I ever found myself in a cabin alone somewhere on the Tundra, I just might crumble like a girly-girl and head for the nearest Starbucks and Nordstroms. But if life is about pushing frontiers, it seems to me that Alaska is the last great one readily available for exploration.

Which is why I love this movie so much. Never Cry Wolf has been called one of the best nature movies ever made, based on biologist Farley Mowat's explorations of the relationship between Arctic wolves and the caribou herds that the Alaskan government accused the wolves of decimating. More than that, though, it's a movie about being alone without being lonesome, about being resourceful instead of wasteful, and about whether or not human beings are in fact capable of existing in harmony with the wilderness. The visually gifted Carroll Ballard nears soapiness on occasion, but for the most part holds tight to a restrained documentary style that lets viewers come to their own conclusions about the themes he raises.

Unfortunately, all the clips of this movies are over 8 mintutes long; this is the only short one I could find.

Pop on over to , Milk River Madman's place for more favorite wintertime movies:

Haiku Mondays: 2010 in Review

Rehab by Mitch Griffiths

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Packaged, shilled, and sold.
Open wide. Receive, swallow.
Cured now, your disease.


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Why don't you, too, haiku? Head over to Troll's for a year end review.

And the Winner Is!

The winner of Guess that Dish is actually a tie. Here's why. Of all the dishes, the one that was perhaps the least succinct was number six. The dish I was thinking of was Saag Paneer, but another of you guessed Saag Aloo, which is actually curried spinach and potatoes, not curried spinach and cheese (Saag Paneer).

So, in all fairness, I believe that BOTH of these contestants are deserving of a donation to their favorite charity. The first one guessed every dish absolutely correctly and that winner is . . .

LA DIVA!

The second entrant also guessed every single dish absolutely correctly, with the exception of the whole Saag thing, as outlined above. And that winner is . . .

AUNTY!

Finally, Honorable Mention must go to Troll, the third entrant (Buzz, where were ya, dude? Karl?), whose guesses for several dishes were spot on, while a couple others were totally—but highly creatively—off the mark.

Here are the ingredients with their dishes:

Chocolate
Pasilla Chiles
Ground corn tortillas
Mole Poblano

Lime
Egg
Rice noodles
Pad Thai


Olives
Anchovies
Spaghetti Noodles
Pasta Puttanesca (Troll said pasta acciughe)

Bottom round
Red vinegar
Juniper berries
Sauerbraten (everyone guessed this one correctly)

Catfish
Pecans
Worchestershire sauce
Catfish meuniere (ditto)

Spinach
Ghee
Curry powder
Saag Paneer (Troll went neither paneer nor aloo, but Spanish curry)

Choclate cake
Kirsch
Whipped cream
Black Forest Cake (ditto)

Sponge cake
Ice cream
Egg whites
Baked Alaska (Troll said Strawberry Shortcake)

So, Aunty and La Diva, send me your charity info and I'll get a $50 check in the mail to each of them in your name on Monday. Troll, I will make a $25 donation to your charity via PayPal.

Thanks for participating everyone!