I am stressing for a variety of reasons. So here's something that sat unfinished on my desktop for the last month:

As the computator has been returned unto me, and I now have some actual, potential audience out there that might browse through my thoughts… and, more importantly, as I’m trying to work through some stuff right now and need an excuse to drink heavily again, I’m gonna try to return to some sort of writing.

Writing on lj is fairly easy so long as the subject matter is light and fluffy and requires little thought (and little risk in the subject selection). I do want to try and return to my many abortive (and thus far unseen) attempts at storytelling, but I’m gonna try, once more, to use lj as a random scattershot sounding board (or sound dampener, depending on the resulting chatter or lack therof) and mental exercise for my writing hand, so y’all get more of my crappy commentary on flicks, books, etc.

I always say this, and it very rarely turns out to be true, but I’m really gonna try and keep these short this time. The writing dry spell I’ve been crawling through means an immense backlog of potential review subjects, and there’s a couple thoughts on each that I’d like to get outta my head. Any one of these may be subject to a more thoughtful and thorough review later.

On the recommendation of just about everyone, I finally pulled my copy of ( The Descent ) the actual film is specifically about the relationship between the women.

Like I said, awesome flick.

I also got out to see the new ( Star Trek )…they’re turning Kirk into Anakin from “The Phantom Menace.”

See what I mean about compression of avatars?

At the other end of the scale, I was lent the trade of ( BATMAN: RIP )Interestingly, the new set of comics that’ve come out since his death covering the Bat-family (including his newly minted son by way of Talia al Ghul) are actually shaping up to be kinda interesting.

There was a paragraph in here where I compare RIP to Identity Crisis, which I read for the first time this month, but that’s more than I care to gorge myself on tonight. The rest in brief:

Up: already covered. Saw again this weekend with the parents for Father’s Day, and I have to say I stand by my previous assessments, though wish to re-emphasize that it is a fun movie. My mother (whose father I mentioned in my previous review) was pretty thoroughly messed up by it.

Drag Me to Hell: Sam Rami’s return to the horror genre shows he’s a surprisingly grounded director. Instead of trying for some all-encompassing, audience stunning “greatest horror film ever made,” and, as a result, making complete crap and failing spectacularly, he instead aims for a nice middle-ground, partially self-aware spook story with some fun set pieces and good practical effects. Aiming into the late 80’s “Ghostbuster” range of targets, he got a solid, enjoyable hit on this one. The absence of a Bruce-Campbell-level personality at the core of the film was noticeable. There wasn’t an icon to grasp hold of (particularly after one scene that makes the audience loose all sympathy for her), and the ending was a little bit of an anti-climax in some respects (though hilariously macabre in others).

So, we’ve come out the other end of the Halloween season and ploughed through famed, feared, and classic flicks for the month of October. How do I plan to bring us down after that lot? Why, by stepping back a bit on the scares and the gore and, instead, screening those favorites from childhood, the PG-rated horror flicks! The kiddie shiver primers! The “My First Monsters” coloring books! …OK, really, it’s the cult favorites that we’ve all got stashed in the back of our heads as the goofy monster movie specials that were tame enough to make it on network TV, but were enthralling enough to stick with us into our adult years. The stuff tailor-made to entertain and maybe even scare the bejeezus out of our formative selves before a night spent extorting candy out of the neighbors.

…at least that’s why I remember ‘em. Ah, the apparent immortality of youth.

(Unfortunately, we’ve got a bit of a problem, but I’ll come to that.)

Universal’s Legacy: The Monster Squad (1987, 82 minutes). Existing squarely at the intersection of “The Goonies” and “The Lost Boys” is this little lost gem, in which it’s up to a squadron of pre-teens to save the world from the revival of nearly the entire lineup of Universal Monsters. While its sentimentality and script is aimed squarely at the kiddie set, it does inject a surprising degree of menace from the leading monsters and the film’s effects and makeup are several steps above the expected. The legendary (and recently deceased) Stan Winston re-designed all of the monsters himself specifically to pay tribute… but not to impinge on any of Universal’s copyrights. And then there’s that one line for which the film is most famed…

The second film is a bit of a problem… I can’t decide between two flicks to round out the evening. One is “Mad Monster Party?,” a Halloween companion piece to the Rankin Bass “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” animations we all watched as kids. I’m not sure I’m actually cruel enough to subject y’all to this one. Boris Karloff does a grand job injecting some gravitas into his part, but practically nothing could counteract the fact that Phyllis Diller sings. Repeatedly. Maybe some judicious fast-forwarding? The other movie is 2006’s animated flick “Monster House.” The problem here is that it’s not actually that bad of a flick. It’s possessed of the same oddly off-natural scripting (and practically the exact same character dynamic) of “Jimmy Neutron,” the flick is nevertheless surprisingly gratifying in the way that the action comes right out and grabs people, even if the kids are the only surviving witnesses. The peak of the action… let’s just say you won’t be disappointed. I just worry that people will get bored without a legitimately bad flick to ridicule and round out the night. What say y’all? I may just leave it up to those who arrive…