Bite Me, Tony

"It's a strange world, isn't it?" Sandy Williams (Laura Dern) in Blue Velvet . David Lynch's 1986 masterpiece,  Blue Velvet begins innocuously enough: it is a beautiful summer day and two firemen are perched aboard a 50's-style firetruck as it does a slo-mo glide past richly blooming rose bushes and white picket fences. Nearby, a robin bounces jauntily while a middle-aged man hoses down his lawn. And, after the firetruck has passed, we see the middle-aged man grab his neck and collapse to the ground, the water shooting from the hose in arcs as he writhes in the grass. A toddler strolls into the frame as Angelo Badalamenti's lush score wells up, and this intrigue suggests that all will not be well from this moment on.  Until now, the beatific street looks like Anytown USA: the peace and serenity are idyllic. But it's a town called Lumberton, located somewhere in the same twilight zone as Twin Peaks, towns where most of the decades of 20 th Cent

Recent Movie Sightings 1: Aladdin, Godzilla King Of the Monsters, Portrait In Black For someone who claims to be a movie buff, it seems inconceivable that I haven't darkened the doors of a motion picture palace since last September. I'm not sure what happened—the last film we'd seen (something with Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick) had been enjoyable enough, if instantly forgettable—but the combined pleasures of Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and PBS, along with my addiction to purchasing blu-rays from Amazon, effectively stalled any efforts we may have made towards actually going out to see a movie these past months. Then, last week, C noticed that Aladdin was opening. I'd seen the animated Disney version numerous times, and later, C and I saw the stage musical on Broadway. Honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed both versions but why on earth was Disney resurrecting yet another of its most venerated animated efforts as a live-action movie? Well, we all know why—as long a

The 10:42 To West Palm (Part 2) It was with a sense of relief that we piled out of the Uber vehicle upon our arrival at the Norton.  Expecting to enter a chill cocoon of frosty air when the Hyundai Tucson arrived at the corner to pick us up, we instead found ourselves descending into the seventh circle of hell. It was 91 degrees outside, and still cooler than the interior of that car. I own a Tucson so I know that the a/c in these vehicles works remarkably well, especially since mine continuously runs at absolute zero. And yet, here she was, a young woman swathed in heavy sweater and jeans, apparently heralding the onset of nuclear winter, or some other frigid calamity, while the Tucson's dashboard issued lukewarm gasps of the kind usually reserved for priests delivering last rites. I am not a religious man but I remember thinking please God, let this 0.4 mile journey be brief . But, as usual, God was in an ill-humor this day. Per the instructions of the virtual a