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Below are the 8 most recent journal entries recorded in
0neminutem0vies' InsaneJournal:
| Friday, August 3rd, 2007 | | 7:21 am |
If I've friended you as both oneminutemovies and 0neminutem0vies, I apologize for being redundant and pesty and annoying. InsaneJournal could never seem to recognize my mchsi.com email account so I was unable to log in to modify my original account and had to make a new one. | | Saturday, July 21st, 2007 | | 2:02 pm |
| | Saturday, July 7th, 2007 | | 8:03 am |
| | Monday, February 5th, 2007 | | 2:37 pm |
Unconventional Love Stories: A Pop Quiz 1. A boy and his rose: reading this is the sweetest Valentine you can give yourself
2. A teenager and his sentient, murderous, self-regenerating car: a cautionary tale for people who name their vehicles
3. An author and his creations: author annihilates the fourth wall, enters his own book, and interacts with his alter ego--postmodernism at its most intriguing
4. A boy and his little brother: even though your book is sometimes pretentious and irritating, your heart's in the right place and your story is heartwarming
5. A girl, a priest, and The Church: the eternal triangle, plus afascinating look at life in the Australian outback
6. An ardent young girl and a cruel traitorous world: she puts us all to shame
7. A man and a figment of his imagination: green light at the end of the pier, you know--although it's been relegated to cliche status by years of overanalysis, still a great read with great characters and a great story. (Note the absence of overanalysis here)
8. A woman and her profession: a Norman Rockwell-style Valentine to teachers and small town America
9. A man and his house: My house is me and I am it. My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams.
10. A boy and his athletic, studly, super-nice roommate: award winner for Most Cleverly Disguised Gay Love Story Regularly Assigned in High School English Classes From the Sixties Up to the Present Day
a. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
b. Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
c. A Separate Peace by John Knowles
d. The Big Orange Splot by D. Manus Pinkwater
e. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
f. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
g. Good Morning, Miss Dove by Frances Gray Patton
h. Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
i. Christine by Stephen King
j. The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough | | Friday, October 27th, 2006 | | 10:41 am |
These are the scariest stories I know The Girl in a Swing by Richard Adams--If you've read Watership Down, you might expect this novel about a slightly psychic but otherwise commonplace young man who falls in love with a mysterious woman to be, well, benign? NO. This is a reading experience of ever-mounting, unrelieved tension, and suspense, and terror, which will haunt you for a long time after you read it.
Ghost Story by Peter Straub--This story of four young men grown old, tied together inexorably by a tragedy and haunted by regrets and other things, is filled with eerie moments. As always, I enjoy the spooky buildup to the gory denouement, but the spooky here is very well done. This book was made into a movie which is also very good.
The Thief of Always by Clive Barker--Harvey Swick is a very bored young man until he meets a helpful guy named Rictus, who whisks him away to Holiday House. There it is spring in the morning, summer in the afternoon, Halloween in the evening and Christmas before bedtime, every day. Barker is a master in the field of horror, usually writing for adults, but I think this understated book for all ages is his most effective.
The Sneetches and other stories by Dr. Seuss--This innocuous-sounding children's book contains a story titled "What Was I Scared Of?" featuring one of the most terrifying literary creations ever: the pale green pants with nobody inside 'em. I was frightened of this book as a child, and my children after me. If you are not yet familiar with it, beware. I'm not joking here. SCARY.
We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson--a surprisingly little-known classic by the author of The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House. The story is narrated in a matter-of-fact voice by the younger sister in a family which had earlier been partially wiped out by a notorious poisoning incident. The remnants of the family live isolated and shunned by the residents of the neighboring village, and as they attempt to carry on their everyday lives, we slowly become aware of the reticence between the surviving members. As always, the understated is far scarier than the elaborately described monster.
Pet Sematary by Stephen King--Okay, can't do this without having Stephen King. Pet Sematary is not by any means my favorite King book, but that is partly because it's just too scary for me. The zombiefied creatures are scary, yes, but even more frightening is the depiction of just how far around the bend grief can send a person, and what horrible acts it can inspire a usually rational sane person to do in their desperation. | | Sunday, July 17th, 2005 | | 9:43 am |
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory will be most successful with members of the audience who have not known and loved the 1971 version starring Gene Wilder for most of their lives. Burton offers a winningly grotesque adaptation of Roald Dahl's book, filled with visual oomph and dark humor, but he's fighting a losing battle with people who can't help remembering the wacky genius of the earlier movie and the far superior vocal numbers of the 1971 Oompa Loompas. Johnny Depp is often funny but his characterization is uncomfortably reminiscent of Michael Jackson, and the most successful parts of the movie are those outside the chocolate factory, featuring Charlie's family and Willie Wonka's childhood. I enjoyed watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but didn't find it exceptional, and I gave it eight out of ten. | | Saturday, November 29th, 2003 | | 12:56 pm |
The Missing The Missing is a Western directed by Ron Howard. Cate Blanchett plays a frontier woman with two young daughters and Tommy Lee Jones plays her estranged father, who conveniently shows up in time to help track the Indians who kidnapped the older daughter. Blanchett, Jones, and the little girl who plays the younger daughter are all excellent and the New Mexico scenery is spectacular, but the movie overall is grim because of the ceaseless violence. People are shot, stabbed, poisoned, tortured, voodooed, thrown off cliffs, and forced to eat dirt. Other than that, The Missing is pretty good and I gave it seven out of ten. | | Friday, November 28th, 2003 | | 1:05 pm |
Timeline Timeline is an uninspired adaptation of Michael Crichton's time travel story, directed by Richard Donner. It's about a team from an archaeological dig in France who are sent back to the fourteenth century after their leader is stranded there by an unscrupulous technology company who accidentally discovered a wormhole. The novel is nearly as good as Jurassic Park, mainly because of its attention to the probable cultural difficulties involved in time travel. The movie is mostly people killing each other and yelling and running around a lot. Timeline is disappointing but the remnants of an intriguing story are still there. I gave it six out of ten. |
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