Harry Potter and the Subjective Ranking

Posted on February 18, 2022 by Risa

I had some trouble getting back into reading after a distracting two years of assorted COVID lockdowns, until I returned to a tried and true passion: the Harry Potter series. Despite JKR over-sharing some problematic opinions about transgender people, I can’t dispute her talents at writing a captivating series.

I love this series, and I find myself so absorbed by the story that by the end of 7 books, I’m basically also a friend of Harry, Hermione, and Ron, and now that I’m done I really miss them! To cling a little longer to the fantasy, I thought I’d just go ahead and rank the books against each other. To be clear, a ranking of 7th out of 7 books is still the same as a ranking of 93 out of 100 when stacked against a myriad of non-Harry Potter books.

Number 7 in the top 7 countdown: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I’m not entirely sure why this is my least favourite of the HP series. It has all the makings of a great story – the Quidditch World Cup, a contest where we all are supposed to cheer for the underdog, actual dragons, first crushes, and the shocking and violent return of Lord Voldermort to his Real Life body. It’s not that I didn’t love it, it’s just that I loved it the least. Maybe it’s a bit too choppy? Or possibly it’s just too long for the stories that it is telling. Just win the tournament, escape the Dark Lord’s return, and be done with it already!

Number 6: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

I liked this booked, partly because I figured out after reading it that Snape was in love with Lily Evans, and that’s why he switched his allegiance to Dumbledore and the Order of the Phoenix. And of course, there was the shocking twist where Snape also kills Dumbledore, so WTF??? But as far as a ranking in the HP greatest hits list, it’s just a little heavy on exposition through the convenient use of the Pensieve for visiting equally convenient, previously stored memories.

It seems like minimal progress is made in the identification, recovery, and destruction of the final remaining horcruxes, leaving a lot of heavy lifting for book 7. I mean, even after Dumbledore risks his and Harry’s lives to retrieve the locket, it turns out it’s already been retrieved (but not, unfortunately, destroyed, so technically it’s lost again). We don’t witness the destruction of even one Horcrux in this book (Dumbledore destroys the ring “off page”, so to speak). This means our intrepid gang of wizards heads into the finale with the tasks of locating three remaining Horcruxes (the re-lost locket and two as-yet unknown), figuring out how to destroy them, and killing the fourth (Nagini).

Number 5: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

Bonus points for being the book that started it all! Super fun, humourous, engaging. Harry, Ron, and Hermione become friends for life. Buuuut …. three 11 year old brand new wizards can figure out the more stringent magical protections around the philosopher’s stone. Yeeeaaahhhhhh ok.

Number 4: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

This book is tough to call. Half of it is full of my absolute favourite moments: The DA comes into being, the Weasley Twins find their passion outside of school and leave a floundering Professor Umbridge in their wake, Harry bonds with Sirius.

On the other hand, Harry is so grouchy for most of the book, and even reasonable explanations don’t appease him. Yes, he’s a hormonal teenager, but he’s had to put up with way worse than “how dare you not tell me what’s going on!” And, he flakes on Occlumency training even after Dumbledore tells him nothing is more important. AND, he forgets he has a perfectly useful 2-way mirror for contacting Sirius and instead runs headlong into a Voldermort trap at the Department of Mysteries. Harry, Harry, Harry.

Number 3: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Third is possibly a higher ranking than this book deserves, except for the fact that the good guys win and we find out what happens to all the key characters in a helpful epilogue (EXCEPT LUNA, JK!!! WHY DID YOU LEAVE OUT LUNA????) It’s also full of excitement, close calls, death, not-death, and some very sad choices around who lives and who doesn’t, as seems right in a war.

The problem I have is all the heavy lifting. As already mentioned, Harry, Hermione, and Ron start out with having to find and destroy 4 Horcruxes, which is already hefty. But this eventually turns into finding the 4 Horcruxes, finding the 3 Deathly Hallows, solving the mystery of the 3 objects that Dumbledore bequeathed, and dealing with a surprise 5th Horcrux (who isn’t actually very hard to find).

Number 2: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

This book, very early on, lays a lot of the groundwork for things that will come later: the sword of Gryffindor, the diary, Gilderoy Lockhart at St. Mungos, house elves, the whomping willow, the Ford Anglia, the vanishing cabinet, Fawkes, Polyjuice Potion … It also settles nicely into the friendship between Harry, Ron and Hermione and solidifies Harry’s relationship with Dumbledore. Finally, it’s already starting to hint at the degree to which Voldemort is dangerous, which of course will just continue to escalate book by book.

And the number 1 book in the Harry Potter series: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Yes, yes, I know this is an easy pick and it’s EVERYBODY’S favourite. For about 5 minutes, Harry has a family and is as happy as he will be throughout most of the series. Sirius gets his redemption (sort of), Buckbeak is saved, and there is proper and judicious use of time travel. Plus Hermione is awesome (as always) and we meet Lupin, one of my favourite secondary characters.

Next up: maybe I’ll rewatch all 8 movies! In the meantime, which is your favourite Harry Potter book?

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Airplane Etiquette

Posted on December 19, 2021 by Risa

I just started flying semi-regularly again after an 18-month COVID hiatus. Things have changed a little since the Before Times and I wanted to offer this short tutorial on the new airplane etiquette.

  1. How to cut the boarding lineup

I confess I have zero respect for airplane lineups and I don’t apologize for it. Airlines have knowingly created a problem by charging people $50 to check baggage and then taking up to an hour to deliver bags to the carrousel, so now everyone wants to take their bags onboard. This means you are SOL* for overhead space if you board last** which in turn means doing whatever you can to board first, including line cutting. I used to be a pro at inserting myself into the front of my zone line. A favourite strategy of mine was to get in the line of people one zone ahead and when I was within a few people of the gate, I would recheck my boarding and look surprised, then step sheepishly to the side, waving people through. “I’m sorry, it’s not my zone yet, go ahead.” Then, when my zone is called, I’m at the front of the line! Less polite, but still effective, is to simply linger near the lineup markers and just drift into the line when your zone is called. Surprisingly, very few people will object. I’m a terrible person.

The COVID era made me rethink my boarding tactics – people are already stressed enough as it is – and I started lining up more respectfully. This thoughtful approach to boarding did not result in anticipated serenity, but it did enable me to discover another line-jumping tactic. It’s so simple. Look for people who are glued to their phones in the lineup. There is an almost 100% chance that the line will move and they won’t notice. At this point, look questioningly at them, shrug your shoulders as if to say “I guess they aren’t in this line” and just insert yourself in front of them (do not speak to them, or otherwise distract them from their obsession). I guarantee they will never notice. (This happened to me a number of times during my short stint as a well-behaved boarding passenger, and what I learned from it is that there is no reward for being a well-behaved boarding passenger.)

2. How to be a total bag on board

Three words: recline your seat. This is basic rage-inducing behaviour. Airlines have been chipping away at our personal space for decades, and nothing makes you more hated than reclining your seat to steal even more space from the person behind you. Are you really tired because you’ve been travelling for 18 hours and want to sleep? Don’t care. Are you tall and therefore uncomfortable in the tiny space you’ve been allotted? Still don’t care. Maybe the person behind you is also tall.

Reclining your seat pushes your chair-back right into the miniscule personal space of the person behind you. It makes it impossible for them to reach the bag they have stored under the seat, it means they can’t use a laptop because it can’t be opened it far enough to see the screen, and watching the in-flight entertainment is challenging because the screen is now 3 inches from their face.

There is very little that can be done about a seat recliner. I’ve complained to flight attendants when the seat back was literally a palm-width away from my face, and was told it was their “right” to recline (note to Americans: it isn’t). At best, I’ll share the discomfort by aggressively rooting around for my under-the-seat purse every 5-10 mins, bumping into their reclined seat every time I do. “Oh, sorry, were you trying to sleep up there? That’s a shame.” Yeah, I’m that person.

I’ve heard that in an attempt to take away even more space from travelers, airlines are toying with the idea of standing-room only short-haul flights (WTF airlines???). I guess the good news is that if you’re standing. nobody can recline into your face.

3. Getting off

Fortunately, it seems that deplaning hasn’t changed much (“deplaning” … is that a weird word, or is it just me?). People wait their turn as the passenger leave row by row. Most people will fuss around trying to get their overhead bags out in advance, resulting in some temporary claustrophobic overcrowding, but the alternative is being stuck being some doof while they fuss around trying to gather all their items and retrieve their overhead suitcase and coat. I think most people just want off the plane as soon as they possibly can so they can safely reclaim their personal space.

4. Conclusion: Airlines suck

After only 3 post-COVID (mid-COVID?) flights, I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to manage airline travel is to just take as little on board as possible. Pay the fee and check your bags upfront, or take the free option and check them at the gate. Then it doesn’t matter when you board, and you don’t have to be a line-cutting jerk like me. You can even avoid lining up altogether and just sit comfortably in a chair until the final boarding call. Luxury! It also means you have marginally more space on board. We move too fast through the world these days, and it’s really not the worst thing ever if we have to wait a little longer for a suitcase to arrive at a carrousel.

That said, you still suck, airline companies!

*Shit Outa Luck

**Helpful tip for airlines: if you want people to surrender their bags at the boarding gate, instead of making a screechy announcement every 5 minutes to a group of already stressed out passengers, why not offer priority off-loading so that if you check your bag at the gate it gets to the carrousel within 15 mins? Or upgrade people to zone 1 if they agree to check their bag at the gate, since they won’t be using overhead bin space? Come on, airlines, this is easy stuff.

Posted in PEC Living | 2 Comments

Doctoring in the County

Posted on November 11, 2021 by Risa

Well, we’ve been in our new home for 4 months now and there’s lots to reflect on! Fixing a swampy pool, booking heating contractors to fix our hot water radiators before the temperature plummets to -25, convincing Hydro to cut down a dead 50-foot tree before it falls onto our power lines or our kitchen, finding a plumber to fix a very leaky sink. And then of course there’s the fun of finding a vet, an optometrist, a dentist, a hair salon, a gym, a trainer, and of course a long list of assorted contractors.

Best of all is (was) the search for a doctor. After some very simple poking around, it became clear that finding a doctor was going to be a challenge (impossible). The social media sites were all the same. “Can anyone recommend a doctor who is taking patients?” Answer: “No.”

In Ontario, there is now a service called Health Connect which you can join if and only if you don’t already have a family doctor, and it is supposed to act like a wait-list. Health Connect matches you with a doctor as soon as one becomes available, prioritized according to your medical needs. (This simply means if you are healthy, you’re looking at a 4 year wait. At least.)

After signing up for this service (“service”), I bravely downloaded a list of local doctors and clinics and started making calls. This lasted until my 4th call to a clinic where, when I asked if they were taking patients, the receptionist said “I don’t actually book any of the doctors here, but even so I can tell you that none of our 57* doctors are taking new patients. I also can’t tell you of anyone who is.” This course of action was too depressing to continue.

At this point, all I really needed was an Ontario doctor to re-issue a blood test req so I could pop into a local LifeLabs and have my iron level tested, just to confirm it’s back to normal so I can stop taking supplements, which are yucky. Not a problem, this is what walk-in clinics are for! So, on the Friday before Thanksgiving I headed off to a walk-in clinic in Belleville, 30 minutes away. The clinic I preferred turned out to be closed that day (“the” doctor had car trouble and couldn’t make it in). I drove to a second clinic that was closed because it was the Friday before a long weekend (what?). The third one I tried didn’t even exist. It seemed like it may have been converted to an Animal Hospital. The 4th clinic was at a pharmacy and was also closed on account of its proximity to a holiday Monday, but the pharmacist gave me a phone number of “someone who would help me”. Long story short, this helpful number was for a telemedicine service which is basically on-line doctoring.

I tried the walk-in clinic option a week later, and my preferred clinic was closed again due to the doctor having a family emergency. I didn’t even bother to try further.

Meanwhile, Jeff found, through his research, the “Ontario Virtual Care Clinic” (www.seethedoctor.ca), a doctoring service for very simple health related questions. I signed up, was immediately put into queue, less than 3 hours later I was on the phone with my randomly selected virtual doctor who reissued my blood test req in about 5 mins. Thank you, random doctor!

After a very easy visit to LifeLabs, my results came back with good iron levels but also elevated “eosinophils”. A visit to Doctor Google (sorry Chrystal!) provided an immediate diagnosis: I either had leukemia or a parasitic infection. Crap.

Back to the walk-in clinic, and lo! Third time lucky, my preferred clinic was open! I’ll just mention here that I bestowed preferred status upon this clinic because it seemed to present itself as a clinic with real doctors (or “doctor”) rather than some weird front for a Telemedicine virtual doctor service. I say seemed because as it turned out, the doctor was actually a nurse practioner** who’s job was to take all of my vital information and then video-conference in a random doctor to provide a diagnosis. The nurse was lovely and thoroughly enjoyed my Google-based self-diagnosis. To engage with the doctor, she stood at attention front of a large monitor like she was about to present me to the Queen of England. “Your majesty, introducing Ms. Risa Zaleski, a female of 56 years who is presenting with slightly elevated eosinophils!” The video doctor diagnosed what the nurse practioner already knew. I do not have leukemia or a parasite. I have allergies.

And that is how you Doctor in the County:

  • The “Ontario Virtual Care Clinic” for easy questions and answers via random doctor video conference from the comfort of my office desk chair
  • The Great Lakes Walk-in Clinic for nurse-facilitated video-doctor care
  • The Emergency Room for everything else

*It wasn’t 57, it just felt that way as I sat through the voice menu recording: For Dr Smith, press 1. For Dr Jones, press 2. For Dr Sharma, press 3….blahblahblah…. For other doctors, press 9.

**She was, in fact, a doctor, fully educated in India, and just working through getting her corresponding medical license in Canada. We make these poor people jump through hoops despite having a serious and health-threatening shortage of doctors.

Posted in PEC Living | 1 Comment

Home Sweet Home

Posted on May 13, 2021 by Risa

Today we resolve the final horror when the plumbers show up to replace the toilets, after which all will be right with the world. Just in case you think we have literally entered the eighth circle of hell, here are some “after” photos of the house to help reset (technically, these are “middle” photos, since we still have painting and flooring to take care of).

This is the main living area of the house, and main selling feature. It’s difficult to capture the grandeur in a photo, but here’s a look from a few different angles. The only unfortunate aspect is that the fireplace is not double sided, but it IS high efficiency so it should provide some help with heating in the winter.

  • The great hall, facing south
  • The great hall, facing north
  • A nook, next to the great hall

A few choice rooms, all wonderfully clean!

  • Main staircase, and second worst wallpaper in the house
  • The parlour, Jeff’s future bar
  • Master bedroom (still pink!)
  • A very country kitchen
  • Dining Room

The basement is not really usable living space, but useful to have. Check out the beams in the basement ceiling – they still have bark on them! The garage (which I like to call the barn because it’s comically huge) has a second floor that would be extremely useful if it didn’t plummet to -25C in the winter!

  • The basement will never look this good again
  • The Chevy is home.

And lastly, a look at the outdoors. We’ve been fortunate to have some beautiful sunny days, although with a couple of frost warnings as a reminder that this is Ontario.

  • Innismar
  • The view from the porch, where we drank our coffee every morning.
  • We decided to keep the tire swing!
  • The Pig Barn, which is dangerously dilapidated, but super cute.

We’ll be back soon with a moving truck. Please come visit! We have LOTS of space and we’d love to have you!

Posted in Innismar | 2 Comments

There’s a pretty nice house under there

Posted on May 11, 2021 by Risa

We finally moved into our home for real once we got rid of the mattresses (ew) and cleaned a minimum of rooms for livability (2 bedrooms, a bathroom, the kitchen, and the dining room which, lacking any other furniture, also became the office/living room/lounge). Up until now I should mention with extreme gratitude that we’ve been welcomed into the home of my cousin Kelly and his lovely wife Brenda. In case you’re wondering, the lot of us have all been first-dose vaccinated 1

We’re pretty much in a daily routine of cleaning now. Even after the 9 hours of Wicked Clean PEC help the house is SO DIRTY. In the main bathroom, where you may remember one of the cleaning crew worked for 3 hours, I thought I’d tackle the disgusting corners of the floor and discovered that the grout and edging is not, in fact, beige…

  • Just need to clean this dirty corner.
  • Nope! The entire border of the bathroom is supposed to be white.

I cleaned a bunch of dog slobber and grime off the kitchen door that faces the living room. I expected great things from this effort, so carefully documented before/after pics.

  • Before – dirty dirty
  • After – what the … ? Is there a difference?

Well that’s disappointing. Maybe the back of the door will be more successful …

  • Nevermind.

The previous owner spared no expense in updating about a million windows to beautiful, energy efficient models from Landmark (the Home Solutions company, not the crazy cult you have to join if you work at Lululemon). Thankfully, they clean up super nice! Sadly, there are 32 of them. There’s also a sliding door that alone took at least 90 mins to clean.

  • Before
  • After!
  • This is SO much filthier than it looks!
  • Underneath the dirt I discovered a damaged sliding track. Thank you, renters!

The worst job of all time, however, is wallpaper removal. There is nobody here who wants to be paid to do that job. My efforts to find someone went something like this:

Attempt #1

Me: Hi, I have a nice big job worth lots of money to remove wallpaper from several rooms in my old century home and them paint the entire interior.

Contractor: No thanks. Wallpaper sucks and if your walls are plaster it could be disastrous.

Attempt #2

Me: Hi, I have a great job to paint the interior of my house, and in a couple of rooms in the newer part of the house there is some wallpaper over drywall, if you could maybe look at removing that?

Contractor: I don’t do wallpaper anymore, thanks anyway.

Attempt #3

Me: Hi, do you think you could paint a large part of my house? None of the rooms being painted have any wallpaper at all.

Contractor: I guess I could come by and take a look.

Sigh. What to do, what to do.

Three lies that I have told:

  1. I’m just 5 minutes away.
  2. No, of course Ryan Reynolds isn’t cuter than you!
  3. I will never take wallpaper off a wall again as long as I live.
  • Starting in on one wall plus a border.
  • Seven hours later …

Next up: Do we secure a painter? Also, a gallery of nice pictures.

1 future readers: May of 2021 is wave 3 of a global pandemic that started 14 months ago. Ontario is in a provincial lockdown that means you can’t buy clothespins at the dollar store or play golf but you can buy clothespins at the grocery store and anyone in the home improvement industry can come and go as they please.

Posted in Innismar | 9 Comments

Contractors. Our New Best Friends.

Posted on May 8, 2021 by Risa

All of my conversations with contractors went something like this:

Contractor: Yes, I can do that job. When do you want me to come?

Me: Can you be here in an hour?

Contractor: Hahaha

Me: I’m not joking.

Our first new friend, the Key Master 1, came straight away to rekey the doors but also ended up repairing damage that made it easy to lock the back door from the outside but for some reason impossible to reopen it. There are so many mysteries.

Second on our speed dial was the Junk Eliminator 2, who delivered us a nice, big, red dumpster and was happy to come as many times as we needed to haul it away and replace it with a new one (turns out 2 times was what we needed). He happily took everything including batteries, electronics, dog carpet, and creepy things from the basement. He wouldn’t take the 101 propane canisters. They are the hot potato in the room.

We had a serious water pressure problem (I guess the dirt makes sense now if you can’t fill a bucket to mop). As well, there were some issues with hot water and, of course, there are the toilets (remember those?!). Third up were our old friends, the Waterboys 3. The water pressure was easily fixed by replacing the carbon filter, which was apparently in a horrifying state. The hot water, which works but takes a while to run, requires a second visit to assess the boiler. The toilets are all being replaced next week. Check check check!

We called on outside help to tackle the layers and layers of dirt, assuming they might also be able to bring one working vacuum. (We left the tenants a brand new $500 Hoover 4 years ago, which I was told “blew up almost immediately”, although it was not one of the 4 broken vacuums left behind.) Three Cleaning Angels 4 showed up and scrubbed away for over 3 hours, with one poor woman spending the entire time just in the main bathroom. A bathroom that was newly renovated 4 years ago. Literally had never been used. Gack.

The carpet smell was more of a challenge. I ripped out any that had nice wood floors underneath, but a significant area of the house is just carpet over subfloor. Rats. Enter the Steam Gang 5 who were cautious (“dog smell is extremely hard to get rid of” … great!) but willing to give it a go. We agreed with their conditions. Indeed, it’s like the steam cleaning just made it angry, and now the place smells like wet dog. It’s the BBO episode of Seinfeld all over again. Fortunately, the carpets are all on the soon-to-be-replaced list.

In what seems like it might be a long-term relationship, the Members of Shield 6 came by for the annual spray for wasps, a problem the tenants complained about a few years ago. Based on the number of the ant traps I found around the house, I suspect we will also discover another problem requiring their help this summer. And next week, Shield comes again to investigate how much of our house doubles as a mouse habitat. Although by then Jeff may have killed them all (he is up to 3 mouse murder-death-kills).

Finding someone to come and remove wallpaper has not been so easy. I’ve left messages for three people, none of whom have called back. I managed to speak to one lovely gentleman who told me, regarding the wallpaper, that “he doesn’t do that horrible job anymore” and “prefers to leave it to the younger guys” (hey, could you give me the name of even one of these younger guys??) It’s almost like they know what’s in store for them…

  • Secondary Stairway
  • Bedroom #5
  • Bedroom #2
  • Bedroom #1
  • Master Bedroom – Jeff loves the pink!
  • Main Stairway

We are going to move on to general contractors next, and pass the buck to them to find people to do the work. That’s the stuff of a future post.

1 Prince Edward Locksmiths, Picton

2 Tom & Kris, from Load-N-Lift Disposal, Belleville

3 Veentra’s Plumbing & Heating, Wellington

4 Amanda, from Wicked Clean PEC

5 Tino, from Tino’s Carpet & Duct Cleaning, Belleville

6 Greenshield Pest Control, Belleville

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Renters. How much do they suck?

Posted on May 7, 2021 by Risa

Four years ago, we bought a charming country farmhouse (“Innismar”1) on Big Island, in Prince Edward County, Ontario. Because we weren’t quite ready to move here, we rented the house for four years to “S” and her partner/boyfriend/husband, their 5 children, and two dogs. In retrospect, this was a red flag. On April 30 we took back the house, along with a laundry list of other surprises.

The Crap

Fast forward a few days from April 30 and we have completely filled 2 dumpsters with the stuff that was left behind. In fairness, about half a dumpster was stuff that was ours and we asked them to leave – a couple of couches, 2 easy chairs, …. S warned me there were “signs of wear” after four years of use. This was an understatement considering we used gloves and masks to carry them to the dumpster. It’s like the leather surface of one couch had … melted? Some of the extra treasures that were left for us included; 6 mattresses and a foam sleeping pad, 2 dressers, 4 bed frames, a headboard, maybe 10-12 industrial sized bags of garbage, 4 broken vacuums, about 20 empty shoe boxes, a dozen rubber vehicle floor mats, a child’s play kitchen, and a large dog stuffy. Most suspicious and unsettling were 101 mini propane canisters (empty) and a broken hibachi. Make your guesses in the comments. Perhaps there will be a prize!

  • One of two!
  • The sun room isn’t so sunny right now.
  • Someone likes outdoor cooking?

The Damage

Dog-gouged French doors. A broken wooden window sill. A broken window that S told me a tree branch had fallen against (here’s the window – do you see any trees?). Every single baseboard radiator is partially disassembled. There are many holes in the walls ranging from 1-3 inches wide. Several curtain rods have fallen (been pulled?) off the wall. The toilets. My god, the toilets.

  • A “tree” did this.
  • OMG OMG OMG OMG
  • ????
  • Who let the dogs in? Nobody!

The Smell

There are three competing smells fighting for dominance; smoke (smoking was not allowed in the house per the lease), wet dog, and mouse pee. The more you try to resolve one, the more one of the others takes over. Lose lose. Today we attempt steam cleaning but have already been warned it may not work. I have taken up the carpet in the master bedroom and the side room off the “parlor” (now the “bar”). And I have already inspected to determine I can rip up one hallway upstairs and two closets, although Jeff wants me to settle down until after the steam cleaning is down. He’s weird.

Tomorrow: Contractors – our new best friends.

1 Innismar comes from Ynys Mawr, which is Welsh for Big Island.

Posted in Innismar | 12 Comments

1001 Movies, Part 15. Lockdown Edition.

Posted on April 13, 2021 by Risa

The race is on between 3rd wave COVID case records and vaccine rollout, and so far COVID is winning. We’re over a year in now, and I have no doubt you are wondering “which movies are the best for day 400 of a worldwide pandemic”? Well, look no further! Here is a handy list of COVID-positive movies for your reference.

In the Mood For Love (Fa yeung nin wah): Set in Hong Kong, this visually gorgeous movie follows the lives of two neighbours in a crowded tenement, Mr. Chan and Mrs. Chow, who believe their spouses are cheating on them. They find comfort in their growing friendship, but promise never to stray beyond that, so as not to become like their spouses. Why is this a COVID + movie? Because even though they fall deeply in love, they never actually touch each other (except for one hug which takes place outside). Also, it’s subtitled, and since you’ve got nothing else to do these days, you might as well sit back and read your movie.

Sergeant York: What better way to spend your 400th+ day of COVID than to watch the the life of someone who had it way worse than you? Sergeant York is the true-ish story of the military life of Alvin York who, after getting cheated out of the money he needs to buy some land and then being stuck by lightning, ends up getting drafted into WW1. Through a subsequent series of unlucky/lucky events, he eventually becomes one of the most celebrated heroes of the war. When he returns home, he gets his land, and lives happily ever after. Like maybe we will one day.

Things To Come: In 1936, HG Wells looks to the future and predicts some actual things to come: flat screen TVs, Jumbotrons, Segways, factory automation, underground drilling machines. In 2021, the world looks the future and hopes we can eat food inside a restaurant one day.

The Exterminating Angel: A very peculiar movie in which members of the Spanish elite class are guests at a dinner party and then find themselves unable to leave. Not because they are being held there against their will. They just cannot make themselves leave the room even to eat or use the bathroom. Every time they get close to leaving, they get distracted and end up staying put. At one point a goat wanders in (?) and so they slaughter it for food. Honestly, if this isn’t symbolic of 2020, I’ll eat my hat.

The Gold Rush: Perhaps the most famous of Charlie Chaplin’s movies, if only for the “roll dance” wherein Chaplin creates a dance number using forks stabbed into dinner rolls. Apart from being an absolute gem of a movie, there is much entertainment in watching Chaplin and his fellow prospectors invent ways to stay entertained while isolated in a cabin in the Alaskan wilderness. You can then recreate these games in your own home, which during lockdown feels pretty much the same as his teeny tiny cabin.

Super Fly: Why binge-watch a season of Miami Vice when you can get the full Vice vibe from this 1972 movie about a cocaine dealer looking to get out of the business after he makes one last score. Ron O’Neal, sporting a fine biker ‘stache and sideburns, spends most of the movie just walking around to the music of Curtis Mayfield. Really, this was a 45 minute TV show that needed to be stretched into 91 minutes in order to qualify as a “movie”. Attempting to make something interesting out of nothing is exactly how my life feels at the moment, which is why this is a perfect pandemic movie.

Doctor Zhivago: An Omar Sharif epic is a fantastic way to spend an evening of lockdown, and if it can’t be Lawrence of Arabia, then it might as well be Doctor Zhivago. Some weird shit goes on – one character marries their cousin, another is molested by an … uncle? Maybe I missed that part while I was making popcorn. But weird shit aside, this is a classic, and unlike many movies of similar length, very little of it is wasted time. Better to make the popcorn before hitting play 🙂

Blue Velvet: First things first, this is not the movie about the horse. Secondly, I am retroactively embarrassed to say that all I really knew about this movie was from an episode of Friends. If you don’t know the one I’m talking about, all the better for you! Thirdly, I was mildly distracted by the amount of Twin Peaks imagery (crimson curtains, weird cuts, a dismembered ear, and Kyle MacLachlan) until I realized/read that Twin Peaks was, in fact, inspired by Blue Velvet. That alone makes it a COVID-friendly movie but add in Isabella Rossellini in a righteous wig and you have yourself a gold medal winner.

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1001 Movies, Part 14. A Murderous Affair.

Posted on March 25, 2021 by Risa

A lot of the movies we’ve watched lately involve themes of murder, which seems about right for the times, given how Covid has murdered our social lives. Here, then, are a few. [Updated: I neglected to include ratings. This has been rectified.]

On The Waterfront opens with an unfortunate dockworker being tossed off a roof in retaliation for his planning to testify against a corrupt local union. Marlon Brando stars as another dockworker who eventually finds a way to fight back against the corruption and avenge his friend’s murder. His famous line, “I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am” always makes me start singing the lyrics to “Something to Live For” by Barney Bentall (“…coulda been a contender, coulda been a big guy…”) Sorta ruins the moment, you know?

Rating: I continue to be impressed with Marlon Brando, and I haven’t even seen The Godfather yet! This is yet another Brando must-see. Just avoid Barney Bentall before you do!

Gaslight is the 1940 movie from which “gaslighting” gets its name and its definition. The movie is so named because the main character, a woman who is literally being gaslit by her douchey husband, realizes something is amiss because the gas lights in her house dim every evening for no apparent reason. The actual reason they dim is because said douchey husband is pilfering about in her attic looking for a secret treasure that she inherited from her aunt (who, it turns out, he murdered).

Rating: I was excited to watch this movie just for the cultural context, and ended up really enjoying it, and I loved the ending.

The 1985 movie Ran is what King Lear would be if it were set in Japan. In true Shakespearean tragedy form, eventually everyone is murdered.

Rating: While it breaks a rule on the runtime by a LOT (2 hours, 42 mins), I was remarkably engaged by this movie. Mieko Harada as the vengeful Lady Kaede is spectacular.

Charlie Chaplin plays Monsieur Verdoux, a con man who seduces women, marries them, and then murders them for their money. He’s the total package!

Rating: Charlie Chaplin gets one thumbs up on his own. Despite a storyline that seems dramatic, there is a classic Chaplin-style comedy scene when M. Verdoux’s real wife is invited to the wedding between he and one of his marks.

Suspiria (the 1977 version) witches curse a ballet dance school, causing maggots to rain from the ceiling, and dogs to kill their owners. For added gore, girls also fall through glass ceilings, and jump into rooms filled with razor wire while trying to escape the school grounds.

Rating: There’s nothing really wrong with this movie except it’s a bit …. 70s.

Badlands is a true-crime story of a couple who escalate bad behaviour into a cross-country murder-spree. The story is based on real life serial killers Charles Starkweather and Caril Fugate who murdered 11 people as well as 2 family dogs over a few weeks between Dec ’57 – Jan ’58. Other fun cinematic portrayals of these two crazy kids include The Sadist, Kalifornia, Natural Born Killers, and Starkweather.

Rating: One thumbs down on principle, just for the disturbing content.

In The Searchers, Ethan Edwards, played by cowboy poster-boy John Wayne, returns home to find his family murdered and his home in flames, in a manner reminiscent of Luke Skywalker discovering his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, also murdered and on fire. The killers in this case turn out to be a band of Comanches who also kidnap Ethan’s 9 year old niece (played by Lana Wood, and in later years, by her older sister Natalie – the movie is a bit of a family affair as Wayne’s son Patrick also has a role). Ethan and his sidekick spend the next 5 years searching for his niece, with Ethan intending to kill her himself if she has become too “indian”. This all seems pretty somber, what with all the positive race representation, but the biggest surprise is that this movie is littered with unexpected comedic moments. Totally worth a watch.

Rating: Keeping in mind the year this movie was made (1956) and taking the racial tones into context, this really is a solid John Wayne movie. Maybe 1.5 thumbs instead of 2 (but I don’t have a half-thumbs-up icon)

The Big Heat stars Glenn Ford as Sergeant Dave Bannion, a good cop who is assigned to investigate the alleged suicide of a fellow officer. Bannion quickly determines this was no suicide, and as more people are killed, including his wonderfully charming wife (doesn’t that just figure) in a bombing intended for him, Bannion goes on a revenge mission to bring down the bad guys, who turn out to also be cops.

Rating: Just a solid good-cop movie.

The Lady From Shanghai seems like it should be an awesome movie, full of double cross and intrigue, and starring Hollywood sweetheart Rita Hayworth and filmmaking icon Orson Welles. But in reality, it is a bizarre and often confusing romp. Rumour has it that Welles threw this together in order to quickly raise the money he needed to fund his musical Around The World in 80 Days, leaving my wondering why this movie made the 1001 Movies list? Even the book describes it as a crazy, hard-to-follow kaleidoscope.

Rating: It’s just such a weird movie …. !

Of all the Stephen King movies, The Shining is perhaps the best (or at least my favourite), despite “winning” two Razzies in 1981. King was allegedly not enamoured with it, but as evidenced by Maximum Overdrive, he’s no expert in masterpiece filmmaking (my experience with Stephen King is that he is too attached to his own visualizations of his books and doesn’t understand that interpretations may vary). The brilliance of this movie shines (you heard me) with the unbroken takes of Danny riding his big wheel through the interconnect halls of the hotel, Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of his character’s descent into madness, the blood filled elevators, and Shelley Duvall in the Heeeere’s Johnny scene.

Rating: I love this movie. Love it.

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1001 Movies, Part 13. This Is Why We Have Rules!

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Risa

Here is a quick refresher of the Barrett/Zaleski (mostly Barrett) family movie rules. They are standing the test of time pretty well, although Nicolas Cage in a strong contender to replace Kevin Costner in rule 4, mostly because of Face/Off. (Never watch this. You’ve been warned.) Let’s see how these eight movies stack up.

The English Patient. In the first 5 minutes, Ralph Fiennes’ biplane is shot down and he is burned beyond recognition, transmogrifying into Lord Voldermort. For the next 157 minutes, I finally understood Elaine Benes’s critique (“Quit telling your stupid story about the stupid desert, and just die already! DIE!”). Ah Elaine, not afraid to break with popular opinion. It’s not a terrible movie, it’s just terribly long. Broken rules: 1) It won 9 Oscars, including Best Picture and the dreaded Cinematography, and 2) It has a run time of almost three hours (why? WHY??).

Spartacus. Spartacus escapes his slavedom, rallies his fellow escaped slaves into forming an army to revolt against a corrupt Roman empire, their revolt fails, and they’re all crucified. The End. (errrr, spoilers ….) On the up side, the casting was magnificent, giving credit where credit is due, no pun intended. Broken Rules: 1) Tops out at 3 hours and 17 minutes and 2) Another 4 Oscars that predictably includes Cinematography. There must be more to Cinematography than long, drawn-out landscape scenes, right? Uuuggggghhhh.

My Fair Lady. Impressive effort was put into trying to ruin this excellent musical. Most significantly, they dubbed the singing of all of the actors who can actually sing, and then didn’t bother dubbing Rex Harrison who speaks all his lyrics because he can’t sing. They also passed on casting Dame Julie Andrews and instead dubbed Audrey Hepburn with a singer who sounds EXACTLY like her. Broken rules: 1) Once again it’s toooooo long at 2 hrs 50 mins, 2) it won 8 Oscars including the Picture/Cinematography combo that is the harbinger of movie awfulness. On a side note, the costumes in the Ascot horse race scene are just WOW!

The African Queen. The title of this movie is a reference to Katharine Hepburn, obviously. By sheer coincidence, the boat Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart ride down the river is also called The African Queen. Unless, hang on, the boat is also named for Katharine Hepburn! The movie was filmed in the heart of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Hepburn and Lauren Bacall, who travelled to the location with husband Bogart, both loved Africa despite heat, danger, and illness. Bogart, on the other hand, reportedly hated it. Broken Rules: Humphrey Bogart won his only Oscar for best actor, and for all you trivia buffs, is the last actor born in the 19th century to win.

Clueless. A surprisingly sweet movie about a seemingly shallow high school in-crowd, but it turns out that the Queen Bee, Cher (Alicia Silverstone), just wants everyone to be happy and falls over herself to make that happen. Definitely a way nicer (and nicer looking) in-crowd than what my high school had! Broken rules: none.

Swing Time. This is the first movie I’ve seen that stars the iconic Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Much of the movie plot seems to be have been stolen by our Christmas favourite, Holiday Inn, including an awkward black face scene that contains plot points crucial enough to the story that if you were to cut the scene you might as well just not show the movie. Which is the choice that a lot of television has apparently made, making this a difficult movie to find. I want to say the choice is unfortunate because this is a beautiful movie to watch, particularly for the dancing. There are times when you’d swear Fred and Ginger’s feet weren’t even touching the floor. Broken Rules: One – it wins the Oscar for best music (and it gets a pass for this).

Miracle on 34th Street. A perfectly Christmas-y court room drama proving Santa is real because the U.S. Post Office delivers him mail. A must-watch movie in the holiday rotation! Broken Rules: Edmund Gwenn won the Oscar for best supporting actor for playing Kris Kringle and it that’s not deserving I don’t know what is.

Cat People. (The one from 1942, not the one from 1982 – this is an important point) A Serbian immigrant thinks she has inherited a Serbian curse that turns her into a murderous panther in moments of intimacy. Her newly-wedded husband is like “cool, we can just never kiss, I love you THAT much”. As a significant psychological horror influencer, this movie is worth a watch. Broken Rules: literally none.

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