Quirkee.com

"I...I like good food, OK? And...good food is...hard for a rat to find."

"It wouldn't be so hard to find if you weren't so picky!"

"I don't want to eat garbage, Dad!"

- Remy and Django, Ratatouille

 

"To eat good food is to be close to God."

- Primo, Big Night

I think it is precisely because the holidays tend to focus on food so much, that it is this particular time of year when I am most cognizant of how much I differ from the rest of my family.

It isn't that we don't get along. My family is probably as close as most families of my generation. And it certainly isn't as though we don't exhibit characteristics that show we are all cut from the same cloth. One need only spend five minutes around my brothers, my father and I when we play dominoes and listen to smack talk being run back and forth to know that we are of one blood, and always out for it when competition is involved.

"I was born a vampire."

- Dragonetti (Udo Kier), Blade

When I saw Udo Kier at Alamo Drafthouse to introduce a screening of Flesh for Frankenstein, he relented to the imploring crowd and dramatically repeated the above line from his turn as a vampire lord in Blade. The crowd ate it up, not the least of all because if there's another actor working today that seems more suited to type to play a vampire, I can't think of who. Whether it's the heavy German accent, the cold eyes, or the way he carries himself, if Udo Kier told me he was really a vampire, I'd have no question in my mind he was serious.

Which is both a blessing for him in that he always can find steady work, as long as there's a vampire movie shooting somewhere; and curse for the fear that many actors have: being typecast. It's entirely possible Kier could play Shakespearean roles on film, or command the stage rattling off some of David Mamet's dialogue, but I dare to say that most of the audience familiar with him wouldn't accept that shift in focus for him professionally because it stretches the niche he's carved out for himself beyond credulity. Kier is the go-to guy when you need a male, Euro-trash vampire for your movie.

If as they say, most every straight man's ultimate sexual fantasy is a threesome with two women, I might surprise more than a few of my friends with my choices were I to name who I'd like my "cinematic" fantasy objects to be. For it would not include Scarlett Johansson's character Charlotte from Lost In Translation, who I fell for madly when I saw that film. Nor would it include Death Proof's Zoë Bell, who I proposed marriage to in this very space.

No, if we're going to name fantasy objects based on film characters, I might have to give very serious consideration to Cynthia Bishop and Lee Hollaway.

Cynthia Bishop is the character played by Laura San Giacomo in Steven Soderbergh's sex, lies, & videotape. Though Cynthia isn't the central figure in the story, per se, much of the film's action is driven by Cynthia's choices. She's clearly a woman who has no issues in expressing the things that she desires and taking action when necessary to achieve those ends. Obviously I can't speak for everyone, but I'd wager that a number of men find those characteristics sexy.

Joey Chestnut won the thing, but part of me wants to call him Robert Paulson.  Takeru Kobayashi may prompt comparisons to many people, but I might be the first to think of George Romero.

July 4th for most people means fireworks and cookouts.  There's usually a fair bit of drinking tied in as well, though for me it's usually a good occasion to recover from the hangover brought on by birthday drinking the day before.  And tied in with all of the expected Independence Day traditions, for better or for worse, is the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Competition on Coney Island.  I'd been marginally aware of the contest until ESPN began broadcasting it, providing yet another reason for me to be thankful I don't watch TV.

It was while I was driving home from a friend's house the morning of the 4th that I heard about the results of this year's contest on the radio.  Joey Chestnut became the first American to win the title in eight years.  I pause to mention what the newscast mentioned next only to advise readers to exercise discretion before reading further.  For it was at this point that I learned that at the end of the contest, Kobayashi, the six-time defending champion entering the competition, suffered what in the world of competitive eating is referred to as a "reversal".  Yes, that means what you think it means.

"...you've got to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky?"

- Dirty Harry

There are times when I think people are more vociferous in their insistence on the existence of luck than they are in their insistence on the presence of God.

The tendency strikes me as being something we always ascribe to other people, calling someone a "lucky devil" (or "lucky sod" if you're of a British inclination) or even ascribing it to someone as part of their cultural makeup ("luck of the Irish"). It's almost as though luck were some physical commodity that can be passed back and forth amongst the deserving and undeserving alike. Wayne Kramer played with this concept in his directorial debut The Cooler in 2003, but two years earlier, Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo explored it on a more metaphysical level with his moody suspense film Intacto.

Max von Sydow plays Samuel, a.k.a. The Jew, a mysterious figure who runs an isolated and very exclusive casino called Uncanca. At Uncanca, high rollers who are allowed to enter can enjoy various games of chance in the hopes of increasing their largesse. The catch is that one shouldn't prove to be too lucky at the games, for if they do the big winner may find themselves visited by Samuel's apprentice Federico (Eusebio Poncela). Federico is possessed of a distinctive gift, one that Samuel has helped Federico hone: with a simple touch of the hand he can steal your luck away, claiming it as his own.

Dallas: "Do you remember what happened on the planet?"

Kane: "Just some horrible dream about...smothering."

The monsters that lurked under my bed and in my closet as a kid were facehuggers.

I've not been able to get my father to confirm, but I have distinctive memories of waking up late one night and hearing the TV in the living room. I stumbled out to find Pop laying on the floor, the TV turned to Showtime. I asked what he was watching.

"It's a monster movie called Alien."

"Can I stay and watch it with you?" I asked. I would have been nine or ten at most.

"I don't know," he said. "It might be too scary for you."

When thinking of movie-going memories of my youth, it's curious that one of the images that stands out in my head is a juxtaposition of demonic clowns and light cycles.

I was born and grew up in El Paso, and one of the last old school movie theaters in town at the time was the Pershing Theater on Montana. I'm not sure how old the theater was, though a solid guess would put it dating back to the 30s or 40s. It had a decent size balcony, one of the vestiges of segregation, and long closed off due to disrepair.

As it struggled to compete with the multiplexes that would dominate El Paso in the later 80s, one of the things it offered in the summer of 1982 were double features. Which is how for my $4 admission ticket (well, my parent's $4 in any case), my younger brother and I wasted a wonderful afternoon in August watching Tron and Poltergeist for the price of one movie. The two films held nothing in common beyond being released during one of the most prolific genre years of the 1980s, but both films held my imagination hostage as a 10-year-old.