Fuck cancer

I lost a friend today, after a long battle made needlessly more difficult and painful by the US medical system. She was bright, articulate, sarcastic with a soft sympathetic underbelly and a practical way of getting things done. She was a light, not just to me, but to many others, and she'll be missed.

There are so many others, many of them prominent in today's news who, if the world was fair, deserved her fate far more than she did. It fills me with rage that they're still here, and she's not.

Right now, everything stinks.

and another thing...

I'd like to amend that list of movies to add Wind.

No, it's not a great movie. By critical standards, it's not even a good movie. It's a story about an elitist sport that's even more rareified and genteely cutthroat than the equestrian industry, America's Cup yacht racing. I mean, really, what kind of greater meaning or social relevance can you glean from that?

But it's so damn pretty, with the sailing footage, and the healthy, bronzed bodies, and the sunlight sparkling off the water and the glitter of picturesque, evocative spray, not to mention the wonderful Basil Poledouris score. There's Matthew Modine at his buff finest, and Jennifer Grey mostly pre-nose job (I think she had the surgery sometime during filming) and familiar. Her character is all focus and effectiveness, nothing like Baby Houseman, but charming in her softer moments.

There's a long stretch working on a yacht design in an empty hangar in the desert, with the obligatory tropical scenery painted on the wall behind an above-ground pool. The best gag in the world that nobody got is the four main characters angsting over this damn boat that *won't* come together, while Stellan Skarsgaard plays The Skye Boat Song on an echoing plaintive cello.

There's a scrappy fashionista heiress raising funds, aided by Skarsgaard, there's treachery by Cliff Robertson, twirling his mustache, there's team spirit defying his orders to loan their spare mast to another team, there's sex in the sail locker. There's the thrilling race, the strategy, the peril, the tension... and it's all. so. pretty.

Yeah, I'd watch it pretty much every time it came on, movie or commercial channel. I own the dvd. Maybe it's time to watch it again. "Where's my whomper?" The what? "The whomper, the whomper! You take it out, it goes WHOMP! and we win!"

another day...

Thank you all who replied to my last post. It means a lot.


And moving on, from all over my flist, have a meme. Thing.

Name six movies you can watch any time without ever getting sick of them.


1. Must be viewed as a double bill: The Princess Bride, and Pirates of Penzance (the Kline, Smith, Ronstadt & Lansbury version *only*!) **

2. Ghostbusters 1 & 2 (for the quotes, alone!)

3. Local Hero ++

4. Chocolat

5. Still Breathing

and interchangeably,
6. My Neighbor Totoro/Spirited Away

**The double bill was the gf test for the sons. "I dun geddit. I'm bored," meant we'd seen the last of the young woman.

++ The Mark Knopfler soundtrack alone makes it worthwhile.

re: the current/recent movie meme

Someday, when I have the spoons, I'll start a "which movies would you marathon together, and in what order" meme. No, it'll be fun!