Christmas

I got a mixed bag this year.

From my older brother, who has been strapped for cash this year, I got one of those public domain collections of Hitchcock movies. This one is from Brentwood Video, an outfit known to transfer their DVDs from videotape sources. My brother had apparently forgotten that he gave me a similar (and better) Hitchcock set three years ago. I didn't have the heart to tell him this, because he's trying his best, after all, and it's difficult to buy these sorts of things for me. Plus, this particular set has Blackmail and The Ring, neither of which are on the other set from three years ago.

From friends: Banlieue 13, an action film produced (but not directed) by Luc Besson. I know nothing whatsoever about this movie.

From my significant other: The Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 3. This one is paydirt. She also got me the King Kong production diary package a couple of weeks ago for my birthday; it's a strange creature, this package: it's the DVD extras without the feature.

For my part, I got her the first season of Gilmore Girls, which was very well received, and added House of Flying Daggers, The Aviator, Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary, Infernal Affairs, The Triplets of Belleville, Minority Report, and Bad Santa to the communal movie shelf (all purchased on the cheap, used, from my local mom and pop video store).

I'm generally relieved to be out from under the holiday now. I can actually think of buying things without stepping on anyone's toes. Most importantly, I can put in that order for the new Disney Treasures tins without worrying about whether or not someone has bought it for me for Christmas. Yay!

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and others...

A busy month on my website. I've posted reviews of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Dragonslayer, Female Convict Scorpion: Jailhouse 41, The Killer Must Kill Again, and Sorum since my last post. That's a lot of activity for me. Here's a page with the links.

My ISP is giving me fits. Unless I tell the server exactly what it wants to hear, it thinks I'm out of space. I'm nowhere near my allotment, so it's a matter of jumping through the hoops. What a pain.

We had a movie night on Saturday. The movie I chose to show was Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan. I need to sit down and write about it, because it's as strange a movie as they come. It's weird and beautiful and violent, and not at all what you might expect from the soft-core porno title it bears. It's a hand-grenade thrown into the history of the Shaw Brothers Studios in Hong Kong, and makes me eager to jump into some of the other Shaw Brothers films I haven't seen.

One of these days, I'll go back to watching American movies. Maybe.