Meme day 25: Cleaning up after myself
Content notes: The TV cut contains spoilers for "The Hungry Earth" and "Cold Blood" from the most recent series of Doctor Who.
[A show you plan on watching (old or new): Classic Doctor Who, BBC, 1963-apparently forever]
I have mentioned in other responses to this meme that although I am now up-to-date on all of the new Doctor Who stuff, it took a long time for me to really consider myself a fan of the show. As I read more about the show and its history, I realized this was because I tend to enjoy the elements of Doctor Who that have persisted ever since the earliest days of the show much more than I enjoy the new things that were added to it. For example, I appreciate Doctor Who most when it is a little (or a lot!) campy, and I usually prefer the stand-alone episodes to the Big Important Plot Arc stuff. I really enjoy the cheesy one-shot monsters and the historical stories and wish there were more of both in the new stuff. I do not care at all for Daleks, Cybermen, or anything having to do with either. The Master was the best villain ever and I would be so incredibly happy if he would just pop up at random here and there to be incredibly homoerotic. I find pretty much anything having to do with the Doctor's love life to be kind of incomprehensible and weird (particularly where Ten/Rose is concerned as a pairing) and prefer his relationships with companions to be kept platonic (though I make an exception for River Song because oh my god, have you seen River Song lately?). I was surprised to talk to Doctor Who fans and to find out that all of the things I disliked (with the exception of Daleks and Cybermen, who I accept are here to stay, sigh) were basically additions from the Russell T. Davies era, and that the things I like about Doctor Who are actually much more prominent in the classic serials.
For that reason, dayzdark have an ongoing project of Get Caught Up On Doctor Who. Not all of it, certainly, because that would be quite literally impossible, but we both want to see some of the great stuff we've missed so we can have a context for what comes up in the future. dayzdark has enjoyed the rebooted stuff from Day One a lot more than I did at first (and he adored Ten), and I get the sense he still prefers that to the old stuff, but at least he's letting me drag him into old TV of questionable production values. (c: So far we have only seen two of the classic serials - The Aztecs with the First Doctor, which we both thought was pretty awesome especially considering that it aired in 1964!, and The Sea Devils with the Third Doctor which was...less so. Even so, watching The Sea Devils was fun because we realized that two of the new episodes we had just recently seen ("The Hungry Earth" and "Cold Blood") actually made reference to the events of that serial, with the Silurians believing they had a claim to Earth and the Doctor negotiating with them! So it was kind of neat to find continuity in Doctor Who when we had previously believed it to be a myth. (c:
I guess I'll end this response with a repetition of my request for people to recommend good Classic Who serials to us, so we can continue with the viewing already. I'm pretty sure that my appreciation for Doctor Who is something that will only deepen with time, particularly considering that I thought the recently-concluded fifth series was fantastic.
[The most hilarious movie you've ever seen: "The Misbehavers" from Four Rooms, dir. Robert Rodríguez, 1995]
I hesitate to actually recommend Four Rooms to anyone because frankly, it's not a very good movie. I don't even own a copy of it for that reason. Of the four interconnected short films that make up the movie (all of which take place over the same New Year's Eve in a hotel, and follow the adventures of a very frazzled bellhop played by Tim Roth), the first is really terrible and basically an excuse to see Madonna topless, the second is interminable and makes no sense, and the fourth (directed by Quentin Tarantino) is really tedious for about 30 minutes until it suddenly becomes awesome. The third segment, "The Misbehavers," absolutely broke me in the best possible way. I'm not sure if I can even explain why it was so intensely funny to me, but in the spirit of the prompt, I'm going to give it a try.
The plot of "The Misbehavers" has to do with a couple (Antonio Banderas and Tamlyn Tomita) who go out to a party and pay the bellhop $500 to keep an eye on their children while they are away. Because the bellhop's duties keep him away from the room, the children have a lot of opportunity to get into trouble as they discover various bizarre and urban-legend-tastical things in the hotel room where they have been ordered to stay, all of which play a part in the enormous trouble they get into by the end. On the most obvious, surface level, the plot and structure of "The Misbehavers" really hits upon one of the styles of humor (and really of narrative in general) that I like the most: when a writer or creator throws out various Chekhov's gun details which are all important in some way at the climax of the story. When done well, this is pretty much a recipe for ultimate hilarity where I am concerned.
More than that, though, Four Rooms cracks me up for personal reasons. Some of you know already that when I was in high school and college, I had a summer job as a housekeeper in a motel. This job gave me a number of things: an unwavering respect for the people who do it day in and day out and don't punk out to go back to college every September, the ability to clean bathrooms and make beds faster than just about anyone, a lack of squeamishness surrounding everything except hair, a lot of really strange and/or disgusting stories, a desperate desire for the movie Tommy Boy to never have been made (OH HO HO YOU ARE SO CLEVER, RANDOM MOTEL GUESTS, I HAVE CERTAINLY NEVER HEARD ANYONE REPEAT "HOUSEKEEPING!" BACK TO ME IN THAT CHRIS FARLEY VOICE BEFORE), and a compulsion to always always ALWAYS tip well when staying in hotels. It was also a window into people's private lives the likes of which I don't think I will ever receive again. For a long time I've been trying to produce some sort of creative piece about the experience of being so invisible to people that they would willingly give you unfettered access to parts of their life they might not even show to their families or spouses, and then to see the same people smiling at you when you bring more towels to the pool and understand that although you have never and will never meet, they trust you more implicitly than those loved ones not to betray the confidence of how they really are behind closed doors. But it hasn't been easily forthcoming, probably because in so many cases, truth is much stranger than fiction.
So that might explain something about why, when I rented this movie during one of those summers along with a friend and co-worker of mine (who was more fearless and open-minded in her movie viewing tastes than anyone I've ever known and who I really, really miss renting weird independent films with), we laughed ourselves absolutely silly because we knew. For most people, the comedy of Four Rooms (and of "The Misbehavers" in particular) comes from how over-the-top and ridiculous it seemed, but for us, the comedy came from how not exaggerated it seemed. And even now, years after I left that job for good, it still makes me laugh to think about how absurd it all could be - and this movie takes me right back.
This entry was originally posted at http://gamerchick.dreamwidth.org/566112.html. You can comment on either journal. Number of comments on Dreamwidth:
[A show you plan on watching (old or new): Classic Doctor Who, BBC, 1963-apparently forever]
I have mentioned in other responses to this meme that although I am now up-to-date on all of the new Doctor Who stuff, it took a long time for me to really consider myself a fan of the show. As I read more about the show and its history, I realized this was because I tend to enjoy the elements of Doctor Who that have persisted ever since the earliest days of the show much more than I enjoy the new things that were added to it. For example, I appreciate Doctor Who most when it is a little (or a lot!) campy, and I usually prefer the stand-alone episodes to the Big Important Plot Arc stuff. I really enjoy the cheesy one-shot monsters and the historical stories and wish there were more of both in the new stuff. I do not care at all for Daleks, Cybermen, or anything having to do with either. The Master was the best villain ever and I would be so incredibly happy if he would just pop up at random here and there to be incredibly homoerotic. I find pretty much anything having to do with the Doctor's love life to be kind of incomprehensible and weird (particularly where Ten/Rose is concerned as a pairing) and prefer his relationships with companions to be kept platonic (though I make an exception for River Song because oh my god, have you seen River Song lately?). I was surprised to talk to Doctor Who fans and to find out that all of the things I disliked (with the exception of Daleks and Cybermen, who I accept are here to stay, sigh) were basically additions from the Russell T. Davies era, and that the things I like about Doctor Who are actually much more prominent in the classic serials.
For that reason, dayzdark have an ongoing project of Get Caught Up On Doctor Who. Not all of it, certainly, because that would be quite literally impossible, but we both want to see some of the great stuff we've missed so we can have a context for what comes up in the future. dayzdark has enjoyed the rebooted stuff from Day One a lot more than I did at first (and he adored Ten), and I get the sense he still prefers that to the old stuff, but at least he's letting me drag him into old TV of questionable production values. (c: So far we have only seen two of the classic serials - The Aztecs with the First Doctor, which we both thought was pretty awesome especially considering that it aired in 1964!, and The Sea Devils with the Third Doctor which was...less so. Even so, watching The Sea Devils was fun because we realized that two of the new episodes we had just recently seen ("The Hungry Earth" and "Cold Blood") actually made reference to the events of that serial, with the Silurians believing they had a claim to Earth and the Doctor negotiating with them! So it was kind of neat to find continuity in Doctor Who when we had previously believed it to be a myth. (c:
I guess I'll end this response with a repetition of my request for people to recommend good Classic Who serials to us, so we can continue with the viewing already. I'm pretty sure that my appreciation for Doctor Who is something that will only deepen with time, particularly considering that I thought the recently-concluded fifth series was fantastic.
[The most hilarious movie you've ever seen: "The Misbehavers" from Four Rooms, dir. Robert Rodríguez, 1995]
I hesitate to actually recommend Four Rooms to anyone because frankly, it's not a very good movie. I don't even own a copy of it for that reason. Of the four interconnected short films that make up the movie (all of which take place over the same New Year's Eve in a hotel, and follow the adventures of a very frazzled bellhop played by Tim Roth), the first is really terrible and basically an excuse to see Madonna topless, the second is interminable and makes no sense, and the fourth (directed by Quentin Tarantino) is really tedious for about 30 minutes until it suddenly becomes awesome. The third segment, "The Misbehavers," absolutely broke me in the best possible way. I'm not sure if I can even explain why it was so intensely funny to me, but in the spirit of the prompt, I'm going to give it a try.
The plot of "The Misbehavers" has to do with a couple (Antonio Banderas and Tamlyn Tomita) who go out to a party and pay the bellhop $500 to keep an eye on their children while they are away. Because the bellhop's duties keep him away from the room, the children have a lot of opportunity to get into trouble as they discover various bizarre and urban-legend-tastical things in the hotel room where they have been ordered to stay, all of which play a part in the enormous trouble they get into by the end. On the most obvious, surface level, the plot and structure of "The Misbehavers" really hits upon one of the styles of humor (and really of narrative in general) that I like the most: when a writer or creator throws out various Chekhov's gun details which are all important in some way at the climax of the story. When done well, this is pretty much a recipe for ultimate hilarity where I am concerned.
More than that, though, Four Rooms cracks me up for personal reasons. Some of you know already that when I was in high school and college, I had a summer job as a housekeeper in a motel. This job gave me a number of things: an unwavering respect for the people who do it day in and day out and don't punk out to go back to college every September, the ability to clean bathrooms and make beds faster than just about anyone, a lack of squeamishness surrounding everything except hair, a lot of really strange and/or disgusting stories, a desperate desire for the movie Tommy Boy to never have been made (OH HO HO YOU ARE SO CLEVER, RANDOM MOTEL GUESTS, I HAVE CERTAINLY NEVER HEARD ANYONE REPEAT "HOUSEKEEPING!" BACK TO ME IN THAT CHRIS FARLEY VOICE BEFORE), and a compulsion to always always ALWAYS tip well when staying in hotels. It was also a window into people's private lives the likes of which I don't think I will ever receive again. For a long time I've been trying to produce some sort of creative piece about the experience of being so invisible to people that they would willingly give you unfettered access to parts of their life they might not even show to their families or spouses, and then to see the same people smiling at you when you bring more towels to the pool and understand that although you have never and will never meet, they trust you more implicitly than those loved ones not to betray the confidence of how they really are behind closed doors. But it hasn't been easily forthcoming, probably because in so many cases, truth is much stranger than fiction.
So that might explain something about why, when I rented this movie during one of those summers along with a friend and co-worker of mine (who was more fearless and open-minded in her movie viewing tastes than anyone I've ever known and who I really, really miss renting weird independent films with), we laughed ourselves absolutely silly because we knew. For most people, the comedy of Four Rooms (and of "The Misbehavers" in particular) comes from how over-the-top and ridiculous it seemed, but for us, the comedy came from how not exaggerated it seemed. And even now, years after I left that job for good, it still makes me laugh to think about how absurd it all could be - and this movie takes me right back.
This entry was originally posted at http://gamerchick.dreamwidth.org/566112.html. You can comment on either journal. Number of comments on Dreamwidth: