Achievement: Weekend

[bironic]

Well, I didn't manage to do much vidding other than prep work for that Halloween vid. Everything was not in fact clipped, only ripped. Then I had to hook up the portable A/C because summer has finally decided to be super gross again, which meant losing my chair space.

It was quite the productive three-and-a-half-day weekend, though! Lookit:

- Put together a storage unit for the closet, re-organized, and moved some stuff to the basement
- Got an over-toilet shelf thing for the bathroom and set it up
- Found a plastic storage bag for winter blankets to get them out of the way
- Sold the dining table that's been in various closets since grad school
- Reinstalled some drawers
- Got a flat bike tire filled
- Put fake flowers in a vase for some color, because real flowers are expensive
- Labeled my spices (shut up, they're in those magnetic canisters and it's hard to tell chili powder from paprika from Old Bay without opening them up)
- Organized the nuts/dried fruits/snacks shelf that's been irritating me for months
- Cleaned floor to ceiling, with "Cake Boss" on in the background
- Grocery shopping and cooking
- Burned finger on hot pan handle, because idiot
- Laundry and dishes
- Oh, and tried making challah for the first time solo. Came out OK; bread-y enough to be proud of, but not very flavorful. Will try a different recipe next time the mood strikes.
- Watched the extremely embarrassing "Plato's Stepchildren" with ignazwisdom

Most fun of all was being charmed by two movies expected to be terrible: Vampire Academy and The Pacifier.

1.

Vampire Academy was the next movie up at the semi-regular local fangirl MST3K gathering. One attendee had promised it really wasn't awful, and we found this to be true! I mean, it suffered from exposition overload and facepalmy lines and American butchering of Romanian words and supposed high school-aged girls who look like Victoria's Secret models and talk like the Family Guy parody of Gilmore Girls -- think Ellen Page playing Kat Dennings -- but on a scale that has included The Host; I, Frankenstein; Mortal Instruments; and Man of Steel, it came out head and shoulders on top. Perhaps best watched in that kind of setting, though?

Points in its favor: Feminism everywhere! Female friendship with f/f undertones at the core of the story! Love interests who don't try to compete with that! Gabriel Byrne! More mythology than could fit into a movie = room to expand in your imagination! Casting an actual Russian man to play a Russian! And my personal favorite, surprise student/teacher // trainer/trainee stuff! I am all over that. Especially when he has long hair. (Don't look, daasgrrl.)

Best/worst line: "They say Dimitri is a god. But I am an atheist. An atheist with a big gun."

In conclusion: I was sad to find there aren't any fics for the movie on the AO3 and it only got a 9% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Ouch.

2.

Then a surprise delight with The Pacifier. Not trying to hide anything, I totally watched it because it was one of the only Vin Diesel movies I hadn't seen yet on Netflix. It wasn't nearly as dumb as it sounded! In fact, it was quite cute. He played up his goofy side and had Hallmark family moments while also getting to kick ass, Disney style. It wasn't perfect or anything; being a kid-friendly comedy, his character was able to achieve superhuman feats of family-fixing in two weeks, and Brad Garrett's vice principal was seriously creepy in a sexually charged power abuse way that would have been better explored in a different kind of movie because this one called for a comedic ending. But it was quite charming and not as far into caricature as I'd anticipated. I apologize to everyone I made fun of 10 years ago for seeing this.

For the record, this one got a whole 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

(Bonus: spent some time trying to figure out where I'd seen and appreciated the face of the commanding officer before. Turns out he played Doctor David on Queer as Folk. Blast from the past, wow. Also, yum.)

Comments

[thirdblindmouse.livejournal.com]

Vampire Academy sounds amazing. You should request it for festivids.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Heh, maybe i should have lugged my boyfriend to see VA instead of I,F.

[daasgrrl.livejournal.com]

I almost made it past without looking. Almost ;P

...although I'm clearly still not watching VA. But I don't begrudge you the happy *g*

[no-detective.livejournal.com]

Hey, I saw Vampire Academy a few weeks ago and REALLY ENJOYED IT! Not good, but certainly tons of fun. Such shame there's no fic about the two female leads OR the student/teacher ship, which perhaps can be best appreciated if one has a predisposition for enjoying terrible long hair on men with Slavic accents. ♥

[bironic.livejournal.com]

It is pretty great-bad. Don't think that's not already churning in my signups brain. :)

Oh, and hey! Happily, I was wrong. There are fics for it on the AO3; they were just categorized under Books & Lit rather than Movies, as "Vampire Academy & Related Fandoms." *pokes around*

[bironic.livejournal.com]

On a grand scale, they're both pretty great-awful. I, Frankenstein had much more stained glass window-breaking and gargoyle punching. They might be on a level with the hastily fleshed out mythology. After that, I guess it's a question of whether you prefer your Gothic action movies set in churches or magical high schools. :) And whether you like Aaron Eckhart and Bill Nighy vs. Gabriel Byrne and pouty-lipped 20-somethings doing martial arts.

[bironic.livejournal.com]

:D

<3

(*in Eddie Izzard voice* And many other emoticons as well.)

[bironic.livejournal.com]

I agree with this comment, and I resemble that remark. :)

& you know, I shook my head at all the splat reviews from professional critics on Rotten Tomatoes and yet feel completely validated in my opinion now, hearing your reaction.