Nor'easter snowSo remember those delicate plum blossoms from Friday’s post? Most have been blown from the tree in this Nor’easter that’s ploughing through. It started in the wee hours of Sunday morning with heavy rain. I woke up at 8:30 yesterday morning to the sound of the sump pump followed closely by the realization that I had several loads of dirty laundry still on the floor in the basement. So much for sleeping in! It rained steadily throughout the day. We got some serious water in the basement, where serious = enough depth and current to float small paper boats. I got all the laundry done though!

The wind started to pick up late in the afternoon yesterday. Yay wind! Well, yay in the sense that it was getting boring to watch rain falling straight down. Sideways and diagonally are much more interesting! By the time I went to bed the wind was gusting with enthusiasm and not insignificant volume. I woke up a couple of times during the night to the sound of wind and rain but sometime early this morning the rain noise went away. I was thinking that the wind was trailing behind the rest of the storm. When I got up this morning I realized I was wrong. There’s some icky slush on the ground and snow and sleet are still blowing around out there.

Nor'easter snowI’m supposed to fly up to Providence tonight. The weather reports don’t bode well for tonight or tomorrow morning. If this snow moves north, I may be screwed. Ah well, worse things have happened.

We went to see Grindhouse on Friday. I didn’t expect to like it at all, honestly. Exploitive B-Slasher movies are very much not my genre. Then again, IMDB has the genre listed as “Action / Horror / Sci-Fi / Thriller” which is actually remarkably accurate. And you know what? I enjoyed it a lot. Grindhouse is actually 2 full-length movies: the first is Robert Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” and the second is Quentin Tarantino’s “Death Proof”. Fake movie trailers and commercials are aired before each feature (including one trailer featuring Nicholas Cate as Fu Manchu in “Werewolf Women of the SS”). The two films contained an obnoxious amount of surreal violence, some of which was so absurd it made me laugh. I liked Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” better honestly- it was faster paced and had an entertaining, over-used, ridiculous plot. Rose McGowan was a hoot. Freddy Rodriguez can plan my escape from apocalypse any day. Bruce Willis was remarkably unremarkable as a bad guy. Tarantino (who had parts in both movies) was actually a more memorable and developed character.

“Death Proof” moved more slowly, especially after “Planet Terror”, and was not what I expected from Tarantino. In fact, it was more fun than I expected. Tarantino made the more up-beat movie… who’d have expected that? I will say that “Death Proof” was totally worth it for Zoe Bell (playing herself), a rockin’ stunt chick from New Zealand who is clearly utterly insane. Kurt Russell was delightfully twisted as well. There was an emptiness where his soul should have been. I guess I expected something edgier from Tarantino but I did thoroughly enjoy Zoe Bell’s car-chase stunts and enthusiastic personality. I do wonder if Tarantino wrote the story around an idea she had for a stunt that no other director would let her perform…

Death counts
“Planet Terror”: Most of the human race
“Death Proof”: fewer than 10

Important note: The runtime for Grindhouse is over 3 hours. Each movie is an hour and a half plus the faux trailers. Plan beverages accordingly.

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