A deeply affecting documentary about late term abortions is coming. It seems to me that people who live in a world where everything is black and white might as well be living alone in cave. Obvious point, here: late term abortions are rarely about "I don't want this baby anymore." What an awful decision a human has to make in these cases.

And, to think that the death threats against these doctors are probably carried out by extremist Christianists. Jesus cries over your blood thirst.

The most disturbing movie I have ever seen, a ghost that haunted me since the night I saw it, was David Lynch’s The Elephant Man. Even writing about it won’t provide the mind-clearing catharsis that I so desperately need to erase the experience of seeing it as a young boy. In the 1980s, just before videotape rental houses proliferated, movies that you missed seeing in the theater would be re-broadcast on network TV—NBC, ABC or CBS.  This is also how I first encountered paragons of cinema like the Sound of Music, the Wizard of Oz, and Police Academy. Here's a trailer for an ABC Sunday Night Movie featuring Star Trek II: the Wrath of Khan (another movie that frightened me. Think: worms in ears).

One evening, my Dad, brother and I watched The Elephant Man, Lynch’s 1980 Oscar-nominated picture. Set in Victoria-era England, a surgeon rescues a man with hideous and debilitating tumors all over his body who last lived as life being paraded around “freak shows.”

Despite its deeper tale about inner beauty and sensitivity to be found in all of God’s creatures, the Academy Award-winning make-up job on John Hurt that transformed him into Merrick had me watching nearly the entire movie through my fingers. If ever there was a time when I wasn’t convinced by the line: “it’s only a movie,” it was then. Of course, Lynch ramped up the tension of not seeing the Elephant Man's full countenance for at least a half hour into the film. The reveal was appropriately devastating. As I would find out later, David Lynch has a way of keeping you off balance so that the "scary" moments are beyond effective.

Not that he intended this to be a scary film but he does want you to be horrified by the shear grotesqueness of TEM's physical features and he probably wasn't thinking what effect this might have on the psyche of an 9 or 10 year-old. Nothing since then has scared me more than those images; Lynch's Merrick was my evil clown, my monster under the bed. Midnight trips down the hall to the bathroom turned into terrorizing affairs and I imagined the Elephant Man behind me in his bulky, burlap mask, clawing at me with his [shudder] deformed hand.  As an adult, it seems absurd to consider that the source of my primal fears were the sight of an historical figure. I guess there might be weirder ones out there.

My chief discovery from this experience was the wonders of David Lynch, whose work I would continue to get familiar with over the next years 25 years. He would become one of my favorite artists of all time. More to come…

Man of Steel Review

The story about how Maximus from Gladiator and a lady who looks like she smokes give birth to Christopher Reeves, Jr. on a dying Star Wars/Avatar planet. A weird council is trying to save geological calamity through diplomacy when a rogue General Zod barges in and starts shooting up the place and espousing his pro-Hitler views. Fast forward to SuperBaby being shot in to space and landing on earth smack in the middle of Ray Kinsella's Field of Dreams farm. He and his wife, not-Sally-Field, raise the boy but tell him to hide who he really is thus telegraphing to savvy viewers the Superman-is-Gay undertones. Clark-Kal-Superman goes on a bunch of Bruce Banner adventures, holding down different jobs in different parts of Canada until he doesn't turn into the Hulk and gets discovered by Plot Device-I mean-Lois Lane. Lois and Supe battle Michael Shannon Zod, whose mustache never grew in after space travel, and they try to stay away from his mouth as he chews the scenery.

There is a part where Ray Kinsella/Johnny Kent dies in a tornado around the year 1997 which is probably when the tornadoes from Twister (1996) came back for their revenge on Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt but went to wrong the state. The third act is nothing but a video game sequence where Zod/Superman re-enact a Bizzaro World 9/11, by just flying around and knocking buildings down on untold millions of innocents yet, for some reason, we only see Morpheus from the Matrix try to save a scared Indian lady and the bald guy who hits on everyone at back at the office. Oh, and Lois still pops up occasionally to move the story along. In the very end, we get some cheap humor from terrible extra about Superman being "kinda hot."

If you like superhero movies, Christ allegories, and billions in collateral damage, this is the one for you. I just had one question: where is Neo when you need him?

2 out of the last 4 times Kelley and I have been to the movie theater, we have walked out before the film even started. The first was over a year ago, a few days before our daughter was born. We were going to try to work in one last outing before our lives changed forever (for the better) so we went down to the Angelika Dallas to catch Moonrise Kingdom. We got there so late and the movie was still so popular that we couldn't find any seats beyond the first row, so we bailed and got a refund. To this day (June 19th, 2013), we still have not seen it! And, this is coming from about as big a Wes Anderson fan as there is.

The second time we walked out was yesterday. We were on vacation and the daughter was at day care. Like good parents, we handed her off while we took a mental holiday. After a late fat-free breakfast of eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy at Bubba's Chicken at Snider Plaza, we headed over to NorthPark for a showing of Iron Man 3. We selected the movie based on it being something that deserved to be seen on the big screen in full glory. I have a man date to see Man of Steel this weekend so IM3 was the natural choice.

First off, the tickets for the 1:00pm showing were $10 apiece! NorthPark only offers discounted rates on shows that start BEFORE noon. Sheesh. We get in the theater and, after a few minutes, a man sits down one row in front of us and a few seats over with a backpack-like bag and a large soda. He begins rocking himself in the seat. It seemed a little odd but I just thought he was getting comfortable or something. Kelley leans in and says that he seems shifty like he's nervous. At this point, the trailers begin (all goddamn seven of them!) and this guy is still rocking. A lady sitting down the row from him was annoyed enough to move down and away from him. At this point, Kelley says she's got a bad feeling about him and brings up the whole Aurora theater shooting. I guess that's where we are now. Nobody feels safe in public places and any "weird" behavior makes them a suspect. Sad but true. Thanks a lot, bin Laden.

While this person could've had a mental condition and completely harmless, we just couldn't write it off and we both had reservations about remaining. So, we left. We simply couldn't get over the fact that we were together and if anything happened to us both, our little baby would be orphaned.

I then proceeded to go 80mph, up the highway, to another theater where the chances of killing us both in a car accident were about 1000% more likely than dying at the hands of a crazed lunatic in a movie theater. If I had to do it all over again, I would've done the same thing. I mean, his rocking was really annoying.

Iron Man 3 was great. Oh, and we saved $8 at the other theater.