MST3K Drinking Game

I was going through a very old binder (I swear the things reproduce when my back is turned) and found something I just have to share: the start of an MST3K drinking game.

• When the movie drives a crew member into an identity crisis, take one drink.
• When there is a reference to
• A previous episode, take one drink.
  
• Trumpy (outside of the movie "Pod People", of course), take one drink.
• Someone's "area", take one drink.
• A woozle who's name is Peanut, take one drink.
• A "war wilf", take two drinks.
• Gamera, take one drink.
• When one crew member vetoes another's joke, take one drink.
• When the movie has a moment so stupid, the cast can only laugh, take one drink.
• When the cast explicitly declares the movie's badness, take two drinks.
• When someone uses the phrase:
  
• "lip and tongue action", take two drinks.
• "Think about it, won't you?", take one drink
• "You can't handle the truth", take one drink.
• "Can I be in your movie?", take one drink.
• "If so-and-so and what's-their-face had a baby" (names filled in as appropriate), take one drink.
  
• When there is a name drop gag you get, take one drink.
• When the crew comes up with alternate lyrics to a movie's music, take one drink.
• When TV's Frank dies, take one drink
• If it's for keeps, chug it.
• When there's a Star Trek gag, take one drink.
• When there's a "It's a Wonderful Life," reference, take one drink.
  
• When you hear the words Capsnaffler or Fentuzzler, take one drink.
• When someone attempts to flee the theater, take one drink.
• if they succeed, take two drinks.
• When there is a riff by Cambot or Gypsy, take one drink.
• When a bot is destroyed, take one drink.
• When the credits include John Agar, Burt I. Gordon, Roger Corman, Robert Z'dar, Peter Graves, Tony Zarindast, or any Estavez, take one drink.
• If the credits include Raul Julia or Joe Don Baker, take two drinks.
• When a crew member voices a plant or animal, take one drink.
• When there's a monster named "Paul", chug it.
• When someone leaves the safety of a car to flee a monster, take one drink.
• When the 'bots exalt about underwear, take one drink.
• When the end of show stinger is from a host segment, take one drink.
• When someone loses consciousness, take one drink.
• When someone other than Frank dies, take two drinks.
• When the crew addresses the movie as an entity, take one drink.
• When the movie drives a crew member to cross-dress, take one drink.
• When Servo has hayfever, take two drinks.
• When someone references the crying Indian "litter on the highway" commercial, take one drink.
• When the crew does a sight gag, take one drink.
• When the movie recycles footage, take one drink.

Please, think about it, won't you? :)

Movie: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

I am sooooo late to the party with this one.
Actually, because I am so late, and it was so popular, and it is fairly recent, I won't go into the movie itself too much. If you were going to see it, you probably already would have.

What I'm going to do instead is put the entire world on notice: Never again do I want to hear someone say you can't have a good female lead in a good action movie. Ever.

Heck, this movie comes very very close to failing the male equivalent of Bechdel's Law. (Bechdel's Law being the principle that a movie should 1) have at least two women in it, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something other than a man.) I have only seen two movies that fail the male equivalent. One is (of course) Thelma and Louise*, and the other is, interestingly enough, My Neighbor Totoro. (Dad and the boy are the only male characters. I'm not sure they ever talk to each other; if they do, it's about the girls.)

Here, the only reason Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon passes is because there's one scene where two men talk to each other about a sword. Maybe two scenes. And yet the movie holds the record for Oscar nominations for a non-American film, grossed about a bagillion dollars, and is widely (and rightfully) regarded as awesome.

So world, don't tell me it can't be done.

(And if you haven't seen it, you really should. We have some really bitchin' female leads here, and you just don't get to see that very often.)


*OK, confession time: anyone else, when you saw Thelma and Louise, did you also check the credits to see whether it was written by a man or a woman? I did. (It was a woman, BTW.) I was giving it even odds. In the early 90s I think it would have been difficult to find a male writer who would write a female buddy pic, but at the same time it was so over the top with the man-hating that I had to wonder if it was a guy trying way too hard to pass. I mean, it's not just over the top, it is so over the top. You've got to have the formatting to really express the misandry here.

Movie: My Sister's Keeper

Yesterday was a significant life-event anniversary, and I decided on a movie as a treat. Unfortunately, there aren't a lot of movies in the theaters right now that really grab me. Out of curiosity when looking at the list of movies playing, I clicked on My Sister's Keeper's trailer, and it looked pretty good, so there I went.

The spoiler-free part:
If you are expecting a realistic movie, your suspension of disbelief will be stretched until it snaps like a cheap rubber band. However, if you're instead willing to pretend this is an alternate universe with much scarier codes of medical and legal ethics than our own, and just get into the emotional aspects and character interactions, it's a pretty good movie. It made me bawl like a baby, but you probably guessed that already. I'm willing to bet the original book is better. There are parts that very much seem rushed, cut off, or just not well developed -- very common in movies based on books.

Also, very good job capturing how inadequate parents operate, especially since this is a situation where people expect the parents to be hyper-competent instead of incompetent. There's one parent who has basically checked out of his responsibilities, and one who has completely defined herself in terms of one child -- thus requiring that child to fulfill her needs. And as a result none of the children are getting the care they need. Jesse has to care for himself, Kate has to care for her mother's emotional needs as well as her own, and Anna has to take care of everyone to the point where her own health is an acceptable and expected casualty. Some parts are obvious ("Give your sister your kidney, dammit! It's your duty to save her life!"), and some are more subtle. There's a scene where Anna is cleaning up one of the nastier aspects of Kate's illness, and I found myself wondering "Where are the parents? Why is this 11-year-old expected to wipe her sister's ass instead of shouting 'Mom, Kate needs some help'?"

Now, the Spoilerific part of the entry:
Some of the issues that I had with suspending my disbelief.
1) The premise. We have a preteen suing to avoid being forced to give a kidney to her sister who has gone into renal failure due to active leukemia. The whole time I was sitting there thinking "Would any reputable doctor actually take a kidney donation from a healthy preteen, even if they were willing?" If the movie hadn't largely been a lark on my part, I probably would have looked that up before going. For those with the same issue, I looked it up when I got home, and a very quick jaunt through the internet suggests the answer is "Technically yes, but..." Only a third of transplant centers will accept donations from mature but underage identical twins, fewer still from mature minor non-twins, and donations from immature minors are exceedingly rare. You throw in to this movie that the desired donor has made it clear she is NOT willing to undergo procedure, and that the recipient is suffering from leukemia that is not in remission, it would just never happen. No doctor that Sara would be wiling to let operate on Kate would take a kidney out of healthy preteen kid to put it into a kid that will almost inevitably die anyway because she's cancerous and will not be able to handle chemo or radiation with only one kidney.

2) Mom The Lawyer pleading her own case. What's the saying? A lawyer who represents herself has a fool for a client. No lawyer of even moderate ability would do this, unless possibly she thought she could bully her daughter hard enough on the stand to make her drop the case right there, in which event, great mom, huh? But then again, the movie is a long string of "Great mom, huh?" moments, sprinkled with the occasional "Great Dad, too" and "Geez, Dad, grow a pair" moments.

3) Judge De Salvo repeatedly threatening to have Campbell's service dog removed from the court. Hello, service dog. As soon as he declared it to be a service dog, she had no right to do or say anything about its presence in the room, and I really hope a judge would know that.


I am kind of imagining about 10 years after the movie.
One, I really hope that when she reached adulthood, Anna found a really good psychological counselor to work with, because the poor girl is going to need one. "Nope, your parents didn't love you or think of you as a person, you were just spare parts for your sister, it was your job since infancy to save her life and in the end you failed."

Two, I bet by the time Anna is thirty at the latest, and probably much younger, she never speaks to her mom except on the yearly family vacation and that usually ends in a screaming match. Of course, Mom doesn't understand why her daughter hates her so, because in her mind she never did anything wrong. And she probably still thinks Anna was selfish for wanting to keep her kidney, still refuses to believe that Kate's wishes were Kate's wishes, and on some level blames Anna for Kate's death. Frankly, Mom really needs a good psychologist too, but I'm sure she'll never go to one because again, in her mind she never did anything wrong.

As for Anna and Dad, they probably get along better but are still distant. He wasn't as directly into the "Parts: The Clonus Horror" bit, but he never stood up for her, either.

So, finally summary on My Sister's Keeper: Completely unrealistic, but pretty good from a psychological and emotional aspect.