Things are falling apart, OLIVER TWIST (32) and a very bad version of BRAZIL (51).

I think somebody has placed a curse on me. Things are breaking in a ridiculous fashion around the old Sanders' household, and yes, you could blame it on the fact that are house is what they might call a "dump", but me thinks a more mystic hand is at work. Three things that have exploded/not worked in the last well, three days:

1. A weird noise was being emitted by the house. I was baffled, my roommate Big Secord was baffled, and a pungent odor was seeping from, well, somewhere. Turned out the laundry machine had stopped spinning it's cleaning spins and instead was just locked in solitary mode while the engine spun its little gears to their death. Noxious smoke poured from its innards, making all of my "clean" clothes smell like burning rubber. I fixed this problem by turning the laundry machine off, waiting two or three minutes and then turning it back on. I am, Mr. Fix-It.

2. I'm interviewing for a position in China on Tuesday. To prepare myself I've been "beefing" up on my China reading. I researched and then found a book that I wanted to purchase and then went to a bookstore and purchased it. I came home to start reading said book, only to find that the book started on page 19. Again, thinking I was cursed, I looked up meanings for the number "19" on the internet but all I found was a bunch of half-cocked theories by dirty hippies. Nonetheless, I will have to return this book.

3. This morning I woke to my roommate, Big Secord, yelling and pounding on things as the shower spewed forth. Seemingly Big Secord had somehow broken the shower and it would not turn off. We hit things with hammers and used screwdrivers to do things, even going as far as to manhandle the water-main in to silent submission. Now we have a shower that is off, but may never turn on again.

Please, whatever which doctor has cursed me, remove it. I apologize for my insensitive actions and I worry for the safety of my computer.

Oliver Twist (32), another huge period piece by David Lean, and another movie that I enjoyed to the limits of my period-piece enjoyment. The actor who plays Oliver Twist very well could just be a dirty orphan taken off the street and Alec Guiness (old Obi-Wan himself) plays a mean, almost loveable Fagin. There's also a hilarious running sequence where poor old Oliver is trying to escape ... something I can't remember, but it's shot in first person POV and I believe at one point involves a cat as an obstacle.

Brazil (51) is a movie I've seen many many times, so I decided this go-around to grab an edition (of which there are a few) that I hadn't seen before. I grabbed the notoriously awful "Love Conquers All" Edition, a version of the film cut by British television to make it more palpable for the average audience member. The film, about a future society so mired in bureacracy that a simple bug in a typewriter can throw it in to chaos, is well, fucking terrible. The heart and soul of the film, Gilliam's awesomely bizarre world and the things it says about where are society is going are completely de-balled and you're left with a badly cut love story set amongst some very strange set pieces. This film, in its true state is filled with amazing performances by Robert Deniro, Jonathan Pryce, Ian Holm, and many more plus one of the great scores of all time and some of the most amazing filmic imagination you've probably ever seen. Thus, I love this film in it's original format, so please spend some time with it, just not this terrible, terrible version.

Wednesday: Yojimbo (52) and Nanook of the North (33)