It's my birthday, and PEEPING TOM (58)

Well, hell and high water, it's my goddamn birthday. Oh yes, the clock has turned once again, and I stand before you, 27 years old. Here's a few thoughts on my last year of life:

- It's been a big one. I mean seriously, this might be - aside from coming out of the womb, leaving for college, and the ill-advised year spent fighting in the Foreign Legion - the most transitory year I've ever had. Long relationships fell apart, new wonderful relationships emerged, big moves are in the works, the Sanders' Family is starting to spread out across this newly Obama-ed country of ours - it's been a real shit-storm these last 365 days. And now sitting in front of my television, reeking like stale booze and nursing my pre-birthday bash celebration hang-over, all I can think is, "awesome." I can't wait for this next year, it's going to be wild and different and completely outside of my thick wall of comfort, but you know, I'm excited. I think that's a good way to start a new year of life.

- Birthdays are weird for me. I love 'em in the way that someone who is obsessed with gifts, Baskin and Robbins ice cream clowns, free booze, and alpaca rides at the zoo loves them. That said, birthdays are a big reminder of the fact that, shit, I'm getting old. There's gray in my hair these days. My knees lock up a little when I run. There's a lot more polyester creeping in to my closet and my gold chain feels just a bit heavier around my neck. It's not that I'm actually old (prior to contrary belief 27 is still young) it's just the idea that the whole world is moving along, regardless of me being 26, 27, 39, 92. Young, old, attractive, ugly, fat, skinny, freckled, albino, this world is powering forward and my birthday, for whatever reason is always a reminder that to a certain degree, I'm just a spectator watching everything creep past.

- I don't really know what to do for my birthdays anymore. I mean the days of shetland pony-riding strippers and illegally adopting children are sort of coming to a stand still and I'm at a loss for what a birthday boy is s'posed to do. Am I still allowed to get black out drunk and wake up in the back of a parked car wearing a New Year's dress and nothing else? Can I still get lapdances at seedy strip clubs (I can't, and I won't) from women with sagging skin and crispy hair? Can I still have my rowdy drunken friends over for hastily rolled blunts and warm, cheap beer pounding? I don't know. Readers, if you've got a good idea, please let me know.

Tip your morning glass of scotch to, well, me this morning. 'Cause Jesus guys, it's my birthday.


I am really glad Peeping Tom (58) is over. It was creepy and bizarre and I couldn't stare at Mark (Carl Boehm) and his big, strange eyes, and toggle-button jacket any longer. I couldn't stare at his weird pervo-film room where he stabbed women with the knife he'd installed on the tri-pod of his camera. No, no I couldn't. I actually enjoyed this movie, I liked the suspense and the really deep, dark sort of psychological horror it was filled to the brim with. It's not a film I'll watch again for a long long time, but it certainly had me interested at least to the end, and a lot of these films can't attest to that.

I actually enjoyed the fact that this movie, critically spat on when it first released in the late 1960s, was pretty much a super intelligent take on a slasher film. Mark (Boehm) is a severely screwed up man, who owns a house, works at a movie studio and for extra money takes semi-naked pictures of slightly attractive women. Just a normal perv you wouldn't let around your children right? Wrong, Mark also likes himself a filmed murder of a busty red-head. It really hits the fan though when Mark starts to fall in love with a woman whom, for some reason, can understand his murderous ways. As you might guess, the killings continue, the story spirals in to a fairly tragic, if not a somewhat melodramatic finish, and along the way pretty much every horror trope is touched upon, but all through the very intelligent, very bizarre lens of Michael Powell.

It's not one that I'm recommending for everyone, but if you're interested in strange takes on psych-horror, this one might just be for you.

Thursday: the somewhat terrifying Nazi-softcore film The Night Porter (59)

Obama-guratin'.

I'm excited today, just like 85 percent of the rational thinking world, I'm excited because Barack Obama is being elected as the 44th President of The United States of America. It's momentous, it's historic, it's hope-inducing, it is goddamn exhilarating. I've been parked in front of my television for the last three and half hours watching the non-stop streaming of various inane clips regarding today's historic ceremonies. I've tried to pull myself away, but there is something truly amazing about watching what I'm hoping will be the beginning of Roosevelt-style historic presidency.

I'm fucking excited.

Yet, I'm also a little worried. It is a beautiful thing to see so many Americans actually giving a rat's ass about events taking place in D.C. It's amazing that a group of my rowdy, drunken friends woke up at 6 in the morning to watch a presidential inauguration on a big screen surrounded by equally excited folk of all ages and races. Yet, if we're still in the honeymoon period here with Obama. He's an impressive figure, a miraculous orator, and a seemingly genuinely caring person, but as of now, as a President of the United States, he's completely unproven.

I'm not saying that I think President Obama is going to fail or be a terrible President, I'm just saying that I worry that when, invariably, the shit hits the fan, the notoriously short memory of the United States people will rear its ugly head and all of sudden it's going to be eggs and tomatoes not roses and knickers being tossed at the man. I'm also worried that this cloud of political excitement and interest will fade, and that is entirely opposed to the message Obama is spreading right now. He's not saying that as one man he can fix the United States of America, he's saying that with the help of us, the American people, we, WE, can start the process of piecing this severely broken country back together.

Not trying to be a Debbie Downer on this big day, I'm just already tired of Away Messages that read "Obama!" or "Change Has Come". It's true, change is here, but we need to start pulling back from the idealistic embrace we've all been wrapped up in, pull back and start thinking realistically how we can help in the months and years to come.

Political rant aside, I didn't watch even a bit of a movie last night. I think the sheer creepiness of Peeping Tom (58) is sort of keeping me at bay. Happy 'Bama-guration!

Tomorrow: Hah, my birthday, and Peeping Tom (58)

Revolutionary Road and PEEPING TOM (58)

I nearly drowned in depression on Saturday night thanks to Sam Mendes' (American Beauty, Jarhead, Road to Perdition) new film Revolutionary Road. It's been vaunted as the reunion of Titantic co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, and to some degree, it's been snatching up awards at the lesser award shows.

It has to be one of the most depressing films I've ever laid eyes on.

The story, based on a famous 1960s novel by Richard Yates, follows two wide-eyed youth as they plunge in to marriage, children, and the onset of the worst pair of midlife crisises you've ever laid your eyes upon. There's something about the way Mendes portrays Frank and April Wheeler and their inevitable succumbing to the world of ticky-tack houses and gossipy neighbors and taking your identical trashcans the curb each and every day that just filled with a sort of fleeting inconsolable hopeleness unlike I've felt from a movie in a long time. There are glimpses of this very attractive couple before there lives sort of shuddered to a halt with the onset of children and a home in the suburbs where everything is happy, and you can even sort of trick yourself in to thinking the same thing when the ill-fated duo decide to fix their problems by moving the whole family to Paris. This is all just well crafted juxtaposition though, as the film spirals in to a long, and at times overly fight-laden, series of events that climax with, well, a horse pill of sadness truly daunting to ingest. The final scenes of the movie are as heart-wrenching as any I've seen in the last few months, and the bitter, hen-ish rant given by Kathy Bates in the final frame is well worth the price of admission. This world of suburban lies is one we can try and try and try to escape, but at least in the 1950s, it always dragged you back in.

I can't figure out yet if this is a film every body needs to watch for the rest of their lives so they can look inwards and see whether or not their lives have reached this sort of crushing stand still. Or if this is a film that should be seen once to meaning in the lesson(s) and then never viewed again as it seriously had me almost in panic mode over the upcoming changes I'm planning on making in my own life.

The movie itself is not Mendes or DiCaprio's best. At times the dialogue wallows in platitudes and sort of self-help pulled quotations and, as I said earlier, the bitter fights between Winslet and DiCaprio grow tinny and overwrought at times. That said, the film is absolutely beautifully shot by world's best cinematographer Roger Deakin, as he awashes the world of Frank and April in a soft and almost glowing light. The true star of the film is Kate Winslet and the path she takes in the final half is so beautifully, and internally wrought, that she deserves whatever accolades are being piled on her right now. One of my favorite actresses working today.

It's funny that Revolutionary Road filled me with such depression because Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (58) has filled me with your sort of confused creepiness. The film is about a very, very odd amateur filmmaker who is not only obsessed with watching others in, well, whatever acts they might partake, but also enjoys killing women ... with his camera. I'm not shitting you here, Mark (Carl Boehm) actually has installed a knife on the tripod legs of his camera and he'll trick women in to letting him film them and then, whammy, films them in to their final moment. As of now I'm enjoying the film, but I'm not entirely sure what it's supposed to be saying. Boehm's Mark is a real head case of an individual and his interaction, strangely enough with only redheads, is made even creepier by his inflicted accent and the shifty way he moves his eyes.

This is a weird movie, albeit an enjoyable one, but the sense of uncomfortableness it fills me with will not be soon missed.

Tuesday: Peeping Tom (58)