Don't you love it...

...when you take a sip of water from a glass and realize how thirsty you are and drink the whole thing at once. Water is so delicious.

October is one of my favorite months and I love Halloween so I'd like to watch some horror movies and write about them here. And I don't even need to rent anything. Turner Classic Movies is showing a lot of horror films this month and I've got the Chiller Channel.

Today The Changeling was on IFC or Sundance and I caught parts of it. I was sick and went to take a nap halfway through and was surprised to see it was still on when I woke up. I caught the ending and remembered why I'd thought of it recently: Final Girl has been running a game called The Final Shot where she posts the last image from a horror movie and you try and guess the movie. She did The Changeling last week.

Saw that The Sunday New York Times reviewed Kristin Hersh's book Rat Girl this past weekend. I'm happy about that; it was a very favorable review and it'll be great exposure for the book. I'm hoping that Rat Girl finds a large audience and it brings a lot of attention to Throwing Muses, who are working on their first album since 2003.

That record, called Throwing Muses, featured some of their best songs and Tanya Donelly came back to sing backing vocals. From what I've heard she won't be involved with the new album but who knows? It would be awesome to see a full reunion with her singing and playing guitar, maybe even throwing in a couple of her own songs. Donelly hasn't put out an album since 2006 so she must have a few songs kicking around.

There are about half a dozen demos up at Throwing Muses's CASH Music page. The best, I think, is "Cherry Candy/Dripping Trees". If you get a chance, check it out.

Today is the two year anniversary of the start of RJ Battles. I'd been thinking of starting a blog for a while, inspired by my favorite blog, Final Girl. When I began this blog I'd just moved to a new city and had been there (here) for just over a week. I hadn't found a job yet and to be honest, I wasn't really looking too hard. Less than a week later I got a call back and started work the next day. My two year anniversary of starting work there (here) is coming up on the 17th.

I'm very proud of some of the writing I've done here at RJ Battles and I'm pleased with a lot of the images I've found and put up. Thank you to everyone who's come here to RJ Battles to read and look at the pictures. I appreciate it and I hope you'll continue to check in from time to time. See you later, RJ Battles

1990

What was it about 1990 that brought out three films that were sequels to excellent movies from the early 1970s?

I'm not crazy about Chinatown (1974) and I've never seen The Two Jakes. The first was directed by Roman Polanski and the second by Jack Nicolson. From what I've heard, The Two Jakes holds up pretty well, maybe not as good as Chinatown, but as a good movie on its own.

John Boorman made the first sequel to The Exorcist, The Exorcist II: The Heretic. The movie has its problems; I won't go into all of them, I'll just mention that dumb machine that lets people sync their thoughts and dreams together. Also, it's very dated. But it's a visually intetresting movie with a jarring soundtrack. If I smoked pot still I'd want to watch this high.

Whe I was younger I found William Peter Blatty's novel Legion on the front porch so I sat out there and read it on our old couch one summer. It was so creepy and fucked up, even Blatty's author photo on the back jacket scared me. He looks evil. Blatty directed The Exorcist III: Legion and it's even scarier than the book. Ask anyone who's seen it and they'll mention the nurse scene (I'm not gonna say anymore). You should rent this movie this month. Or do an Exorcist marathon one night. They're all worth seeing.

I've watched all three Godfather movies a bunch of times. Most people say that Part II (1974) is the best and I agree. But I don't agree with people who say that Part III sucks. I think it's very interesting and it came out great, especially considering that Copploa did it mostly for the money and there wasn't any real plan on what to do with the characters. If Pacino didn't feel like doing it they were just gonna kill off his charcter and do something else. Plus, Sophia Coppola was perfect for the role of Mary and she did an excellent job. Part III deserves a second chance. The only thing that bothers me (and it's bothered me ever since I saw the original trailers for the movie) is the special effects when the cardinal is falling down from the stairs. So fake.

When a movie is very good, like The Exorcist or The first two Godfathers, it's really tricky to come along years later and make a quality sequel, but in 1990 Blatty and Coppola succeeded.

Miss Manners

I love Miss Manners. She's an excellent writer and unexpectedly funny. She's one of the very few advice columnists that I almost always agree with. I have a couple of her books and every once in a while I'll go to the Washinton Post online and read a bunch of her columns.

It can be a pain sometimes cause you have to click back and forth to keep reading, but actually, the only thing that really bothers me is when one of her readers will write her a letter and try to imitate her writing style and act overly formal and pretentious.

Anyway, I have a complaint: I answer a lot of business calls and people are always trying to get connected to the owners. They ask for them by their first names- which I don't like but I've learned to live with; everyone's on a first-name-basis with everyone and that's just the way it is- but what I really can't stand is that they don't indentify themselves.

Grown men and women make phone calls like 13-year-olds- "Hi, is Jimmy there?"

The owners get about 20 phone calls a day and none of them are from people they wanna talk to. It's people selling things or people wanting a donation. I can always tell which callers are legit; they'll say, "Hi, this is Peter Davis from Coca-Cola..."

We have a problem when other employees call, or the owner's kids. I'll say that the owners aren't around and ask if they wanna leave a message and then once they identify themselves I say, "Oh, yeah, they're upstairs, hold on a moment, I'll call them".

As for the all the other people, they never wanna leave a message, they just ask when a good time to call would be and I always say they'll be in the office between 5pm and 7pm. By that time the place is closed and the only person around is the cleaning guy.

"The Killing Jar"

"The Killing Jar" (1988) Siouxsie & the Banshees

Cool song, the remix is alright. There's also the single version on Twice Upon a Time.

This sleeve is better the "The Last Beat of my Heart" and the tiny Peepshow on the back is even cooler.

"The Last Beat...' Siouxsie

"The Last Beat of my Heart" (1988) Siouxsie & the Banshees

I really like this song and the packaging is cool too. Number one, the record label is neat; number two, I like the back cover with the tiny image of the Peepshow cover.

Wheaties

Yesterday, at work, I came across two wheatback pennies; today I found three.

My Mt. Olive bread & butter pickles jar is filling up.

In other news, terreriunm updates are coming soon.

A Time to Kill

A Time to Kill (1996)

A Time to Kill is on TV right now. I've never seen it before and I'm not really watching it right now. Years ago I wanted to read one of John Grisham's books and ATtK was handy so I picked it up but it was too upsetting so I put it aside after a few pages. Probably the wrong book to start with.

The story doesn't really interest me. One thing about this movie does surprise me though: I didn't remember when it came out but watching it tonight I was thinking 1992 or 1993. Nope, 1996. But everyone looks so young- sandra Bullock, Oliver Platt (his fat face looks so babyish), Chris Cooper, even Donald Sutherland looks fresh-faced. Hey, look, there's Dr. Chilton. Everybody's in this movie. And by the way, the judge looks just like Peter Fonda playing Tom Wolfe.

This past Thursday there was a special screening of The Exorcist, a movie I'm fascinated with. I read that William Peter Blatty won a bunch of money on You Bet Your Life and when Groucho asked what he was gonna do with it Blatty said he was gonna take a year off and write a novel. That novel was The Exorcist.

Which reminds me- I read once that Blatty became friends with Groucho Marx and the two of them came up with an idea for a prank: you know when Chris MacNeil opens the door to Father Merrin? They were gonna have Groucho wait on the other side of the door to surprise her but then they had schedule problems and couldn't work it.

As I've said here before, I love The Exorcist; it's perfectly made, and once you get past all the shocking elements it's a very sweet story about good people trying to help each other.

I believe Stanley Kubrick was interested in directing at one point but the studio was worried about the costs and headaches. That would be interesting but I'm glad it didn't happen. Nothing could be better than William Freidkin's movie.

Supposedly The Exorcist is going to be made into a mini-series. I can't see how it could be good at all. All I know is, if they're smart they won't set it in the present day. Priests aren't what they used to be.