Marathon or no marathon, it's October and that means it's time for Scary Movie Month, where The Dude and I attempt to watch as many scary movies as we can possibly fit in.
This year I left the selection in The Dude's hands, I didn't much care what we watched - my mind was first taken up with the marathon and now with preparing for NaNoWriMo. Especially when we only ever see a fraction of what we want to anyway.
We always have some TV show as a fallback, for those nights when we sit down too late to watch a whole movie or one of us needs to go to bed early or when the movie up next isn't one we can reasonably split over two nights. This year that fallback is the third season of Buffy. I saw most of this season years ago by myself, up late with a colicky D, and once you get over the angst of the first few episodes it's one of my favorite seasons. So we've been working our way through that. Though I will say the older I get the less I enjoy it, I get too cranky about the immaturity on display.
Our first movie for the month was Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, we try to get one Hitchcock in every year. A classic, of course. I last saw this decades ago on a small black-and-white set in our kitchen - I hadn't even realized this movie was in color. Watching it now I was struck by just how creepy it is, there's behavior that is portrayed as matter-of-fact for that time period that would have red flags going up all over the place now. Brrr. But watching this made me want to visit San Francisco, for sure.
Then, spread out over three nights, David Fincher's Zodiac. There's a great article here with more about the film and why it might be considered his masterpiece.I'll just say that it was really hard to stop watching each night - it's put together so well and the performances are so compelling. I almost feel ready to start watching it again.
We gave ourselves a night off after the marathon to watch the Bears lose to the Vikings, and then watched Jordan Peele's Get Out. I'm trying to think how to respond to it without cursing in appreciation. It is so scary - in so many ways - and so well made - and so interesting, especially from a horror movie perspective - I just feel kind of dumbfounded. And I don't want to say anything that would give anything away or that would discourage anyone from seeing it. So, see it! And then we can talk.
I've been using this month to work through my to-be-read list for fantasy as well. So far I've finished the first book of Zoraida Córdova's The Vicious Deep trilogy (and just got the next two in the mail), and am almost done with Nnedi Okorafor's Akaba Witch. In theory I'm also working on the 2nd and 3rd volumes of Stephen King's Dark Tower series as well, but I have no expectation that I will finish those this month. I'm finding that series interesting but not as compelling as other books I'm reading or even other Stephen King I've read, so they're out and at hand if I've got some time to read and don't want to pick up a book that will be hard to put down, but not my first choice if I'm settling down for the evening. I'll be happy if I get through them by the end of the year.
Loving the cooler weather and dark evenings -
Annie
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