Happy Halloween!

I love Halloween. I love, love, love, love, love Halloween. I have since I was a kid. The fact that there's one day out of the entire year when I can openly embrace all of the spooky and macabre things I enjoy so much without people think I'm a weirdo makes me happier than a pig in slop. Honestly, if Thanksgiving and Christmas weren't so awesome, I'd demand that the Halloween season last all the way to New Year's. That's how much I love Halloween.

It's largely due to the affection I've had for the horror genre for so long. Scary movies and I have been close friends since my adolescent years. I've always been kinda shy about that, at least around people who I know aren't really into the genre. But on Halloween, and pretty much the whole month of October, I get to be totally open with my love of all things scary. And as such, I've been watching tons of horror movies lately. I've even reviewed five of them over at the "Sutton at the Movies" blog this month, so feel free to go check those out if you'd like.

And not only do I get to celebrate scary things on Halloween, there's trick-or-treating too. I'm a fat kid, and I've never said no to free candy from strangers. So yeah, I approve of trick-or-treating too.

But as of right now, I've pretty much gotten all of my Halloween festivities out of the way. I hit the Kentucky Theater in Lexington on  both Friday and Saturday nights for two consecutive screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (with some actual friends tagging along for a change on Friday night), and today I passed out candy to trick-or-treaters. I'm still kinda bummed that my "no costume, no candy" rule didn't quite take off, though. I mean, if you're not going to bother wearing even a crappy costume, then I shouldn't give you candy. And I wish that's how it went, but alas, no dice.

But with Halloween almost over, I cannot wait for the two holidays that follow it. I believe I've said it more than once in the past. But Halloween is only the first in a trilogy of holidays - including Thanksgiving and Christmas - that I look forward to all year. I absolutely cannot wait until Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's to the point now that I'm already totally in the Christmas spirit. We can't get through November and December fast enough. So let's go ahead and get ready for those two big days, okay? Okay.

A Post Two Weeks Late

Holy crap, it's October already. Well into October, even. And here I am, totally unprepared. I know Halloween's not for another few weeks, but I could at least start trying to get ready.

But it just hit me that I completely forgot to blog about seeing the remake of Straw Dogs. I saw it two weeks ago and I'm just now getting around to writing my short little mini-review. Shame on me. But I'm here and you're here, so we might as well do this now.

I've never seen Sam Peckinpah's original Straw Dogs, so I can't judge how the remake compares to it. But this new Straw Dogs isn't a bad movie at all. It's a tense, visceral movie, an orchestra of violence and rage. Though not as extreme as I've seen some movies take things, Straw Dogs is still a bleak movie. But it's so well made and acted that I couldn't possibly bring myself to dislike it. The movie wasn't what I was expected it to be, but I still won't complain. And thus, I'm going to give it three and a half stars and a thumbs up.

Granted, I could have gone more in depth, but it's been two weeks, so I hope you'll forgive my memory of the movie being a bit hazy. Next time, I'll really have to remember to do posts like this sooner. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go start my preparations for Halloween.