The Grand Budapest Hotel (a movie review post)

Wes Anderson is not your typical film maker, not by any standard. His films are, at best, quirky or, if it's not the kind of thing you like at all, actually, I suppose the best would be something more along the lines of weird. At any rate, they're different. If you want explosions and action, you're probably better off going somewhere else. Although there was a ski chase in this one...

The Grand Budapest Hotel is probably Anderson's best film. It's full of prison breaks, cats flying out of windows, and lots of perfume. It has a lot of humor, some of it black (like the cat flying out the window), and is full of weird and interesting characters. Also, it's a story within a story within a story. I still like Moonrise Kingdom the best, though.

Rather than talk about the movie, because I don't want to be spoilery, let's talk about the actors:

Ralph Fiennes as M. Gustave: I am not always completely satisfied with Fiennes. He seems to oscillate between extraordinary and, well, pretty awful. I'm not sure if it's that he just sometimes chooses poor roles or if he's erratic as an actor. Whatever the case, he was delightful in Grand Budapest. Utterly charming and debonair. It's a good thing, too, since the weight of the movie was on him. He pulled it off magnificently.

Adrien Brody as Dmitri: Not the role required much of him, but Brody was great in the role. He looked the part, and he played the part. What more can you ask?

Willem Dafoe as Jopling: Dafoe is just kinda creepy all by himself so, when you put him in a role as someone who is creepy, you kind of can't miss. Not to mention the... I don't know; it's like they gave him lower jaw fangs or something. Certainly not someone you want to mess with.

Jeff Goldblum as Deputy Kovacs: I'm not sure Goldblum went out of his way in this part; I mean, it's not like it required that much, but I loved him in it. He's just got a... presence, and I wish he did more movies. favorite line from Grand Budapest: "Did he just throw my cat out the window?"

[Can you see the theme with the flying cat? That's my theme, not a theme of the movie.]

Jude Law as Young Writer: Law has a great voice, so he works great as the story teller. Well, the story re-teller.

Tilda Swinton as Madame D.: If I hadn't known it was her, I wouldn't have known it was her. My only issue with the movie, if you can call it that, is that Swinton plays a woman about three decades older than she is, and I don't know why Anderson wouldn't just get someone of the appropriate age to play the part. But, then, there's Swinton doing this amazing job bringing that peculiar look she has even though you can't tell it's her at all, and I guess Swinton was the right choice.

Tony Revolori as Zero: Actually, Revolori was great as the sidekick/counterpart/protege to Gustave. His very direct manner worked to cut through Gustave's some of Gustave's pretense and offered some great moments in the movie. "Don't flirt with her."

It was also great to see Bill Murray and Owen Wilson make appearances. Oh, and Jason Schwatzman.

There are other actors I could mention, but these are the ones I thought stood out. These are not in any order, either. I mean, I didn't put them in any kind of descending order; I just went down the cast list and commented on the ones I had something to say about.

So... If you like Wes Anderson's movies, this one will certainly not disappoint. If you've seen others of his movies and were put off by them, this one is no different and won't convert you. Probably. If you've never seen an Anderson film, I'd say this one is a good one to start with. Or Moonrise Kingdom; you can't forget that one.

How To Be... a Yodeler

Today is the FREE! release of "Part Twenty: The Sword of Fire" from the Shadow Spinner serialization!

But first: How to be a yodeler!


I think yodeling is one of those things that gets an unnecessarily bad rap. Maybe, it's because of cartoons. No, seriously. Take a look at this old Looney Tunes clip:

I don't think the cartoon was making fun of yodeling, especially considering that it was a popular form of entertainment at the time. Yes, I said it was a popular form of entertainment. People used to pay money to go watch yodelers perform. However, the effect of watching cartoons like this one when I was a kid, especially with Bugs and Elmer yodeling and things like that (which is the clip I wanted but didn't feel like spending any more time than I already had looking for it), was that yodeling became this kind of funny thing people did, but that was it. It was just a funny thing, not a real thing. Except that it is a real thing.

For instance, did you know "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" is considered to be the most successful yodeling song ever performed? You know the song, right?

I didn't know that was considered yodeling, but I grew up with that song. It was one of the songs we used to perform with our puppets. We had a big lion puppet and every thing.

Still, that's an old song, but, surprise, surprise, many contemporary artists use yodeling within their music. You might recognize some of these names: Celine Dion, Gwen Stefani, Jewel, and Mariah Carey. Just to name a few. And, then, there's the people you might not expect that can yodel: Julie Andrews (okay, you probably expected her), Gene Wilder, and Bill Murray. I suppose yodeling's not quite as dead as people might think.

So, then, how do you become a yodeler?

Mostly, it's just practice. There are people that give lessons, evidently, but they are few and far between (probably rather like the accordion), so listening to yodelers and learning on your own will most likely be your best bet. Unless you live in the Alps.

Here we are at part 20 of Shadow Spinner, and can I just say "Wow"? Yeah? Okay. Wow! Of course, I'm looking ahead at the parts still to come and how much longer that will be till the last piece is released, but, still, 20 parts. There are some big changes coming up with Tib and his world, not the least of which is the imminent (I hope) release of the physical book, but more on that when I have more details. For today, you'll have to be satisfied with FREE! stuff, so here's today's list of FREE! pieces. Tell all your friends!
"Part Twenty: The Sword of Fire" (FREE! Monday, April 29 and Tuesday, April 30)
(The rest of these are only FREE! Monday, April 29)
"Part Nineteen: Lost in the Garden"
"Part Eighteen: The Angel"
"Part Seventeen: The Tree of Light"
"Part Thirteen: The Clearing"
"Part Twelve: The Gash in the Floor"
"Part Eleven: The Kiss"
"Part Ten: The Broken Window"
"Part Nine: The Shadow of the Tree"
"Part Seven: The Moth and the Shadow"
"Part Six: The Man with No Eyes"
"Part Five: The Police Car"
"Part Four: The Cop"
"Part Three: The Bedroom"
"Part One: The Tunnel"
That's it for today. 15 out of the 20 pieces of Shadow Spinner completely FREE! Go by and pick them up, and let me know how you like them. On Amazon, even!

"This is no time to panic."

"This is the perfect time to panic!"

Okay, so no one is really panicking, but that's one of those lines that pops into my head anytime anything is going wrong. Sometimes, it's joined by the corollary to the first part of that exchange: "Don't Panic!"
It always makes me want to grab a towel.
Speaking of which, it was Douglas Adams' birthday this week.
And all the loose computer cables we have running everywhere right now makes me think of him, because he had things to say about loose computer wiring and cables.
Which brings me back to what all of this is about. Or one of the things this is about.

We are in the midst of restructuring our computer set up, because I was gifted a computer by my good friend that works over at Lucasfilm, which is very timely, because I'm sure my wife's (old) computer is going to drop dead any day now. It's just like the one I had drop dead back in the fall, and we got them at the same time, and it's sounding really bad, lately. Like a guy with lung cancer or something. I'm halfway expecting it to explode or some such. But I digress...

So we have this new computer, which is currently set up across the room from the place where it will eventually be, so there are cords stretched all over the place. The worst one is the one running from our phone socket on the wall in the kitchen over to the modem. Earlier this week, my oldest son stepped on it and jerked it forcefully from the jack, breaking the clip that holds it in. Of course, that was accompanied by a loss of Internet connection, which was accompanied by me losing what I was working on, because I couldn't save it.

Why couldn't I save it? Well, because... That's the best answer I have. Once I got everything set back up again, my computer wouldn't recognize the connection. The other computers did, but my computer kept saying, "Hey, Buddy, what do you think you're doing? We got no connection here."
No, I do not know why my computer talks like that, but it does. And I said, "Why, yes, we do have a connection," and I held it up and showed it and said, "The other computer recognize it; why not you?"
And it replied, "I'm tellin' ya's, we got no connection."
And we went on like that until I shut it off. When I turned it back on, it said, "Oh, hey, you plugged us back in."
But I didn't get to save anything, because I had to re-boot to get the computer to recognize that I had re-connected everything.

Then, Wednesday morning, the dog jumped on the phone line.

It wasn't exactly her fault; she thought she was getting a treat and got all excited. Well, actually, she was getting a treat, so she had a reason to get all excited; my younger son just didn't think about where he was standing when he was offering it to her.

Whatever she did, she did it good. I spent around 30 minutes trying to get the connection working again and hadn't managed it by the time I had to get the kids to school. Once I got home, I spent another hour working on it before I got everything working. It's like the sudden disruption just fired everything, and I had to go over every piece of equipment and every connection. I don't know what was actually knocked loose or what, but, eventually, I did something that got it all working again.

And, while I was doing all of that, I had Bill Murray screaming in my head, "And if I can't work, THEN I CAN'T WORK!"

Which just makes me glad I'm not more plugged in than I am, because I hear too many stories about people that don't know what to do with themselves when they lose or break their phones. No, sir, I don't want one of those.

Then there's the cat...

As I've mentioned before, the cat, my cat, Jack, has some kind of weird abusive relationship with this orange tabby from down the street. I call him The Orange. The Orange will come down to my house and pin my cat down and make a horrible mewling noise. This noise greatly disturbs my dog, and she goes crazy barking, but I can still hear the horrible sounds The Orange makes even over her barking.

It started up yesterday, and I opened the front door to find Jack huddled at the bottom of the steps with The Orange standing over him going "merow" "merow" merow." However, The Orange knows enough not to hang around when I come out, so he turned tail and ran. But, see, my cat can't just let him go. Jack always follows him anytime anything like this happens. And they go through bushes and crap that I can't go through, but I have to follow them so that I can get in between them, which gives The Orange a chance to run all the way off, and, then, Jack will come home.

But, yesterday, I didn't get around the hedge in time, because The Orange was really running much more quickly than normal, and Jack was chasing him, so I got around just in time to see The Orange turn on Jack and attack him.

You know how in cartoons when animals fight they always show these dust clouds with the occasional paw or whatever popping out of it. Now, I know why. This looked exactly like that. It was, like, three seconds of a squalling blur. And you know how they say "the fur was flying"? Well, I know where that comes from, too, because a great cloud of fur flew out in every direction, which only heightened the sense of them fighting in a dust cloud. I just stood there and blinked and wondered if I'd stepped into a cartoon. Then it was over, and The Orange was running for home.

I don't know if that means Jack won or not. He watched The Orange run off and, then, walked away. Actually, he came home with me and lounged around in the house for a couple of hours which isn't something he generally does at  that time of day unless it's raining. I couldn't find any wounds on him, although he can be kind of difficult with being examined.

The thing that disturbs me is that the owners of The Orange acknowledge that their cat is a bully (and I've heard complaints about him from other people in the neighborhood -- on the other hand, everyone in  the neighborhood loves Jack (heck, people come to my house just to see Jack if he's hanging out in the driveway)) and, yet, do nothing about his behavior or his comings and goings or anything. It would be one thing if Jack was going down to their house and these problems were happening, but, no, The Orange comes here, and I have to run him off (at least) a couple of times a day.

Which makes me want to sign Jack up for martial arts training. Or something.

I think I need to just get a towel that I always carry with me...