Why I Love: Pee Ell Ell

It is, you might say, quite silly that a grown woman of 32 would find so much enjoyment in an ABC Family teen drama based on a popular series of YA novels. Granted, the popularity of Pretty Little Liars--henceforth to be known as PLL--is nothing shocking, as anyone who might have rolled their eyes at its proud (and true) claim to be 'the most tweeted show of all time!' can attest. 

These kids with their hashtags and hashbrowns and corned beef hash, amiright?

Anyway, I am (wo)man enough to admit that my week got a little brighter when I discovered Season 5 (or half season 2.5? Soooo many mysteries abound in Rosewood) has debuted. The excitement of learning how the show will continue to wrestle with/not actually address the morality of a teacher dating a student, what kind of blandly handsome yet shockingly inept policeman it will introduce, and answer the question of just how much white wine Laura Leighton can drink without reddening to her hair color will keep me entertained throughout the summer.

Need more reasons to watch? Try these:

The Show Is Literally Produced With An Addictive Additive

I've often said that the 'chunk chunk' (or 'dun dun', depending on your interpretation) gavel sound effect used on any Law & Order had to include cocaine. No, I don't know how that's actually possible, but you have to admit that it's either supernatural or illegal how hooked you are once you hear that transitional noise. Likewise, even when you're bored watching (cough cough) PLL, you almost always find your heart beating a little faster during any episode's final scene, usually one that involves some masked mystery man/woman/suburban army stabbing a doll to seriously intense music. 

This leads us to the next reason, namely...

DOLLS!

Guys, this show almost always has dolls, often in the form of creepy effigies of its main quartet and more often than not, super awesome like this:

Or this...

Even the Barbie-esque this...

You get the point. The show has dolls. They're occasionally unsettling and yet equally adorable. 

Best Coming Out Story Ever

Here's where I step away from the snark to say, without irony, that PLL handled a teenage character coming to terms with her (not straight) sexuality with more finesse and sensitivity than any other show that I've ever seen (a bow and shout out to Buffy, which took up this challenge gamely but still felt restricted by its time). In its first season, the character of Emily Fields (played by the 'she's so pretty I hate her' Shay Mitchell) cautiously came to accept herself as a lesbian in a believable storyline that never felt forced or movie-of-the-week.

Pretty Little Outfits

How the hell these girls, all of whom have boyfriends, extracurricular activities, and a network of genius stalkers find time to deep condition their hair and coordinate such intense ensembles is beyond me. But hey, if the end results include as many animal prints mismatched with other animal prints as evidenced by the stylings of Aria Montgomery, it's all worth it.

LOOK! It's--

Meg Foster! 

And the creepily ageless Kendra Dee Vampry Slay-rr!

And Mike Horton!

Wait. Is that Alex Mack?

Sassy grandmother Betty Buckley

And when in doubt, cameo by Mrs. Garrett

Female Characters That Don't Rely On A 'Thing'

With four female leads, it's easy to take a guess at what your characters represent. Surely there must be one slut (the Samantha/Blanche), one prude (Charlotte/Rose), one practical grump (Miranda/Sophia) and the one who ties them all together (Carrie/Dorothy)? Aren't all female quartets composed of the same parts? The beauty of PLL, and I say this WITHOUT sarcasm, is that each of the four girls ISN'T a stereotype. Sure, they were originally conceived in broad strokes: Spencer is the intense overachiever, Emily the athlete, Hanna the ditz with a shopping addiction and Aria the artsy one who unites them all with her arrival after spending a year in Iceland (it's a thing). But even by the end of its first season, it's clear that these girls and to a more uneven degree, the actresses who play them, are much more layered than that. Aria likes to draw and write, but those are just her hobbies. Emily is less the champion swimmer than a young woman who slowly comes into her own as she deals with her sexuality, complicated relationship with her parents, and overall confidence. Spencer is intense and awesome. Best of all is Hanna, a character that could have easily been the dumb blonde but emerges--with the genuine best actress Ashley Benson--as the most interesting presence on the show. 

Halloween Done Right

If you're going to do a Halloween episode, you best DO a Halloween episode. Give me teenage girls referencing classic fiction and cult cinema, give me terror trains-- actual Terror Trains. Like Roseanne and The Simpsons, PLL understands that the most important holiday of the year comes on October 31st...even if it airs some time in January.

Homage This

Aforementioned Halloween episodes are always nodding towards some classics (wink at the John Carpenter staging in Season 2 and the complete Terror Train parody of Season 3), but even regular episodes have incorporated some classic cinema in pretty neat ways. Hitchcock abounds throughout the series, though the end of its second season pays up with glorious taxidermied results. More recently, Season 4 took an entire episode and made it '40s style noir, filming in gorgeous black and white, sticking to rotary phones, and turning its 'teenage' cast into fast talking, hats-and-gloves wearing dames.

So there. I've said it. I love Pretty Little Liars. Judge as you wish. Or just start streaming the entire series on Netflix and see how far YOU get before realizing addiction is not always a bad thing. 

Did I mention this stuff?

Why I Love: Maximum Overdrive

Amongst the many, many many, many reasons I love my parents is this: 

Maximum Overdrive came out in 1986, when the Mets were Mookie Wilsoning their way to the World Series Championship and I was a happy 4 year old...who saw Maximum Overdrive in the theater.

Stephen King was famously on more coke than a Christmas loving polar bear when he wrote, directed, and provided his best cameo yet in what can pretty safely be described as a truckwreck of a film. With a ridiculous premise made even more ridiculous by the deux ex machina explanation of planetary orbit, Maximum Overdrive boasts some of the gooeyist melted American cheese to emerge from the ‘80s. It’s a gooey cheeseburger of a movie served with the greasiest fries you’ve ever eaten, and by golly sugar buns, I love every minute of it.

Quick Plot: You know the story. On a bright summer day in North Carolina, all the world’s machinary  pulls a small-scale SKYNET and becomes hostile. Hairdryers strangle. Electric knives stab. Arcade games electrocute and even the sweet little ice cream truck drives with menace. A varied band of plucky survivors (led by the rebellious Emilio Estevez in his Brat Pack prime) hides out in the Dixie Boy Truck Stop as they formulate a plan to make it alive in a world free of batteries and gasoline.

Obviously, it’s a silly plot, and one that was probably irresistible to the man responsible for killer washing machines, sociopathic classic cars, and evil religion-spreading corn. Stephen King is a vital piece in the history of modern horror, but when undisciplined, his work can be embarrassing. Maximum Overdrive was his first (and sadly, thus far only) directoral effort, and just about any word out of his mouth in the last 20+ years has been sprinkled with his own admission that it’s terrible. 

It’s a charming humility, but let’s face it: Maximum Overdrive is also an absolute blast. A few reasons why:

9:48...79 degrees...Fuck...You

Can you think of a better way to open a film than with a neon sign cursing you out? I suppose following said intro with Stephen King being dubbed an asshole by an ATM machine comes pretty close.

CHONK CHONK CHONK CHONK!

Every villain needs his theme song, and Maximum Overdrive cranks it up right with a ridiculously over the top and aggressive sound cue that can only be described as Jaws eating popcorn on speed and helium. The fact that King randomly assigns this music to particular attacks (the aforementioned electric knife, the no-name dude’s payback for stealing a ring from the dead) somehow makes it all the more entertaining as it only occasionally reminds us just how goofy a thing we’re watching.

Who Made Who? WE MADE YOU!

Speaking of soundtrack, let’s give a fingerless gloved round of applause to AC/DC, the one and only band responsible for Maximum Overdrive’s peppy pseudo badass beats. Their songs firmly ground the film in the fertile ground of the ‘80s, especially when its official anthem--Who Made Who?--is spoken, a la Britney Spears in Crossroads, by one of the film’s most beloved characters, Wanda the truck stop waitress who’s so dedicated to her profession that she keeps her blue eyeshadow fresh and pink hairbow high a full day after the world’s machines have tried to kill her (they eventually do).

Death. By. Soda. Can. DEATHBYSODACAN!

Easily one of my favorites in the extremely long list of best death scenes ever, the soda can machine killing is a glory to behold. Watch ! as the happy go lucky baseball coach saunters over to treat his winning team to a few Pepsis, only to be goofily puckered in the groin by a powerful surge of cans. Hear ! his teenagers giggle, because who doesn’t giggle when the only adult in eyeshot just got his groin hit by a soda can? See ! the machine wage a full-blown war on every player in sight, shooting its ammo as they flee like soldiers on the Western Front, most pegged down with one hit to their backside. At that point, the sight of a steamroller rolling its way over a 14 year old boy is just whipped cream on an already very delicious root beer float.

Sloooooooooooowww Moooooooooooooooooshoooooooooonnnnnn

Often a sign of a director-in-training, an overabundance of slow motion generally comes off as ineffective but hilarious. Maximum Overdrive is no different. The opening drawbridge-gone-psycho scene uses it wonderfully, as an ill-fated biker slides off into the water, complete with his own Tarzan-like cry of peril. You’d think that would be enough, but King seems to find the tool quite versatile, later employing it to build totally unneeded excitement at the conclusion of the even more ill-fated baseball team’s winning slide into home.

Death By Watermelon

It happens, and it happens within the film’s first five minutes. Sheesh Death Bed: The Bed That Eats, it took one scene for you to officially be dethroned.

Happy Toyz, Where Art Thou?

Certainly not in business, because what kid in his right mind would be charmed by any company whose mascot was a grinning gargoyle-like clown? The star truck of Maximum Overdrive is indeed a gleeful villain, so long as we look past the whole idea of, you know, a terrifyingly kid-unfriendly kid company even existing. Then again. Ronald McDonald has been pied pipering his way through the entire planet’s children for almost 50 years, so maybe I underestimate youth.

Random Product Placement

A sparking Miller Lite sign. Evil BIC pens truck. Adorable AC/DC themed Volkswagon bus. Heck, I almost want this film remade just to see how Apple Computers worms its worm-in-an-apple way into getting a positive spin in a film about evil technology.

When In Doubt, Shoot A Bunch of Dudes

Maximum Overdrive CERTAINLY has its flaws, among them, the fact that it’s pretty gosh darn hard to keep track of its characters. Sure, our eyes are always on the heroic(ally hunky) Billy, his quick-to-bed hitchhiker lady pal Brett, the villainous Pat Hingle, Lisa Simpson & her new husband, the kid, and black guy, but there are anywhere between two and seven other background survivors who seem to be hanging out in the truck stop that never come close to registering as being important. They’re all male, country-looking, and bland, so it’s only fitting that at about 2/3rds through the film, the cute little machine-gun driven vehicle kills them all with one swoop of its bullet fire. 

(don't even bother learning the names of the white dudes in the rear)

Someone Got a Different Memo

Holter Graham’s Deke has a little more to care about than the rest of the Dixie Boy’s patrons. Within 24 hours, the kid has seen his baseball coach brutally die and learned that his father’s guts are still fresh on the pavement. I suppose that explains how much more seriously he seems to take his role in Maximum Overdrive, with an intense grimace on his young face all the way to his slaughter of a frisky Drive-Thru burger sign. When he passes his rifle to Brett, Graham’s delivery of “I don’t want this anymore” has more weight than an elephant telling a whale that it had an abortion. Or something.

It's just realllllllllllllly serious. And therefore hilarious.

Eat My Shorts

....gets said in this movie, cementing its status as Great Cinema of our time.

Why Mourn When You Can Eat Bacon?

We’re not really expected to take any of the deaths too seriously in Maximum Overdrive, so perhaps it’s only fitting that the characters don’t either. After Deke’s caring father gets run over, Billy and Brett are quick to flirt their way under the covers, while Wanda’s widowed husband doesn’t seem to have too much trouble moving on and joking his way through pumping gas. When your film is just over 100 minutes, you really shouldn’t waste any time with the mushy stuff, right?

The Comet. Oh Yeah, the Comet

When most of us think back to Maximum Overdrive, the things that gleefully ride into our minds are listed above. But remember, dear readers, just WHY the toy cars and lawnmowers and gas pumps and pinball machines are trying to bring about the end of the human race: 

“On June 19th, 1987, at 9:47 A.M. EST, the Earth passed into the extraordinarily diffuse tail of Rhea-M, a rogue comet. According to astronomical calculations, the planet would remain in the tail of the comet for the next eight days, five hours, twenty-nine minutes, and twenty-three seconds.”

So, as the selectively loose Brett mentions later in the film, an evil comet is telling technology to turn on its makers. Makes perfect sense, no? 

Let’s examine the closing coda text, of which I’ll declare, is easily the greatest closing coda since the adorably unspellchecked two-typo boasting conclusion of Burial Ground: Nights of Terror.

“Two days after, a large UFO was destroyed in space by a Russian 'weather satellite,' which happened to be equipped with a laser cannon and class IV nuclear missiles. 

Approximately six days later, the earth passed beyond the tail of Rhea-M, exactly as predicted.”

Okay. So, the comet was just a red herring in a film that CLEARLY was dying for some external plot twists that have no effect whatsoever on the action we’re watching. And in the end, the Russians save the day with laser canons. And Stephen King is EMBARRASSED by this?

The Winning Line

“Curtis!........... Are you dead?”

I cannot tell you how many times these words were quoted in the Intravia household when I was growing up. The fact that Yeardley Smith would later go on to cement her voice in cultural history as the one and only Lisa Simpson makes this all the more grand.

Lessons Learned

Even Stephen King can’t resist a fat man farting joke

Mack Trucks are especially annoyed by screechy waitresses accusing them of insolence

Morse Code: Learn It. Love it. Live It.

Rent/Marry/Buy/Worship

I will not say that Maximum Overdrive is a good film, but trust me sugar buns, it’s a joy. The film is sadly unavailable from Netflix and currently has nothing more than a bare bones DVD release, but if you can find it at a decent price, it still makes for a glorious daily backdrop to your life. I’m praying to the fairy godparents of Blu Ray that one day, we can all live in a world where Stephen King sits down with a six pack of O’Douls and gives us a long-awaited commentary track, where Emilio Estevez returns for a making-of documentary, and those mythical 12 seconds of gruesome cutting room floor footage resurface, all packaged in a tacky tin case with a glow-in-the-dark Happy Toyz Goblin poking out of your movie library. 

Until then, take us home AC/DC:

Why I Love: Last Night

If you’re reading this today, then I regret to inform you that according to some babbling calendar obsessed idiots, you were probably not chosen to ascend into heaven and avoid the upcoming rapture scheduled to run until October. Clearly, you were Left Behind, but so was Kirk Cameron so who are you to feel insecure?

I love me a good rapture, just as much as I love the underrated Mimi Rogers film, The Rapture. But that’s a story for another day, and since we’ve apparently got another 5 months of movie watching left before Paul Bettany fights a bunch of angel zombie things (or something), let’s shift to a more cheerful 100 minutes of apocalyptic warmth, recommended successfully some months ago from my blogging pal Shiftless (blog here), of whom I shall be eternally grateful to.


Don McKellar’s 1998 black comedy(ish) Last Night is one of those extraordinarily unique little films that sits with you like a fine glass of red wine (the good kind, not the crappy one gargled down by the main characters). It’s funny but not in a quote-it way, touching but not sentimental, and ultimately, incredibly special in a manner entirely its own.

The story takes place in an unnamed Toronto on the last day of the universe. For reasons never explained, the world will end at the stroke of midnight, a fact that the general populace has known for the last few months. This being Canada, the civilians seem to take it in stride.

Director McKellar plays Patrick, a sad and closed-off widower trying to go out with the world in peace and solitude. That doesn’t happen. Instead, Patrick is forced into human interaction at every turn, from an awkward ‘Christmas’ dinner with his parents and sis (my girl crush Sarah Polley), chance meetings with old pals (strategically horny Callum Keith Rennie, an old high school French teacher, a nerdy pianist school chum) and most importantly, the tense soul that is Sandra Oh. 

Sigh, you’re thinking, apocalyptic meet-cutes that might call to mind Grey’s Anatomy? Settle down, left behinders. Last Night is quirky but not in the annoying indie way, even if it is indeed a quirky indie. It’s easily the most cheerful end-of-the-world story I’ve seen, but that doesn’t mean the film is all sweet maple syrup and red vines. 

Take some of the supporting characters, all of whom are and have been very aware that the clock is ticking. Some have planned each final minute, like Rennie's scheduled nearly nonstop sexcapades to act out every fantasy he's ever had. One such bang involves the aforementioned French teacher, who follows an afternoon of passion with an awkward conversation with another former student Patrick and spends her last moments entranced by a piano player's scarcely attended concert. There's something sad or beautiful, or maybe not at all sad and beautiful about this minor character's trajectory. 

Then there's the demigod of Canadian film, David Cronenberg putting in a subtle, sympathetic performance as a single middle-aged man who chooses his final day to go to work, make his calls to answering machine after answering machine assuring the city that the gas company is still working, then head home for a tub of ice cream. As a lifelong fan of Cronenberg's sadistic gynocologists, belly VCRs, nude Russian bathhouse brawls and armpit vaginas, it's eerily refreshing to watch the man exist in such an ethereal scope on film.

Last Night is sort of an ensemble film, though only in the sense that virtually every speaking character comes off as an actual person. We don't get more than five minutes of dialogue from Sarah Polley, but within her brief scenes, we believe her and Patrick to be siblings, not overly close but connected nonetheless. We know from one line that she's spending the end with her boyfriend, probably a former ex who maybe went a little crazy once the world's stopwatch was activated. It's enough.

Patrick is ultimately our lead, although McKellar is wisely subdued. He's a sad man, one greeting the apocalypse without much of a reaction until he meets Sandra (Oh), the kind of flaky but earnest woman whose life would probably have had far less meaning were it lived to its entirety. Oh is absolutely wonderful as a tense wandering wife searching for her new husband (one clearly married in the throws of the apocalyptic fever). Her goal? To shoot him in the head at the stroke of midnight as he does the same for her. The apocalypse, you see, stirred something different up in Sandra: defiance. She got pregnant soon after the announcement, simply to see if she could. She ties the knot and buys a gun just so that it's her decision to die and not the world's.

The first time I watched Last Night, I was touched and amused. Upon second viewing, there's something about Sandra that I find fascinating. None of us can say with any certainty what we'd do with our final months on this planet, and perhaps what I love about Sandra's choices is that I get the sense she never expected THESE would be her decisions. Something about the ticking clock activated this sense of anger and need inside of her.

"Tell me something to make me love you," she pleads (rushed, not romantically) to Patrick as the clock hits 11:58. It's a wonderfully quotable line, funny in its absurdity, tragic in its impossibility, and utterly believable in the rather unbelievable situation of Last Night. 

I haven't even gotten to McKellar's fantastic use of music or the fact that the sun hauntingly shines throughout the entire evening. Or the gleeful plethora of unusual cars (Callem's mint-green classic and my father's personal favorite, an AMC Pacer). The funny, if slightly unsettling female jogger who runs through town and announces the time left with more cheer than the Battle Royale television star. 

Last Night might not be a masterpiece of filmmaking, but it simply hits me in a way few films can. This may very well be a case of personal taste, though even that leaves me mystified. There's nothing in my life that I particularly connect to the characters of this film, and yet when I watch or think about it, I find myself breaking into warmly comforting smiles and tears. We're used to end-of-the-world tales following messianic survivors, leather-clad bandits or go get 'em heroes. In Last Night, there are no superstars or villains. There are no miracles. There's just us, men and women choosing their lives as they want to live them, even if it's a matter of minutes before eternal death. I don't know why I find that so powerful, but it's films like these that make me happy to be here.