Saturday 15 August 2009

The Strangers: Don’t Go Near The Castle … And If You Do, DON’T KNOCK ON THE DOOR!


And if you do knock, don’t be invited in; if you are invited in, don’t stay the night; if you do stay the night, don’t sleep in the master bedroom, with the balcony; if you do sleep in the master bedroom … … DON’T COME CRYING TO ME!

Runs the gag from Terry Pratchett’s rather fun vampire Discworld story, “Carpe Jugulum” … !

Which is very relevant to tonight’s movie; the 2007 horror flick, “The Strangers” …

Mind you, saying that, I know Allison wasn’t too impressed with me replacing her copy of Windoze with Ubuntu. We had a devil of a job — that took a lot of damn good repair work from Adrian — hooking the laptop she had to her o2 Mobile dongle.

Part of the problem was my fault, I’m sorry to say. While I managed to remind her to back up her important file and pictures — mostly of a lot of Great Danes she helps look after — I didn’t stop to think about asking if she had any passwords and logins she needed saving.

Bless her, she wasn’t impressed with that, although sausage, chips and two cans of coke — and a film — did help calm her down.

And getting Movie night Adrian to help us look up the relevant help pages was a big help, too, I think we owe him a BIG thank you, there!! At least I owe him a big thank you, he managed to stop Allison thumping me … !

Welcome to Linux Land; we may be some time!

The other part of the problem, it seems, was simply the brand of wireless router o2 uses; it seems it’s got a built-in SD card, and small sized usb flash drive, that the modem itself, uses to store various cookies and bits of temporary data. That means o2 dongles show up as three different devices, on Ubuntu.

Actually, I must confess, I phoned o2’s help-desk, for Allison, trying to sort the problem out.

Turns out I knew more about Ubuntu than the guy on the other end of the line …

Tim, if you and Adele are reading this, trust me, the router should be easy, in comparison … … …

Umm …

~≈Â≈~

Either way, I do know that Steve, who joined Adrian, Allison and me, for tonight’s movie, was positively dribbling with excitement, watching me and Adrian, getting geeky, and Allison happily getting annoyed.

But, whatever else, we all of us saw a really rather entertaining film, tonight.

Did I mention we watched 2007, Bryan Bertino directed, “The Strangers”, tonight? I did?

Jolly good!

Actually, Gwen, Stefan, if you are reading this, I’d recommend this one, I really would!

Now granted, “The Strangers” isn’t the goriest of horror films. And it is just a touch formulaic. Hence the opening line, from Terry Pratchett.

But, although it’s been knocked out of a mould, it has been hand decorated.

If not by Leonardo daVinci, then certainly Clarice Cliff.

It takes those stock elements of a troubled young couple, a lonely house, and masked assailants, playing torturous mind games, and manages to put them together in what all of us thought were, if not new, then certainly entertaining.

And made all four of us — all of whom are adult, mature people, and not easily scared by a movie — jump at least once, at various points in the film. (Steve jumped first, which surprised me, I know how many gruesome films he’s seen over the years. Adrian and Allison went next, and me, at the end.)

Which is sort of the point, I think, with a shocker.

It’s got to make you jump, to be worth the money.

And “The Strangers” is well worth the money.

1 comment:

Nik Nak said...

Actually,about those assailants, one rather clever point was simply that we never get to see their faces, clearly.

Throughout the whole film!!