party like it's 1979

[serinde]

In the course of the move, I found Mom's fondue pot and all the bits for it, so we had A Very 70s New Year. I used the Joy of Cooking cheese fondue recipe, and it tasted fine, but the cheese never fully integrated with the liquids, so what you had was a thinner somewhat-cheesy-flavored wine top section and a cheese sludge below. What's up with that? Longer cooking needed? I was using half Emmenthal and half Gruyere, which is AIUI canonical, so I don't think it's a type-of-cheese problem.

Started the evening with Denis Leary's Merry Fucking Xmas, which I only caught part of due to nursing fondue along, but what I did catch was awesome; I would so bear his children. (Engage rant about Beth having an elevator ride with him WHEN I WASN'T THERE hmph.) We then proceeded to Fantastic Four. It was surprisingly entertaining, actually. I expected to be far more annoyed by it, particularly since dariodevil had just lent me Waid's most excellent run on the comic, but it was in good fun and most of the differences were not wholly egregious. The weakest part was unquestionably Doom (not the actor's fault--he seemed to be doing exactly what the script & director demanded), and the strongest part Ben and Johnny, both individually and together. Ioan Gruffudd did a better job as Reed than I ever expected; not because I don't love him, I certainly do, but it seemed a woeful miscasting. The performance lacked Reed's self-assurance, but again, that's what the moviemakers seemed to want, as his Character Arc[tm] was all about becoming confident and Winning The Chick and all that shite, so whatever. Jessica Alba was...kind of a cipher. While it's true that a big part of Sue's role in the family dynamic of the FF is to play mama to and mediator between the nerd, the tough guy, and the young punk, and this is something which borders on the stereotypical, she came off in this as Insert Stereotypical Female Bombshell Here, Oh And We'll Say She's A Scientist So We Don't Look Like Chauvinist Pigs, Even Though She Wears Everything Zipped To Her Solar Plexus To Show Off Her BQQBIES. Meh. Bleh. I think a better actress could have brought more chops to the part, though it would've been an uphill battle. Rambling aside, it was a fun beer & pretzels movie.
Eli's review: "Doom is not referring to himself in the third person nearly enough."

And then, into the abyss that is Van Helsing.

I knew it was bad. Everyone said it was bad. I just had no notion exactly how bad it could be with a budget like that. And Hugh Jackman. HUGH fucking JACKMAN. They put him in a movie and made him utterly unattractive to me. That's a whole dimension of suck which is not detectable by our primitive science. And when I say it is jaw-droppingly terrible, I mean that literally; my mouth was hanging open at parts. What a complete train wreck. And poor David Wenham went from Faramir to this shitburger? Honey, what kind of blackmail material could they possibly have had over you? No hooker photos could be worth this. Really.
Eli's review: "The Vatican wanted to kill off Dracula because he'd stolen all the gay in Europe."

Comments

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

I have that happen at times. Slower cooking is usually what's needed, and lots of stirring, and remembering to use the right amount of cornflour at the start. (And not being dim and substituting wheat flour for cornflour and forgetting to up the proportions of flour accordingly, like I did last time.)

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

This recipe calls for cornstarch added last, after the cheese has been stirred in. Sounds like your method may work better, though.

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

That's a bit odd - I can see why it might decide to stay separate.

My method involves adding the cornstarch to a little bit of the wine to make a paste, and then adding the wine to that gradually to avoid lumps, and heating that, and then adding the cheese.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

That makes a lot more sense, I have to say.

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

And then, into the abyss that is Van Helsing.

I saw that in the theater. And I wasn't terribly bothered by it. I mean, I did perceive the substantial not-goodness, but I sort of accepted it nonjudgmentally as a constant of the universe and then set about watching the pretty special effects.

FWIW, I had no idea what I was getting into when I agreed to go see it with the friends in question (and quite possibly neither did they); I figured there'd be vampires somewhere on account of the name, but that's about it.

But then there's Antitrust, where I walked out thinking “wow, that was a total waste of $9 and N hours of my life.” (This was while I was at Oberlin, so a bunch of us had arranged a car trip to some mall somewhere to see it at a first-run theater.)

So, the lesson here: I can forgive almost anything as long as there's Stuff Blowing Up and/or Ninja Ass Kicking. (See also: last episode of Voyager.)

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

It wasn't grindingly painful badness (like oh say the Thanksgiving installment of Bad Movie Theater); it did not kick my puppies. So, it was moderately enjoyable to mock the badness, at least for awhile. By the end, I think we were all running out of the will to live.

But it surely was a bad, bad movie. And I would have been excessively sad if I'd paid to see it (as Steve actually had--I think half his motive for renting it was to share the pain).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

You can treat Van Helsing as a drinking game to make it more enjoyable: each time they obviously rip off a scene or character from another film, drink once. Each time an entire genre is ripped off, drink twice.

[dagbrown.livejournal.com]

Jessica Alba actually is a pretty good actor, but she's not a very good movie actor. On television, she generally takes about half a season to settle into a role, and then once she's got settled in, she does a fine job. Before that, she's kind of awkward and tends to fail over to default "look cute and stay out of the way" behaviour.

Unfortunately (for us poor viewers; certainly she's doing fine for herself) her Startling Good Looks rocketed her towards movies possibly before she's really developed the knack for the job.

[syringavulgaris.livejournal.com]

Ah. Yes, one of my fellow sufferers viewers was saying that she was really good in Dark Angel. (I never caught it and so had no opinion.)

Fondue

[nancaurelia.livejournal.com]

The easist way to do it is to make chocolate fondue instead of cheese! ;D

I've never had trouble with that, and it's REALLY popular when I make it at Pennsic!

XXX