Vixen's Mixens: The Bird Is the Word

Like the brilliant Sheldon Cooper, I suffer from Ornithophobia. Simply put - birds scare the bejesus out of me. I guess it all stems from watching The Birds at too young of an age as well as the incident where a pigeon flew at my head trying to take the sandwich I was in the process of eating on a park bench in Portugal.

Regardless of when and where it began, I hate birds. I will literally cross the street if there is a bunch of pigeons on the sidewalk. I am afraid to go to Venice because of all the frickin' birds they have there. No lie.

So why, you may ask, am I dedicating this month's playlist to the birds that so make my skin crawl? Because despite their filthy feathers, beady eyes and obnoxious chirps they make for great lyrical subjects. I guess the whole being able to fly thing really gets songwriters inspired. So I have faced my fear and produced: The Bird is the Word - a playlist filled with songs about all types of birds or songs by artists with birdy names, such as.... Birdy (ha!)

I hope you enjoy. As always, let me know if I have made any glaring omissions.

That was not funny

That was not a funny movie at all, really. The tittle is really misleading. "Funny Games", though, the Michael Haneke remake of the really disturbing Michael Haneke movie of the same name (yup, odd) is one of the most disturbing, wacked out, crazy, opressive scary slasher movies I´ve seen in ages.

Many ridiculously awesome thinks going on in this movie. First, despite being an oppressive psychological slasher, it is really not too violent -or at least, does not display any of the violence on camera. That old adage that it is most disturbing to force the viewer to imagine what is going on instead of showing the blood and guts is completely true here.

Second, Michael Pitt. The highest level of praise for this guy; it made me think that if some hopeless individual is to play the Joker after Heath Ledger, he is probably one of the very actors that could pull of that level of creepy in a convincing fashion. He is smooth, polite, uppity and just terrifying.

Third, something that is a bit odd, but I think it works well. The movie (Pitt´s character, actually) breaks the fourth wall a few times during the movie, looking to the camera and making snarky coments to you, the viewer. The breaks are always very short, but masterfuly placed; they basically get inserted in really tense, really dramatic, really uncorfortable moments, and -for me at least- they only make the scene even more painful.

Is it better than the original? To tell the truth, I don´t know. I haven´t seen it. I have seen many Haneke movies (a director that has a penchant for inflicting painful amounts of suffering and distress to characters and spectators alike), but I missed Funny Games. For what I´ve read, the remake is pretty damn close to the original, and after all the "fun" I had watching this one (tremors, uncontrolable shaking, crazy panic attacks) I will pass. At least for awhile.