Sunday!

I had a couple of various teasers I could have used for a post discussing “Crimson Peak“.

“Love makes monsters of us all.”
“Chekhov’s Pen.”

Okay, technically, I came up with a third: “Chekhov’s Butt.”

I turned to Maribou and asked “How in the heck would they make *THAT* pay off?”

She turned to me and said “Well…” and I said “You know what? Never mind. I’ll just say that I came up with a couple of other ones.”

Crimson Peak was directed by Guillermo del Toro. GTD is one of the most awesome directors, like, ever. Remember the difference between Blade 1 and Blade 2? After watching Blade 1 you said something like “That was cool” and after watching Blade 2 you said something like “holy crap, he had the same nightmares that I had.”

Remember a couple years later watching Hellboy? “Holy crap. This guy had the same nightmares I had, but fought out of them the same way that I did.”

Well, then I learned that Guillermo del Toro directed his own movie, start to finish. I said something like “HOLY CRAP, DUDE, MARIBOU WE HAVE TO SEE THIS!” and, seriously, the entirety of the information I had was that GTD directed his own movie.

My operating assumption was that it was a PG-13 or something.

Anyway, I sat next to Maribou watching this movie set in the Spanish Civil War. Then this scene came up where the bad guy in the movie shot one of the captured rebels in the head. I remember seeing a little puff of a cloud of smoke after the shot. I took a deep breath. Then he shot the second rebel in the head. Then the third.

I remember turning to Maribou and saying something like “I don’t think that this is PG-13” and she said something to the effect of “Yeeeeaaaaah?” the way that someone who did her research would have done.

Anyway, Pan’s Labyrinth is one of the most wonderful, beautiful movies that I have ever seen (though I have *ZERO* desire to see it a second time).

Crimson Peak is directed by the same guy.

So I’m watching the movie for 10 minutes and I say something like “I like this person, I don’t like this person,” and Maribou starts to school me on Gothic Novels. There’s always a Dark Person afflicting the protagonist and a Light Person afflicting the antagonist and I need to keep my eye on this person, for this reason, and keep my eye on Chekov’s iron bar, Chekov’s Dog, and Checkov’s Game Of Fetch With The Aforementioned Dog.

And we watched the movie and were perfectly entranced. We knew who was the protagonist, the sympathetic bad guy, and other characters within seconds of each and every minute of their showing up. But the story it told was fairly timeless, the actor they chose for each character was very good, and the sound person was just TOO FREAKING GOOD for each scene in which the sound was essential to tell the audience “START PRODUCING ADRENALINE NOW”.

All in all, I think you should get Crimson Peak and you should enjoy it.

Though you won’t promise to never, ever, watch it again the way you swore to never, ever, watch Pan’s Labyrinth again.

So… what are you reading and/or watching?

(Featured Image is “Edison’s Telephonoscope” by George du Maurier from Punch Almanack for 1879)