A Family Affair

So I already did a post on the opening line of Sense and Sensibility, you should go here if you want to check that out. So Sense and Sensibility is far different from Pride & Prejudice. In Pride & Prejudice we have a basic introduction to the family-5 daughters, and their mother’s need to marry them off.

Sense and Sensibility is a little different.

We get a big family entanglement of who’s who in the family and who’s inheriting. It can be a bit much.

It’s not as bad as Love Actually or He’s Just NOT Into You, but it is pretty knotted. But lucky for you all, that’s what I’m here for. I shall untangle it for you.

So it’s always about the property and land right?

And in this case it’s the same. But the one in question here is Norland Park, belonging to Mr. Dashwood.

Now Mr. Dashwood was a confirmed bachleor, and shared his house with his sister who managed everything for him. Both of them grew older, and Miss Dashwood died. Mr. Dashwood found himself alone and didn’t enjoy it. So he decided to invite his nephew, Mr. Henry Dashwood.

Now Henry is where things become a bit more complicated. Henry has two families.

Now I don’t mean that he was married to two women at the same time, this isn’t Sister Wives. And he wasn’t a conman either. He was a widower who remarried. This might not sound too complicated right now (I mean with how high the divorce rates are today, things are far more complicated,) but it does cause some legal issues I’ll get into later.)

So we have Mr. Dashwood’s first family. This includes his son John, horrible daughter-in-law Fanny,

and awful grandson.

I hate these people. Absolutely HATE THEM.

But more on that later.

And his second family consists of the new Mrs. Dashwood, Elinor, Marianne, and Margaret.

So here we are.

John being older and married was the one that didn’t move into the family homestead. But he and his family visited all the time. The three girls however, joined Old Mr. Dashwood. They take good care of him and greatly amuse him in his old age.

Only one problem.

Ugh

One thing my drama director always told us:

“Never work with kids or animals. They’ll steal the show.”

It’s true. Kids and animals are too cute, and they don’t even try. They’ll do something that will cause all others to be overlooked.

And here it’s no different.

Yes, the little spoiled brat steals away all the love of his grandfather.

“…this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained the affections of his uncle. by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old, an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of all the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters.”

Duh!

 

Yep, just another case of those who slaved and cared being pushed aside for something “cuter”.

Ugh

So the old Mr. Dashwood dies. And leaves things unpleasant. He entails all his money and estate to his grandnephew.

Entailment!

Replace Rothbart with entailment

Entailment sucks!!!!!!!

Entailment was something that was done a lot in the 18th-20th centuries. All the money, property, the whole shebang was entailed to the next male heir. So this is good and bad. It means that Henry will have everything, but only for as long as he is alive. When he dies it will be passed on to John, and then to the kid. This means that the female Dashwoods will receive nothing. The old Mr. Dashwood gave them £1000, but that won’t be near enough for them to marry well.

So I’m sure you are wondering about Mr. Henry Dashwood. I mean he doesn’t have to entail his personal money. Or Mrs. Dashwood’s money. Right?

 Well you’re half-right. He wouldn’t have to if he had any. Yep, you see Mr. Dashwood has no money.

He had status and married wealthy. His first wife had a fortune!

Unfortunately, she died.

And left all her money to her only child, John.

When he remarries it’s for love and his second wife is poor. They have only £7000. (I’m not sure if that’s a year or what, but it’s not enough for taking care of his family long-term).

And then he hopes to get the inheritance, but winds up with basically nothing.

To rub salt further in the wound, John doesn’t even need the money. You see John not only has all that dough from his mom, but when he married he increased his net worth tenfold.

Yep, he’s rolling in dough.

So the Dashwoods got the shaft.

But then Henry decides maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all. He is not an old man, he’s still has plenty of years left in him and he could start setting money aside to take care of his family. After all it’s not like he is going to die any day.

For more on Sense and Sensibility, go to A Sense of Sense and Sensibility

For more on the Dashwood family, go to Opening With…

For more on how entailment sucks, go to Fantastic Fantasies

For more on Gone With the Wind, go to At the End of the Rainbow

In Love With the ’80s (Pink Tux to the Prom)

The music of today sucks. You know what’s awesome, music of the past, things of the past. Things…of the ’80s!

I love the ’80s. The fashion, the movies, the music…It all is so cool. I would love to go back in time and visit.

This shouldn’t really surprise any of you out there as I’m constantly going on about it. It also should be no real shock that this is one of my favorite songs:

In Love With the ’80s (Pink Tux to the Prom) by Relient K

I can’t find much information on the creation of the song, but it clearly was created by one who loved the ’80s. I just love the music and lyrics of this piece. In fact my senior prom escort joked about getting a powder blue tux, like the one in Dumb and Dumber and I told him he could wear one like that (I think they are cute), as long as it didn’t clash with my dress. He chose to just go in regular black.

So it was Jeremy in 1983,

In his ocean pacific tee,

Who got a bloody knee,

On his skateboard,

In the halfpipe,

In the backyard,

That tuesday night.

And I’m only gonna pierce my left ear,

And I’ve been working on this mustache all summer long,

And my favorite band will always be tears for fears,

And I’m gonna to wear a pink tux to the prom, a pink tux to the prom.

Cuttin class through the first four windows,

He’s drivin fast because he never did a thing slow,

And I look up to my big bro cuz in the eighties all the ladies grabbed his

hands and couldn’t let go.

And I’m only gonna pierce my left ear,

And I’ve been working on this mustache all summer long,

And my favorite band will always be tears for fears,

And I’m gonna to wear a pink tux to the prom, a pink tux to the prom.

Do, do, do-do, do, do, Pink tux to the prom, [x2]

I am gonna wear, a pink tux to the prom,

Live without a care, what can possibly go wrong.

When you’re the president of the breakfast club,

And you’re not hesitant to fall in love,

To fall in love with the eighties, to throw it away

to fall in love with the eighties.

I am gonna wear, a pink tux to the prom,

Live without a care, what can possibly go wrong,

I am gonna wear a pink tux to the prom,

Live without a care cause you threw it away to fall in love, with the eighties..

Do, do, do-do, do, do

A great song that I hope my fellow ’80s fans enjoyed as much as me. 🙂

For more on Relient K, go to Here I Go

For more of my favorite songs, go to The After Party

For more on the ’80s, go to Just a Friendly Reminder

For more on The Breakfast Club, go to The Anniversary of Its Formation

For more on Psych, go to You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

For more Buffy the Vampire Slayer, go to Simply Fantastic

It’s Coming From Inside the House: When A Stranger Calls (2006)

We traced the call! It’s coming from inside the house! Do you hear me? It’s coming from inside the house! You need to get out!

So I love this movie so much! It came out during the period of remakes of 1970s horror films, you had Dracula 2000, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), The Wicker Man (2006), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003), Carrie (2002), The Omen (2006), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), Dawn of the Dead (2004), Halloween (2007), and Invasion (2007). 

I thought it was a great remake, although I’ve never seen the original. And as the trailer revels the climatic ending I don’t feel bad about doing so either.

So the film starts off a police cleanup as a baby-sitter and the kids she had been watching were ripped to shreds.

 Then we cut to out protagonist Jill who is practicing track. She is suffering from a supremo of bad days. Her times are all off and she needs to improve her speed. Part of the reason she is sucking so much is that she is distracted by her broken heart.

It turns out that her boyfriend and best friend hooked up! What jerks!

And she is grounded because she went over the mins on her phone. Remember, back in the day when every cellphone plan had min limits, and everyone was going over them all the time?

Oops!

She really wants to go to the bonfire party, but the only place she is allowed to go is to babysit.

Yep, the money from the job is supposed to be enough to cover the cost of the phone bill. They must be paying her an awful lot of money.

To further her punishment, she can’t have her own car but has to be dropped off by her dad and then dropped off by the couple when they return from their night. Now this is a pretty sweet baby-sitting job. It is for a rich family, who lets you eat anything in the house, watch things on their massive TV, getting paid lots of money, and you don’t even have to look after the kiddos as they’re sick.

Only one problem, she is in the freakin’ middle of nowhere. But it is a beautiful house!

It has a so many glass windows and such, it also has an inside garden/aviary thing.

Now my home has a whole wall of windows, so when I first watched this with my friends we were all freaked out during the…well I’ll save that for later.

So Jill doesn’t have much to do as the kids are sick and knocked out upstairs. The maid is there, but will be leaving shortly after she finishes her rounds. The couple have an older son who attends college and he may or may not be coming back to visit, but if he does he’ll crash in the guest house in their backyard.

Seems easy enough

So Jill gets ready for a night o’ fun. She eats popsicles and tries on jewelry and clothes.

Everything is fun and games until Jill begins to receive anonymous and annoying phone calls.

Jill Johnson: [phone rings] Hello? [no answer] [sighs] Mandrakis Residence.

Voice of the Stranger: Have you checked the children?

Jill Johnson: What

[Stranger hangs up. Jill runs and checks on the children. Comes back downstairs]

Jill Johnson: [phone rings] Hello?

Voice of the Stranger: [pauses] How were the children?

At this point in the film if you look hard enough you can actually see him watching her through the window while she is walking around and talking to her on the phone.

In between she gets some creepy calls from her ex’s friends. She gets even more calls, but then one turns out to be her ex-friend Tiffany. Tiff the big, bad, boyfriend stealer.

Tiff comes and tries to fix things between them, with Jill feeling lukewarm about the whole thing. She kicks Tiff out, who tries to leave but can’t as a tree blocks her path. A tree that wasn’t there earlier. That means only one thing, bye-bye Tiff.

Goodbye now!

 

The calls continue getting even creepier.

Jill Johnson: Tiffany, I know it’s you. I can see your name on Caller ID, genius.

Voice of the Stranger: This isn’t Tiffany.

Jill Johnson: Who is this?

Voice of the Stranger: [pause] Who is this?

Jill Johnson: Cody?

Voice of the Stranger: Who’s Cody?

Jill Johnson: You better cut this out!

[stranger hangs up]

Now for the most part Jill is pretty smart girl. She calls the police and tries to get them to trace the call and get rid of her stalker. She keeps the security system on at all times. When she sees a light go on in the guest house, she thinks it might be the son and tries to get him to come back with her to help.

She turns the security system off and runs down to the guest house to get the son. When she gets in there, she discovers that there is no one there.

Jill concludes that it must have been the maid, going over here to clean and then left after she completed the job. She runs back to the house, causing the security system to go off. She gets a call from the company, but tells them that it is only her. She must have only thought she turned the system off.

She continues to get more calls from “the Stranger”, telling her that he can see her.

Oh Crap!

Jill Johnson: He can see me!

Officer Burroughs: Sorry?

Jill Johnson: It’s Jill, the girl who called before about the man who keeps on calling.

Officer Burroughs: What’s going on?

Jill Johnson: He called me again.

Officer Burroughs: What did he say?

Jill Johnson: He’s out there, he’s outside, he’s watching me through the windows.

Officer Burroughs: Did you see him?

Jill Johnson: No, but I know he can see me, because I went upstairs…

Officer Burroughs: Okay, take a deep breath, where’s the house keeper?

Jill Johnson: I don’t know, I saw her purse and the keys but I can’t find her.

Officer Burroughs: The house locked up?

Jill Johnson: Yes.

Officer Burroughs: Alarm system?

Jill Johnson: It’s on.

Officer Burroughs: Okay, you’re safe inside that house. If he wanted to break in, he wouldn’t be calling.

Jill Johnson: But he must want something!

Officer Burroughs: Listen to me, Miss, it’s just some a****** trying to hassle you.

So when my friends and I were watching this film, we were in the living room which has a whole wall made entirely out of windows, similar to the house in the film. There is also a window behind the TV. As we were watching this part, something hit our window.

AAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Our cat had jumped up on the fence outside and hit the window with her tail. We were just so into the film that we were creeped out.

So back to the film. So Jill keeps trying to talk to “the Stranger” so the police can trace the calls. It is so creepy, it was like when that crazy girl kept calling/texting me last spring.

Jill Johnson: [On phone] You really scared me, if that’s what you wanted. Is that what you wanted?

Voice of the Stranger: No.

Jill Johnson: What do you want?

Voice of the Stranger: Your blood all over me.

As gross and creepy and Nightmare in Elm Street’s Freddy Kreugar.

EW!

That’s when everything starts to fall apart.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Besides Tiff, Jill also finds the body of the housemaid. She tries to help save the children, but end up getting in a deadly fight with “the Stranger”.

Save the Children!!!!

Jill is awesome how she takes down the stranger, totally kicking butt.

Kudos for carrying the crowbar

The cops come and capture the killer and cart him off, taking Jill with them to be looked at.

The ending is great, with its nod to Friday the 13th. Check it out, it is an amazing film!

The creepiest thing about this film is how the guy watches her and how he gets in the house and does the whole cat and mouse game. It is such a creeptastic film.

To start Horrorfest III from the beginning, go to Even a Man Pure of Heart

For more on When a Stranger Calls, go to Do You Know Where Alex Is?

For more on psychopathic killers, go to Everyone’s Entitled to One Good Scare

For more great remakes, go to Redone Done Right