No gym today. We were both too sore.

We went out last night and ate sushi; a celebration for a bonus I got at work. Good timing, considering I have to shoulder two houses and an airplane payment this month.

I love sushi. All it is really is a medium for soy sauce and wasabi. No, that's not true; the rice has a distinct flavor and texture. The seaweed and the fillings all have more texture than flavor, it seems to me. I'm perfectly happy with a sushi roll that consists of cucumber, rice and nothing more. A have developed a taste for raw tuna, however. Spicy tuna rolls are my favorite.

Jon had to return a pressure washer to a friend after dinner so I flipped on the tv and caught the very beginning of The Longest Movie.

I'm kidding. The Longest Day is a pretty good war movie about D-Day. The movie encompasses just about everybody's point of view, including German, British, and American military, as well as French Resistance. (One of the few woman's roles - and the only relatively big role for a woman in this movie - was a member of the French resistance. She was pretty kewl, and a nice change from the roles women normally play in mid-20th century war movies.)

When I mean encompass, I mean encompass. I don't think they could make a movie like this again. John Wayne, Richard Widmark, Robert Mitchum, Eddie Albert, Robert Ryan, Richard 'Master Thespian' Burton and a bunch of other familiar faces.

Wayne represents the airborne side of things; he commands a battalion of 82nd Airborne who has the objective of taking the French town of Ste. Mere-Eclise (sp!). These scenes amused me because they were the flip-side of similar D-Day scenes in Band of Brothers(which has a more intimate look at one company in the 101st Airborne Division). Both had scenes where members of the 101st and the 82nd ran into each other and the confusion it caused. Very few if any of the 18,000 paratroopers landed in their correct Landing Zones that night.

The Longest Day did not explain completely why everybody landed off; BoB - thanks to CGI - showed the terrific bombardment the jump planes were taking. Besides the bad weather and night time conditions, many pilots simply gave the paratroopers the green light so they could get the hell out of there.

TLD did have a terrific scene where paratroopers ended up landing in the town of Ste. Mere-Eclese (sp?!?) itself; they ended up being target practice for the German troops stationed there. Owie.

TLD also had a spiffy sequence of British Troops landing in these huge gliders. Damn, those landings were rough!

Anyway it's a long damn movie so I cranked up TiVo so I could go to bed. I'll finish the rest of it tonight.

My Top 10 favorite Villains:

10) Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman Die Hard)

Oh come on of course he's in my top 10!

9) Scorpio (Andrew Robinson, Dirty Harry)

A favorite because there is absolutely nothing likeabe about him. He is a completely evil creep. And when he starts whining about "I have my rights!" *I* wanted to beat him up.

8) Judge (Simon Yam Full Contact)

He's a hoot because he's an absolute flaming homosexual and an absolute badass. I'm absolutely impressed that Yam pulled this role off as well as he did.

7) Catwoman/Selena Kyle (Michelle Pfeiffer, Batman Returns)

Batman Returns is one movie I would have liked to Script Doctor. Hey! That would make an *excellent* top 10 list! Another time, perhaps.

I would remove any mention of the Penguin (no offense to Danny DeVito) and focused this movie on Catwoman, Batman and Max Schrek (Christopher Walken). Catwoman could never figure out whether she wanted to fight Batman, or boink him. She tended to try to do both at the same time. Batman Returns captures some of that with some chemistry between Pfeiffer and Keaton.The scene where Selena and Wayne are dancing and they realize who each other are is classic.

6) Archibald Cunningham (Tim Roth, Rob Roy )

Dresses like a pansy, in his heart he's a ruthless punk. He had an Evil Bad Guy checklist when he went after Liam Neeson's noble Rob Roy: "Let's see: burn the house, kill the livestock, rape the wife... what did I forget? Oh, yes. Shoot the dog!"

5) Hannibal Lector (Anthony Hopkins, Hannibal)

Yeah, he's on everyone's list too. However it isn't his elegant menace that I find interesting. I like how he expresses his outrage towards the world (by eating people. Most psychos grab a gun and shoot up diners or high schools; Hannibal kills people and turns them into gourmet dinners. Far more dignified).

One scene really appealed to my Inner Sociopath: Clarice Starling loses her job because of the machinations of a real creep, Arthur Krendler. Instead of eating Krendler, Lector drugs him up, cuts the top of his skull off, and feeds him part of his own brain. All in an elegant and classy way. Sorry; I haven't enjoyed cannibalism this much since The Cook,The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.

4) Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper Blue Velvet)

HEINEKEN?!!? FUCK THAT SHIT!! PABST BLUE RIBBON!!!

Another bad guy so disgusting and unredeemable, he's a hoot to watch.

3) T-101 (Arnold SwarzeneggerThe Terminator)
Originally Swarzenegger was going to play Kyle Reese. He wisely talked James Cameron into letting him play the bad guy. Movie history was born; pretty Sarah Connor and slight Kyle Reese against an unstoppable machine? It didn't look good for our heros. This is why he's on this list. The Terminator has a very logical reason to maim and murder his way through the phone book, a dance club, and a police precinct: he was programmed that way. He can't be bargained with, he can't be reasoned with, he doesn't feel pity or remorse. Or fear. And he absolutely will not stop. Ever.

Oh, come on! It scared me...

2) Colquhoun (Robert Carlyle Ravenous)

Ravenous is one of my favorite movies nobody saw (another list for another time). Ravenous concerns two men who have discovered separately that if you eat human meat, it gives you superhuman strength. The down side is it also gives you insatiable hunger. Slightly built Robert Carlyle (another brit who gets stuck with a lot of evil bad guy roles) does a great job conveying both charm and animal hunger. He really plays well against Guy Pearce's equally famished but passive good guy who Colquhoun tries to seduce into giving in to and accepting his cannibalistic urges. Hmmmm. I have a wierd thing for cannibals. I'm really afraid to go exploring the Freudian explanations for that.

1) Spike (James Marsters Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Undead heart of a chaotic punk, buried soul of a weenie romantic poet. Equal parts menace, hotness, and shameless wanker. I almost wish he'd stayed villainous or at least kept walking that edge he found when he fell in love with the slayer. I'm somewhat glad he found a second life on Angel even though I STILL CAN'T SEE IT!!!


You know, this was going to be a quickie list, but I ended up doing a lot of thinking for it. I really don't like evil bad guys. Not because they are evil, but because many times I don't know *why* they are evil. Antagonists should do what they do because they think they are right. Plenty of sick bastards exist who can be classified as evil (John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, etc), and plenty of bad guys are portrayed as psychopathic in movies. "He's just off his rocker" is a reasonable explanation, but it doesn't leave much room for empathy.

I have racked my brain (doesn't that sound painful?) but I can't think of any villain I have ever been that attracted to (Spike doesn't count! By the time I wanted to have his child he was working for the good guys). Even the villains I list deserve punishment for what they did even if I have empathy for their actions. I have talked (via internet) with a lot of women who have things for certain villainous characters. The classic example I guess would be Count Dracula in his various incarnations. Nope, doesn't do a thing for me. I simply don't get why someone would fall in love with an evil man.

I'm guessing that what fires many women's fantasy ovens are characters that need the lovin of a good woman to mend their wicked ways.

So this list turned out pretty pedestrian in the sense that many of my favorite villains are everybody else's favorite villains. On the whole I wish for more villains like Catwoman. I mean people who are this close ->|| to redemption but can't quite make it. It gives them a tragic, romantic edge that I like.