The Oranges

The Oranges

                From the most ©inauspicious of days sometimes come the most illuminating editions of this Take This Thing Back to Baltimore me-moirs and (f) / (b) / (s) / (c) log, but (y)our man ©in the humble(d) narrator of the same doubts that this will be one / of those days.  Still there's only one way to find out, namely by hulk-smashing away, and then seeing what pours / forth.

                First this Spanish movie gots / to go.  ©in acts all kinds of sophistimicated when he's after renting these foreign films in that corner of the video store, but what he brings home to videe after the cell-phone buzzes him that the video store is closing is often no es bueno. 

                Next up is The Oranges, a comedy of manners set in East Orange New Jersey, the same part of the world, though hopefully on the other side if the tracks, from where our car broke down and the owner of the bar we went to for assistance proceeded to lock down the place while we were there – even using the ‘N’ wo®d , innit Fergus - and then grabbing / his shotgun from behind the bar.

                Good times, of a Sunday in the old days, 'the bad days, the blood by / the bucket days' Mickey Rourke's Marv says it better in Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City, in the hal©yon p®e-®egime ze®o days (y)our man ©in would be after getting home at this hour after 4 hours minimum at his local, reading the NYTimes and picking up anything that his antenae still allowed him to, between all the booze and the drugs and the cincussions and we weren't that bright, innit DD, to begin with, ‘and the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad’ Kris Kristofferson sings it better of those hal©yon p®e-®egime ze®o days in his Sunday Morning Coming Down, ‘so I had one more / for dessert’, Sunday morning coming down is all / we gots.

                Course nowadays it's ©affeine that Cin is after consuming morning noon and night , and plenty of it, and fruity drinks by / the bucket.  'Butter' the ®ed-hot popcorn girl aksed it better last TGIFF®iday when Cin was after ordering a large popcorn to go along with his 12-ounce Pepsi - it's what passes for / a p®rty these days, innit G - to which Cin could only reply, stealing from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life''s Mr. Creosote, 'butter get / a bucket.' 

                'Fruitopia' read the carton better of the name of the juice drink that Cin was after cinsuming last night, made if the title is to be believed, from the juice of / strawberries among other fruits.  Carton lasted five minutes before Cin's parched state required its draining even before he reached / the car, which is two minutes less than this movie will last, 'not white girls' the mother from West Orange (our aforementioned Orange (mis) / (b) adventure back in the 20^th was in East Orange, innit Cash) says it better in this film, famous last words, after her wayward daughter calls to say over the phone that she'safter getting married all / of a sudden, and that people get married at 17 all of the time, 'from / New Jersey.'

                Famous last words indeed, this movie grows on you, what it is in The Oranges is that the wayward daughter comes home for Thanksgiving in West Orange after all, before during and after finding her fiancé making the beast with two backs with the town bike (hooker please –id.) in flag®ente dele©to, in the utility room.  Good time, ain't love / grand.  Reminds Cin of the story he heard told of four strangers, one of them an -ex of all people, who were thrown together in a car for a trip - the driver a friend of the passenger, and the tag-alongs friends of the passenger - who during the course of the trip heard a story, from of one of the tag-alongs, about her fiancé, whom she suspected of cheating, as a result of a dodgy phone call he had made, and then created a Cock and Bull Story to gloss over, in flag®ente dele©to is all / we gots.

                Turns out that one of the other people in that car was the recipient of the exact same cock and bull story, only delivered by the second party to the aforementioned unfaithful fiancé fiasco in Part One of this story in the paragraph above.  Sounds like an urban legend - two total strangers sharing not only a ride but unfaithful partners as well, partners who had sold a bill of goods to their better halfs, who bought the stories but then ended up sharing a car ride, and happening upon the bitter truths purely by accident, realizing that they were both telling the same / story from different angles - except for the fact that ©in knew all of the principles and knew that all of this unlikely turn of events was true, though for more details than this you'll have to run the surveillance tapes, between the drugs and the booze and (that's enough -id.) the ©incussions, your humble(d) narrator (and no, he wasn't any of the four principles, he was told the story by yet another 3rd party later on) is what the English majors call a somewhat unreliable / narrator, though the entirety of this story, or at least the gist of it, is true, 'I like you Tony' Tony Montana's erstwhile partner Alex tells Pacino’s Tony Montana better in de Palma’s Scarface, 'there is no lying / in you', a variation of which Tony ‘fesses up and confirms at another point in the movie, ‘I always tell the truth, even when I lie’, cock and bull stories is all / we gots.

                On the other hand he lied like a rug, Cin cannot watch much more of what your heroine in The O®anges calls better her mother's 'sick, suburban / fantasy' of marrying her daughter off to the neighbor's son.  Actor playing one of the hen-pecked husbands is the guy who played the Doctor on that TV show Dr. House, where's he's a tyrant, hooked on prescription drugs and all that .  Now the wayward daughter is after seducing not only the neighbor's son but also his father Dr. House, and that's the last Cin saw of / The Oranges.

                Polanski's The Tenant is next, 'I found this one' the video store guy said it better yesterday after of the movie, 'hidden behind one of / the shelves in the back.'  Cin re-delivered this line later in the evening, complete with background story, to no effect as usual.  Here's Roman as the main character getting a hand job and feeling up his impromptu date at the cinema while videeing a Bruce Lee movie, interrupted by the objecting Frenchman in the theatre aisle behind the amorous pair, who glowers, apparantly even in France handjobs in cinemas are frowned upon, what chance does this reviewer have within the cinfines of / the cindominium ?

                What it is is in The Tenant is that your man Polanski - who ©infamously had sex with a thirteen-year old in California in 1978 and has been on the lam ever since  - in this film plays the new tenant in a Parisian apartment building.  After going to see the previous tenant of his apartment - who tried to snuff it by jumping out / the window - die in the hospital, your man the current tenant meets a female friend of the jumper, and off they go to watch Bruce Lee in the aforementioned Enter the Dragon, and play ®oadhead with each other.

                For some reason the dialogue is in English, with the French actors affecting bad American accents and crass mannerisms, though Polanski keeps his Gaulois patois.  Polanski directed and stars at the same time, like (y)our man ©in the humble(d) narrator of this Take This Thing Back to Baltimore me-moirs and (f) / (s) / (b) / (c) log, and like the results of the latter efforts, the results of the former can be mixed / at best, your man Polanski evidently in the movie business partly to mix with and marry 6 foot tall ®ed-hot Euro-models, and not particularly concerned with the acting part of being / an actor.

                This film is one of three of what Polanski called the 'apartment films', the other being the great Rosemary's Baby, and one other, the title of which slips what's left / of this horroreviewer's mind.  Course Polanski directed as well the great The Pianist as well earlier this century, with Adrian Brody playing the title role - 'you' P. Diddy said it better after reading Brody's poetry, 'an ill / cat' - and both Polanski and Brody won Academy Awards for their efforts. 

                In this one, Polanski's tenant goes coo-coo for coa-coa puffs in his new building - as Cin too did in Paris some twenty-two years ago, before during and after trying to snuff it be©ause terribly ©infused, he must have / been, course he’s right as rain / now (hooker please –id.) these days -  trying unsuccessully to paint at the time out of romantic European flavors what was a real horror show, but rarely speaking / thinking  of any of it again since - and becomes convinced, not wrongly, that everyone, inside the building and out, tout / le monde, is out / to get him, 'just because you're paranoid' the paranoid says it better, 'doesn't mean that they're not / watching you.' 

                Thank you for reading this Take This Thing Back to Baltimore me-moirs and The Oranges.