By the way, THE HOST is one of the awesomest monster movies ever. I’m watching it for the third time now (I got a copy in Chinatown for ten bucks, and a legal copy too - it’s been out in Korea for a while) and it’s still pretty great. We’re about to come to the part where the monster barfs up human remains, so I may not be eating any more cookies tonight, but seriously, giant man-eating fish-monsters get the thumbs-up. Plot schmot I say. Eat more military guys in yellow suits.

Also the Apple movie trailer plot description is pretty stellar:

Gang-du (SONG Kang-ho) works at a food-stand on the banks of the Han River. Dozing on the job, he is awakened by his daughter, Hyun-seo ( KO A-sung), who is angry with him for missing a teacher-parent meeting at school. As Gang-du walks out to the riverbank with a delivery, he notices that a large crowd of people have gathered, taking pictures and talking about something hanging from the Han River Bridge. The otherwise idyllic landscape turns suddenly to bedlam, when a terrifying creature climbs up onto the riverbank and begins to crush and eat people.

That just about sums it up!

GWOEMUL/THE HOST (IMDB)

Some sweet Lord of the Rings art.

I never understood why is it that people hate mice. I always liked mice, even if they were biting through the bottom of my box of Honey Smacks. The whole standing-on-a-chair-screaming thing is odd to me; why not for a roach, who’s so much more inhuman and alien, and disgusting? Comparing a mouse running across the floor with the slow crawly throb of a millipede on a white wall there’s no contest. And mice can’t help squirming around all the time. Bugs stand way too still. When I turn on the lights and what I think is a smear of old tomato sauce on the wall right above the lip of the stove, a second later, starts moving, that’s unnerving. At first the roach thinks it can just wait me out, that I’m not going to notice him hanging out there, and then it’s like Fuck it, and makes a break for it, and I’m like Yow. Mice don’t do that. Being warm blooded prevents the creepy stasis that afflicts lizards and bugs. Also mice have fur, and fur isn’t scary.

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Times Square presents a steep challenge to even the seasoned New Yorker. Confusing traffic patterns, bright, flashing lights, gaudily-dressed out-of-towners: they all add up to one of the most ridiculous and inconvenient areas to traverse in our ridiculous, inconvenient city. And at rush hour? Fucking forget it. Take every working stiff just unchained from a dusty cubicle in some windowless law firm, add like four million schmucks from God knows where, stumbling out of Modell’s or Bubba Gump Whatever, and stir in a goulash of the usual screaming lunatics, teenagers groping around for MTV headquarters, and a bunch of cops on horses, and you have one really unpleasant stretch of pavement.

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This one’s for you, Chris.