Now that the Oscars are over, I promise to start writing more regularly on this truly forgotten blog. Right now, in our lives, we are going through some major shifts. For one thing, we’re wading through the nightmare that is LAUSD for really the first time. We’ve been lucky in that Emma was moved into Laurel Canyon to attend the highly rated public elementary school there. It had been a long held dream of mine to send her there and what do you know, the dream came true. It took moving in with and then breaking up with a sociopath but in the end, Emma prospers. That is, she prospered until we stuck with a lame duck teacher. It is a truly tragic thing that most kids in Los Angeles aren’t properly educated. Thus, we parents who are lucky enough to send our kids to this school really have no cause to complain. BUT nonetheless, the teacher is simply not doing her job. And is has been an ongoing battle to oust her.

Either way, Emma watched two really great movies this week: Poltergeist and Aliens. She tends to like either mermaid, horse, unicorn or cat movies or scary movies. Both of these films aren’t really as scary as you’d think. Alien, the first, is far more terrifying. She liked Poltergeist so much she watched it twice. I’d forgotten how good it is and not so much because of the special effects or because it’s a scary movie but because the actors are so much fun to spend time with – JoBeth Williams and Craig T. Nelson seem like old friends.

Aliens is actually worse than I’d remembered – without the mother/child storyline (which I initially thought ruined the movie) it would be utterly useless. The monsters just aren’t that cool or scary when they’re flying at you a mile a minute. But it’s what Emma and I call a “license to kick ass” movie, wherein the hero (or in this case, heroine) is put through the ringer before finally unleashing his/her fury. Aliens has one of the all-time best kick-ass moments with Ripley taking on the egg-laying mama alien. We especially like the LtKA movies with women in them. We’re not talking the weird post 90′s sexy girl high-kicking just to become more appealing to the gamers – but the real toughies who take on the world practically. There is nothing more satisfying than a “license to kick ass” movie and someday I’ll show Emma the archetypes – the Dirty Harrys and the Rambos and the Billy Jacks. But for now, it was Ripley (“Get away from her you bitch!”) and Diane Freeling (“stay away from my BABIES!!!!!”)

Watching Poltergeist after all of these years makes it plainly clear that Spielberg did, in fact, have his mitts all over this thing, from the rack zoom shot in the hallway to the scene with the skeletons in the swimming pool. It is slightly less cornball than the usual Spielberg fare, much more like Jaws and less like, say, Always.

Aliens is Jim Cameron all the way, from the tough female lead to the pulsating action sequences. Sometimes it feels like he just made the same movie over and over again. Sigourney Weaver is really what elevates Aliens, and maybe what made Alien so good. It’s a good time to ponder Ridley Scott. What the hell happened to him?