Ok… it is official. It seems that every movie FRANCHISE is getting reworked, redone, or the more popular term, rebooted. James Bond, Batman, Star Trek is on its way, and now, The Man of Steel himself (any that I am forgetting?). After Superman Returns failed to live up to the extreme demands of the Warner Brothers bigwigs (apparently the $389 million dollar domestic was not acceptable), it was recently announced that the series would be given a redo. I am not entirely certain what that will ultimately entail. If it means starting completely from scratch with the entire origin story, I am sorry to inform them that there will be thousands of upset fans who believe that the Christoper Reeve 1978 blockbuster was the true take on the beginning of the series. It has also been mentioned that the Last Son of Krypton may be developed into a darker character ala Batman. No thank you. Superman has always been the polar opposite of The Dark Knight. Supes stands proud and tall like the red, white, and blue while Batsy is a character of the night working in the dark shadows and instilling fear in the criminal underworld. Hopefully, the darker tone will refer to the movie itself and leave the character as is. While the most recent film in the franchise did have several problems (the introduction of a boy who is possibly the love child of Superman and Lois Lane being the biggest), I do not see them warranting a total dismissal and a face lift.

Other rumored senseless movies that are rumored to be in the works: BOTH giants of the 1980s horror genre: Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. I don’t think it worked well with Rob Zombie’s re-imagining of Halloween, so why not? ENOUGH ALREADY!!!

You can skip the insanity of the revenge of the killer reboots by renting the originals at Blockbuster.com.

Halloween is right around the corner…  ok it’s 2 months away!  But Halloween stuff is out all over the stores already, and while we’re planning our Haunted Tour for our community theater group, our other friends in the theater are getting ready to stage an hilarious (TANGENT ALERT: I HATE using the word “an” before words that start with h, but I guess that’s proper English, so…) production of the play called Kitchen Witches!  Someone had a great idea to sell a Halloween cookbook as a fundraiser for the theater.  Being a stay-at-home-mom of 4, I have a few holiday-themed recipes in my vault that are fun for the kids and adults (to eat), so I’m going to contribute my favorite Halloween recipes.  Since I have to type them up to submit to the cookbook anyway, I thought I’d put them on my blog, along with a recipe for one of my favorite desserts: peanut butter bars – YUM!

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds
large pumpkins
salt
seasonings (your choice)
butter

Extract seeds from pumpkin, separate from pulp, and discard pulp.  Put the seeds in a colander and run water over them to get rid of all the pulp.  Drain on paper towels.  Melt 1 Tablespoon of butter and toss pumpkin seeds in a bowl with the butter and salt and / or seasonings.  Spread seeds out onto a cookie sheet.  Toast seeds in an oven preheated to 350° for about 30 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes and adding salt occasionally.  Check the seeds to see if they’re done by taking a sample out, letting it cool, and tasting it.  If the insides are dry, they’re done.  Be careful not to burn – you want a nice golden brown color.
NOTES:  I use a clean, thin dishcloth instead of paper towels since I’ve had problems in the past with the seeds sticking to the paper towels.  Be creative with the seasonings; you can use popcorn seasoning, taco seasoning, garlic salt, onion powder, cayenne pepper, cajun seasoning, etc.  Pumpkin seeds are high in iron, vitamin A, and zinc; if you want to make them even healthier use olive oil instead of butter.

Rice Krispies Treats Spiders
YIELD: 3-5 spiders
3 Tablespoons margerine or butter
1 package (10 oz. or about 40) marshmallows or 4 cups mini marshmallows
6 cups rice krispies cereal
food coloring
prepared frosting
candy corn
string licorice
shredded coconut

In a large microwave-safe bowl, melt margerine and marshmallows on high for 2 minutes, stirring after 1 minute.  Add a few drops of food coloring and stir mixture until smooth.  Add rice krispies cereal, stirring until well coated.  Let cereal mixture slightly cool until it is safe to touch.  With buttered hands, shape cereal mixture into spider shape and place on wax paper.  Let cool.  Attach decorations to the spider with frosting using candy corn for eyes, licorice for the web, and coconut for the hair.  You can color the coconut by soaking in warm water with a few drops of food coloring for about 30 minutes.  Dry coconut on a paper towel before using.

Peanut Butter Bars
1 lb. powdered sugar
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
2 sticks melted butter
12 oz. peanut butter

Mix all ingredients together in a 9×13 non-greased pan.  Melt large bag of chocolate chips and spread on top.  Cut into squares in pan and refrigerate until cold.

I’ve always been a big fan of Halloween and Haunted Houses, so when our little theater started to look into doing something like this, I jumped at the chance. The very first “Haunted House” I went to was actually someone’s house. Just for Halloween they would bring in a real casket, and the owner of the house was dressed as Dracula. The candy dish was place on his chest. Every so often he would move to grab a kid. Sent you right through the roof. Of course you wanted to be that kid he moved on because his wife (a witch) would give you an extra candy bar.

Now on to other haunted houses and Halloween. Believe it or not, there are people who don’t like haunted houses. For some it has everything to do with their religion. Now, as long as they aren’t out there preventing my fun, my hat is off to these folks. To take a stand, because of their moral views, counter to the societal views is laudable. Others are simply frightened too much by them, and they don’t enjoy it. Nothing wrong with that either.

There is a third group. They may or may not belong to either of the two other groups. People who have experienced a loss of someone close (spouse, sibling, parent) may not like the idea of having fun with death. While I’ve lost a brother and both parents, the loss of my wife made me see this more. The other deaths could be explained away (didn’t help the grief, but the logic was there). My wife’s death was something out of the blue. Never saw it coming. Generally her family had very long life spans. I could then see how people would be upset and troubled with the fundamental ideas behind Halloween and Haunted Houses. The gravestones, skeletons, zombies, ghouls and ghost can all bring up some troubling memories. I can see where that would really change a person’s view on the whole Halloween event. And that doesn’t even go into the sight of seeing something in a Halloween display that reminds you of your loved one’s death. That is very troubling.

So I guess because of this, I do draw a few lines. I don’t like, and won’t go to a haunted house based on a hospital. I don’t like haunted houses with a lot of suicide themes. There are other things that can be just as scary that don’t touch these areas. It just takes a bit of insight.

Of course, even after my wife’s death, I couldn’t completely give up on Halloween, it was one of her favorite holidays. I can have fond memories of past Halloweens by carrying on the celebration of the day in the future.

Happy Haunting…

A question mark you see….hmmm. They are coming soon provided the selections we made in our play-reading group meets with the approval of the theatre board. The small group assembled to discuss our selections decided upon the following for the 2009 season:

Over the Tavern

Honk

Lion in Winter

Little Shop of Horrors

Miracle on 34th Street

I am greatly familiar with three of the five shows. I had heard of Over the Tavern and recently read the play. Someone I used to work with has a nephew who played the young mentally challenged boy in an area production a few years ago. I am not really familiar with Honk but know that it is a musical based upon the tale of “The Ugly Duckling.”

I adore Little Shop… and definitely will audition for that (as well as most of the others, right?). I need to begin re-looking into that Howard Ashman and Alan Menken show. But it will be a fun show to do for the Halloween season. I am told that a frequent reader of this blog might consider venturing this way to audition (but I’m not sure if that would be possible…. D?).

Wrapping up our suggested season is the play Miracle on 34th Street. I do not think there is a better show that could bring in huge audiences and put them in the holiday spirit than this timeless classic.

We also began tossing ideas out for 2010 (The Year We Make Contact… according to the sequel to 2001). A few musicals were introduced: State Fair and Can-Can. State Fair is perhaps the least known of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musicals. Can-Can is a Cole Porter show (I KNEW IT as soon as I looked it up…. there you go, C.)

So, our job is done, it is now in the hands of the theatre board to approve or do better. (and I forgot to mention a suggested special engagement of Jesus Christ Superstar that I could post about forever).
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