Friday, 21 Apr 2006

Laughing at really bad old movies (The Fat Spy, Wild Women of Wongo, Ninja Avenger), hanging out with good friends (h&j), hearing J’s voice above the ensemble in JCS, sitting in the sun reading a book V recommended (Angus…) on an old bridge abutment in the woods near the river in back of my house. Finding a naturey (if you don’t mind powerlines) walk through the woods for a couple of miles which kept me from having to walk 3 miles on roads. Listening to a hammer dulcimer CD I bought for $1 years ago and never listened to blending with bird calls at 7AM in the morning as I walked the powerline walk to pick up my car. Seeing 2 deer along the way.

Tuesday, 4 Apr 2006

Seeing J in “The Princess and the Pea”. Seeing/Hearing VJ&Shelby singing an acapella version of one of Z’s songs in their high school talent show. When Z asked me to come see he and J&J at open mic night.

Tuesday, 4 Apr 2006

*** Spoilers below ****

“XXX” was a really bad movie. Sure it had the requisite rich vaguely ex-soviet military anarchist heavy metal fetish dressing criminals from Eastern Europe who do all their business in gothic cathedrals-turned-raveclube, sure it had a wise-cracking muscular American forced into working as a spy for the NSA, sure it had the vulnerable criminal babe who is really not as bad as she seems, and sure it had the requisite chase scenes on fast vehicles, a doomsday weapon of mass destruction that the hero has to disarm in the final seconds before it detonates, and the obligatory pole dance by a bikini clad woman you never see again, but somehow despite all these elements, the overall picture was somehow still lacking.

*** More Spoilers below *****

The Ring 2 : OK, I know these are American versions of a Japanese film directed by the same Japanese director who did the originals, and I will overlook for now the pretentious “special features” interviews with the american writer who “wrote” both Ring movies explaining the importance of symbols, but if The Matrix trilogy or the second Star Wars trilogy taught anyone remotely related to filmmaking ANYTHING it should have been “Don’t use CGI effects unless they are undiscernable from reality”. If you can TELL that a scene is CGI because of the way it looks, if something tips you off that it is not and could not be ‘real’ even in the movie physics world than it takes the moviegoer OUT of the experience of the film, it takes away from the enjoyment and the immersive experience. In the Matrix it was any number of things in the 2nd or 3rd movies, probably the rubber fighting man being the most blatant. In Star Wars it was Jar Jar Binks or the changing scale of the creatures in the Roman colliseum scene. In Ring 2 it was the crazed herd of Deer. I realize that it is probably hard or impossible to get real dear to attack a car on cue or to stand around after attacking said car peering in the window and sniffing, but the director made a special point of how they considered using CGI for the well scene but then used a contortionist and played with film speed to get the effect they wanted - specifically because he was concerned that CGI might not look real enough. So why then the faux deer herd? Answer? Bad writing. Yep, bad writing. Samora manifests in the television and electric devices, she appears in mirrors, and as a poltergeist ghost she makes houses damp and closes and locks doors and things, or scratches walls, or lights things on fire. BUT BUT BUT - she does not take over animals or act through nature, so WHY in this film do the deer attack? The implication is that it is Samara looking for the protagonists, but why Deer? (I am sure the writer would tell because of what deer “represent” but what they represent is lame ass computer effects that make a movie that is supposed to be terrifying look like a video game)  If Samara were able to use animals wouldn’t there be creepy squirrels and birds hanging around outside the boy’s window? And don’t give me some lame excuse like “The deer, as guardians of the forest, are attuned to life, and they sensed the dead (ghost) in the boy so that’s why they attacked”. I blame it on bad writing.

Tuesday, 4 Apr 2006

Lately I’ve been thinking of movies which would make good/bad double-feature combos. I think it was seeing certain pairs of movies at the same theatre that planted the bug.

There are different kinds of pairings - name based, concept based, actor based, etc. Here are a couple.

“Cheaper by the Dozen 2″ & “Yours, Mine, and Ours”.
“Ultraviolet” & “Aquamarine”
“Dark Water” and “The Ring 2″
“V is for Vendetta” & “Phantom of the Opera”

Tuesday, 4 Apr 2006

I was almost crushed yesterday as drove to work. I was driving in the rightmost lane (allowed during rush hour) and a very large truck to my immediate left decided it wanted to be in my lane. Either I was in the driver’s blind spot or s/he didn’t care about my puny vehicle. Fortunately my brakes work so I was able to avoid being pushed into the guardrail at 65mph, but still it was a bit harrowing when I realized the driver wasn’t just drifting over the lane but was continuing to move into the space I was occupying.