I saw what I assume to be the latest trailer for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on IMDb, and I have to admit that it looks pretty damn impressive. Since Kloves is back as screenwriter, I don't hold out a lot of hope for it for it being coherent or comprehensible, but it should be visually pleasing at least. The effect of the cursed necklace on Katie Bell is exactly as I imagined it.

Here's what I don't understand, though: how the hell did they manage to make a movie version of Half-Blood Prince and only have it be rated PG, rather than PG-13 ? I don't mean that a higher rating automatically makes for a better film (I've seen plenty of R-rated movies that were utter crap), but I personally found the book so much more disturbing than the earlier installments that I don't see how the movie could be anything less than equally as violent, disturbing, etc. as the most recent movies. But then again, it's not that it's necessarily less violent, disturbing, etc. as the previous movies, it's that the MPAA hasn't deemed it so, for its own inscrutable reasons.

And then, against my better judgment, I watched the trailer for New Moon, the latest installment in the "Twilight Saga", as it's now being called. I have no interest in seeing the film, but I was a little concerned about the character of Jacob because in the first movie he had long hair and now he has short hair, and in several American Indian cultures that's a sign of mourning. Well, "concerned" isn't really the right word; I just wondered if that was important to the story or purely an aesthetic choice. But they didn't address it in the trailer, nor on the IMDb trivia pages, and I don't care enough to research it any further. I have to admit, though, the werewolf transformation in the trailer is pretty damn cool, and even though it's clearly a digi-wolf, at least it resembles an actual wolf rather than some enormous, hairless, carnivorous rodent (*ahem* Prisoner of Azkaban).

I bought the Rifftrax for Twilight as soon as it came out, because Twilight as a cultural phenomenon deserves to be mercilessly mocked. I haven't been able to listen to it with the actual movie yet; all the copies in the library are out, and when I requested my reserve copy I was number 94 in the queue. But I've listened to it by itself, and even without the movie it's quite funny. Fortunately, (or unfortunately, as the case may be), I remembered the movie well enough to match up the commentary with approximately what was going on in the story. Of course, it helps that Twilight doesn't have a plot as such until the latter third of the movie.

I went to see Slumdog Millionaire today. It was very good, although it was a little bit hard to follow sometimes, probably because of a combination of accents and cultural references (coming into 5 minutes late probably didn't help either). But I pretty much knew how it was going to end what with the publicity and the Oscars and all, and yet I was still antsy with suspense towards then end. And once again, it was one of those movies in which the journey is more important than the destination, though, having taken the journey, the destination makes for a nice payoff.

I loved how the police inspector started to get caught up in the story, so that it was less an interrogation and more of a Scheherezade, Thousand and One Nights situation.

I've said before and I'll say again that Dev Patel is adorable, and he was soooo good in this movie, although I felt that his dialect work was a little splotchy, but he brings such tenderness and pathos to the role that it hardly matters. His few scenes with Freida Pinto were so beautiful and sweet. It kind of reminded me of Man of LaMancha, the idea that idealized love doesn't have to be disappointed, that love has the power to make the ideal real; as the song lyrics go: "to each his Dulcinea that he alone can name."

It's interesting that of all its many awards and nominations, very few are for acting: few acting nominations and fewer wins. It's also interesting that for the SAG Awards Dev Patel was nominated as an Outstanding Actor in a Supporting Role rather than a leading role; I don't know if that's because they considered it to be such an ensemble piece, or they had so many strong contenders in the Leading category, or what. It's unfortunate for Dev Patel that he had to go up against my boy Heath Ledger but, God willing, Dev Patel will have a long and fruitful career ahead of him and get plenty more chances to win. I truly hope so, because from what I saw in this film he truly is a prodigious talent (Slumdog did win the Outstanding Cast award from SAG, so at least he didn't go home completely empty-handed).

Well, I've now seen two Academy Award nominees for Best Picture, this and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (unfortunately I missed both Frost/Nixon and Milk in the discount theater, so will have to wait for the DVDs, and don't know if or when The Reader has played near me, or will). Between the two of them, I honestly couldn't say which is better; I can't think of any valid grounds for comparison. I guess if I absolutely had to pick one over the other, I'd pick Benjamin Button, for the sole reason that I could easily follow the story and (mostly) understand what the characters were saying. Also, it had less of the cringe-worthy violence, which I appreciate. That's not to say that the violence and disturbing imagery in Slumdog was gratuitous, because it wasn't; I'd just prefer not to see it, although ultimately it was worth it.

Oh, by the way, the soundtrack kicks ass!

Yesterday I did indeed go see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and I enjoyed all 166 minutes of it. It was a beautiful story about unconditional love and devotion, and about things happening in their own season. It's one of those movies that sort of defies genre categorization, and I like movies like that because they present an intellectual challenge and invite interpretation.

It won 3 Oscars on Sunday, for Art Direction, Visual Effects, and Make-up, the latter two unquestionably well-deserved, although I am bemused by the extent by which they have become almost the same thing in recent years. Not that that's a bad thing; if that's what it takes to keep the stories coming, then I'm all for it, and this is definitely a story that probably could have been presented without extensive CGI, but it probably wouldn't have been as effective. I felt that all the aging (or un-aging, as the case may be) effects in the movie were very skillfully and gracefully done.

I respect Brad Pitt as an actor because he seems to be one who tries to maintain artistic integrity and doesn't allow himself to be typecast or pigeonholed, but as a result he's played a lot of roles in which his character is, for lack of a better word, creepy. Creepy at best. So it was nice to see him play a not-creepy character for once. Well, he was still kind of creepy what with the whole digi-man-boy aspect of it, but the creepiness came more from the situation and not from the content of the character's soul.

( Philosophical musings with vague spoilers )

It's now ten years since Roberto Benigni won the Best Foreign Language Oscar and Best Actor Oscar for Life Is Beautiful, one of my favorite movies ever. It still maintains an IMDb rating of 8.4, and is ranked number 85 of its Top 250. And yet, I'm constantly dismayed by the resentment that people, particularly film critics, harbor toward that movie and toward Benigni, particularly for the best actor Oscar. Now, to be fair, I've never seen any of the other performances that were nominated for best actor that year (nor, unsurprisingly, the other foreign language film nominees) so I'm not prepared to make a value judgment, but people seem to regard that win particularly as a joke at best and an outrage at worst.

So I would just like to take a moment to get down on my knees and profess my undying love for Roberto Benigni and Life Is Beautiful. ( Read more... )

I hope you'll indulge me as I continue to work through my grief. My counselor told me last fall that grief never really goes away, although it (usually) gets easier to bear after a while. Now that I think about it, you wouldn't really want it to go away entirely, because that would mean forgetting about the people you lost.

So as you can probably imagine, Heath Ledger is much on my mind lately, what with the anniversary and the movie awards season and the year-end retrospectives on people who have died in 2008.

( Read more... )

You know, last year I didn't put the results behind a cut, and maybe I should have. But then, maybe anyone who actually cares was either also watching or looked up the results already.

I don't have a lot to say, not having seen many movies or watched much TV this past year. One thing that I learned from watching this particular broadcast is that a five-second delay is not enough time to blur out obscene gestures, which is interesting to know. I wonder how much time they would need for that; perhaps we'll find out. I kind of hope not.

But anyway, there are three results that I want to comment briefly about:

( I will cut it just in case anyone hasn't seen the results yet and wants to be surprised )

You see, I was feeling hormonally unbalanced and overly emotional, so I thought getting out of the house and seeing a teen-angst movie would help. And it did. I did enjoy the movie, though not necessarily in the way the filmmakers intended. And yet, as it was ending and I was leaving the theater, I felt kind of ashamed for having spent money on it (although it was a matinee, so I didn't pay full price for it), and kind of nervous that I might run into someone I know and feel the need to explain myself, but that didn't happen so it's fine.

Anyway, as to the film itself...as I expected, it is prime Rifftrax fodder. Example:

BELLA--Let's assume for the sake of argument that I'm not smart.
ME--Wow, that's a stretch.

There were quite a few places in the movie where I enjoyed a hearty guffaw where no one else seemed to. That said, however, I think the medium of film served the material well as far as making it seem less ridiculous, as did having actual, three-dimensional human beings portraying the various roles. I think that casting Robert Pattinson in the role of Edward was wise, because I found myself liking the character as portrayed by him, whereas I didn't expect to like him at all (due to transference, if nothing else). But he brought something indefinably endearing to the role. I guess somehow through his acting ethos he brought some credibility to the role and to the project--no mean feat, so let's give him credit where credit is due. He's also quite pretty, and I'm not sure why; I wouldn't categorize any of the individual features of his face particularly attractive, and yet put them all together and somehow it works. So yeah, he's definitely the glue that holds this thing together; I was impressed with him, and I will be watching his career with interest.

I don't know what else to say, really. It wasn't as unintentionally hilarious as I thought it might be, but certainly presented a lot of raw material for parody. What I needed from it was escapism, and it provided in spades, so I guess from that viewpoint I can recommend it--provisionally. Oh, and because I know it will be of interest to some people, the girl who played Fritzie in Camp was in it, which of course opens up a whole new avenue of parody possibilities.

Apparently Twilight, starring Cedric Diggory and Diet Natalie Portman, is opening tonight at midnight, which sounds really silly when you just say it like that. I'm so depressed I almost want to see it in hopes that it will be so unintentionally hilarious that it will take my mind off my troubles. But on the other hand, it might just be completely stupid and make me more depressed, not to mention 8 to 10 dollars poorer and nervous because I would be surrounded by a crowd of hormone-crazed, angst-ridden teen girls. Mega-Teen-Girl-Squad!

I do want to see the movie eventually; I just don't want to pay to see it, because I'm expecting to pay money for the Rifftrax, whenever there is one. I know there will be eventually, and if there isn't I'll make my own version, because without having seen it, I know intuitively that Twilight is the kind of movie just made for Rifftrax.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that I haven't read the books either, nor do I intend to. So I suppose I don't really have the right to judge, so I'll try to say this as ingenuously as possible: from what I understand, this girl falls in love with this guy, but he like completely ignores and avoids her and treats her inconsiderately, and she's all hurt, but then it turns out that the reason that he completely ignores her is because he actually loves her too, but he's a vampire and so he stays away from her to protect her from himself.

Without making any unfair criticisms, I'm just thankful that the book series didn't exist when I myself was a hormone-crazed, angst-ridden teen girl, because I myself was also in love with someone who completely ignored and avoided me and treated me inconsiderately, but it turns out that he just didn't like me. Had the books existed and had I read them (which is kind of unlikely in the first place because I'm not really into vampires), I probably would have become even more deluded; I probably wouldn't have concluded that he was a vampire (although it would have been good if I did because that would have been a major turn-off), but I probably would have taken it as reason to hope that he really did like me and there was some sort of noble reason why he always ignored and avoided me and treated me badly. Because I did read a book once which was actually quite cute and clever and not remotely similar to Twilight (as near as I can tell) except for the motif of a guy treating a girl really badly because he was secretly in love with her, and maybe if I hadn't read it I would have wised up more quickly.

*sigh* That kind of plot just really, really annoys me, because I know the damage it can do. Not to say that people aren't responsible for their own thoughts and feelings and actions, because they are...and yet, books can have a powerful influence, especially if they seem to give us license to believe what we want to believe.

Okay, I found a MST3k "fan film" on YouTube that has left me both confused and delighted.

But before I get into that, I must initiate you into the mysteries of The Final Sacrifice, one of the most memorable MST3k features ever, mostly because it features a character named--and I'm not making this up--Zap Rowsdower, who meets up with this kid named Troy who's being pursued by this cult of men who run around in tank tops and black hoods and wield all sorts of weaponry, led by this disturbed-looking man in a black trenchcoat with a digitally modified voice whom Mike and the 'bots dub "Canadian villain Garth Vader." They're all looking for a hidden city, and along the way our heroes meet up with a scrawny, grizzled mountain man with buggy eyes who talks like Yosemite Sam, whose name is--I'm not making this up either--Mike Pipper. It has to be seen to believed, and for some reason I can't find the whole episode in its non-segmented form online anymore, but thankfully somebody put together a montage of highlights:

( Oh come on, one more sacrifice before we go? (video behind cut) )

At about 6:43 of the above video, they make up a commercial for "Zap and Troy: the Legendary Journeys." And so the parody torch was passed, and somebody made up a trailer for that imaginary series:

( Oh baby, Rowsdower saves us and saves all the world! (video behind cut) )

Arr, a better question be, why do I not drink?

Here it be Talk Like a Pirate Day and me with nothing to say.

Arr, this may be an opportune moment to mention the Rifftrax of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which I have not yet purchased because me fortunes are still low. It seemed to me kind of a strange choice for a Rifftrax; sure, there be plenty of silly stuff to make jokes about in it, but it's also a movie which doesn't take itself terribly seriously, it's comparatively well done (though big-budget blockbusters with splashy special effects do tend to provide their own type of riffing fodder), and it's not only funny in it's own right but already has two really funny commentary tracks associated with it on the DVD.

I'm not sayin' it was a bad choice, ye understand; I'm just sayin' that a more obvious choice would have been Dead Man's Chest, and a middlingly more obvious choice would have been At World's End. Ah well, all the more reason for me to get me iRiff of Dead Man's Chest goin' so I could enter it in the contest in October. Arr, but I don't think that's going to happen, what with grad school and all. Scurvy grad school. If only I could make me fortune making iRiffs, but unfortunately I be not that funny.

Well, I guess that be all I have to say fer now. I'm going to plunder me some Doritos now (that be the generic store brand of Doritos; they were on sale). Yo-ho-ho, me buckos!

There was one detail about the Dark Knight which I forgot to mention in my previous post. At one point the movie for sure (and possibly two different points) the Joker rattles off an address, and both Batman and Officer Gordon have the ability to remember it without writing it down. Now THAT is a superpower that I wish I had; it sure would come in handy.

And since I'm in a deconstructive mood, I would like to share this spoof Dark Knight trailer that I enjoy:

( That's a Sharpie! That's permanent! )

(I should also reiterate the spoof-makers disclaimer that the last line is not a reference to Heath Ledger.)

At long last, I went to see The Dark Knight last night. I was going to wait until it came to the discount theater, but I decided to splurge because for some reason (probably various reasons) I've been having dreams about it, like this one I had in August, but didn't make public at first because it felt a little too personal at the time. Then Saturday night/Sunday morning I had at least 3 distinct dreams about it, and they all had to do with Heath Ledger playing the Joker. The one I remember most was particularly upsetting because in it I was involved with the making of the movie, and I had prior knowledge that Heath was going to die, but couldn't tell him or anyone (although I think some other people knew anyway) because it would tear apart the fabric of the space/time continuum.

So I realized that the cure for having dreams about Heath Ledger playing the Joker was to go and actually watch him play the Joker, but now I wonder if maybe the cure is not worse than the disease, because now I'm having dreams about just the Joker, which has the potential to be even more upsetting since the Joker is, like, evil personified; I believe the MST3k cast refers to such characters and images as "nightmare fuel." As it turns out, though the Joker (just the character) did appear in my dreams last night, I was surprised and grateful to find on waking that he turned out to be a benign presence (not a benevolent presence, you understand, but temporarily refraining from killing and maiming and otherwise torturing people).

So as to the movie itself, it was very good. In the first place, it was head and shoulder above Batman Begins, which was a very good movie in its own right; its main weakness, if it was indeed a weakness, was that it was an origin story, even the best of which get bogged down by their expository nature (in my opinion). And I think that a strength of The Dark Knight is that it doesn't concern itself with the Joker's origin; the Joker just is. So it was a good movie: suspenseful, compelling, even gripping. But even though a movie is good, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is enjoyable, and I found this to be true of The Dark Knight.

( On Heath Ledger as the Joker--With Spoilers )

Oh yeah, and there were some other people in the movie too. ( On the rest of the cast and some miscellaneous comments, With Some Spoilers )

All in all, it was a good movie that had a certain resonance for me, and I'm glad I saw it once, and I'm grateful to Heath for bringing me to it, because I probably would not have seen it but for the fact that he was in it, but I don't know if I ever want to see it again.

Oh yeah, in related news, The Dark Knight is currently number 3 on IMDb's top 250, and The Shawshank Redemption is number 1! Hooray! Sadly, Brokeback Mountain is not currently on the list.

So today I was reading some John Milton for my seminar, and John Milton's kind of an interesting cat, because he was a Puritan, and yet he held a BA and an MA and so was well-read in classical literature, so he was always making reference to all this Greek and Roman mythology, even in the middle of all these Christian tracts.

Anyway, today in the thing I was reading, he made a reference to the Roman goddess Juno being the goddess of childbirth, and I suddenly realized that that's probably why the title character of the movie Juno has that name.

Of course, once I realized it, it was like, "well duh!" They do mention Juno as a mythological figure in the movie dialogue, but if I recall correctly, they only discussed the angry/jealous-wife aspect of her personality (or god-ality?). Anyway, I really appreciate that kind of subtle, meaningful allusion, so go Diablo Cody!

Last night I had a dream in which I sneaked into a movie theater to see The Dark Knight with my friends Mike B. and Greg. There was a reason why we sneaked in, but I can't remember what it was, but it had something to do with not watching the whole thing; we purposely sneaked in after it started and we didn't intend to stay until the end, but then we accidentally did anyway, and Greg was annoyed because he didn't want to see the end before he saw the beginning (which is silly because I'm sure in reality he went to see it--from the beginning--the very first chance he got). And then I think for a while in the dream I was actually in the movie, as is often the case in my dreams.

( Read more... )

Not really, but after a comparatively easy morning I got off work early, and having the whole afternoon to myself I decided to enjoy it. It was beeeeeeautiful weather today. I took a lunch and went to Falls Park, and it was so lovely. With all the recent rain the Big Sioux River is running kind of high, so the eponymous falls were particularly spectacular. There were a lot of people there, more than I expected on a Tuesday, but I suppose a lot of them were tourists. So that was a little uncomfortable, and for that reason I didn't go up into the observation tower, which is what I usually go to Falls Park for because I need some elevation, but I guess I got enough elevation on my vacation to last me for a little while yet.

Then I went to the zoo, because they just opened a new Asian Cat exhibit, which I hadn't seen yet. It was kind of disappointing, though, because it wasn't that different from the old exhibit. They did have a new viewing area, but most of the changes seemed to be related to the decor; it seemed somewhat superficial, but maybe the actual cat habitats are improved, and that's the important thing. They do have a new cat on display there called Pallas' Cat (named for a naturalist whose last name was Pallas, not Pallas Athena). They're kind of interesting because they're gray cats about the size of a house cat, but they have flattened ears and round pupils, and extra long hair on their bellies to keep them warm in the snow. They were cute.

But the best part of the zoo was when I went to see the gibbons and I noticed that one of them was nursing a little baby. I don't know how old the baby was, but my guess would be only a couple of months. Then she groomed the baby a little bit, then she took him outside (I couldn't tell for sure, but I think the baby's male), and he held onto her leg while she was swinging around. It was amazing. To the best of my knowledge, I've never seen a zoo animal take care of a baby before; it seems like the babies always have to go to the nursery and have human care. It was so cool.

And then I picked up the copy of The Mist that was on hold for me at the library, so I FIIIIIINALLY got to see it. I have to say, this was not my favorite Frank Darabont movie. Don't get me wrong; it was good, and it was as well-made as his other films, but it was... I guess I would say it was a tonal departure. ( Cut for Spoilers )


Bottom line on The Mist: I didn't really enjoy it much more than Beowulf after all, so I don't feel so disappointed that I didn't see it in the theater anymore. But even though I didn't find it very enjoyable, I commend Mr. Darabont for daring to do something different and make this kind of tonal departure, to grow as a filmmaker and invite audiences to grow and develop and shift their paradigms as well, which can be a very risky endeavor. Of course, the next logical step from here is for Mr. Darabont to start adapting the Dark Tower series for the screen. Hey, they've got the poster all ready to go.

By the way, my friend Julie gave me the novel Adverbs by Daniel Handler as a birthday present, and I started reading it today during my downtime at work. It's the first book by Daniel Handler I've read that wasn't a Lemony Snicket book, and I love it. How do I love it? Madly, wholeheartedly, truly, unabashedly, utterly, helplessly, shamelessly, redundantly, deliberately, and redundantly. But not unrestrainedly, since peals of raucous laughter are frowned upon in the workplace, with good reason.

Every year Newsweek does a feature called the "Oscar roundtable" in which they gather together five or six of the most compelling filmmakers from the previous year, sit them down at a table together and have a discussion about filmmaking and related issues. I read the transcript of this year's round table when it came out in January, and then recently I looked it up again and there was video (which is interesting because not all the material from the transcript is in the video, and vice versa). One of the questions that they asked was whether there was a particular film that they saw which inspired them to become an actor.

This question as posed to the six actors on the panel doesn't actually apply to me; I am not a professional actor, because I do not have the patience to make the sacrifices that it takes to make a living as a professional artist. And yet, I find the question compelling, because I think all of us have seen films that have had profound influences on our lives and helped to shape who we are (and if not films, then books or plays or some kind of art form). I still feel the inexplicable need to categorize films, but I'll never be able to compile a "best of" list because "best" is such a vague, subjective term, open to such wide interpretation that it becomes almost meaningless. Also, they keep making more movies, so a ranked list would have to be continually updated, which would be exhausting.

But I can, and I have, compiled a list of ten films that are memorable and meaningful to me, and have had some kind of strong impact on my life, or that have come to represent something important in my life. Rather than trying to rank them, I will organize them in order of when I first viewed them (approximately), starting with the earliest:

1. The Elephant Man--first viewed partially circa 1985, first viewed completely in 1998


2. The Sound of Music--first viewed circa 1990


3. Beauty and the Beast--first viewed in 1991


4. The Princess Bride--first viewed circa 1992


5. Fried Green Tomatoes--first viewed circa 1993


6. The Shawshank Redemption--first viewed in 1998


7. Life is Beautiful--first viewed in 1999


8. the original Pirates of the Caribbean--first viewed in 2003


9. Brokeback Mountain--first viewed in 2006


10. Pan's Labyrinth--first viewed in 2007

For now I'll just present the list and hopefully, as I have time, I'll post some commentary on each one, except for Brokeback Mountain because I've already discussed it exhaustively. I'd also like to make an honorable mention of the original Star Wars trilogy; I would have included it, but then it would have been a list of 12 movies, and I specifically wanted 10.

In fact, there are many movies that I could mention honorably, but if I did that I might as well make a whole new list (or add to the one I have). But there is on other film I want to give an honorable mention to: The Wrong Guy, an obscure Canadian film that was never released in theaters in the United States (or, as I understand it, at all), but happens to be the funniest film I have EVER seen in my life. Its humor comes from the fact that it takes just about every movie cliché ever and turns it on its head. My singing its praises probably won't make much difference, but if enough people were to seek it out on video, it might get its long-deferred theatrical release, so I just want to light my little candle in its favor, on the off-chance that it might start a flame.

Today I went to see Penelope, and it was brilliant: delightfully whimiscal and clever and sweet and fun. I only wish I had written it. In fact, the person who did write it (first name "Leslie", so I suppose it could be a man, but I think not) was a writer on NewsRadio, which is one of my favorite TV shows ever. Not that this has anything to do with Penelope; I was just excited to find it out.

It is a fairy tale, and I like fairy tales, fractured or otherwise. Even though I must admit that I think reading too many fairy tales as a child kind of messed me up (or at least messed up certain things for me), I still can't get enough of them. This is a fairy tale in the tradition of Shrek, in that it's sort of deconstructing the fairy-tale paradigm from within. So to be fair, I have to admit certain things about Penelope that could come across as negative to people who don't like fairy tales. First off, because it's a fairy tale, the set-up and the structure are somewhat formulaic. It also has familiar romantic-comedy plot elements, like seducer-with-ulterior-motives-falls-in-love-with-seducee-and-grows-a-conscience. So during the first 20 minutes I was thinking, "Okay, this is nice, but I think I've seen it before," but then it veers off into the unexpected, and while there are other familiar elements (which I don't want to say in the interest of not giving anything away), it didn't strike me as being derivative at all. Because it's a fairy tale, it has a moral, and the moral does strike me as being a little bit heavy-handed, but I felt that this was compensated for by its unexpected poignancy.

But apart from the fairy-tale thing, I'm having difficulty categorizing or describing it. It reminds me of Juno in that it's light without being fluffy; there is actual substance to it but (with the slight exception mentioned above) it's not heavy-handed. Perhaps it has slightly more of an agenda than Juno, but I feel that it mainly exists just to tell a good story. Another similarity with Juno is the presence of a strong young female protagonist, although I hate to put it like that because those are sort of feminist-coded words, and I make a point of not self-identifying as feminist.

( Possible spoilers )

To sum it all up (which, as you've probably noticed, I'm very bad at) this was a film that I was genuinely sorry to see end. I really wish I could live in the world of Penelope; I want Penelope to be my friend.

When I first heard that he'd passed away, after the shock wore off and the grieving set in, my thought was "When does the hurting stop?" I'd experienced grief before, of course, but never grief quite like that. I had lost people that I care about before, but only after prolonged illness, in which case there's always an element of relief that the person's suffering is over. I had known people my age or close to it who have died, but no one who had been meaningful in my life, or who had left "footprints on my heart", as someone unknown to me at the moment has eloquently put it. It still amazes me that the death of someone whom I'd never even met (and of whose films I've seen comparatively few) would make the world seem so much emptier, and would leave such a gaping hole in my heart.

( Read more... )

Heath, you've left behind many people who love you and miss you. You gave so much of yourself...you gave us so much...and you had so much more to give.

When I say the titles together like that, it sounds like a sentence, haha.

Finally some of the late-release Oscar nominees are coming to the discount theater; finally my financial situation is resolving itself so I can afford to go see them there. Last week I saw Juno and last night I saw There Will Be Blood. Both were excellent films, although I found Juno to be more enjoyable, just because I prefer light-hearted comedies as a matter of course.

Although, strangely enough, while Juno has since grown on me, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would while I was actually watching it. For some reason I didn't find it as laugh-out-loud funny as I thought I would; I think this was because a lot of the funniest jokes were in the trailer, so they weren't as new when spoken in the film. While watching it, I inexplicably felt like crying, and I'm not entirely sure why. It is possible that I felt like crying about something else and the fact that I was watching a movie was circumstantial. But I'm not sure. It was strangely touching. As far as appreciating the humor of the film, after the fact, I can revisit the jokes and find more humor in them.

( Cut for material that makes me somewhat uncomfortable )

So anyway, I don't have much more to say about it. From what I'd read about it, I had a pretty good idea how it was going to end, but in Juno, as in life, the journey is more important than the destination. It's smart and it's sweet without being saccharine; it's realistic yet hopeful. The casting was excellent, and I shall watch the careers of Ellen Page and Michael Cera with interest.

As you may or may not remember, I had misgivings about seeing There Will Be Blood, because I'm uncomfortable with violence in films. But while there is blood in the movie, as promised, it's not as much as you would expect. When I went back and looked at the rating I saw that it was rated R for "some violence", and all the movies that I have found intolerably violent in the recent past have all had two amplifying adjectives describing the violence depicted, one of which is always "strong". The thing about the violence in There Will Be Blood is that most of it is suggested through the use of sound effects, etc. rather than actually being depicted, which I find to be the more classy and artistic (and to me more tolerable) way of doing it.

( Possible spoilers )

As I think more about There Will Be Blood, I rescind my opinion of it being under-written, because I realize that the film draws the viewers in by forcing them to fill in the blanks, as it were, which is similar to how audiences have to approach silent films because very little of the dialogue is revealed to the audience. I was thinking about this yesterday because in my literature seminar we watched part of a silent film and the professor commenting about how little of the dialogue is actually revealed through the intertitles, even though the actors/characters are chatting away to one another. I found myself wondering what it would be like to be an actor or a writer in the days of silent films and to know that most of the words you were writing/saying would never be revealed to the audience. It's interesting to think about.

Today I saw the trailer for The Incredible Hulk. I'm looking forward to it, but not without some trepidation.

The Hulk is one of the first superheroes that I became aware of as a child; there was a Saturday morning cartoon about him that I remember watching at a very young age. I don't really remember anything specific about it, but I remember being horrified and fascinated by the character. I always found the Hulk scary, and I must have expressed this fear at some point because I remember one of my older siblings assuring me, "No, no; the Hulk is a good guy." This caused me some cognitive dissonance: the big green scary guy who goes around screaming and smashing things is a good guy? Whaaa?

Thus began my fascination with the Hulk, and I think part of my fascination (and perhaps my horror) stems from the fact that I can see myself in the Hulk and his alter-ego of Bruce Banner. Because I too have a fearsome temper, and when I lose it, I do feel like a completely different person. But as much as I would like to disown that otherness, as much as I would like to believe that I'm really not that kind of person, I have to recognize that, while it's certainly not the end-all and be-all of my identity, and hopefully a relative minor aspect of my personality, it is a part of who I am as a person. Fortunately, for me and the people around me, over the years I've learned to keep a pretty tight hold on it (mostly by avoiding situations that have the potential to upset me, which is perhaps not the healthiest way to go about it).

So I'm excited about this upcoming movie, but I'm also concerned about it. From what I have read about it, they are trying to sort of get away from the way that Ang Lee and colleagues adapted it in 2003, which is probably a good idea because that movie was rather disappointing, but I think that its being different from Hulk won't automatically make it good.

This raises the question: what exactly went wrong with Hulk? What made it so disappointing to me? This is a question I began contemplating back in 2006 after seeing Brokeback Mountain, an Ang Lee film that I could understand and enjoy for once (and, consequently, created a paradigm in which I could understand and enjoy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). At the time I wondered, how could he go so right with Brokeback Mountain and so wrong with Hulk, when both deal with subject matter very close to my heart? So I went back to investigate Hulk's IMDb page, and I saw a user comment from someone who enjoyed the film, who theorized that most people's lukewarm feelings for it were due to its being more cerebral and artistic and philosophical than your typical action-oriented, blockbuster comic book adaptations. Whereas I think that I'm the type of person who appreciates a thoughtful, artistic, philosophical film, so I don't think that was what was getting in the way of my appreciation of it. So I went back and watched it again, and came up with the following conclusions as to why Hulk fell flat for me.

( In which I analyze a five-year-old movie that nobody else cares about. )

So as far as the upcoming The Incredible Hulk goes, I think that they could definitely improve on Hulk. On the other hand, it's supposed to be more action-oriented, which is not an inherently bad thing, but ... okay, here's my thing: action should be a complement to the story, the plot, the characters, etc.; it shouldn't exist for its own sake. So long as the action is motivated by the story, I won't have a problem with it, but speaking for myself, action is not one of the main reasons that I enjoy these movies.

I'm not too concerned about the casting; Ed Norton's good in pretty much everything, and so is William Hurt even though he has one of the most annoying acting styles in the world. Apart from that, I really don't have enough knowledge of the other characters to make a judgment or a comparison. I just really, really, really hope that they have Ed Norton performing the Hulk's actions even though it will necessarily be CGI. I'm concerned about that, because Eric Bana was credited only as Bruce Banner, not the Hulk, and Ed Norton is credited the same way. I know it's traditional to have two different actors playing Banner and the Hulk, but that precedent was set in the 1970s. Nowadays anyone can put on a motion capture suit and, through the magic of computers, be turned into anyone and anything, so there's little if any reason not to have one actor do both parts.

I very nearly posted this as private to come back and make it better later, but then I was seized with a horror that if I did that one of the major players would die tomorrow, which I know is silly and superstitious, completely irrational and embarrassingly childish, but still...I put in all the links I wanted to and I really have nothing more to say about it, so let it stand as is.