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|
| 7/31/2004 |
| Shamalama-dum-dum |
Obviously, I have some kind of movie sickness. I'm going to go see Jonathan Demme's pointless re-make of The Manchurian Candidate in a couple of hours. Two nights ago I went to the Crest (a local second-run theater) with step-sista Erin and we caught a double-feature of Saved! and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. And last night, on the way home from work, I stopped off at Redmond Town Center and caught M. Night Shyamalan's new "thriller", The Village.
I'll admit that for the first 2/3rds of the movie, I was entertained. Great cast. Beautiful cinematography. Great costumes. And then, as we've all come to expect from MNS, there's a big "twist" that PULLS THE RUG OUT FROM UNDER EVERYTHING, RIGHT?
Yep. There's a twist ending, AGAIN. Except this one is so silly, so preposterous, so... disappointing. And you know what? I had already guessed it before it happened. Not because there's any obvious clues in the early scenes, but because this was a MNS movie, from the first scene I was watching for "hints." I spent the first half of the movie trying to think what the "surprise" was gonna be. And one of the ones that occurred to me while thinking about that turned out to be what happens. Which would have been fine if the story could have supported it, which it can't. You could feel the air going out of the audience like an old deflating balloon. WHOOOOOSH.
I first started thinking that Emporer MNS had no clothes after Signs, which again while it had a great premise and some scarily effective scenes, falls apart at the end. The Village is supposed to be scary, but it isn't. Where it's effective is as a character study, and even a love story, in its first half. Give credit to the actors, who have to wrap their tongues around some pretty ridiculous dialogue, and for the most part they are really successful. I realized that I hadn't seen William Hurt in a really long time, and he's great, and I hope he does more films soon. Same goes for Sigourney Weaver who looks shockingly fetching in her 19th-century costumes.
The Sixth Sense is a great movie, and I also admire Unbreakable, though many didn't like that one. MNS knows how to make a great-looking movie, but his writing seems to be getting worse. I'd like to see him make somebody else's script for a change, one that doesn't rely on that tired "Gotcha!" device. I mean, how long does he expect to be able to get away with that? So, from this fake reviewer's standpoint, The Village disappoints. Go to your local second-run theater and see Eternal Sunshine instead. |
| 9:40:18 AM |
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| 7/27/2004 |
| Pass The Tenderizer, Please |
This seems impossible to me. I have no words to even begin to try to wrap my head around this idea.
Teens of the world... you can't be that bored. |
| 11:07:00 AM |
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| 7/25/2004 |
| Slayer! |
Roomie benefits: Beta Girl, being an employee of the Very Large Monopolist Software Company, signed up sometime in the recent past for the Beta program for Gobsmacker Poop Chute Deluxe 2*, the soon-to-be-released-and-what-I'm-sure-will-become-the-biggest-game-of-all-time for XBox. So this week, she brought home the Gamer's Holy Grail: the Gobsmacker Poop Chute Deluxe 2* multi-player beta disc. Now, I don't typically do the multi-player thing, especially online, but, we must all make sacrifices for the common good from time to time.
Oh, it's loads of fun. It's kind of weird hearing the voices of pre-teens coming out of our TV set, though. XBox has a thing called "XBox Live" that allows players to play against each other over the internet. One of the optional gadgets you can use for this is a headset microphone, so you can literally talk to the other players. We don't have one of these. But some of the people I've been playing do. So like I said, it's weird hearing somebody's slightly garbled taunts coming out of our TV.
I'm really, really terrible at this thing though. If you are also playing the beta, look for "MsBojangles". Chances are, you will very easily kick my ass, while I'm trying to figure out how to reload my weapons, and stop staring at the ground when I'm trying to look in the air.
*Not the real name of the game. For NDA reasons, it has been requested that I disguise the name of the game in question - which starts with an "h", ends in "o 2", and his the first name of Mr. Pacino in the middle. |
| 9:40:56 AM |
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| 7/17/2004 |
| What Ah Do? |
| This is classic. I laughed until I nearly spotted. Thanks to Lizzy for the tip. |
| 1:04:34 PM |
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| To Portland, Then |
My Mom is here, flown in the other night from Ye Olde Dominione State. In a little while we shall be en route to lovely Portland, Oregon, to see my bro-in-law's sketch comedy group TROOP! perform in the Best of the Best Sketchfest (say that three times fast). The drive to Portland is an easy and uneventful one; the city is smallish and pretty, and I'm not all that familiar with it, really. What I love about going to Portland is they have a Fuddrucker's, who serve The Greatest Burgers In All The World. Fuddrucker's doesn't have even one store in all of Washington State (though they built one right down the street from my boyhood home in Virginia the year after I moved away, the bastards). The Portland one is the closest, followed by the one in Missoula, Montana. This is probably the only thing I dislike about living in the state of Washington, no Fudd-burgers.
This was a weird week. Filled with sadness, regret, guilt, remorse, and in the end, honestly, a little relief. Now, I guess, it's time for reflection. Why do some lessons seem to have to be re-learned over and over and over and over again? As the great philosopher Lizzy Daymont once said, "It's really hard to criticize those you care about." Not too many truer statements I can think of. |
| 9:08:37 AM |
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| 7/3/2004 |
| Honest Abe |
Abraham Lincoln has long been one of my biggest historical heroes, for a zillion reasons, and I tend to pick up as many books about him as I can. Former New York State governor Mario Cuomo has written new one that I'll be checking out. Here's a quote from an interview with Cuomo about the book that pretty much distills my admiration for Lincoln in one short paragraph:
Salon.com: But does that mean Lincoln wasn't religious? Then as now, I have a hard time imagining America electing a president who claims to have no belief in God.
Mario Cuomo: A congressman once asked him, "Mr. President, you talk about the Bible a great deal. Do you belong to any particular religion?" Lincoln said "No." The congressman countered, "Mr. President, you purchased a pew at the Baptist church." And Lincoln said, "Yes, but only my wife uses it." And the congressman said, "Why, then, are you not a member of any specific religion?" And Lincoln said, "Because they all appear to have prohibitions, admonitions and proffered truths which cannot be established as a matter of intellect or natural law, which is reason - simple reason - unattended by revelation of faith. Most of them insist that you believe in certain things not because you can prove absolutely that they are so, but because you want to believe in them." Then he said, "Give me a church or a religion that has one principle: Love one another as you love yourself, and I will belong to that church." |
| 11:56:53 AM |
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| 7/2/2004 |
| You'll Pry My iPod From My Cold Dead Fingers |
| This article in Salon says everything I would say about how cool it is to have my entire collection of music on a little device that fits in my pocket, if I could manage to write coherently. And it takes the music industry to task the same way I do, for trying to discourage this rather than encourage it. Dumb, dumb, DUMB music industry. |
| 11:09:16 AM |
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| 7/1/2004 |
| Beta Birthday |
It was Beta Girl's birthday yesterday, which means that it was time for my yearly ritual, which is Bake Beta Girl A Cherry Pie For Her Birthday. I decided to get a little creative with it, and asked our lovely doggies Bojangles and Pete to model for me. They just looked at me like they thought I was completely out of my mind; really they were probably just exasperated at my inability to comprehend that they don't speak or understand English. Anyway, I ended up with the birthday pie shown above. Here's a shot that shows a little more detail:
That's Bojangles on the left, Pete on the right. Striking likenesses, that's what I think. Next year I'll do Mount Rushmore on a pie. |
| 2:50:22 PM |
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