Dispatches from District 48
Archive for the ‘Movies & Entertainment’ Category.
while Paramount develops a Magic 8 Ball movie among many other projects that have been co-opted from the toy aisle
See Interstate 60. Best movie about the meaning of "freedom" you have likely never seen. And you can take that to the bank.
Some surfing around on YouTube led me to this seemingly odd combo -- Slash playing with Chic on their song "le Freak." Slash comes out about half way.
I would have sworn I hated the whole Duran Duran catalog, but I was watching this video (because a friend of mine did the costumes, including the wedding dress) and I must say its not a bad song. So my apologies to Duran Duran.
By the way, my friend said that I would be surprised how many women later wanted to get married in exactly this dress.
Also, speaking of music videos, if you have never seen the Hugh Grant / Drew Barrymore movie Music and Lyrics, the plot is an utterly predictable romantic comedy (with Hugh Grant playing the same guy he always plays) but in the opening scene they nail the 1980's pop music video genre dead on. I can't embed it but the video is here. You can miss the rest of the movie, but the spoof is genius.
OK, I saw the Spiderman musical (still in pre-production) on Broadway last week. I thought I would share some thoughts about the show. Note that I like musicals and have been to a bunch but I am by no means an expert.
The show began with an unforced error, which seemed really dumb given the bad press the show has been getting (mixed reviews combined with some very high-profile accidents). I showed up 20 minutes early and found a line for the Will Call (not ticket purchase, but simply ticket pickup) that went down the entire long block. It took me 40 minutes just to pick up my tickets. The show started late, but I still missed the first number, and a LOT of people were behind me.
The show was sold out on a Wednesday night. I don't know if this is a measure of its popularity or the new Nascar, waiting for an accident aspect of the show. A friend of mine said he went the week before and the show had three long halts (there is a lot of technical stuff going on in the flying -- the stops feel exactly like when the ride stops at DisneyWorld). We had only two very short ones.
The staging is amazing. Actors fly all around the stage, and more impressively, soar and fight above the audience, frequently landing on the railings of the balconies. The stage itself is well done - they do a nice job creating the illusion of great height when scenes take place on the top of buildings.
The dancing is fun, in a high energy way. Often it is more tumbling and gymnastics than dancing, but entertaining.
The plot in the first half is solid - the classic spiderman origin myth -- if you have seen the recent movie you have got it.
For me, the wheels really came off the bus in the second half. The villain is Arachne -- not some super villain with an appropriate name, but the actual Arachne from greek mythology that Athena turned into a spider. Arachne is a combination scorned lover, unkillable super-villain, and source of redemption and has these sort of spider minions around her. This whole plot angle did not work at all for me.
Why the problem? Well, they killed off the first villain in the first act. So, without even being a sequel, they created the sequel problem in the second Act -- how do you top the first villain? And like many sequels, it became over the top and incoherent.
OK, and now for the final problem: The music was entirely forgettable. There were no musical themes that helped unify the show (as someone like Andrew Lloyd Weber does). There were just a bunch of unrelated songs (I suppose there could have been a reprise, but the music being reprised was so forgettable that I forgot it). The music established the right moods -- dark or heroic or romantic, but it was just wallpaper behind the actors.
I would not have had trouble with it if Bono and Edge had, being new to musical theater, tried to do something really different and failed. But they simply cranked out a bunch of utterly bland show tunes. A couple were OK at the time, but I sure wasn't whistling them on the way out. In contrast, I saw Chorus Line 30 years ago and still can sing bits of several songs.
Weird Fact: Dr. Normon Osborn (who in the show is not only Green Goblin but also the creator of the mutant spider that gives Spiderman his powers) looks exactly like Madam Hooch in the Harry Potter movies. As Green Goblin he looks more like a green Gene Simmons.
Well, after flying 10 hours round trip to do 5 minutes of television (don't get me wrong, it was a new enough experience that I am glad I did it) I am going to reward myself by seeing Spiderman the musical tonight. Seriously, Bono, Edge, Spiderman, stage accidents? I have to give it a chance, despite mixed reviews. I will post reviews tomorrow.
We tried out the new IPic theater yesterday. They are shooting at a super-premium niche, and we went for the top package. For our money we got free valet parking, free popcorn, and an unbelievable luxury recliner seat as nice and roomy and comfortable as anything in your house. Waiters brought food and drinks (including cocktails) to our seats, and my wife got a nice pillow and blanket. Not sure I am taking the kids to the smurf movie (yes, there is one coming) at this place, but it was a great date night with the wife, and in the current economy had a sort of Fiddling While Rome Burned kind of vibe to it.
Found by my son Nic on Wikipedia:
The Wilhelm scream is a frequently-used film and television stock sound effect first used in 1951 for the film Distant Drums.[1] The effect gained new popularity (its use often becoming an in-joke) after it was used in Star Wars and many other blockbuster films as well as television programs and video games.[2] The scream is often used when someone is pierced with an arrow, falls to his death from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion.
The Wilhelm scream has become a well-known cinematic sound cliché, and is claimed to have been used in over 216 films
By the way, Nic thanks everyone for their help on his blog and his writing project. He is writing a novel over the next year, dealing mixing his interest in sports with dystopian themes. This entry into the Hayek poster contest actually comes really close to the themes in his book. I thought he was getting on a wrong track by trying to use Atlas Shrugged too much as a model. While I love the book and it has had a profound effect on me, as a work of fiction it is pretty limited, with black and white characters and no character movement/development at all. I am making him read the Fountainhead right now as a better example of having more intriguing characters.
I watched 2081 on video the other day -- it claims to be based on a Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron, which I will have to take on faith because I never read that short story. The film is only 20 minutes or so long, but I thought it was a pretty powerful statement on egalitarianism. Recommended.
Just when I was climbing on top of any number of issues at work, and was ready to start blogging again in earnest, Civ 5 was released yesterday. Yes, it has all the time destruction potential of its older versions. Some quick thoughts from a few hours of play
Glenn Reynolds has a discussion of projectors as an alternative to flat screen TVs. I have been a projector owner through 10 years and 3 generations and am a big fan of them in certain applications.
I have an Epson 8500UB, which is close to the top of their line and can be bought under $2000 (which is amazing - the projector price drop in the last 10 years has been stunning). It is a 1080p projector with great blacks and color. I have it ceiling mounted with a 110-inch diagonal 16x9 Stewart screen. I have one of the silver fabrics (I think the Firehawk) that enhances black levels over the white fabrics (there is a reason movies used to be shown on the "silver screen.") The screen is acoustically perforated so the speakers (except for surrounds) are actually behind the screen (as in movie theaters).
In the evening, with the lights down and the projector adjusted correctly, the effects is awesome. Not to be missed. I have had to kick many visitors out of my house. Sports are also amazing, particularly in HDTV.
As Glenn's commenters mention, you have to be careful with light. I picked this Epson both because it is really about the best in its price range, but it also is very bright. Unlike my last generation projector, it can overcome some ambient light. I have to have blinds in my den, but with the blinds down but the room still lighted well I can watch sports on the bright setting quite well with this projector (you really don't want to watch a movie with this bright setting - movies are all about the blacks, and to get those looking great you need darkness).
Anything 60" and below, get an LCD. But if you really want a ridiculously large screen for movies and sports, this is the only way to go and I highly recommend the Epson line -- they have projectors at many price points and they are mostly all very good.
I was watching the Elizabeth Hurley remake of Bedazzled (mainly to see, you know, Elizabeth Hurley) and thought the guy in the video below should be in the Obama cabinet. Y'all may know the story - guy gets 7 wishes from the devil, and each wish goes wrong in some way. In this wish, he wants to be really sensitive to get this girl he is after, but he is unable to take any meaningful action because he is just too caught up in expressing the depth of his caring.
Every once in a while, something occurs in the real world that will help thousands of movie audiences continue to suspend disbelief. Today's story: Russian sleeper agents in America.
Apparently the makers of the movie Downfall have demanded takedowns of all those various Hitler-speech parodies on YouTube using clips from the movie (I linked to one here, which still seems to be up).
If this is true, it is stupid. I really enjoyed Downfall, and likely would never have rented it had I not been exposed to it via YouTube parodies.
Update: Some meta parody. Pretty dang funny.
Yeah, I watched the Oscars, though I seldom find them entertaining any more. My wife and I were able to attend about 20 years ago (the year Clint Eastwood won for Unforgiven) and go to the Governor's Ball afterward so we have a certain nostalgia for the event. Only one image really sticks with me, and it was before the show. It was an image of George Clooney high-fiving his fans, but doing it separated by a chain link fence. Even the President still greets the public in person from time to time. To me, it was a brutal caricature of a Hollywood actor trying to pretend he is engaging with the common man but utterly failing to do so.
This is a pretty cool video showing green screen use in TV and movies.
I will say I don't really draw any philosophical conclusions about the meaning of life and reality from it, other than to say, "how cool is it that we can do this?"
I thought this was pretty good. I was so focused on the Dances with Wolves parallels that I missed this one. Via the South Bend Seven, who has other review notes on Avatar.
Chocolate Bunny Kill:
Chocolate Bunny Kill
Tiffany | MySpace Video
I think it may be the music.
PS- the final scene with the hair dryer is the exact technique they used in Raider of the Lost Ark for the melting Nazi guy at the end.
A producer of Creation, the film about Charles Darwin and his wife Emma, starring Paul Bettany and his real-life wife Jennifer Connelly, is griping that the film has no distributor in the US, apparently because so many Americans are evolution-hating mouth-breathers that no one wants the touch the thing; it's just too darn controversial.
Well, it may be that. Alternately, and leaving aside any discussion of the actual quality of the film, it may be that a quiet story about the difficult relationship between an increasingly agnostic 19th Century British scientist and his increasingly devout wife, thrown into sharp relief by the death of their beloved 10-year-old daughter, performed by mid-list stars, is not exactly the sort of film that's going to draw in a huge winter holiday crowd, regardless of whether that scientist happens to be Darwin or not, and that these facts are rather more pertinent, from a potential distributor's point of view. . . . Maybe if Charles Darwin were played by Will Smith, was a gun-toting robot sent back from the future to learn how to love, and to kill the crap out of the alien baby eaters cleverly disguised as Galapagos tortoises, and then some way were contrived for Jennifer Connelly to expose her breasts to RoboDarwin two-thirds of the way through the film, and there were explosions and lasers and stunt men flying 150 feet into the air, then we might be talking wide-release from a modern major studio. Otherwise, you know, not so much. The "oh, it's too controversial for Americans" comment is, I suspect, a bit of face-saving rationalization from a producer
If you think Scalzi is exaggerating, sit and actually write down a synopsis of the plot for "Transformers" and see if you get anything that makes any more sense - just substitute "Jennifer Connelly's bare breasts" with "Megan Fox's bare midriff."
Hawaii 5-0? Star Trek? I Dream of Jeannie?
Jeannie, fresh as a daisy/Just love how she obeys me/She does things that amaze me so...
The Star Trek lyrics are awful, but you have to do a search to find them all. The Leave it to Beaver lyrics are just ... bizarre. Some pre-1960s hallucinogens or something.
You would think I had learned my lesson 35 years ago when I saw the absolutely awful movie "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," probably the worst movie I have ever seen, at least as compared to the profile of its cast. One needs to be very suspicious of the "lets-make-a-show-from-stringing-together-a-bunch-of-songs-from-one-band" genre, though I guess I was lulled intlo complacency by my enjoying Mamma Mia (the show, not the movie) despite not really being an ABBA fan.
This show was really pretty awful. The plot and most of the humor was downright embarassing to watch. Only a fun and rowdy last 20 minutes plus a pretty decent female lead saved the experience -- like Mamma Mia, the best part is the encore, but even more so here. A bad plot is accented by perhaps the least likeable male protagonist since Thomas Covenant. This will play quite well in Branson some day.
As a full disclosure, the show has been running for some time and the audience on a Wednesday night was nearly full so I may be in the minority on this one. But my advice is to skip it and try another show.
The original was a sort of surprise -- one expected a movie based on a toy franchise to suck, but it was actually OK. It had a bit of wit, probably Spielberg's influence. The new movie is not nearly as good. I give it about 2.5 stars, with that being an average of 1.5 stars when Megan Fox is off the screen and 5 stars when she is on the screen. The director avoids doing anything to advance the plot when she is on the screen, which is good because it is hard to concentrate during those moments.
The one highlight for me was that most of the college scenes were filmed at my old alma mater Princeton. With all due appologies to my friends, there is a certain amount of cognitive dissonance to seeing 40 or 50 consistently smoking hot college girls wandering around the Princeton campus. We had a name for women like that when I was there -- we called them "visitors."
One bit of credit -- unlike a lot action movie sequels, the plot was mostly coherant. The humor was strained, more sophomoric and less witty than the original. Thedogs having sex in the beginning was gratuitous, for example.
Anyway, my kids enjoyed it, and it was a decent way to spend a summer afternoon when it was 107 outside. Air conditioning always adds at least 1 star to every movie during a Phoenix summer.
If you can get over the cognitive dissonance of seeing Spock feel up Uhura, this is a very solid movie. Much like Casino Royale did for the Bond franchise, it tore the franchise down and rebuilt it very well, creating something that is both familiar and true to the original yet less campy and more up-to-date. My son, who has never seen any of the original series (yeah, I know, major parenting failure) really enjoyed it as well. Interestingly, there were almost more references back to The Wrath of Khan as there were to the original series.
I'm delighted Kate Winslet finally got a Best Actress Oscar, because she deserves it for being so good for so long but also because now that means, pace Halle Berry and Charlize Theron, that she will now immediately make a God-awful action film in which she wears very tight black latex, and I'm all for that.
How many "A's" do you put in "Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!" ??
Wow, that has to be the hardest to punctuate sentence I have ever written. Is there even a right way to punctuate that?
Via TJIC
Update: This is also an interesting study in the Heisenberg principle (which, generalized from its quantum mechanics roots, posits that you can't study a process without altering it). The very act of posting the results is changing future Google searches, so the original results will be invalid.
Update #2: There needs to be one of those web sites that do textual analysis of web content called the geek-o-meter. I would suppose that by dropping a Heisenberg and a Star Trek reference in the same post, I have shot up there on any presumptive scale. All I need is a D&D reference, which I actually came frighteningly close to in the last post when I wanted to say "it's like Obama dropped all his character creation points into charisma and didn't have any left over for wisdom."
Apparently Patrick McGoohan has passed away. I suspect his death will further reinvigorate interest in the Prisoner series, a 17-episone show following a spy trying to come in from the cold, but who finds himself in an surreal small town structured for maximum surveillance and to try to extract as many secrets from him as possible. A nice statement on the individual vs. the state, 1960s style. I have not seen every epiosode, but I enjoyed most of it, right up to the ending, which I confess I didn't totally get but seemed to undermine the individual vs. the state theme and convert it to some Freudian surrealism. If you become intrigued, you don't necesarily need to shell out to Amazon because AMC is streaming all the original episodes online in preparation for a remake they are producing this year.
