Home again, home again, jiggity jig
Dec. 28th, 2006 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatBack home in NYC. Enjoyed my holiday, am happy to be home.
Saw a couple of flicks over the holiday - we rented since the pickings were pretty slim at the theaters. Only movie out that I felt any interest in I'd already seen - Casino Royale. Almost went to see it a second time with Momster, because...Daniel Craig makes a yummy James Bond. His next flick is His Dark Materials: The Compass Rose due out sometime in 2007 or 2008 - he's playing the protagonist's father, while Nicole Kidman plays the mother. This series I'm looking forward to, preferred it to CS Lewis's Narnia Chronicles for its wit (Lewis tends to take himself a tad too seriously, although he did loosen up a bit later), its ambiguity, and its strong-willed female protagonist - plus the imaginative touches. Craig and Kidman are perfect casting for the anti-hero roles of the parents - who veer from heroic to villainous and back again. We avoided Charlotte's Web - honestly the 1973 cartoon was enough. This version I can't stand to watch the previews. Spider. Ack. Definitely not a movie for the arachnaphobe in your family. There's just something creepy about watching a brown recluse spider speaking in Julia Roberts voice - yep, they've managed to make the brown barn spider look like a brown recluse.
Of the three rented, I only enjoyed Scoop - which oddly the critics appeared to hate.
My mother and I found it to be hilarious in places. Sample line: "I came from the Hebrew faith, but eventually grew away from it and am now a practioner of Narcissism." Or something along those lines. Wish I could remember the exact wording. Woody Allen states it in the film.
Gotta give Allen credit - at least he's honest and willing to poke fun at himself. Which may explain why I enjoy his later films more than his earlier ones - he's taking himself less seriously, poking fun of the stuff he used to romanticize, and making fun of himself. Another great line: "I don't need coffee or drugs, my anxieties keep me in a constant state of alertness and hyperactivity." Allen pretty much steals the film from Johannson and Jackman, but hey that's to be expected. There's a great supporting cameo by Ian McShane.
Cars bored me. Not just me, my entire family. Dad left the room. Mom left the room.
I stayed and stuck it out. Yet, the critics for reasons that continue to escape me, adore it.
Odd. They pan Lady in The Water and All The Kings Men, yet adore this? It actually made one critics best movies of 2006 list - as opposed to more quality fair such as I don't know, The Prestige, Little Miss Sunshine, Stranger Than Fiction...Cars is your boilerplate tale about the cocky rookie kid who has gotten early success and needs to be brought down a notch or too and learn there's more to life than money, babes, and your name in lights. It reminded me of the plotlines to any number of Lifetime movies, and TV shows. Cocky racecar ends up in small neglected town that has seen better days, and becomes a betterperson car, falls in love with the local innkeeper car motel keeper, learns a few lessons from a grouchy and reluctant mentor (who get this used to be a racecar - I'm not spoiling you, it's pretty frigging obvious), and becomes pals with the backwards yutz. The movie should have been no more than an hour. It was close to two hours. 116 minutes. Felt like three hours. And while the animation was okay, wasn't spectacular. Just reminded me of how tire I'm becoming of CGI animation. Starting to miss the far more creative and difficult painted cell animation which the Japanese are still cranking out. Or the stop-motion stuff Tim Burton did. Want to know why there are so many CGI or computer generated animated films out? Because they are easy and cheap to make in comparison to the other stuff. For Bugs Bunny and The Grinch - people had to draw every cell and photograph it. Think about that. A film that is an hour long would require at least 100,000 cells. Don't get me wrong - I don't mind some of the CGI flicks - Shrek II and The Incredibles are my favorites at the moment - as far as animation goes. Also the stories are somewhat clever. But Cars? Ugh. Dumb movie. Not worth a rental.
The Proposition - another film that is making several critics best lists, making me wonder how many films these critics have seen? Or what ones? The critic in EW, Lisa S., states that no Australian movie she's seen has been this gritty, this brutal, this realistic. Apparently she hasn't seen that many Australian films, because Mad Max made this thing look like a kids' movie. So for that matter did a couple of other indies I've seen here and there. As far as Westerns? Hate to tell you, but ever since The Wild Bunch - this is pretty much the type of Western I've seen filmed, that and the occassional family fare - which I don't really consider Western's so much as frontier sagas. Enough to make one miss Howard Hawkes, John Ford, John Wayne and Billy Wilder. One gets tired of Milch, Peckinpah, Eastwood, McMurty, and Sergio Leone after a while.
The Proposition is another film that is overly long and needs an editor. Although, I guess, if you like looking out at the Australian Outback at Sunset for about twenty minutes with no action - this could be the flick for you. Personally? I've got better things to do.
The plot-line is your basic man makes a deal with the devil. In this instance - it is to kill his psychotic brother to save the mentally challenged one. All three are outlaws and all three more than likely were responsible or at least participated in the rape and murder of a family. Most of the film is spent watching the lead character portrayed by Guy Pierce traveling across the desert with a Nick Cave song playing in the background and lots of pretty cinematography - the silhouette of Guy Pierce (Charles Burns) against the skyline, the buttes, the raw desert, the dust. The plot or rather three characters imbroiled in it are intriguing - so you sort of put up with the lack of action. The three are: Charles Burns (Guy Pierce), Ray Winston (Captain Stanley), Emily Watson (Mrs. Stanley) and I suppose the brother (Anthony Burns), although I found him more peripherial. Each make moral decisions which result in disastorous consequences. It is a "noir" Western - the protagonist is a true anti-hero. And it is gruesome - although no more so than Criminal Minds, CSI, or Heros - except possibly a tad more realistic, which may make it harder for some to stomach. There's a great scene where a character states: "Not the gut." A gut wound is about the worst wound you could get for a painful death. The stomach acid leaks out and eats away at your organs.
Not a happy movie. Also oddly a Xmas movie - takes place at Xmas time.
I liked it better than my parents did. But found it to bit slow in places and a tad heavy-handed and arty. Felt as if the filmmaker was more interested in showing off than telling a story. Other than that, not bad. But certainly not something I'd pay to see in a theater.
Finished Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Jesus's Childhood Pal
which I highly recommend to anyone who likes dry wit and theological books. It's funny.
It's touching. It's historical. And there's a nifty five-six page bit at the back detailing the research the author conducted to write it and the points where the story merges with the real one and veers away from it. It sticks pretty closely to the actual one, more so than I'd thought. I also learned a few things I'd forgotten or didn't know - 1)Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, no where in the bible is it listed that she was. Nor was she saved from stoning. What is stated is Jesus save her from evil spirits and she washed his feet while he was on the cross with ointment and wiped the ointment with her hair. 2)In biblical times women traveling alone away from their families, divorced, or without a husband - were often referred to as harlots. (Thank God I was born in the 1960s after Elisabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B Anthony, Queen Elizabeth I, and Betty Friedman amongst others.)3) Apparently no one mentions in detail Jesus' childhood, when Joseph died exactly, and what happened in the period between his birth and when he turned 30. 4)It was common for women and men to get married and have kids at the age of 13/14 in those days, since you were lucky to make it to 30 let alone 40. (So Jesus died old not young?) Anyhow, interesting. Also a fitting book to finish on Xmas Eve - which by the by is not really Jesus birthday - hence the reason the Gullah in South Carolina don't practice Christmas. His birth was actually in March/April - yep, Jesus was a Pices not a Capricorn. It was moved by the Northern Europeans to coincide with Yuletide - most of the Xmas practices are derived from ancient pagan rituals to celebrate the beginning of the Winter Solistice.
Just started a really good book - or at least I'm enjoying it. Swapped it from my folks. They got Lamb and I got it. Snowstorms in a Hot Climate by Sarah Dunant. Here's what the back cover says about it:
Marla's best friend, Elly, left England two years ago on a soul-searching trip through South America. Except for a few postcards, Marla has not heard from her since. Then Marla receives a strange letter from Elly begging her to fly to New York. [Marla lives in London, England - they are both English]. But the person Marla meets at the airport is a very different woman from the strong, carefree friend she remembers. Elly, now well-dressed and thin, has acquired a park-view apartment, a house in Westchester, and a charismatic, manipulative, cocaine-smuggling boyfriend named Lenny. As Marla tries to free her friend from the dual addictions of love and cocaine, she unravels a story of seduction and power in Columbia and of desire and betrayal in California. Caught in a web of deceptions, the threat of violence mounting around them, Marla decides to take on Lenny and his empire. But Lenny - like the drug he peddles - has no intention of letting Elly go.
Only 60 some pages in, but pretty certain will finish it quickly - it moves fast, is gripping, and speaks to me. First book I've read in months that fits that description.
Saw a couple of flicks over the holiday - we rented since the pickings were pretty slim at the theaters. Only movie out that I felt any interest in I'd already seen - Casino Royale. Almost went to see it a second time with Momster, because...Daniel Craig makes a yummy James Bond. His next flick is His Dark Materials: The Compass Rose due out sometime in 2007 or 2008 - he's playing the protagonist's father, while Nicole Kidman plays the mother. This series I'm looking forward to, preferred it to CS Lewis's Narnia Chronicles for its wit (Lewis tends to take himself a tad too seriously, although he did loosen up a bit later), its ambiguity, and its strong-willed female protagonist - plus the imaginative touches. Craig and Kidman are perfect casting for the anti-hero roles of the parents - who veer from heroic to villainous and back again. We avoided Charlotte's Web - honestly the 1973 cartoon was enough. This version I can't stand to watch the previews. Spider. Ack. Definitely not a movie for the arachnaphobe in your family. There's just something creepy about watching a brown recluse spider speaking in Julia Roberts voice - yep, they've managed to make the brown barn spider look like a brown recluse.
Of the three rented, I only enjoyed Scoop - which oddly the critics appeared to hate.
My mother and I found it to be hilarious in places. Sample line: "I came from the Hebrew faith, but eventually grew away from it and am now a practioner of Narcissism." Or something along those lines. Wish I could remember the exact wording. Woody Allen states it in the film.
Gotta give Allen credit - at least he's honest and willing to poke fun at himself. Which may explain why I enjoy his later films more than his earlier ones - he's taking himself less seriously, poking fun of the stuff he used to romanticize, and making fun of himself. Another great line: "I don't need coffee or drugs, my anxieties keep me in a constant state of alertness and hyperactivity." Allen pretty much steals the film from Johannson and Jackman, but hey that's to be expected. There's a great supporting cameo by Ian McShane.
Cars bored me. Not just me, my entire family. Dad left the room. Mom left the room.
I stayed and stuck it out. Yet, the critics for reasons that continue to escape me, adore it.
Odd. They pan Lady in The Water and All The Kings Men, yet adore this? It actually made one critics best movies of 2006 list - as opposed to more quality fair such as I don't know, The Prestige, Little Miss Sunshine, Stranger Than Fiction...Cars is your boilerplate tale about the cocky rookie kid who has gotten early success and needs to be brought down a notch or too and learn there's more to life than money, babes, and your name in lights. It reminded me of the plotlines to any number of Lifetime movies, and TV shows. Cocky racecar ends up in small neglected town that has seen better days, and becomes a better
The Proposition - another film that is making several critics best lists, making me wonder how many films these critics have seen? Or what ones? The critic in EW, Lisa S., states that no Australian movie she's seen has been this gritty, this brutal, this realistic. Apparently she hasn't seen that many Australian films, because Mad Max made this thing look like a kids' movie. So for that matter did a couple of other indies I've seen here and there. As far as Westerns? Hate to tell you, but ever since The Wild Bunch - this is pretty much the type of Western I've seen filmed, that and the occassional family fare - which I don't really consider Western's so much as frontier sagas. Enough to make one miss Howard Hawkes, John Ford, John Wayne and Billy Wilder. One gets tired of Milch, Peckinpah, Eastwood, McMurty, and Sergio Leone after a while.
The Proposition is another film that is overly long and needs an editor. Although, I guess, if you like looking out at the Australian Outback at Sunset for about twenty minutes with no action - this could be the flick for you. Personally? I've got better things to do.
The plot-line is your basic man makes a deal with the devil. In this instance - it is to kill his psychotic brother to save the mentally challenged one. All three are outlaws and all three more than likely were responsible or at least participated in the rape and murder of a family. Most of the film is spent watching the lead character portrayed by Guy Pierce traveling across the desert with a Nick Cave song playing in the background and lots of pretty cinematography - the silhouette of Guy Pierce (Charles Burns) against the skyline, the buttes, the raw desert, the dust. The plot or rather three characters imbroiled in it are intriguing - so you sort of put up with the lack of action. The three are: Charles Burns (Guy Pierce), Ray Winston (Captain Stanley), Emily Watson (Mrs. Stanley) and I suppose the brother (Anthony Burns), although I found him more peripherial. Each make moral decisions which result in disastorous consequences. It is a "noir" Western - the protagonist is a true anti-hero. And it is gruesome - although no more so than Criminal Minds, CSI, or Heros - except possibly a tad more realistic, which may make it harder for some to stomach. There's a great scene where a character states: "Not the gut." A gut wound is about the worst wound you could get for a painful death. The stomach acid leaks out and eats away at your organs.
Not a happy movie. Also oddly a Xmas movie - takes place at Xmas time.
I liked it better than my parents did. But found it to bit slow in places and a tad heavy-handed and arty. Felt as if the filmmaker was more interested in showing off than telling a story. Other than that, not bad. But certainly not something I'd pay to see in a theater.
Finished Christopher Moore's Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Jesus's Childhood Pal
which I highly recommend to anyone who likes dry wit and theological books. It's funny.
It's touching. It's historical. And there's a nifty five-six page bit at the back detailing the research the author conducted to write it and the points where the story merges with the real one and veers away from it. It sticks pretty closely to the actual one, more so than I'd thought. I also learned a few things I'd forgotten or didn't know - 1)Mary Magdalene was not a prostitute, no where in the bible is it listed that she was. Nor was she saved from stoning. What is stated is Jesus save her from evil spirits and she washed his feet while he was on the cross with ointment and wiped the ointment with her hair. 2)In biblical times women traveling alone away from their families, divorced, or without a husband - were often referred to as harlots. (Thank God I was born in the 1960s after Elisabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B Anthony, Queen Elizabeth I, and Betty Friedman amongst others.)3) Apparently no one mentions in detail Jesus' childhood, when Joseph died exactly, and what happened in the period between his birth and when he turned 30. 4)It was common for women and men to get married and have kids at the age of 13/14 in those days, since you were lucky to make it to 30 let alone 40. (So Jesus died old not young?) Anyhow, interesting. Also a fitting book to finish on Xmas Eve - which by the by is not really Jesus birthday - hence the reason the Gullah in South Carolina don't practice Christmas. His birth was actually in March/April - yep, Jesus was a Pices not a Capricorn. It was moved by the Northern Europeans to coincide with Yuletide - most of the Xmas practices are derived from ancient pagan rituals to celebrate the beginning of the Winter Solistice.
Just started a really good book - or at least I'm enjoying it. Swapped it from my folks. They got Lamb and I got it. Snowstorms in a Hot Climate by Sarah Dunant. Here's what the back cover says about it:
Marla's best friend, Elly, left England two years ago on a soul-searching trip through South America. Except for a few postcards, Marla has not heard from her since. Then Marla receives a strange letter from Elly begging her to fly to New York. [Marla lives in London, England - they are both English]. But the person Marla meets at the airport is a very different woman from the strong, carefree friend she remembers. Elly, now well-dressed and thin, has acquired a park-view apartment, a house in Westchester, and a charismatic, manipulative, cocaine-smuggling boyfriend named Lenny. As Marla tries to free her friend from the dual addictions of love and cocaine, she unravels a story of seduction and power in Columbia and of desire and betrayal in California. Caught in a web of deceptions, the threat of violence mounting around them, Marla decides to take on Lenny and his empire. But Lenny - like the drug he peddles - has no intention of letting Elly go.
Only 60 some pages in, but pretty certain will finish it quickly - it moves fast, is gripping, and speaks to me. First book I've read in months that fits that description.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 07:34 pm (UTC)I saw 'Scoop' in the theaters, I ran out to see it because Anthony Stewart Head was in it (just for a couple of minutes at the end, he was the police detective), and I enjoyed it too. I thought that 'Match Point' was much better, but this one was funnier (and Hugh Jackman being undressed a lot is always a good thing).
no subject
Date: 2006-12-28 08:20 pm (UTC)Yep, if you blinked you'd have missed ASH. He has what amounts to a five second cameo - shorter than Marsters cameo in House on Haunted Hill - which is saying something. And Hugh...pretty man. But you've got to go see Casino Royale - because Daniel Craig has managed to make me forget all about him. ;-)
Also, yep, on Cars. Skippable. I have no idea why people loved Cars - unless they have a thing for race scenes and "motor vehicals"? (I have to admit have never understood the appeal of "cars" or "football".)
PS: Thanks for the Xmas card - I did get it. Quite beautiful. Thank you.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-29 03:24 am (UTC)I enjoy Woody too, even when he makes a movie I don't love, I can usually see a lot of interesting things in it. I think I'm the only one who enjoy the 'Curse of the Yellow Scorpion' (or whatever the name of his Helen Hunt movie was). I think it is cool that he makes so many films that a radically different from one another.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-29 05:20 am (UTC)Interesting director.
no subject
Date: 2006-12-29 05:16 am (UTC)Another thing that he wrote which I found fascinating - was how the books of Luke and Matthew contradict each other in places, as does John, with different writers picking up on and potentially embellishing different points. This makes sense - if you think about it. If you ask ten people what they from a critical event - say 9/11, you will get ten different tales - some of which contradict one another entirely. Anyhow the book fascinated me. Well worth a look.
Particularly the author's note at the end. Can't quote directly though since I left it behind me in Hilton Head.
This is what Owen Glieberman of EW said of Cars (one of many critics who actually put this dud on their "BEST FILMS OF 2006 LIST"): "Not a Pixar masterpiece like The Incredibles or Toy Story,but John Lassiter's witty, enchanting, gorgeously designed NASCAR fantasia is a lucisou piece of American pop art, the niftiest computer fable in a year of animated overkill (eg. that penguin boogie commericial in search of a soft drink, Happy Feet). It celbrates speed, but it's also a cany colored homage to an early-60's boomer America now chain-stored out of existence. Cars also rolls out the greatest piece of cartoon acting in years, with the grandly gruff daddy-o presence of Paul Newman as an aging champion stock car who teaches arrogant upstart Owen Wilson to slow his motor."
Make of that what you will. But keep in mind, Glieberman is the same critic who panned Little Miss Sunshine, stating no one acts like that and the characters were stock stereotypes. Either he saw one too many computer generated films this summer - or he has a fantasy of being a stock car driver. Possibly both.