18 posts tagged “movie”

On Sunday, David and Kevin and I drove down to Mountain View to visit the 7 Eleven that was transformed into a Kwik E Mart to promote the new Simpsons movie.  It's been a while since I've eaten a big, frosting-covered donut.  It took me two days to get through one and I thought it'd be the death of me.  Click below for the photos Kevin took:

This is such a good movie.  I cannot recommend it highly enough.  It was hilarious in a completely horrible way.  Mike Judge is amazing and Fox sucks for hiding this fantabulous film.  Steven Root has Wolverine hair.  Terry Crews is the President of the United States.  Carl's Jr. beat McDonald's.  The dresses are pretty cute, too.

The plot of the Magneto spin-off movie:

Magneto comes to grips with his mutant ability to manipulate metal objects as he and his parents try to survive in Auschwitz. Magneto meets Professor Xavier (played as the wheelchair-bound mutant leader by Patrick Stewart) when Xavier is a soldier liberating the concentration camp.

David Goyer is attached at direct and he's cool about superhero stuff, so he better fix this plot problem.  Maybe things have been re-written, but that's just not the way I remember Magneto's origin.  There's the concentration camp -- Eric and his parents, some cute girl from the neighborhood, possibly his girlfriend, I forget.  Anyways, when Magda (cute girl) tells Eric that his parents have been gassed, Eric decides to break out and take Magda with him.  Their break out is rather conventional (no super powers) until the kids are surrounded in the woods by a bunch of guards.  Then Eric turns their guns against 'em and shoots them all dead.  He and Magda escape to freedom, have a couple of kids, Magda dies, etc.  Charles meets Eric in Isreal, after the war. 

I was sorely disappointed when they didn't use this plot in their flashback in the first X-Men movie.  Instead of showing lil Eric reaching for his parents and bending some bars, they should have shown him escaping and turning the Nazi guards' guns against themselves.  That would've made the later use of the same tactic more poignant.  It may have been a bit cheaper than that concentration camp crowd scene, too.  I much prefer the idea that Eric can take care of himself, if violently, over the nice strong Americans coming to rescue him.

(via Defamer)

Today I saw the new Kevin Smith movie.  Well, it's a Jennifer Garner movie, but she's not enough to get me to see a romantic dramedy with such poor reviews. 

The movie is pretty good.  Definitely not bad.  It's just uneven.  The different tones of different scenes -- tragic, comic, romantic -- aren't well-balanced; there aren't smooth transitions between the different types of scenes.  I think this is the writer-director's first feature as far as directing goes.  The same problem with transitions crops up visually as well.  More than once, we'd go from a nice dark indoor nighttime scene to a bright sunny outdoor shot.  Like, thanks for blinding me.  I appreciate the expressionistic touches in the cinematography/editing during some emotionally-charged Jennifer Garner scenes, though. 

Of course, since it's a romance, characters have to pair off and it has a happy ending and all that.  Some of the more predictable scenes were boring.  I was disappointed that Kevin Smith's character was Fat Guy Who Likes To Eat.  He got good lines and was funny and all, but still.  I think I would've been even more interested in the film had I known in advance that Juliette Lewis is in it.  But any director who gives Kevin Smith a speaking role (which he can't even get in his own films) is good by me.  Maybe she's learned some good lessons about editing from this movie.

Dreamgirls
My Mom and I saw this over my holiday break.  Jennifer Hudson is completely amazing and made me cry, she performs so well.  The whole cast was good, but it's Ms. Hudson's movie.  They even had Hinton Battle, who was the villain in the Buffy musical!  I bought the soundtrack just for Ms. Hudson's tracks, but the rest of it is good, too.  At last, something good has come of that American Idol show.

Children of Men
Cameron went with me to see this New Year's day at the new Bloomingdale's shopping center downtown.  This movie made me cry, too.  Kevin is right that 'all the good stuff was in the trailer', but that's how movies always are.  The plot still managed to surprise me in a few places and the whole thing was well made and the cast was great.  A good film, even with the depressing content.

Pan's Labyrinth
I saw this with David (and a man resting a fedora on his knee sitting next to me) at the newly-Sundanced Kabuki.  I hadn't been there since the change in ownership.  This came very close to making me cry a few times.  It's beautiful and scary and icky and gory and uplifting and enthralling.  Highly recommended if you can handle scary suspense and bloody violence.

The next new movie I want to see is something with Jennifer Garner and Kevin Smith, just cuz I like watching those people.  I don't expect it'll be great, but I need another movie theatre fix and the mid-Feb. release of that Drew Barrymore / Hugh Grant RomCom is too far away.

Everything has been squeezed in right before the holidays! 

Saturday, David and I went to Musee Mechanique at Fisherman's Wharf.  It has a bunch of penny arcade-type machines and video games and whatnot.  I got to see photos of the 1915 World's Fair in SF, and play metal rock 'em sock 'em robots, and skee ball, and I tried to play Centipede, but the firing button was broken.  It was terribly frustrating!

Then we used a photo booth and tried to be as silly as possible down the strip of pix.  I think we did a pretty good job.  There was a lot of laughter involved.

Then Brian and I went to Oakland for Gaskell's Christmas Ball.  We got there a few hours early for lessons.  My previous waltz lessons had been lost to the sands of time.  It was not easy, but it was fun.  I can't even remember all the dances we 'learned'.  Some of them were quite silly!

The whole ball was entertaining.  The people watching was the best -- hoop skirts and corsets and kilts and top hats and all other manner of garb.  At the end we all sang the Hallelujah Chorus together.  I'm glad they had cue cards because I hadn't sung that since high school.

Sunday, we had a TWoPcon at the Scharffen Berger factory in Berkeley.   Cisco picked me up downtown so we could drive across the Bay together.  When I sat down in his car I found myself facing a lil video screen cued up to a Battlestar Galactica episode!  Cisco's been trying to convince me to watch BG for a while now, but it just isn't my type of show.  I finished watching it on the way home.  It's a high quality show, but I still don't want to watch it again.  It's much too violent and dramatic for my taste.

We met Cathy at the SB cafe and Cameron got to the shop just before the tour started.  We learned so much about chocolate!  It was very interesting.  The factory doesn't run on Sundays, though, so the machines weren't as fun to look at as I suspect they are when they're working away.  The lecture our guide, Danny, gave before we saw the factory was the best part of the tour.  Well, that and the free chocolate samples!  Oh! and the whole vanilla beans we got to sniff.  Yum!

We had a yummy lunch and then cruised through the gift shop again before departing.  I bought myself a molinillo.  It's a stick for frothing Mexican drinking chocolate.  I'm eager to melt some more Ibarra and try it!  Some of the rings on the stick actually move on their own.  It's fun just to play with--if it makes a delicious drink I'll like it even more, if that's possible.

Sunday night, Rika and many of her friends and I went to the Grease sing-along at the Castro.  I had a pretty good time at the Sound of Music sing-along earlier this month, but I'm not a fan of TSoM.  I love Grease!  Olivia Newton John used to be my very favorite singer ever.  I even saw her in concert when I was a lil kid. 

Unfortunately, it was too cold to dress up in a cute skirt, but the goodie bag they gave me had, among other things, a pom-pom!  Shaking a pom-pom is much funner than clapping. 

The sing along was such fun!  Not only do I know all those songs, I also know quite a bit of the dialogue, too.  So so fun!  Woooo!!1!!!

Now I just have to get everything ready to fly south to visit my family on Thursday night.  Oh, the pressure.  At least I don't have to worry about mailing things on time or anything like that.  I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody in SoCal and eating all the delish food down there.

I saw the Tenacious D movie yesterday.  It was funny and goofy and rockin'.  And Tim Robbins was there, too!  And Lee!  Lee Lee Leeee!!

Those who aren't already fans of the D (please don't admit that to me. I won't be able to love you as much anymore. you can't go back from something like that.) may not like it.  It isn't my favorite comedy, but it made me laugh all over the place and had a mix of classic and new D tunes.  Plus, JB continues to be incredibly hot!

Oh, and one of the security guards is played by Dr. Tom from "Ed Wood"! hee.

I've been looking forward to this since whenever Darren Aronofsky first went in to production on it with Brad Pitt in the lead.  (It's sad that Pitt's decision to pull out of the film just before production was scheduled to start put the kibosh on the whole thing and lost people jobs and money and stuff.  But I'm so glad he didn't star in this after all.)  Then production was shut down.  Then it became a beautiful graphic novel.  Now, at last, a film starring Hugh Jackman.  What more could a geek girl want?

Having read the graphic novel, I already had some idea of what to expect from the film.  The narrative may have been a tad confusing without any previous knowledge of the plot.  Anyways, the important thing to know beforehand is that it's highbrow and pretentious.  Just accept that and go along for the ride.  The structure is rather static and the parallels are drawn very clearly.  Because what's the point of pretension if no one can see it?

The repetition of visual themes serves a purpose.  Not only does it draw clear links between different scenes, it grounds the entire work.  The whole film is rather calm, even when crazy shit is happening.  It's mostly circles, straight lines, and right angles -- rather soothing. 

It made me cry, of course.  Everything seems to these days.  But I was seriously afraid I'd completely lose my shit in the middle of the movie theatre.  It's all about life, death, the universe and everything -- the interconnectedness of it all -- the immortality of not an individual life but of the whole of creation.   It's a celebration, not a morbid fugue.

It took a while for me to decompress from the film.  About half of the audience stayed through the credits.  I was a bit . . . stuck in my head -- maybe even awestruck or something.  I saw another audience member sit on a bench in front of a window for a while and just look out and think about whatever the film had sparked in his brain.  We were all like that -- calm and contemplative.  It reminded me that I am living my life; it's right here right now for me to enjoy.

The themes of the film are all rather obvious.  But I think that works well, given the subject matter.  We all know we are mortal.  We all know about the cycle of life and all that jazz.  The Fountain is a beautiful reminder of all that.  There's no need to cunningly obfuscate the film's meaning behind subtlety.  It's there and it's beautiful -- like life.

The first time I really noticed how much computers have taken over my brain was in, say, 2002 or 2003.  I was at work, had just copied a piece of digital info onto the computer's whatsit -- the thing that temporarily holds copied selections.  Clipboard!  Anyway, for the sake of laziness / efficiency I used Alt (thumb) + C (index finger) keystroke.  (There was a time when we had a PC without a working mouse, so I had to learn all the Windows keystroke shortcuts.)  I then had to get up, walk around the corner, and retrieve a fax from the copy room.  I thought, I have to hurry before my thumb forgets what I copied!  Then I realized how silly that was.  My thumb, though used to both copy and paste, does not store the copied info -- the computer does, duh!  I still catch myself associating the keystroke for copying (now open-apple + C) closely with my left thumb and index finger.  And, y'know, I do have to remember whatever it was that I copied to the clipboard so that I can know what to do with it. 

Anyways, I've since bought my own laptop; first an iBook G4, now a MacBook (Intel).  It's my media center.  I still have a separate tv for live broadcast-type stuff.  My laptop is where I keep my music and watch DVDs.  I'm in the habit of reaching for the volume buttons when a music track or DVD scene gets too loud or too quiet.  I'm also quick to pod the screen brightness up or down accordingly, not just with videos but with any digital image or text.  Even just tilting the flat screen can change my view. 

I can easily change the volume of the television with a remote control (MacBook has a remote now, too, so I can futz with iTunes from bed!), but the picture is a bit more difficult -- I need to go through a couple of menus and then scroll through the confusingly labeled variables of color and brightness and I don't know what else.

I have a little sling-type leather case for my iPod that makes it very easy for me to switch tracks or adjust the volume of whatever I'm listening to.  I don't have to reach in my pocket or anything.  When I'm not listening to my iPod, if I go into a store with music playing my hand reaches for where my iPod usually hangs -- right around my right-hand pants pocket.  I want to listen to something I like better or at least turn the volume down.  But my pocket does not control the record store's PA system.  Rather discouraging.

I also want to change the type and volume of music in theatres, cinematic and otherwise.  But I have no control over that, either.  I'm used to that, but the amusing thing is that when the picture on a movie or tv screen is so dark that I can scarcely discern what's going on, my hand reaches for the top corner of the picture to pull the screen forward.  If I do that to my laptop's flat screen, the change in angle makes the image brighter.  Not so in the real world.  Good thing theatres are dark so no one else can see my hand reaching for the corner of the frame.