Bros from different area codes
We are in pretty much non-stop wedding mode for the next month-plus, even though one wedding is already finished up and most of the heavy planning for ours is through. This weekend, for example, Marisa and I took off Friday for some time to head downtown and get our marriage license ready for signature/sealing/delivery next month. This meant a visit to the MARRIAGE BUREAU. It was not thematically decorated. It was not decorated at all. It was one of those depressing offices that looks like it was thought up thirty years ago as the final word on depressing offices. But what leaps and bounds have been made in the field since then! Despite the frustrating combination of only a dozen people ahead of us in line with an hour or so of waiting, it was relatively painless. We are licensed, pending some info from our officiant. We celebrated in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
So my bachelor party was Saturday, but before that I cleansed my palate with more of a girls' afternoon out to see Step Up 3-D with Marisa, Maggie, Katie, Kate, and Allison. I hated the first Step Up, saw the second one because Marisa wanted to, and wound up really enjoying it. Step Up 3-D is more in the vein of the second one, although I'm not sure if it's as good. The dancing, to my recollection, is just as good if not better: director Jon M. Chu seems to have more affection for movie musicals than many actual movie musicals. There are plenty of big hip-hop numbers in Step Up 3-D made with music-video slickness -- although rarely as dice-cut as so many videos or video-inspired movies -- and enhanced by the enthusiastically gimmicky 3-D, but Chu really shines when he pauses for a self-conscious but gloriously retro two-kid dance number on New York streets, shot in what looks like a single unbroken take and a better number than appears in the entirety of Nine, Hairspray, Chicago, or Dreamgirls.
The story in Step Up 3 is a touch -- okay, several touches -- sillier than the second one, which felt a little more recognizable for taking place at an arts-oriented high school rather than an underground league of dance crews competing for a $100,000 purse of dubious origin. The new characters for the new love story component aren't as charismatic as they could be, and the sense of friendship isn't as palpable (though I did appreciate the encore of several Step Up 2 kids). But even when it's not running at maximum effectiveness, there's an innocence and sincerity to this series (or at least the sequels) that's really quite charming. It's skillfully executed formula.
Then we lost an Allison but gained a Sara and a Cossar and a just-in-town Rob for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which resists formula all over the place. I've only read the first installment of Bryan Lee O'Malley's six-part graphic novel and don't remember much about it, but Edgar Wright's film version works with the tone and rhythm of a comic strip without alienating the audience that wants to see a cool, involving movie, not just a visually stunning book-on-screen a la Watchmen. I was a little afraid Scott Pilgrim would be all knockout visuals and nerd-culture references, but it takes its characters and story seriously -- even the humor is derived more from odd little gestures and asides and deadpan stuff than a barrage of guffaw-out-loud comedy a la The Other Guys. Michael Cera gets a lot of flack for playing the same part, but Scott Pilgrim really isn't much like George Michael Bluth or Evan from Superbad -- he's more coy and affected than those characters, manipulative in his way, and I would swear Cera even raises his voice to a slightly higher pitch to make Scott more insinuating and pleading than his other variations on the Cera persona (which, by the way, is a totally fine persona, exactly what a comic actor does, blah blah blah, I've mentioned this before). Though the fantastical elements are a delight, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is essentially a coming-of-age fractured-relationship movie, and a smart, satisfying one at that. It maybe goes on a little longer than it needs to, but it's too inventive to really wear out its welcome.
Over fifteen hours following Scott Pilgrim, out-of-towners joined me and Rob Brooklyn: Chris, then Jeff, then Derrick, until we had enough to go meet Jason and NYC residents Andrew, Jon, Michael, and Ben at Shake Shack.
The centerpiece of my bachelor weekend was a trip to see The Expendables. I don't actually have all that much love for eighties pop culture as an entity; there are certainly eighties touchstones I love (Back to the Future, Gremlins, Clue) but the simple eighties-ness of a movie will never be a particular attraction for me, which is part of the reason I am in no rush to see Top Gun or Dirty Dancing. What interested me in The Expendables was the re-re-teaming of Jason Statham and Jet Li, especially putting them on a mercenary team with a bunch of other brawling has-beens or never-wills. On a level of pure brawny ridiculousness, The Expendables does deliver. It's violent. It has a pleasing buzz of stupidity. Jason Statham beats up a bunch of guys. Guns are fired, knives are thrown. And shit blows up like whoa. I mean, you think you've seen enough shit blow up in a movie so that blowing shit up can't really do much for you anymore, and The Expendables does not make it matter the way it did when you were thirteen or fourteen, but its last half hour is such a relentless, massive, nigh-uninterrupted stream of explosions that I have to tip my hat to writer-director-producer-star Sylvester Stallone. You really went for it, buddy. You stuck Statham in a plane and blew up the coast of a small country, then you came back and blew up the remainder of it.
However, and I'm usually loathe to make this distinction: As not-bored and often quite amused as I was watching The Expendables, it's not really a good movie on the usual levels. Stallone co-wrote the screenplay, and you can hear it; the dialogue, which is supposed to be a chunky mix of macho banter and stupid exposition, often sounds, like it was translated from another language or, more likely, it was scribbled down with haste and never clarified with any kind of a rewrite. When characters in this movie talk, you have to kind of approximate what the wisecracks or exchanges are supposed to be; in Stallone's versions, the meaning comes across, but often makes no literal sense, or sounds like elementary school students. This is the work of an inarticulate man using his words.
Stallone is only marginally better as a director; he loves quick cuts and close-ups, neither of which are really necessary in a Jet Li or Jason Statham fight scene, and although the ensemble nature of this movie makes it more varied and enjoyable than that last Rambo picture and its monotonous rampaging, he still seems to prefer scenes of people getting killed over chases, fights, or break-ins -- you know, the stuff that makes action movies exciting beyond the realm of creative decapitations and massive explosions. Given that this is the type of movie Stallone apparently wants to make, you could see a worse version than The Expendables; that version looks like Rambo and has no Statham beating up a basketball team or rambling Mickey Rourke monologues or awkward Arnold/Bruce cameo scenes. As bad movies, The Expendables is a loud, brash, fun one, but imagine if it had been made by a talented filmmaker less prone to tripping over his own words and ideas. It would probably be a little more like what I hope Machete is going to be like. Oh, boy, do I hope Machete will be like that.
From there, we returned to Greenpoint and there was much talking of what was wrong with The Expendables and, secondarily, what was wrong with Ghost Rider, we got Thai food and ate cokies, and apparently Andrew beat a bunch of my Saratoga buddies at hearts, and we watched Robot Chicken: Star Wars and talked about the new Arcade Fire record a bit. Everyone was a pretty great sport about sleeping in my solidly two-person apartment in the case of the out-of-towners or getting home from Greenpoint after midnight in the case of the in-towners, or sitting through (and improving, with laughter) The Expendables, a movie several of us definitely would've seen anyway but others definitely would not have, at least not until it finds its more comfortable home on Sunday afternoon cable.
Oh, and my nerd-core got me a new GONK.
Today, Rob and Jason and I drove out to Rye to meet Marisa at Playland. We went upside down a bunch of times and I only felt a little bit sick. Ice cream helped. It was a pretty awesome weekend and a nice chance to hang out with the boys before I hang out with them all again in a situation where there's another 75 or 80 people around who I also know. That's what's really blowing my mind about the wedding: that I am going to know everyone there. Other weddings, knowing twenty or thirty other attendees would be a lot. This will be more than that.
Before the weekend of movies where problems are solved through fighting and/or dance, I saw Eat Pray Love, in which problems are solved through being rich, so I could review it, and I tried to be relatively objective and open-minded, but the movie bored me (and Kate) into submission, and forced my hand. I'm not against lady movies (though I remain sort of against Julia Roberts movies). But as much as dudes deserve better than The Expendables, ladies deserve double-better than Eat Pray Love.
So my bachelor party was Saturday, but before that I cleansed my palate with more of a girls' afternoon out to see Step Up 3-D with Marisa, Maggie, Katie, Kate, and Allison. I hated the first Step Up, saw the second one because Marisa wanted to, and wound up really enjoying it. Step Up 3-D is more in the vein of the second one, although I'm not sure if it's as good. The dancing, to my recollection, is just as good if not better: director Jon M. Chu seems to have more affection for movie musicals than many actual movie musicals. There are plenty of big hip-hop numbers in Step Up 3-D made with music-video slickness -- although rarely as dice-cut as so many videos or video-inspired movies -- and enhanced by the enthusiastically gimmicky 3-D, but Chu really shines when he pauses for a self-conscious but gloriously retro two-kid dance number on New York streets, shot in what looks like a single unbroken take and a better number than appears in the entirety of Nine, Hairspray, Chicago, or Dreamgirls.
The story in Step Up 3 is a touch -- okay, several touches -- sillier than the second one, which felt a little more recognizable for taking place at an arts-oriented high school rather than an underground league of dance crews competing for a $100,000 purse of dubious origin. The new characters for the new love story component aren't as charismatic as they could be, and the sense of friendship isn't as palpable (though I did appreciate the encore of several Step Up 2 kids). But even when it's not running at maximum effectiveness, there's an innocence and sincerity to this series (or at least the sequels) that's really quite charming. It's skillfully executed formula.
Then we lost an Allison but gained a Sara and a Cossar and a just-in-town Rob for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, which resists formula all over the place. I've only read the first installment of Bryan Lee O'Malley's six-part graphic novel and don't remember much about it, but Edgar Wright's film version works with the tone and rhythm of a comic strip without alienating the audience that wants to see a cool, involving movie, not just a visually stunning book-on-screen a la Watchmen. I was a little afraid Scott Pilgrim would be all knockout visuals and nerd-culture references, but it takes its characters and story seriously -- even the humor is derived more from odd little gestures and asides and deadpan stuff than a barrage of guffaw-out-loud comedy a la The Other Guys. Michael Cera gets a lot of flack for playing the same part, but Scott Pilgrim really isn't much like George Michael Bluth or Evan from Superbad -- he's more coy and affected than those characters, manipulative in his way, and I would swear Cera even raises his voice to a slightly higher pitch to make Scott more insinuating and pleading than his other variations on the Cera persona (which, by the way, is a totally fine persona, exactly what a comic actor does, blah blah blah, I've mentioned this before). Though the fantastical elements are a delight, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is essentially a coming-of-age fractured-relationship movie, and a smart, satisfying one at that. It maybe goes on a little longer than it needs to, but it's too inventive to really wear out its welcome.
Over fifteen hours following Scott Pilgrim, out-of-towners joined me and Rob Brooklyn: Chris, then Jeff, then Derrick, until we had enough to go meet Jason and NYC residents Andrew, Jon, Michael, and Ben at Shake Shack.
The centerpiece of my bachelor weekend was a trip to see The Expendables. I don't actually have all that much love for eighties pop culture as an entity; there are certainly eighties touchstones I love (Back to the Future, Gremlins, Clue) but the simple eighties-ness of a movie will never be a particular attraction for me, which is part of the reason I am in no rush to see Top Gun or Dirty Dancing. What interested me in The Expendables was the re-re-teaming of Jason Statham and Jet Li, especially putting them on a mercenary team with a bunch of other brawling has-beens or never-wills. On a level of pure brawny ridiculousness, The Expendables does deliver. It's violent. It has a pleasing buzz of stupidity. Jason Statham beats up a bunch of guys. Guns are fired, knives are thrown. And shit blows up like whoa. I mean, you think you've seen enough shit blow up in a movie so that blowing shit up can't really do much for you anymore, and The Expendables does not make it matter the way it did when you were thirteen or fourteen, but its last half hour is such a relentless, massive, nigh-uninterrupted stream of explosions that I have to tip my hat to writer-director-producer-star Sylvester Stallone. You really went for it, buddy. You stuck Statham in a plane and blew up the coast of a small country, then you came back and blew up the remainder of it.
However, and I'm usually loathe to make this distinction: As not-bored and often quite amused as I was watching The Expendables, it's not really a good movie on the usual levels. Stallone co-wrote the screenplay, and you can hear it; the dialogue, which is supposed to be a chunky mix of macho banter and stupid exposition, often sounds, like it was translated from another language or, more likely, it was scribbled down with haste and never clarified with any kind of a rewrite. When characters in this movie talk, you have to kind of approximate what the wisecracks or exchanges are supposed to be; in Stallone's versions, the meaning comes across, but often makes no literal sense, or sounds like elementary school students. This is the work of an inarticulate man using his words.
Stallone is only marginally better as a director; he loves quick cuts and close-ups, neither of which are really necessary in a Jet Li or Jason Statham fight scene, and although the ensemble nature of this movie makes it more varied and enjoyable than that last Rambo picture and its monotonous rampaging, he still seems to prefer scenes of people getting killed over chases, fights, or break-ins -- you know, the stuff that makes action movies exciting beyond the realm of creative decapitations and massive explosions. Given that this is the type of movie Stallone apparently wants to make, you could see a worse version than The Expendables; that version looks like Rambo and has no Statham beating up a basketball team or rambling Mickey Rourke monologues or awkward Arnold/Bruce cameo scenes. As bad movies, The Expendables is a loud, brash, fun one, but imagine if it had been made by a talented filmmaker less prone to tripping over his own words and ideas. It would probably be a little more like what I hope Machete is going to be like. Oh, boy, do I hope Machete will be like that.
From there, we returned to Greenpoint and there was much talking of what was wrong with The Expendables and, secondarily, what was wrong with Ghost Rider, we got Thai food and ate cokies, and apparently Andrew beat a bunch of my Saratoga buddies at hearts, and we watched Robot Chicken: Star Wars and talked about the new Arcade Fire record a bit. Everyone was a pretty great sport about sleeping in my solidly two-person apartment in the case of the out-of-towners or getting home from Greenpoint after midnight in the case of the in-towners, or sitting through (and improving, with laughter) The Expendables, a movie several of us definitely would've seen anyway but others definitely would not have, at least not until it finds its more comfortable home on Sunday afternoon cable.
Oh, and my nerd-core got me a new GONK.
Today, Rob and Jason and I drove out to Rye to meet Marisa at Playland. We went upside down a bunch of times and I only felt a little bit sick. Ice cream helped. It was a pretty awesome weekend and a nice chance to hang out with the boys before I hang out with them all again in a situation where there's another 75 or 80 people around who I also know. That's what's really blowing my mind about the wedding: that I am going to know everyone there. Other weddings, knowing twenty or thirty other attendees would be a lot. This will be more than that.
Before the weekend of movies where problems are solved through fighting and/or dance, I saw Eat Pray Love, in which problems are solved through being rich, so I could review it, and I tried to be relatively objective and open-minded, but the movie bored me (and Kate) into submission, and forced my hand. I'm not against lady movies (though I remain sort of against Julia Roberts movies). But as much as dudes deserve better than The Expendables, ladies deserve double-better than Eat Pray Love.