M-O-O-N, that spells ROAD HOUSE
Moon (2009), Duncan Jones. July 4, 4:45pm. View count: One.
Road House (1989), Rowdy Herrington. July 4, 9pm. View count: One.
Well! This is a ludicrous pair of movies.
Moon was pretty charming, really, and did a great job of making its effects work difficult to notice. I had a problem with the ending, though, which I will discuss . Lisa referred to it as unsatisfying, with which I agree. Here's the problem: Clone 2 (Healthy Clone) apparently makes it safely back to earth, and is able to bring the plight of the Sam-clones to the attention of the media. This is cute, but firstly, it's shown to the audience in a very short audio-only bit wherein a newscaster is heard saying something about the situation, and a talk-radio host taking a call from a listener who is hostile toward everyone involved. A very short segment, with no visuals, is the "he made it" wrap-up. Secondly, no time or attention is given to the three-year lifespan of the clones. So, okay, Healthy Clone vilifies the corporation, let's assume, on Oprah or something, but... Healthy Clone still has three years to live and a partial family which presumably it would be pretty weird to meet up with.
Had the movie cut out after the (so token) shot of Sick Clone's reverse angle on the capsule-on-its-way, I would have felt less marooned. The movie would have been up-front about the fact that its scope did not lie on earth, and one could only hope that things would work out for Healthy Clone. But having opened the door to the on-earth aftermath, it's not enough to just mention in passing that, hey, a goal was met! There's too much that goes unalluded-to.
It's so weird a choice that I think I may agree with the postulation put forth by JP (I think) that the audio-only wrap-up could have been tacked on by producers, as a sop to a focus group that complained about the lack of closure or some such thing.
I had some additional issues with the obvious callout of 2001 via various very, very referential shots, and then the subsequent decisions to stop quite short of 2001's... depth? I mean, it's clear what was meant was to say something like, "Okay, so, remember 2001? This is in a 2001-like setting, but it's not a cosmic film, it's a personal film. It's not an inhumanitarian AI, it's a very helpful AI." But, really, I don't think the comparisons thus invited did Moon any favors. (Maybe the Kevin-Spacey-bot, but that's really it.) Comparison to 2001 invites some pretty serious assumptions about scope and attentional requirements, neither of which really seemed to be warranted in Moon's case.
Lastly, I had a problem with the way Sick Clone was essentially written off by the script. By the time he decided to sacrifice himself, we were no longer expecting a heck of a lot out of him, and didn't really feel much when he was left out in the rover. The movie really let us stop caring about him too early. If he had died in bed, and his body had been put out after the fact, I don't think much would have changed emotionally; in fact, it might have meant a little more. But as JP brought up, he was kept alive so he could see the glint of the info-pod on its way back to earth, and approve silently of what his co-clone was doing, I guess. I wasn't into that. It felt cheap and non-meaningful.
So, the end was odd and honestly I'd been hoping for an "I want more life, fucker" moment, but, what are you going to do. The rest of the movie was quite well-done, and, honestly, casting Kevin Spacey as Mother/HAL is the best choice that can be made. Beautiful set and prop design throughout, great acting and makeup. Wasn't quite as smart as could have been hoped for, but it wasn't stupid, and I'm glad I saw it.
Road House, surprising no one, was the stupidest thing ever. We watched this in lieu of actual fireworks, and I think it was a good decision.
Patrick Swayze is a big-headed weirdo who is apparently some sort of super-bouncer at some bar, when a dude with two lines shows up and hires him away to be a bouncer at HIS bar, because his bar is needlessly rowdy and he is always "sweeping eyeballs off the floor" at the end of the night. Safety hazard, don'tcha know. So Patrick Swayze shows up, does a lot of pointless things, and somehow the bar gets nicer and nicer. But there is a bad man who owns the town, and he's a dick, and he sort of looks like a cut-rate mixture of Jonathan Pryce and Sam Neill. Patrick Swayze is also a Buddhist, according to the DVD box copy and nothing else, and he shows this by doing tai chi in a field while an old farmer with a beard blushingly wipes sweat off his head. And blah, blah blah.
It's all pretty awful, but if you have the right group of people, it can be respectably hilarious.
Road House (1989), Rowdy Herrington. July 4, 9pm. View count: One.
Well! This is a ludicrous pair of movies.
Moon was pretty charming, really, and did a great job of making its effects work difficult to notice. I had a problem with the ending, though, which I will discuss . Lisa referred to it as unsatisfying, with which I agree. Here's the problem: Clone 2 (Healthy Clone) apparently makes it safely back to earth, and is able to bring the plight of the Sam-clones to the attention of the media. This is cute, but firstly, it's shown to the audience in a very short audio-only bit wherein a newscaster is heard saying something about the situation, and a talk-radio host taking a call from a listener who is hostile toward everyone involved. A very short segment, with no visuals, is the "he made it" wrap-up. Secondly, no time or attention is given to the three-year lifespan of the clones. So, okay, Healthy Clone vilifies the corporation, let's assume, on Oprah or something, but... Healthy Clone still has three years to live and a partial family which presumably it would be pretty weird to meet up with.
Had the movie cut out after the (so token) shot of Sick Clone's reverse angle on the capsule-on-its-way, I would have felt less marooned. The movie would have been up-front about the fact that its scope did not lie on earth, and one could only hope that things would work out for Healthy Clone. But having opened the door to the on-earth aftermath, it's not enough to just mention in passing that, hey, a goal was met! There's too much that goes unalluded-to.
It's so weird a choice that I think I may agree with the postulation put forth by JP (I think) that the audio-only wrap-up could have been tacked on by producers, as a sop to a focus group that complained about the lack of closure or some such thing.
I had some additional issues with the obvious callout of 2001 via various very, very referential shots, and then the subsequent decisions to stop quite short of 2001's... depth? I mean, it's clear what was meant was to say something like, "Okay, so, remember 2001? This is in a 2001-like setting, but it's not a cosmic film, it's a personal film. It's not an inhumanitarian AI, it's a very helpful AI." But, really, I don't think the comparisons thus invited did Moon any favors. (Maybe the Kevin-Spacey-bot, but that's really it.) Comparison to 2001 invites some pretty serious assumptions about scope and attentional requirements, neither of which really seemed to be warranted in Moon's case.
Lastly, I had a problem with the way Sick Clone was essentially written off by the script. By the time he decided to sacrifice himself, we were no longer expecting a heck of a lot out of him, and didn't really feel much when he was left out in the rover. The movie really let us stop caring about him too early. If he had died in bed, and his body had been put out after the fact, I don't think much would have changed emotionally; in fact, it might have meant a little more. But as JP brought up, he was kept alive so he could see the glint of the info-pod on its way back to earth, and approve silently of what his co-clone was doing, I guess. I wasn't into that. It felt cheap and non-meaningful.
So, the end was odd and honestly I'd been hoping for an "I want more life, fucker" moment, but, what are you going to do. The rest of the movie was quite well-done, and, honestly, casting Kevin Spacey as Mother/HAL is the best choice that can be made. Beautiful set and prop design throughout, great acting and makeup. Wasn't quite as smart as could have been hoped for, but it wasn't stupid, and I'm glad I saw it.
Road House, surprising no one, was the stupidest thing ever. We watched this in lieu of actual fireworks, and I think it was a good decision.
Patrick Swayze is a big-headed weirdo who is apparently some sort of super-bouncer at some bar, when a dude with two lines shows up and hires him away to be a bouncer at HIS bar, because his bar is needlessly rowdy and he is always "sweeping eyeballs off the floor" at the end of the night. Safety hazard, don'tcha know. So Patrick Swayze shows up, does a lot of pointless things, and somehow the bar gets nicer and nicer. But there is a bad man who owns the town, and he's a dick, and he sort of looks like a cut-rate mixture of Jonathan Pryce and Sam Neill. Patrick Swayze is also a Buddhist, according to the DVD box copy and nothing else, and he shows this by doing tai chi in a field while an old farmer with a beard blushingly wipes sweat off his head. And blah, blah blah.
It's all pretty awful, but if you have the right group of people, it can be respectably hilarious.