Mini-review time!
Another collection of small updates, this time with three quick movie reviews. Er... almost. Our first one up is more like a preview, but the NYTimes link will go dead soon due to the whole "old content becomes premium," so no saving up for the cool-links edition.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/movies/09kenn.html
...the movie itself, "Drawing Restraint 9," which might best be described as a conceptual-nautical-ritual romance, or maybe a Shinto-shipboard-sculptural tryst.
The movie's two romantic leads are Bjork and Mr. Barney themselves, but their only love scene does not exactly hew to cinematic convention: they sit on the floor of a tearoom aboard a Japanese whaling vessel, and as the room begins to flood with a warm, viscous liquid, they brandish flensing knives and set to work on each other's legs, carving away consensually as dollops of blood resembling sperm float by.
Could this be the most pretentious movie ever? Not that that's a bad thing. I may have to actually check out the story of Europeans who become Japanese whalers and turn into "whalelike sea-creatures."
While at commencement last year, myself & a bunch of other Obies almost watched nezumifae's copy of Appleseed. It didn't quite work out, but I ended up having a chance to borrow it off of longdeadturkey. Now, I'd been warned before hand that the movie is pretty, yet dumb. After watching it, I can confirm that the result is... pretty dumb. The plot starts off a bit unsteady, but reasonable, then starts flying off the rails about halfway through... and not in a bizarre, crazy way, but more in a just plain dumb way. The pacing is off as well; we get answers to questions we only wanted to ask 5 seconds ago, rather than setting up much in the way of enduring mysteries or foreshadowing. Plus there are some just blatant loose ends.
However, the setting was flagrantly stolen from later, and used to much more interesting affect, so I can't hold too much against it. If you think of the movie as a 2004 graphics update to a 1980's plot, it's not so bad. Hurray for cyberpunk cities with cyborgs & artificial humans & insane berserkers outside the city!
I was set to go the Mets game on Saturday with my cousin, who was celebrating his birthday... except it got rained out. Dang, and after I just got a foot-long hot dog to wait out the rain at exorbitant stadium prices. So I ended up going back to Schnechtedy with him, my father, and my uncle, and randomly got to see The Man who Knew Too Little. I distinctly recall it getting a bad review; Roger Ebert gave it 1 star. However, after I saw the movie, I went and saw that James Berardenelli gave it 3 stars, and I'm more inclined to agree with Berardenelli as usual.
The basic plot for the movie is: Bill Murray's third-rate thespian thinks he's LARPing, but he's actually REALLY engaged in spy hijinks, not "The Theatre of Life" his brother paid for as entertainment. So he gets to swagger around the movie, Inspector Gadget style, with the plot & dialogue carefully concocted to insure double meanings for all sides involved ("You're sick! Are you enjoying this?!" "Yes, yes I am! I'm enjoying myself immensely!"). Personally, I found the idea pretty amusing. The main trick is actually lining the plot up so that it isn't utterly ridiculous that a person stupid enough could really believe that it was all theatre... which they actually do fairly well for the first half, which is the best part. Alas, things get a bit silly by the end of this movie as well, with more random "uh, because it happened!" things helping the illusion along, but oh well. Not nearly as bad as I thought it might be- my uncle seems to have a special ability to pick movies that look like they may suck that are actually good.
And lastly, the obligatory Wikipedia birthday meme. Lots of interesting stuff happened on August 1st. I mostly know of it due to the Swiss connection, what with my mother living in Switzerland for 9 years and all along with the fine Swiss taste in chocolate & cheese.
1291 - The Swiss Confederation is formed.
(darthhowie quoting The Third Man in three... two...)
1492 - Ferdinand and Isabella drive the Jews out of Spain.
1619 - First African slaves arrive in Jamestown, Virginia.
1774 - The element oxygen is discovered by Carl Wilhelm and Joseph Priestley.
1914 - Germany declares war on Russia at the opening of World War I.
1981 - First broadcasts by MTV. The first video played was "Video Killed The Radio Star" by the Buggles.
(This is MY birthday too. I'd liberally estimate I've watched maybe 1 hour total of MTV, ever- I saw the music video to "The Phantom Menace" there by chance when flipping channels.)
2005 - German spelling reform of 1996 is formally implemented
(Goodbye, Preßburg; Hello, Pressburg)
Births
1819 - Herman Melville, American writer (d. 1891)
(I've never read Moby Dick. I did hop straight to the end and get to the good part while in a bookstore once, getting the last 3 pages in.)
1932 - Meir Kahane, American orthodox rabbi and founder of the Jewish Defense League (d. 1990)
(a great suckmeister. Check out his website for the worst kind of supremacist drivel- "I'm part of the chosen people, you're not, so screw you & everyone else." At least his band hasn't been able to attract any webmasters who've escaped past 1998, though.)
Deaths
2005 - King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (b. 1923)
(Stupid House of Saud. Why couldn't the guys from Lawrence of Arabia like Prince Faisal have won?)
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/movies/09kenn.html
...the movie itself, "Drawing Restraint 9," which might best be described as a conceptual-nautical-ritual romance, or maybe a Shinto-shipboard-sculptural tryst.
The movie's two romantic leads are Bjork and Mr. Barney themselves, but their only love scene does not exactly hew to cinematic convention: they sit on the floor of a tearoom aboard a Japanese whaling vessel, and as the room begins to flood with a warm, viscous liquid, they brandish flensing knives and set to work on each other's legs, carving away consensually as dollops of blood resembling sperm float by.
Could this be the most pretentious movie ever? Not that that's a bad thing. I may have to actually check out the story of Europeans who become Japanese whalers and turn into "whalelike sea-creatures."
While at commencement last year, myself & a bunch of other Obies almost watched nezumifae's copy of Appleseed. It didn't quite work out, but I ended up having a chance to borrow it off of longdeadturkey. Now, I'd been warned before hand that the movie is pretty, yet dumb. After watching it, I can confirm that the result is... pretty dumb. The plot starts off a bit unsteady, but reasonable, then starts flying off the rails about halfway through... and not in a bizarre, crazy way, but more in a just plain dumb way. The pacing is off as well; we get answers to questions we only wanted to ask 5 seconds ago, rather than setting up much in the way of enduring mysteries or foreshadowing. Plus there are some just blatant loose ends.
However, the setting was flagrantly stolen from later, and used to much more interesting affect, so I can't hold too much against it. If you think of the movie as a 2004 graphics update to a 1980's plot, it's not so bad. Hurray for cyberpunk cities with cyborgs & artificial humans & insane berserkers outside the city!
I was set to go the Mets game on Saturday with my cousin, who was celebrating his birthday... except it got rained out. Dang, and after I just got a foot-long hot dog to wait out the rain at exorbitant stadium prices. So I ended up going back to Schnechtedy with him, my father, and my uncle, and randomly got to see The Man who Knew Too Little. I distinctly recall it getting a bad review; Roger Ebert gave it 1 star. However, after I saw the movie, I went and saw that James Berardenelli gave it 3 stars, and I'm more inclined to agree with Berardenelli as usual.
The basic plot for the movie is: Bill Murray's third-rate thespian thinks he's LARPing, but he's actually REALLY engaged in spy hijinks, not "The Theatre of Life" his brother paid for as entertainment. So he gets to swagger around the movie, Inspector Gadget style, with the plot & dialogue carefully concocted to insure double meanings for all sides involved ("You're sick! Are you enjoying this?!" "Yes, yes I am! I'm enjoying myself immensely!"). Personally, I found the idea pretty amusing. The main trick is actually lining the plot up so that it isn't utterly ridiculous that a person stupid enough could really believe that it was all theatre... which they actually do fairly well for the first half, which is the best part. Alas, things get a bit silly by the end of this movie as well, with more random "uh, because it happened!" things helping the illusion along, but oh well. Not nearly as bad as I thought it might be- my uncle seems to have a special ability to pick movies that look like they may suck that are actually good.
And lastly, the obligatory Wikipedia birthday meme. Lots of interesting stuff happened on August 1st. I mostly know of it due to the Swiss connection, what with my mother living in Switzerland for 9 years and all along with the fine Swiss taste in chocolate & cheese.
1291 - The Swiss Confederation is formed.
(darthhowie quoting The Third Man in three... two...)
1492 - Ferdinand and Isabella drive the Jews out of Spain.
1619 - First African slaves arrive in Jamestown, Virginia.
1774 - The element oxygen is discovered by Carl Wilhelm and Joseph Priestley.
1914 - Germany declares war on Russia at the opening of World War I.
1981 - First broadcasts by MTV. The first video played was "Video Killed The Radio Star" by the Buggles.
(This is MY birthday too. I'd liberally estimate I've watched maybe 1 hour total of MTV, ever- I saw the music video to "The Phantom Menace" there by chance when flipping channels.)
2005 - German spelling reform of 1996 is formally implemented
(Goodbye, Preßburg; Hello, Pressburg)
Births
1819 - Herman Melville, American writer (d. 1891)
(I've never read Moby Dick. I did hop straight to the end and get to the good part while in a bookstore once, getting the last 3 pages in.)
1932 - Meir Kahane, American orthodox rabbi and founder of the Jewish Defense League (d. 1990)
(a great suckmeister. Check out his website for the worst kind of supremacist drivel- "I'm part of the chosen people, you're not, so screw you & everyone else." At least his band hasn't been able to attract any webmasters who've escaped past 1998, though.)
Deaths
2005 - King Fahd of Saudi Arabia (b. 1923)
(Stupid House of Saud. Why couldn't the guys from Lawrence of Arabia like Prince Faisal have won?)