who let celine out?
So, it's pretty much my bedtime (9pm, baby! I'm a bit of a party animal), but I just wanted to electronically scribble down unas cosas, lest I forget later.
Firstly, I finally got around to seeing I Am Legend, and I'm... mixed. Severely. I'm exactly 2/3 in love and exactly 1/3 in hate. I'm no John Nash, but I figure some of that love and hate can cancel itself out into apathy, which still leaves about 1/3 of love... so I suppose I can state for the record that I did, actually, enjoy the movie. END OF MATH TIME!
Quite honestly, though, I would recommend that anybody wanting to watch this movie leave the cinema after the first hour and ten minutes (or at least mentally detach the last half-hour from the rest of the film). It felt to me as if I had been on a super-fun road trip for a good long while, when suddenly the driver goes insane and drives the car off a cliff. I felt angry and betrayed!
First of all, if you read and enjoyed the novel, be prepared to stab your eye out with a freakin' fork. The entire point of the plot build-up and the meaning of the title itself ("I Am Legend") revolved around a clever twist in the book's story - that some of the infected/vampiric/zombirrific creatures were still sentient and had formed their own society, and that Neville himself had become the 'monster' legend because he went around murdering them in their sleep. What the HELL is up with this bullshit about Vermont, and the chick with the kid, and fucking everything that took place after Samantha's(the dog's) death?
Incidentally, Old Yeller's got nothing on that shit. Seriously. This is not a good movie if animal deaths distress you terribly! I had to pause the movie to do a quick Google search on what was going to happen to the dog, just so I was prepared.
Second point - shitty CGI zombies. What the hell?! I could live with the shitty CGI deer, although I really don't understand the appeal (The Ring 2, anyone?), but I think that films like 28 Days/Weeks Later have proven that using actual human actors to portray dehumanized monster-people raises the creepy factor exponentially. The zombies are much more frightening when they're not actually on screen.
The movie itself is beautifully shot and directed (CGI aside), and I'm actually very impressed with Will Smith's presentation in this one. I realize that the nature of the movie generally sets him up for a one-man band performance, but that has to be tough to pull off. I enjoyed him as the character.
The movie's treatment of the story is half-hearted, as if it's afraid to commit. They set everything up beautifully and sleekly contemporized the whole premise of the disease, but in the end they failed to follow through with an explanation of the whys and hows (the allergy to sunlight, the reasons for certain 'human'-like behaviours), and these are abandoned like dangling plot threads when the movie crash-lands into an explosive (and cop-out) ending. It's like they were creating this amazing movie that would be true to the book, but right after the dog's death they did a focus group and realized that nobody is interested in philosophical conundra, all they want to see are fucking zombies and explosions and shitty CGI bullshit.
I think I'm mainly upset because this movie was so close to being the story I wanted to see rendered on the big screen, but it went askew so suddenly and so weirdly that I felt betrayed! I do recommend it, though, because what the movie does do right, it does incredibly. It's also very creepy and I thought I was going to be sick the entire time. (If you know what I'm like, that's high praise! I feel physically sick whenever a movie is very exciting or suspenseful!)
That is all! For now...
I was slightly bummed out that the Writer's Strike hit right when I actually have time to watch primetime television again, until.... AMERICAN GLADIATORS! TV at its finest. This was reality TV before reality TV even existed. I was obsessed with it when I was a kid, oddly. Well, I was into the British version of Gladiators, but it doesn't matter - different country, same general silliness.
And finally, from fourfour, I am completely bowled over by this compilation of Celine Dion weirdness! Words cannot define how much love for her I suddenly evolved based entirely on the following video:
CAN'T STOP WATCHING!
Firstly, I finally got around to seeing I Am Legend, and I'm... mixed. Severely. I'm exactly 2/3 in love and exactly 1/3 in hate. I'm no John Nash, but I figure some of that love and hate can cancel itself out into apathy, which still leaves about 1/3 of love... so I suppose I can state for the record that I did, actually, enjoy the movie. END OF MATH TIME!
Quite honestly, though, I would recommend that anybody wanting to watch this movie leave the cinema after the first hour and ten minutes (or at least mentally detach the last half-hour from the rest of the film). It felt to me as if I had been on a super-fun road trip for a good long while, when suddenly the driver goes insane and drives the car off a cliff. I felt angry and betrayed!
First of all, if you read and enjoyed the novel, be prepared to stab your eye out with a freakin' fork. The entire point of the plot build-up and the meaning of the title itself ("I Am Legend") revolved around a clever twist in the book's story - that some of the infected/vampiric/zombirrific creatures were still sentient and had formed their own society, and that Neville himself had become the 'monster' legend because he went around murdering them in their sleep. What the HELL is up with this bullshit about Vermont, and the chick with the kid, and fucking everything that took place after Samantha's(the dog's) death?
Incidentally, Old Yeller's got nothing on that shit. Seriously. This is not a good movie if animal deaths distress you terribly! I had to pause the movie to do a quick Google search on what was going to happen to the dog, just so I was prepared.
Second point - shitty CGI zombies. What the hell?! I could live with the shitty CGI deer, although I really don't understand the appeal (The Ring 2, anyone?), but I think that films like 28 Days/Weeks Later have proven that using actual human actors to portray dehumanized monster-people raises the creepy factor exponentially. The zombies are much more frightening when they're not actually on screen.
The movie itself is beautifully shot and directed (CGI aside), and I'm actually very impressed with Will Smith's presentation in this one. I realize that the nature of the movie generally sets him up for a one-man band performance, but that has to be tough to pull off. I enjoyed him as the character.
The movie's treatment of the story is half-hearted, as if it's afraid to commit. They set everything up beautifully and sleekly contemporized the whole premise of the disease, but in the end they failed to follow through with an explanation of the whys and hows (the allergy to sunlight, the reasons for certain 'human'-like behaviours), and these are abandoned like dangling plot threads when the movie crash-lands into an explosive (and cop-out) ending. It's like they were creating this amazing movie that would be true to the book, but right after the dog's death they did a focus group and realized that nobody is interested in philosophical conundra, all they want to see are fucking zombies and explosions and shitty CGI bullshit.
I think I'm mainly upset because this movie was so close to being the story I wanted to see rendered on the big screen, but it went askew so suddenly and so weirdly that I felt betrayed! I do recommend it, though, because what the movie does do right, it does incredibly. It's also very creepy and I thought I was going to be sick the entire time. (If you know what I'm like, that's high praise! I feel physically sick whenever a movie is very exciting or suspenseful!)
That is all! For now...
I was slightly bummed out that the Writer's Strike hit right when I actually have time to watch primetime television again, until.... AMERICAN GLADIATORS! TV at its finest. This was reality TV before reality TV even existed. I was obsessed with it when I was a kid, oddly. Well, I was into the British version of Gladiators, but it doesn't matter - different country, same general silliness.
And finally, from fourfour, I am completely bowled over by this compilation of Celine Dion weirdness! Words cannot define how much love for her I suddenly evolved based entirely on the following video:
Click to viewCAN'T STOP WATCHING!