Everything burns. Including one's bridges...
I was under the impression that some people in this city had jobs. So I was surprised to arrive at the theater yesterday morning to a *line* - an actual LINE! - at the ticket booth. I mean, this is the kind of town where you decide to go to a movie ten minutes before it starts, take those ten minutes driving to the theater and still have your pick of the seats. Sometimes you even have the theater all to yourself.
I wasn't going to rush to see The Dark Knight, but my German teacher happened to mention that her daughter had already been the night before. And I had my Batman cup with me. And it was Friday. So in the end I left for the movies as soon as class got out, stopping only to tank up my Juice Purse. I was planning to see the first show that day, and for the first time in recent memory, I made a point of arriving twenty minutes early. Only to find a twenty minute line. I wasn't worried about missing the first few minutes, but I was slightly put off by the idea of fishing out my cup-wrapped-in-plastic-bag-hidden-in-purse in the middle of an especially dense crowd. So after a little bit of quick math at the head of the line, I solved the problem by doing two things for which my friend Liz would probably make fun of me: 1) Taking actual steps to avoid getting caught with Contraband Juice, and 2) Buying tickets for two consecutive movies instead of sneaking from one theater to the other.
Thus, a Double Feature! (No spoilers to speak of):
Mamma Mia!
I had no previous familiarity with Mamma Mia and very little familiarity with ABBA. (I know the classics and the songs that turn up in Muriel's Wedding, and that's about it). So I was pleasantly surprised by the movie's heady and utterly unapologetic silliness, perhaps especially because the focus of the story remained on the middle-aged characters, and there was something really sweet about watching the likes of Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, and Pierce Brosnan act like lovelorn adolescent loons. (Am I already so old that stories of regret, longing, and lost love hit me that much harder than stories about hope for future happiness???) Meryl Streep has always been a lady with an elegant appearance, but I have never seen her look so beautiful. Still, the antics did get a little tiresome at times. Meryl Streep and her *pointedly* Awesome Lifelong Girl-Power Back-up Singer Best Friends probably exchanged two or three too many 'OMG Everything We Say Is HI-larious!!!' looks to be tolerated. And while most of the songs were cute, energetic, hummable - sometimes even poignant - others were belabored and grating. (Maybe those are the songs the stage musical uses to distract you while the main characters change clothes or something). Colin Firth and Meryl Streep both turned out to have surprisingly lovely voices. (Though I shouldn't have been so surprised about MS when I've already seen 'Prairie Home Companion'). Pierce Brosnan's voice was... weird. Really weird. But they went right on ahead and let him sing anyway. He was very good in every other way, however, and I loved the interactions between all three Potential Fathers and the maybe-daughter they had never got to know.
I had to cut out the very second the end credits started to roll, even though there was a musical number over the titles, but that just meant I got to exit doing my ha-cha-cha strutwalk to Dancing Queen - with no one around to see me! ;o9
The Dark Knight
Two and a half hours of suspense at this intensity is no laughing matter! Dark Knight was a truly excellent film, but I think it's also a film that I'll grow to enjoy more on repeat viewings - when I don't have to be quite so keyed up about what's *going to* happen and can think about the individual parts as they come. Ebert described the movie as a game-changer with respect to the whole comic-book-movie genre and a transcending of its roots. It certainly sets a high standard for the quality of story, dialog, and conflict that can be elicited from a comic as source material. But, for my part, I would rather say that it *achieves* what the best of the comics have done. All that stuff - all that alleged profundity espoused by the Joker, for example - is there to be had in the books, in one form or another. (The strongest single influence I can detect being Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Long Halloween, Dark Victory, and... that other compilation from their series that I can never remember the name of - from which some Batman Begins dialog was actually lifted directly).
It was pretty cool just to see a movie where Breakneck Ethical Dilemmas keep pace with Breakneck Action Set Pieces. I don't want to give a false impression that the movie's ethical thought is deeper than it actually is, but it certainly keeps the ethical in view at all times, rather than putting it to the side when it's time to break out the guns and the throwing stars and the tank-mobiles. And the characters' decisions in the context of those dilemmas will sometimes surprise you.
I've heard much praise of Heath Ledger's Joker and it seems well-deserved; he was unrecognizable and new and frighteningly familiar, all at once. Still, for me, these movies are all about three people: Alfred, Lucius Fox, Jim Gordon. The guy behind me in line was talking to the guy in front of me while we were waiting; he had his twelve or thirteen year old kid with him.* He said he was looking forward to the movie, because he'd heard it was going to be 'way more sadistic.' That's just not me. I fail to find anything really gripping in sadism - other than the bafflement I run up against trying to imagine inhabiting a mind that enjoys doing harm for harm's sake. I'm not saying we don't learn anything from having to take a good long look at that kind of evil; what I am saying is that my eye is continually drawn away to what, for me, is a matter of greater interest: what does it mean to be a good man working alongside someone whose methods, whose position with respect to the law and to justice itself, must remain suspect for the good of the people, for the good of your conscience, even for the good of that someone? Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman were all quite predictably superb. And although it may sound like a back-handed compliment at best, Christian Bale succeeded once again at the unlikely task of making me forget for two and a half hours time that he is Nothing At All like the Bruce Wayne in my head.
I know that I'm probably in the minority on this one and have heard that neither Christopher Nolan nor Christian Bale will touch the idea with a ten foot pole, but if the series continues, I'd love to see Dick Grayson introduced. Okay, okay, that's partly cuz he's my favorite, but mostly because after the fascination of seeing Bruce Wayne endanger or sever his ties, it would be a thrill to see him put through all the risks and travails of building some instead.
*In addition to the twelve or thirteen year old kid, I definitely saw at least four children between the ages of two and eight. Honestly, who brings a six year old to a movie where a clown is maiming people, up close and personal-like, with a knife??? Even I covered my eyes a couple of times!!!
In other news, one minute and... HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANGELA!!! I'm glad you were born.
I wasn't going to rush to see The Dark Knight, but my German teacher happened to mention that her daughter had already been the night before. And I had my Batman cup with me. And it was Friday. So in the end I left for the movies as soon as class got out, stopping only to tank up my Juice Purse. I was planning to see the first show that day, and for the first time in recent memory, I made a point of arriving twenty minutes early. Only to find a twenty minute line. I wasn't worried about missing the first few minutes, but I was slightly put off by the idea of fishing out my cup-wrapped-in-plastic-bag-hidden-in-purse in the middle of an especially dense crowd. So after a little bit of quick math at the head of the line, I solved the problem by doing two things for which my friend Liz would probably make fun of me: 1) Taking actual steps to avoid getting caught with Contraband Juice, and 2) Buying tickets for two consecutive movies instead of sneaking from one theater to the other.
Thus, a Double Feature! (No spoilers to speak of):
Mamma Mia!
I had no previous familiarity with Mamma Mia and very little familiarity with ABBA. (I know the classics and the songs that turn up in Muriel's Wedding, and that's about it). So I was pleasantly surprised by the movie's heady and utterly unapologetic silliness, perhaps especially because the focus of the story remained on the middle-aged characters, and there was something really sweet about watching the likes of Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, and Pierce Brosnan act like lovelorn adolescent loons. (Am I already so old that stories of regret, longing, and lost love hit me that much harder than stories about hope for future happiness???) Meryl Streep has always been a lady with an elegant appearance, but I have never seen her look so beautiful. Still, the antics did get a little tiresome at times. Meryl Streep and her *pointedly* Awesome Lifelong Girl-Power Back-up Singer Best Friends probably exchanged two or three too many 'OMG Everything We Say Is HI-larious!!!' looks to be tolerated. And while most of the songs were cute, energetic, hummable - sometimes even poignant - others were belabored and grating. (Maybe those are the songs the stage musical uses to distract you while the main characters change clothes or something). Colin Firth and Meryl Streep both turned out to have surprisingly lovely voices. (Though I shouldn't have been so surprised about MS when I've already seen 'Prairie Home Companion'). Pierce Brosnan's voice was... weird. Really weird. But they went right on ahead and let him sing anyway. He was very good in every other way, however, and I loved the interactions between all three Potential Fathers and the maybe-daughter they had never got to know.
I had to cut out the very second the end credits started to roll, even though there was a musical number over the titles, but that just meant I got to exit doing my ha-cha-cha strutwalk to Dancing Queen - with no one around to see me! ;o9
The Dark Knight
Two and a half hours of suspense at this intensity is no laughing matter! Dark Knight was a truly excellent film, but I think it's also a film that I'll grow to enjoy more on repeat viewings - when I don't have to be quite so keyed up about what's *going to* happen and can think about the individual parts as they come. Ebert described the movie as a game-changer with respect to the whole comic-book-movie genre and a transcending of its roots. It certainly sets a high standard for the quality of story, dialog, and conflict that can be elicited from a comic as source material. But, for my part, I would rather say that it *achieves* what the best of the comics have done. All that stuff - all that alleged profundity espoused by the Joker, for example - is there to be had in the books, in one form or another. (The strongest single influence I can detect being Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's Long Halloween, Dark Victory, and... that other compilation from their series that I can never remember the name of - from which some Batman Begins dialog was actually lifted directly).
It was pretty cool just to see a movie where Breakneck Ethical Dilemmas keep pace with Breakneck Action Set Pieces. I don't want to give a false impression that the movie's ethical thought is deeper than it actually is, but it certainly keeps the ethical in view at all times, rather than putting it to the side when it's time to break out the guns and the throwing stars and the tank-mobiles. And the characters' decisions in the context of those dilemmas will sometimes surprise you.
I've heard much praise of Heath Ledger's Joker and it seems well-deserved; he was unrecognizable and new and frighteningly familiar, all at once. Still, for me, these movies are all about three people: Alfred, Lucius Fox, Jim Gordon. The guy behind me in line was talking to the guy in front of me while we were waiting; he had his twelve or thirteen year old kid with him.* He said he was looking forward to the movie, because he'd heard it was going to be 'way more sadistic.' That's just not me. I fail to find anything really gripping in sadism - other than the bafflement I run up against trying to imagine inhabiting a mind that enjoys doing harm for harm's sake. I'm not saying we don't learn anything from having to take a good long look at that kind of evil; what I am saying is that my eye is continually drawn away to what, for me, is a matter of greater interest: what does it mean to be a good man working alongside someone whose methods, whose position with respect to the law and to justice itself, must remain suspect for the good of the people, for the good of your conscience, even for the good of that someone? Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, and Gary Oldman were all quite predictably superb. And although it may sound like a back-handed compliment at best, Christian Bale succeeded once again at the unlikely task of making me forget for two and a half hours time that he is Nothing At All like the Bruce Wayne in my head.
I know that I'm probably in the minority on this one and have heard that neither Christopher Nolan nor Christian Bale will touch the idea with a ten foot pole, but if the series continues, I'd love to see Dick Grayson introduced. Okay, okay, that's partly cuz he's my favorite, but mostly because after the fascination of seeing Bruce Wayne endanger or sever his ties, it would be a thrill to see him put through all the risks and travails of building some instead.
*In addition to the twelve or thirteen year old kid, I definitely saw at least four children between the ages of two and eight. Honestly, who brings a six year old to a movie where a clown is maiming people, up close and personal-like, with a knife??? Even I covered my eyes a couple of times!!!
In other news, one minute and... HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANGELA!!! I'm glad you were born.