30 Day Movie Challenge - Day 30 \o/
I DID IT. Or, more precisely, I'm about to finish a meme! WOoooooOOT.
Day 30 - Your least favorite movie
Wow. How do I even begin to answer this one? There is a veritable landslide of movies that I've watched that, at the time, were the worst movies I'd ever seen. The Hulk. Swordfish. The Wicker Man remake with Nicholas Cage. The Crow: Wicked Prayer. Then there are the movies that ruined perfectly good franchises--Spider-Man 3, X-Men 3, the Star Wars prequels (Luuuuuucassssssss!!!!).Any number of Z-movies that masquerade on Netflix as possibly real movies but are always shot-on-my-mom's-old-camcorder movies. (ZA: Zombies Anonymous, I am looking at you, goddamnit.) Sci-Fi Channel Original movies. (C. Thomas Howeeeeeeeeelllllllll ::HISSES::) Catwoman. For the love of god, Catwoman.
How to choose? I guess I gotta go with a classic.
This might not technically count as a movie. I'm fucking counting it. Want to know why?
I saw this. And I have no memory of it.
I can tell you the plot of a romantic thriller movie I taped off of the goddamned Lifetime network in the 1990s, and I could probably still identify the stars if they showed up in anything else. I've won more games of "Spot the obscure character actor" bingo with myself than most of my friends have ever even played. All those bad movies I listed above? I can name every plot detail, acting quirk, direction mishap, costuming error, or action scene that ever went wrong in them.
So, how bad was The Star Wars Holiday Special? It was so bad I have no memory of it. We watched it in CUSFS. I was dead sober because a) I was underage and b) I didn't tend to go to meetings drunk even when I was legal. I watched this movie. Intently. Until I reached high school, Star Wars was, like, my sole outlet for space stuff. I had the Dune books to read, but these were the movies of my life. So you tell me there's a holiday special and you tell it's bad? So fucking what? Is it Star Wars? Then I'm going to watch it.
I just never remembered it. We watched the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special that night, too. Orko fucked things up somehow. I remember She-Ra kicking ass--mostly because there was a call to rewind the segment where she did so to see if she was wearing panties when she kicked people. (She was.) No memory of The Star Wars Holiday Special. People tell me about this "Life Day" and little wookiees. And Carrie Fisher being coked out to the gills. Never happened. It's got to be my least favorite because my brain erased it from my memory.
Previous entries:
Day 01
Day 02
Day 03 - 06
Day 07
Day 08
Day 09
Day 10
Day 11-13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17-19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23-26
Day 27
Day 28
Day 29
Finished! Woo hoo! Not finished with talking about movies, o'course, just with this meme. Speaking of movies, it looks like I have to revise my expectations of what is or is not over-hyped, specifically as regards Oscar-nominated movies this year. I went to see True Grit and The King's Speech after hearing nothing but rave reviews. I could see, through the hype, how they might be good; I just wasn't sure until I'd seen them how good they would actually be. Turned out to be very. Turned out they were worthy of the hype.
That left only one movie of three that have been practically canonized this year to watch: The Social Network. I have as much interest in Facebook as you might expect, being the only one I know without one under the age of 40. (Even quite a few of the people I know over 40 have them.) I was utterly uninterested in this movie and completely incredulous as to the adulation it received. I watched it last night with the most skeptical of attitudes, prepared to be both bored and underwhelmed.
The Social Network was...really good. Really, really good. I think 80% of the credit must go to the script. Aaron Sorkin's way with words cannot be overstated. It took some great performances to bring those words to their most vituperative life, and I have to give Jesse Eisenberg (yes, bootleg Michael Cera) a ton of credit for bringing Zuckerberg off the page in all his scowling, smart-and-sharp glory, but that performance could not have existed without the words. One scene, in particular, though, showed off both writer and performer to their utmost.
Eisenberg has been, in other movies I've seen, something of a fast-talking mumbler. It means that he's got a facility with quick-paced, spit-fire readings like this one. Which makes this dialogue, which would be wooden in someone prone to pausing, absolutely sing in his delivery. I was flabbergasted. This is the epitome of what I did not expect from this movie: chilling performances and dynamite story. The soundtrack, which I didn't know Trent Reznor was behind until he won an award for it, was fantastic, too. It suited the mood perfectly, without any ostentatious flourishes that would distract from the story itself.
Speaking of telling stories, I find the whole misrepresentation of reality issue funny because I never once thought I was watching a biopic, not even one of the usually slavish, frequently glossed-over variety Hollywood churns out regularly. The movie plays very much as a fictionalized world that merely resembles our own. Perhaps because the world before Facebook--before the ubiquity of social media in every corner of our lives--seems so very fictional? For as much as The Social Network hit its marks as a drama (the requisite highs, lows, redemption, villains and heroes being very much in place), it felt much fairer to the people in it than movies based on real life often manage. And still I would never confuse it with reality.
I'm quite pleased to be proven wrong in this case. I also will now have expectations of Andrew Garfield, who made something of a character that might otherwise fade into the background as the put-upon guy. It will be interesting to see what he does with Peter Parker in another year.
Day 30 - Your least favorite movie
Wow. How do I even begin to answer this one? There is a veritable landslide of movies that I've watched that, at the time, were the worst movies I'd ever seen. The Hulk. Swordfish. The Wicker Man remake with Nicholas Cage. The Crow: Wicked Prayer. Then there are the movies that ruined perfectly good franchises--Spider-Man 3, X-Men 3, the Star Wars prequels (Luuuuuucassssssss!!!!).Any number of Z-movies that masquerade on Netflix as possibly real movies but are always shot-on-my-mom's-old-camcorder movies. (ZA: Zombies Anonymous, I am looking at you, goddamnit.) Sci-Fi Channel Original movies. (C. Thomas Howeeeeeeeeelllllllll ::HISSES::) Catwoman. For the love of god, Catwoman.
How to choose? I guess I gotta go with a classic.
This might not technically count as a movie. I'm fucking counting it. Want to know why?
I saw this. And I have no memory of it.
I can tell you the plot of a romantic thriller movie I taped off of the goddamned Lifetime network in the 1990s, and I could probably still identify the stars if they showed up in anything else. I've won more games of "Spot the obscure character actor" bingo with myself than most of my friends have ever even played. All those bad movies I listed above? I can name every plot detail, acting quirk, direction mishap, costuming error, or action scene that ever went wrong in them.
So, how bad was The Star Wars Holiday Special? It was so bad I have no memory of it. We watched it in CUSFS. I was dead sober because a) I was underage and b) I didn't tend to go to meetings drunk even when I was legal. I watched this movie. Intently. Until I reached high school, Star Wars was, like, my sole outlet for space stuff. I had the Dune books to read, but these were the movies of my life. So you tell me there's a holiday special and you tell it's bad? So fucking what? Is it Star Wars? Then I'm going to watch it.
I just never remembered it. We watched the He-Man and She-Ra Christmas Special that night, too. Orko fucked things up somehow. I remember She-Ra kicking ass--mostly because there was a call to rewind the segment where she did so to see if she was wearing panties when she kicked people. (She was.) No memory of The Star Wars Holiday Special. People tell me about this "Life Day" and little wookiees. And Carrie Fisher being coked out to the gills. Never happened. It's got to be my least favorite because my brain erased it from my memory.
Previous entries:
Day 01
Day 02
Day 03 - 06
Day 07
Day 08
Day 09
Day 10
Day 11-13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17-19
Day 20
Day 21
Day 22
Day 23-26
Day 27
Day 28
Day 29
Finished! Woo hoo! Not finished with talking about movies, o'course, just with this meme. Speaking of movies, it looks like I have to revise my expectations of what is or is not over-hyped, specifically as regards Oscar-nominated movies this year. I went to see True Grit and The King's Speech after hearing nothing but rave reviews. I could see, through the hype, how they might be good; I just wasn't sure until I'd seen them how good they would actually be. Turned out to be very. Turned out they were worthy of the hype.
That left only one movie of three that have been practically canonized this year to watch: The Social Network. I have as much interest in Facebook as you might expect, being the only one I know without one under the age of 40. (Even quite a few of the people I know over 40 have them.) I was utterly uninterested in this movie and completely incredulous as to the adulation it received. I watched it last night with the most skeptical of attitudes, prepared to be both bored and underwhelmed.
The Social Network was...really good. Really, really good. I think 80% of the credit must go to the script. Aaron Sorkin's way with words cannot be overstated. It took some great performances to bring those words to their most vituperative life, and I have to give Jesse Eisenberg (yes, bootleg Michael Cera) a ton of credit for bringing Zuckerberg off the page in all his scowling, smart-and-sharp glory, but that performance could not have existed without the words. One scene, in particular, though, showed off both writer and performer to their utmost.
Click to viewEisenberg has been, in other movies I've seen, something of a fast-talking mumbler. It means that he's got a facility with quick-paced, spit-fire readings like this one. Which makes this dialogue, which would be wooden in someone prone to pausing, absolutely sing in his delivery. I was flabbergasted. This is the epitome of what I did not expect from this movie: chilling performances and dynamite story. The soundtrack, which I didn't know Trent Reznor was behind until he won an award for it, was fantastic, too. It suited the mood perfectly, without any ostentatious flourishes that would distract from the story itself.
Speaking of telling stories, I find the whole misrepresentation of reality issue funny because I never once thought I was watching a biopic, not even one of the usually slavish, frequently glossed-over variety Hollywood churns out regularly. The movie plays very much as a fictionalized world that merely resembles our own. Perhaps because the world before Facebook--before the ubiquity of social media in every corner of our lives--seems so very fictional? For as much as The Social Network hit its marks as a drama (the requisite highs, lows, redemption, villains and heroes being very much in place), it felt much fairer to the people in it than movies based on real life often manage. And still I would never confuse it with reality.
I'm quite pleased to be proven wrong in this case. I also will now have expectations of Andrew Garfield, who made something of a character that might otherwise fade into the background as the put-upon guy. It will be interesting to see what he does with Peter Parker in another year.