and now, movies
In less sober Memorial Day news...
- My family enjoys watching some of the Memorial Day movie marathons put on by AMC and TCM and other such stations. So when I got to the parental homestead yesterday with my laundry, I walked in to see some German soldiers on screen in tight quarters, speaking German with no subtitles. Mom look up at me expectantly and asks if I recognize it. So I said, "The Guns of Navarone?" And Mom busts up laughing and looks at Dad in the kitchen and says, "All those years of Memorial Day movie marathons paid off have ruined them!" Seriously, I was actually thinking it was a submarine movie until the scene cut to an interior of an elevator cut into rock. [ETA: Mom tells me I remembered her comment incorrectly! ;)]
- We watched Bill Maher's Religulous, which was both funny and depressing. I don't really have a lot to say about it; I thought he was often correct, often funny, and often confrontational. He found some great folks to talk to, and featured some crazy crazy clips. It was both educational and adversarial. I'm glad I watched it, but I don't know if I would watch it again.
- We watched Avatar together. It was actually really disappointing, after all the crazy build-up. Mom's verdict, as the credits rolled: "Titanic was better." The parts with the exploration of Pandora were really nice, but there was too much violence and too many explosions for us to see the appeal. I found the Na'vi to be both derivative and mildly offensive as a culture; they seemed pasted together from various indigenous Earth cultures with no real exploration of the implications of a semi-sentient planet, or the symbiosis of the ecosystem. The other characters were two-dimensional and criminally stupid to boot, and the entire story revolved around a conflict blatantly and transparently manufactured by one of those 2-D characters, the warmongering asshole military commander. It felt like an attempt to combine allegory and adventure movie that fell flat on multiple levels. I thought the best part of the whole thing was actually the way the tree roots lit up when they were walked upon.
- Winding up the evening we watched Operation Petticoat. It's a hilarious comedy classic starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis on a submarine in the Pacific. The sub is in a constant state of disrepair, breaking down and needing parts. Over the course of the movie, through various hilarious machinations of con-man Curtis and twists that confound commanding officer Grant as they try to get things into working order and into the combat zone, the sub ends up painted pink, hosting five Army nurses and a passel of civilians, and seeing some action from both sides of the conflict. It's a real hoot, one in which every other line is a subtle (or blatant) innuendo, and the whole thing increases in hilarity if you add "in my pants" to the dialogue. Most hilarious family moment: in the interior of the ship one of the nurses has fixed part of the sub's machinery with an item of clothing that stretches from several snaps. I had to look over at Mom and ask, "Ok, what is that?" and she laughed and told me it was a girdle, and how nice must it be to live in a year when I don't recognize one.
This entry was originally posted at http://zephre.dreamwidth.org/447066.html.
comments posted to original post.
- My family enjoys watching some of the Memorial Day movie marathons put on by AMC and TCM and other such stations. So when I got to the parental homestead yesterday with my laundry, I walked in to see some German soldiers on screen in tight quarters, speaking German with no subtitles. Mom look up at me expectantly and asks if I recognize it. So I said, "The Guns of Navarone?" And Mom busts up laughing and looks at Dad in the kitchen and says, "All those years of Memorial Day movie marathons paid off have ruined them!" Seriously, I was actually thinking it was a submarine movie until the scene cut to an interior of an elevator cut into rock. [ETA: Mom tells me I remembered her comment incorrectly! ;)]
- We watched Bill Maher's Religulous, which was both funny and depressing. I don't really have a lot to say about it; I thought he was often correct, often funny, and often confrontational. He found some great folks to talk to, and featured some crazy crazy clips. It was both educational and adversarial. I'm glad I watched it, but I don't know if I would watch it again.
- We watched Avatar together. It was actually really disappointing, after all the crazy build-up. Mom's verdict, as the credits rolled: "Titanic was better." The parts with the exploration of Pandora were really nice, but there was too much violence and too many explosions for us to see the appeal. I found the Na'vi to be both derivative and mildly offensive as a culture; they seemed pasted together from various indigenous Earth cultures with no real exploration of the implications of a semi-sentient planet, or the symbiosis of the ecosystem. The other characters were two-dimensional and criminally stupid to boot, and the entire story revolved around a conflict blatantly and transparently manufactured by one of those 2-D characters, the warmongering asshole military commander. It felt like an attempt to combine allegory and adventure movie that fell flat on multiple levels. I thought the best part of the whole thing was actually the way the tree roots lit up when they were walked upon.
- Winding up the evening we watched Operation Petticoat. It's a hilarious comedy classic starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis on a submarine in the Pacific. The sub is in a constant state of disrepair, breaking down and needing parts. Over the course of the movie, through various hilarious machinations of con-man Curtis and twists that confound commanding officer Grant as they try to get things into working order and into the combat zone, the sub ends up painted pink, hosting five Army nurses and a passel of civilians, and seeing some action from both sides of the conflict. It's a real hoot, one in which every other line is a subtle (or blatant) innuendo, and the whole thing increases in hilarity if you add "in my pants" to the dialogue. Most hilarious family moment: in the interior of the ship one of the nurses has fixed part of the sub's machinery with an item of clothing that stretches from several snaps. I had to look over at Mom and ask, "Ok, what is that?" and she laughed and told me it was a girdle, and how nice must it be to live in a year when I don't recognize one.
This entry was originally posted at http://zephre.dreamwidth.org/447066.html.
comments posted to original post.