Journal of Omnifarious

02:03 - Watching 21

I watched a preview of 21 with cooncat, mizemm and luchog. That was a happy thing and I'm glad I got to spend some more time with cooncat before she flies off to Japan.

But the movie was mediocre. It was a not-very-believable dramatization of a real-life event. The dialog was dumb. The main character is somehow supposed to be credibly having a discussion of the Newton-Raphson method (which is a pretty elementary method for root finding that you learn early in calculus) in a senior level course at MIT.

The drama was predictable and also dumb. None of the characters was particularly believable. The only interesting thing was the card counting techniques and how they worked the tables. And I bet they didn't describe the real card counting system they used.

This story survives solely on knowing that somehow somewhere real people used something approximating the techniques in the movie to win a lot of money at Vegas. It would've been really nice if Hollywood could've told the real story and done some actual filmmaking to make it interesting to an audience instead of gussying it up in fake drama and bad characterizations and making it a different (and much worse) story.

Current Mood: content

20:13 - 10,000 BC is a dud

I made the mistake of seeing this movie on a whim without reading any reviews. It is an awful movie. Horrible dialog, bad special effects, corny unbelievable plot, tons of historical inaccuracies, just all around a bad movie.

The worst part is, I get the impression that the people putting it together didn't realize it was a bad movie. At every turn the narrator is telling us how much of a serious, epic story this is supposed to be. If you didn't realize that the narrator is intended to be serious it would be funny. As it is, it's just sad.

I almost left halfway through, which I've only done once or twice before. I just couldn't see it being worth my time, even after I paid money.

If you all want to see a decent cave man movie, go rent Quest for Fire. That one is truly excellent.

Current Mood: annoyed

07:15 - I saw Starshine yesterday

And much of it was technically accurate (well, there is no decent explanation for the situations when there is gravity (or some facsimile thereof) vs. when there isn't) as far as it went, but it suffered from two major problems... mediocre acting and stupid crazy 'artsy' camera work and effects. I suppose I should be grateful because the run-of-the-mill science driven Hollywood movie has so many technical flaws that you can't even begin to take it seriously.

There really is only so much you can accomplish with sudden random cuts, little random subliminal flashes, purposely blurred and distorted camera shots, weird and crazy camera angles, and tense and suspenseful music. Really, you can't carry a movie on those things. In fact, if you do that for more than about 2 minutes of the movie total (well, except for the tense and suspenseful music, a good movie can consist almost entirely of this) you're doing something seriously wrong. If a good 20 minutes of the movie is taken up with that kind of 'artistic' trash the movie becomes awful.

The acting, intended to portray people, some of whom are a little on the unstable side was stilted, strange and not very believable most of the time. I blame the directors for this and not the actors. There was no real sense that the people on the mission were actually the best the Earth had to offer when the mission was launched.

****SPOILER ALERT****

One might almost suspect that Mission to Mars and this movie were done by the same director, but they aren't.

I was hoping for an intellectual sleeper hit that was too brainy and slow-paced for most people, like Contact. Instead I got a really badly done thriller incongruously set in a well-thought-out science fiction setting.

Current Mood: disappointed

21:45 - The movie "300"

This movie is the most cliché ridden piece of trash I have ever been fooled into watching thinking that it might actually be good. It isn't that the movie is awful. It's pretty good for what it is. But what it is is not by any stretch of the imagination a good movie.

It is a football movie. The brave and somehow special band who undergo tests throughout not just their training, but their entire lives (they train from childhood) and prove themselves brave and worthy beat the big bad evil team against all odds.

The only good thing about it is that unlike most sports movies, they dispense with the war metaphor in favor of actual war.

All the same old vapid stupidities about freedom, honor and glory are all trotted out for significant screen time. I'm all for freedom, but having one group of people spout off about it while evincing no evidence that they are free isn't very convincing. I would've felt a lot less like mocking the movie had they talked about preserving their homes, their families and their way of life instead of some ideal with no evidence that it is anything but an empty one.

To be fair, there is no evidence that it's not empty either. But our own leaders have had such a rich history of abusing the words 'liberty' and 'freedom' and the ideal behind them for things that are anything but that the movie's attempt to appeal to the audience through this without backing it up is really grating.

But the movie is basically a sports movie. The determined, courageous and exceedingly competent underdogs beat the big evil unstoppable group and act like real men besides! Woohoo! *waves a tiny triangle flag with the word 'Sparta' on it*

The movie is also pleasingly gory in a way that is simultaneously blood spattery and devoid of any ability to really believe that anybody is actually being hurt. One would think that people are little more than pressurized bags of blood with a tough, thick skin. This is quite unlike the other (much, much better) movie I saw, Pan's Labyrinth, in which only a sociopath of the highest order could not have enough empathy to wince when even the bad guy is hurt.

Oh, and in keeping with the genre, there were bunches of semi-naked women to ogle at various points too. And while women were referred to often as the prize of battle, it was reasonably clear that the underdogs felt this was a bad situation and wouldn't treat their enemy's women in this fashion. In fact, there was even one woman on the underdog side who was something more than eye candy. That's a heck of a lot better score in that regard than most sports movies.

Another saving grace is that the movie is based on a real event, the Battle of Thermopylae and is accurate in some detail to this event, though it embellishes greatly. It's possible the movie is a cliché because it's about an event that all the cliché's come from. That still doesn't excuse it for excessive and gratuitous use of the word 'freedom' though.

All in all, the demographic in the theater of teenage boys and their friends or obliging dates seemed like the appropriate audience for this movie.

This review says something similar, but I think the reviewer uses more and better words.

Current Mood: disappointed

21:20 - Pan's Labyrinth

This movie was described to me as bloody, and brutal with a lot of squicky scenes.

I guess you can say all those things. But I found it to be profoundly sad and beautiful all at the same time. I thought that was more important than any blood, brutality or squick. Even though the movie has plenty of all of those things. All of those elements, along with elements of fantasy and a child's view of the world. They are woven together masterfully to create a vivid and emotionally moving story.

It's not something I think anybody in Hollywood could ever have managed to make.

Current Mood: awed

21:13 - Star Wars geekery, this reinterpretation makes SO much sense

Copied from jwz.

A New Sith, or Revenge of the Hope

If we accept all the Star Wars films as the same canon, then a lot that happens in the original films has to be reinterpreted in the light of the prequels. As we now know, the rebel Alliance was founded by Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Bail Organa. What can readily be deduced is that their first recruit, who soon became their top field agent, was R2-D2. [...] Much of Obi-Wan's behaviour in this film, and Yoda's in the next, can best be understood if they are frankly scared to death of what Luke might become.

Current Mood: amused

23:57 - Birthday part 2

Well, klicrai and rainonthewind got me some wonderful presents. Books off of my Amazon wish list. They got me The Tao of Physics, The Web of Life, and The Forever Peace. I'm really looking forward to reading them.

klicrai also prodded me into going out and doing stuff after dinner with some members of my family I see less often than I ought to.

We went and saw Clerks II, which was hilarious. We were laughing for about 20% of the time spent watching it. I highly recommend it. I will never look at mules the same way again.

Then we went and play Teken 5 until I got a blister. I did much better than I was expecting, especially against klicrai, who is actually fairly good at it.

So, I had a much better birthday than I was expecting. Thanks to klicrai, rainonthewind, and the people who responded with well wishes to my previous post. :-)

Edit 2006-07-31 06:29

We also watched "What the #$*! Do We (K)now!?" before I went out to dinner with my family. It was interesting and puzzling. I liked a lot of it. I thought there was a lot of worthwhile stuff about the implications of quantum physics and interesting things about psychology, but I didn't buy a lot of the mysticism.

While the 'observer' plays an important role in quantum physics, anything which can carry away definitive information about the state of the system acts in the role of the observer. I think one of the most fruitful areas of research in quantum physics is determining just how big a system you can coax into a quantum superposition of states, and exactly what events are required to collapse that state into the kind of reality we're used to. But, positing that the soul somehow lies in this area of the unknown in physics is a big stretch, and that's the stretch the movie seemed to be trying to make.

I would be really interested in a critical analysis of two experiments in the movie. The first is the experiment where people meditate on water and thereby change how the molecules organize themselves. The second is an experiment where a whole bunch of people come into a city and meditate on peace or crime reduction and reduce the crime rate.

Current Mood: content

08:45 - Syriana

I went to see "Syriana" last night with rainonthewind and a friend of ours named Pete. It was an excellent movie. The director of "Traffic" has done it again.

It was a gritty look at a fictional oil industry and middle east. Like "Traffic", it is likely closer to the truth than not. The filming style and script make it hard to remember that the film is fiction. The plot is complex and not fully resolved. The characters motivations and actions are believable.

Current Mood: contemplative

12:13 - Wallace & Gromit

I would like to go see Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, but i've grown accustomed to seeing movies with people in recent months. So, are any of you interested in seeing it? I've heard that it isn't as good as people are hoping, but that it isn't bad. I'd like to see for myself. :-)

Current Mood: lonely

21:31 - Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I went to see it today. I went to the earliest matinee to make sure I could get a seat. rainonthewind humored me and accompanied me instead of insisting on going out and doing something to enjoy the sunshine. :-)

It was a disappointment. They tried hard to remain true to the book, but somehow they lost it. And the plot changes they made to make it more Hollywood-esque (more of a love story, more conflict, etc) were annoying and took away from the story instead of adding to it.

I don't insist on slavish adherence to novels in movie adaptations. For example, in "Lord of the Rings" I thought Arwen's expanded role, and the exposition of the love story between her and Aragorn added to the story.

But they annoy me when they're pointless, or detract from the story, or alter the original spirit of the story. And I felt the changes to Hitchikers did all three. Ford blinked. All these special effects and computer animation, and Ford blinked. :-(

The good parts were these: The inspired casting of the voice of Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin; The exchange between Arthur and Slartibartfast when they first meet worked well; The Vogons were also done well.

Current Mood: disappointed

16:33 - Sin City

I watched Sin City with rainonthewind yesterday. It was... hard to describe. Gritty and filled with callous violence. Lots grotesque, disgusting and macabre imagery.

OTOH, there were people who I could care about, who seemed like good people to me. It didn't suffer from the Pulp Fiction evil of largely having no characters who you could believe were worth more than the heap of atoms that made them up.

But, Sin City did suffer from the "No good deed goes unpunished." level of cynicism about the world. Also, everybody who's authority derived from something other than individual trust was portrayed as evil. That isn't a philosophy I wholly disagree with, but a world in which that's always true isn't a very pleasant place.

All in all, I think I would've chosen not to watch it had I known what I now know about it. But, I don't think it was a bad movie.

Spoiler warning! The comments may contain spoilers.

Current Mood: nauseated

07:14 - AI

I like this movie, a lot. I fully understand why it didn't do really well. Watching it always makes me feel sad in a very complex way. I just watched it with skylark77 tonight. Now, I can't sleep very well, and she's sleeping away just fine. *sigh*

I'm starting to actually get tired now, so I think I'll end here and go to bed.

Current Mood: sad