Category: Movies

(from “his diary”:http://disciplineglobalmobile.com/diary/diary-RobertFripp.shtml, April 22, 2004)

bq. 23.17 The Punisher. My sister is still trying to rationalize B movies, now after watching them with her brother for at least 50 years. I suggest to my Sister that the plot details of B movies are irrational: accept that people do things that are contradictory, against their own best interests, have short term aims & limited attention span, and do incredibly stupid things while things blow up. Apart from things blowing up, this is just like the music industry.

But experiencing my Sister experiencing the irrational adventures of a B movie is itself a movie entertainment.

I still feel a little scarred from the second one. But “this review of ROTK”:http://aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=16641 had me laughing right out of the gate with its discussion of the inevitable disappointments of third movies in trilogies.

That its derision for such is generally couched in homophobic terms is unfortunate and deplorable, etc., etc., but was ultimately not enough to stop me from nearly spewing coffe out of my nose.

bq. This movie will make you forget that if you stick a knife in your belly you’ll bleed to death so do not bring a knife to this movie.

What can I say, “I find intellectual narrowness unattractive”:http://scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2003-12%2F16%2F12.00.film.

I guess Hollywood’s self-obsession taints everyone eventually.

First, Ozzy Osbourne was apparently “very seriously injured”:http://news.google.com/url?ntc=0M6B2&q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.reuters.com%2FnewsArticle.jhtml%3Ftype%3DentertainmentNews%26storyID%3D3981005 in what sounds like a daft accident.

I’ve watched the Osbournes precisely once. I can understand the amusement factor, but it made me kind of sad to see Ozzy being portrayed as a mumbling, bumbling buffoon, even if he knew it was being done and didn’t mind.

I sincerely hope he recovers completely–I think he’s a very important person in the history of rock and roll.

I know it sounds silly, given popular perception of the music he’s made, but I think a lot of those perceptions are a result of the sheer number of slavish imitators and mediocre knock-offs of his early stuff, both with Black Sabbath and on his own. It would be like talking about Led Zeppelin based on listening to Whitesnake or Kingdom Come–Black Sabbath, right up to the bitter end of his tenure with them, is unlike anything before or since.

In lighter news (considering it must be one of the signs of the impending end of the world), Baz Luhrmann is working on a movie about Alexander the Great “starring Leanardo di Caprio and Nicole Kidman”:http://imdb.com/title/tt0327405/ while Oliver Stone is working on one starring “rather a larger number of famous people”:http://imdb.com/title/tt0346491/.

Stop. Think. _Baz Luhrmann_ and _Oliver Stone_ are both working on a picture about Alexander the Great.

Put your head between your knees and kiss your ass goodbye.

I’ve never been any sort of partisan of the ??The Matrix?? and its follow-ons.

Honestly, I didn’t even see it until it had been out on DVD for at least a couple of months, and although I thought it was a fine adventure flick, I certainly didn’t think it was quite deserving of the rabid following it developed–just about anything ??The Matrix?? seems to get cited for, I think Philip K. Dick did better.

Still, when ??Matrix Reloaded?? came out, I did actually go see it at a matinee, and while I thought it got mired down in exposition that sounded like it was right out of 50s pulps, it had some visuals that were interesting and wasn’t really, well, _bad_, so I didn’t feel cheated or anything. Maybe that would have been different if I hadn’t gone to a matinee.

However, ??Matrix Revolutions??, really leaves me cold. It’s not a horrible sequel, per se–it’s hard to have a truly horrible sequel without Ewoks, or obvious Ewok stand-ins–but it succeeded in being boring even when there was action going on. Quantity of shell casings do not translate to interest, no matter how much you want it to. Chase scenes with zillions of sentinels, no matter how important the outcome is to the future of the human race, have already been done. Neo and Trinity’s tender moment: vomit.

Glad I went to the cheap show.

So it’s not new–I’m just getting around to seeing it anyway. It’s hardly immortal cinema, but it’s not a bad way to spend a Friday night.

…but ultimately, ??The Two Towers?? disappointed me.

I do not think I am being obsessive about the movies exactly replicating the books–frankly, I have a great deal of affection for Ralph Bakshi’s animated version which plays _much_ more fast and loose with things than Peter Jackson has.

What I do look for is staying true to the characters.

So, changes in the flight from Hobbiton, the lack of Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Wights in both versions, the changes in the way the whole Rohan thing unfolds–even, after a second viewing of the first film, the modifications to Arwen’s part–do not particularly bother me, because they do not seem to distort the characters, even if they do some violence to the story itself.

Faramir, though, gets screwed, and for no reason I can discern. In fact, in the book a large part of the point of the interlude in Ithilen with Farmir is setup for what happens in Gondor later, and the person that Peter Jackson has portrayed does not, in my opinion, fit into the place that the character in the book fits–so one is forced to wonder what further distortions, on top of the time wasted in this whole stupid Osgiliath segment (including Sam’s clanging speech), are going to have to be made to try and fix these seemingnly unnecessary changes to the story brought on by some bizarre need to create extra tension.

I think I need to remember in future to _not_ see movie adaptions of books for which I have some affection, because the filmmakers cannot win with me–if they stay too close to the book, I walk out wondering why I spent my money, but if they stray too far, I walk out wondering why I spent my money.

Perhaps this explains why I go to so few movies.

Next up in the list of potential disappointments…??X-Men 2??. Although, in fact, I have high hopes for this–??X-Men?? was a much more subtly done movie than I ever would have expected, and they showed great respect for the characters while telling a story that had not been told before. Perhaps Brian Singer and company will pull another rabbit out of the hat…

So, it appears that, at least initially, David Lynch’s ??Mulholland Drive?? was meant to be a _TV_ series. If that weren’t absurd enough, apparently a big feature was going to be lots of cameos by Marilyn Manson.

No, I’m not kidding. I couldn’t make up stuff this silly. Look at the (unfortunately not directly linkable) March 12th entry at “Nothing Records’ March ’99 Newspage”:http://www.nineinchnails.net/news/mar99.html

I recently watched ??Mulholland Drive?? and not even a naked Naomi Watts could really make me enjoy it. Put that together with catching about 15 minutes of ??Wild At Heart?? recently (how the hell did _that_ get to basic cable!), and you really have to start wondering if David Lynch has done anything worth watching since ??Elephant Man??.