too much Stargate? Never!
I am lucky enough at the moment to have little bit of what I choose to call play money. My natural Scrooge tendencies are too painful to go into here, but suffice to say that splurging – even on thins that I really want and will get a lot of joy out of – is something I struggle with. So I thought long and hard, and eventually decided it would be worth it: I bought the 59 DVD box of Stargate: SG-1. This is a crazy extravagance; I know someone with them already – although theirs are pirated, and of course I don’t have easy access to them. Plus, this comes in a lovely big box, complete with tacky raised circle (aka stargate) on the front.
Anyway, it arrived on Thursday. We watched the entire first season on the weekend – my love didn’t get into show until about season 2 or 3 when we watched it the first time (oh, did I mention that I’ve already seen the whole lot?), so he enjoyed watching that; I also discovered that first time through I missed a disc – three or four episodes, including the wonderful Antarctic episode. We’re now into the second season, and we’re trying to limit ourselves to only two… or so… episodes a night. Hard, though…
Couple of things of note:
* Samantha is cringingly nerdy in the first couple of episodes. I am so glad they sophisticated her.
* Teal’c is fairly painful in these first few seasons; his facial expressions are just ridiculous. And not always convincing.
* Michael Shanks. Daniel Jackson. *sigh* Wonderful!
* Richard Dean Anderson. Jack O’Neill. As above!
I said something to my love as we watched an episode – something about enjoying the interaction between Jack and Samantha – and he turned to me, in ridicule, and asked whether I had bought 59 DVDs just for the sake of a few, frustratingly brief, interactions between the two.
Well, duh.
Planetary alignment
Yes, you guessed it, I am spending tonight watching the first Lara Croft film. Whee! It does have a brilliant opening, I must say. And some of the action sequences are marvelous. I love the bungee scene, between floor and mezzanine; giving her the bungee cord makes it at least vaguely plausible, unlike some other scenes of this type. And, you know, who doesn’t love a sexy archaeologist (talking about Alex West, aka Daniel Craig, of course – with a bad American accent)?
But seriously. A planetary alignment I can just about come at, on a fantastical level; it’s not a new idea, and there are alignments of two or three (I’m including the sun and moon here) every now and then. But a meteor that strikes at the exact moment of the alignment? Not even I’m that gullible. And I don’t think it adds to the story, either – it’s not necessary for the plot to work.
Oooh, just got to the massive Buddha getting up and angry; very cool.
And Jolie’s hair? So very fake.
Mummies and romance
I watched The Mummy a couple of days ago, and The Mummy Returns tonight.
I’d really like to be able to say that I watch and enjoy them because of my joy at seeing archaeology and egyptology on the big screen, getting a cool rep; for the awesome FX; and for the manic action sequences.
Part of that is true – I leave it to you to figure out what’s a big fat lie from that statement. But the truth is, I like those movies for the same reason I like the original Star Wars movies.
Yes, it’s partly the action and the explosions – particularly in Star Wars. But the reality is, I watch them for one main reason: Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) and Han Solo (Harrison Ford), and their relationships with Evie/Leia.
This is my big guilty secret, that I am trying to come to grips with, and which outing myself here will hopefully help: I am a sucker for romance. It has to be surrounded by action, and explosions, and preferably lots of cool FX and a scifi bent; the heroine has to not be a wimp and the hero has to be a real hero (being a rogue helps as well) – and I love movies with no real romance, too – but, still, a bit of romance done well is not something I object to.
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last decade or so building up an anti-romance persona; it hurts to tear it down! And there are certain friends to whom I will never admit this, ever. Because they will never let me live it down. Like they still tease me for getting married, after saying I never would (six years today). Kate – stop scheming right now!
The Golden Compass
I took my sister to see this the other day (although I guess she could have taken herself, given she’s 21 years old; guess there are some things it’s up to a big sister to do, though…). We’d both been looking forward to it a lot. It has such a great cast! It should be an amazing movie.
Can you tell where this is going?
The chick who sold us the tix asked if we’d read the book, and when I said I hadn’t, she informed me that it might be hard to understand. I realised as I walked away that actually, I have read the trilogy – just a few years ago, and the details are quite fuzzy. My sister has indeed not read it.
Anyway, there are lots of people who have reviewed the movie, so I won’t bother to go into details of the plot and characters. Suffice to say that I was a bit disappointed. I enjoyed it and all, but I wasn’t utterly overwhelmed, which is what I’d rather hoped. One telling instance might have been that I asked my sister half way through: wasn’t Robert Deniro meant to be in this? She pointed out to me that I was thinking of Stardust, which I haven’t seen. Oops.
The effects were very cool – very cool; I thought Nicole Kidman was good, as was Daniel Craig (what you saw of him); Eva Green seemed stilted, and the girl playing Lyra was a bit odd in places. The story didn’t feel like it went anywhere.
Whenever the sequel/s come out, I imagine I will go see them, for completeness’ sake… but I won’t be gagging for them, like I was LOTR (but that’s a different instance anyway, for me…).
DOA; or, How to Watch Unexpected Movies
Oh. My. Goodness.
When out shopping today, I decided to act on impulse and visit JB to finally buy The Mummy, because I only have this taped off TV. I expected that I would be able to get it as a double with The Mummy Returns, which I was fine with. Turned out that I could only get it as a trilogy, with The Scorpion King. OK, I figured – haven’t seen the latter, I’ll deal with it; it was $4 more than The Mummy by itself. Plus, it was 20% off all DVDs, which was even better. For that reason, we had a look around the store for anything else that caught our eye, which is how we ended up with the Blade trilogy as well. Then, on the way out, my darling saw the stall where they have the multiple-movies-in-one-case. There was one with The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, Scorpion King, Van Helsing (I can’t believe we didn’t already own this!) and The Hulk (meh): back went the trilogy I’d picked up, because this 5-set cost less than it did! And while we were there, we got a second: Doom (not seen… not sure), Pitch Black (love it; love Claudia Black!), Chonicles of Riddick (same; plus Judi Dench in such a cool, out-there role), Serenity (do already have it, but you know – it’s Serenity!)… and DOA.
I’d never heard of DOA: Dead or Alive, and my question is this: did it ever appear in Australian cinemas? Because it’s the sort of thing I certainly would have thought about going to see, although perhaps not busting a gut to get to; but I’d never heard of it before I saw it on this DVD cover. And heck, it has Holly Valance in it! Clearly, it was going to be (as my love says) qualitah.
What it turned out to be was a fairly cool 75 minutes of fun fighting choreography. There is a plot in there – somewhere – but it was fairly transparent, not to mention flimsy, and in many ways was essentially facilitating bikini-clad women fighting either blokes who knew not what hit them, or each other. It really was very cool choreography, though, and there was barely a 5-minute block without a fight scene. And Holly Valance’s opening scene had me in absolute hysterics; never has a woman putting on a bra been quite so hilarious. I’m not sure I’ll watch it again – except maybe with friends who will appreciate the gloriously insane and kitsch nature of the film – but it’s definitely one to loan out and wait for the reaction from.
Kenny
Oh my.
I’ve only just seen this little Aussie battler – I was dubious when I first saw the trailers, then heard rave reviews from various people, but never got around to it.
It is brilliant.
I can’t begin to describe it properly. If you haven’t seen it, and you’re not embarrassed by poo-talk, you must see it. It captures Australia beautifully. The family relationships in particular are so true that they’re heartbreaking – and they actually are all family! That’s amazing – and that they didn’t kill each other in making it. Kenny himself… well. Quintessentially what we’d like to think Aussie working class blokes are like, but not so stereotyped as to be unbelievable. I think the sheer brilliance of this is that I know Kennys. Quirks, surprises, and sheer bull-headed determination and all.
His insights into Aussie culture – and seeing festivals and the like from behind, as it were – are pointed and exact, and at times quite disturbing because of their truth. Driving past the Calder Raceway every day as I do, the hoons shown there were a bit scary – again, because it’s just so true. And, reflecting the quote from the start, it really does show just how little attention is paid to people who are – for all we like to think we live in a glorious, flat, classless society – treated no better than servants ever were in the hey-day of rigid class division. Those were the bits that made me squirm; not the frank and easy talk of poo (“regular as clockwork, that’s me…”). But Kenny just goes on, and does his job, and enjoys his job, while the people who think they are his betters act like right knobs.
This is The Castle for the 00s. It had better go down as one of the more insightful looks at Aussie culture – as well as being very funny. And the cinematography too – it really does look like a doco; it’s magnificently done.
Indiana Jones
Well, to start with I am very excited that the fourth one has actually had a date set for release – mid this year. It’s been a long time coming!! With Cate Blanchett, hopefully it will be good – I really hope it’s realistic about Ford being ancient. One of the things I really enjoyed about Lethal Weapon 4 was Glover and Gibson going on about being too old for this shit. Anyway, I’m excited.
What has sparked this post, though, was a viewing of Last Crusade. Great movie. Great movie. I adore the opening, with young Indy: it is so very nicely set up – I realised that you don’t know whether Indy is a scout or in the cave for quite a long time; the main looter in the cave even looks a bit like Ford, and of course the hat is Indy’s. It made me sad to see River Phoenix – such a pity for him to die so damn young.
And the whole movie is great. Good chases – although the tank/horse scene gets a bit long; good baddies – especially Elsa, of course, and adding in Hitler is brilliant; I love the zeppelin scene; and heck – it’s Connery! “The schlime of humanity” – what a line.
Underworld
We re-watched Underworld and Underworld Evolution the other day; I really do like those movies. It was quite funny in that for a few minutes there I had to make the effort to remember that we were watching this, and not Blade. Kate Beckinsdale is quite good; Scott Speedman is quite adorable. Quite adorable.
The thing that struck me this time was the atemporal and aspatial nature of the duo. Yes, there is the date at the start of Evolution, where you find out about Williams and Marcus; there is the whole, rather confused thing about how long the war has been going on, how long Selene has been a vampire, and exactly when Alexander Corvinus lived… but it doesn’t give a date for the movie, and it’s both sufficiently old-fashioned – the mansion, for example, and the very noir feel – as well as sufficiently futuristic – the clothes, guns, lights – that atemporal is the only way to describe it.
The cityscape of the first movie is unrecognisable: it could be European or American. Add in the rural landscape of the second, which is essentially mythical Transylvania (or your basic Eastern European setting), and it quite confuses the setting utterly – certainly more European than American, which is entertaining in contrast to the predominance of Yank accents. I liked this aspect; I think it worked better than trying to ground it somewhere more concretely. It sets the story loose, lets it play fast and loose with geography and makes it more dramatic.
I was also reminded of quite how attractive the movies are to watch. Lovely shadows, stark corners, gloomy backgrounds… delightful.
Rise of the Silver Surfer
… was really, really crap. I liked the premise of the Surfer himself, but they really didn’t develop that very well – and even if he’s just a herald, they could have made more of that aspect. I even quite liked the idea of exploring their tension-filled relationship with their fame, but that was done quite poorly too. And except for a few moments between Reed and what’s-her-face, Alba, and some angsty moments between the whingy Human Torch and his sister, there was pretty much no real interaction between the Fantastic Four themselves. Essentially, it was SFX driven, and the plot – not to mention the dialog – really suffered as a result.
Fun to watch though, as long as your credulity is taking a long, long holiday.
Godzilla
So yesterday was the first real day of my holidays (weekends don’t count). I thought that a perfectly lovely way of starting my hols would be getting up late (check), pulling on the dressing gown (check; because Melbourne has decided to go back to winter for whatever daft reason), and watch Godzilla… hmm. Yes.
I saw the remake when it came out, in 1998 it turns out. I remember thinking it was hilarious. I put it down on my BigPond Movies list, and thought it would be great to share it with my love. Sigh. It was not to be, sadly. Because it really wasn’t as good as I remember. In fact, it was quite average. When I realised it was 130 min worth of average-ness – at the 50 min mark – I made a considered judgment and gave up on it. I could not do it.
And so is one of illusions destroyed. Heartbreaking.
Randomly Yours, Alex 