Willow
Not the tree, the movie. Kate come over last night for dinner and brought it with her. I hadn’t seen it in ages, so it was lots of fun. Such a young Val Kilmer! And nobody else I recognised. It must have been a great day for the dwarfish (dwarvish? and is that the PC term?) community when it was made, since they actually used real short people rather than lots of special effects (which they couldn’t anyway, since it was made in the 80s or something). We were convinced that one of the brownies was Flacco, but I don’t think he was. I might show it to my year 9s if ever I get a chance to do my fantasy unit, since I think they would be less likely to laugh at this than they might at Labyrinth (pft; no sense of style).
High Fidelity
I’ve been wanting to see this flick since it was on at the movies; finally got around to it today (love those 5 weeklies for $8.50 deals). John Cusack is such a star… he’s the only reason to watch that awful Nick Cage escapee film, and Grosse Point Blank is just brilliant. And I love it when he’s in films with his sister. This one appealed to me because of the music… I may not have known all the music referred to, but I can associate with the vibe of the thing (or so I’d like to think). Jack Black was great, of course. Anyway, it was well worth seeing and I just should have seen it before this.
Monsters in general
I finally saw Underworld the other night (J didn’t; he fell asleep). It was pretty good: wish I’d seen it on the big screen, because some of the sequences would have been awesome. It was heavily Matrix, I thought… that movie’s influence will be felt a long time. The premise of the story was interesting, too; I liked the couple of twists it had. I also thought the conclusion was quite brilliant. My one complaint was the stupid thing about Corvinus: I guess they had to have some explanation of why the human was important, but it was so convoluted that it was just pointless.
Also finally got J to see Monsters, Inc. This is such a clever film; any animated movie that includes out-takes gets my nod, really. And of course there’s the whole thing about the main monsters being James and Mike….
The Day after Tomorrow
Went to see this today. Had read a review that said it was “half a good disaster movie”, which is unfortunately rather accurate: the last half is mostly concerned with the usual improbable father-crosses continent-to-find-son story. I did like it, though. The effects were incredible – cloud formations and water action – and the story was not as bad as it could have been. I hope it also makes at least some people stop and think, about two things: global warming (no idea whether the theories proposed in the film are even wildly valid or not, but the point still holds), and ‘first-world’ attitudes to ‘third-world’ countries.
It is, anyway, one that could possibly go on the ‘help! the world is about to end’ list, particularly because there is nothing humans can do about it in this case.
Troy
It was good.
I went with Mum because she has just recently done some Classics (actually she’s doing it at the moment, but not actual myth stuff), and so she understood when I got miffed or excited, which James would not really have.
They made a few changes, of course… I was a bit surprised at them completely leaving out the gods, to be honest. However, I guess it was already a fairly long movie, so things had to be sacrificed. A few people died who shouldn’t have, and didn’t need to (I thought, anyway). Eric Bana was fantastic, as expected, and Orlando Bloom was perfect for the role – if only because he just looked simply too beautiful to be a warrior; I thought he fit Paris just right. And Brad Pitt was pretty good too. It was also much fun, and not a little smug-ifying, to say “that must be Ajax” or Nestor or someone else… and be right. I think that says good things both about me and the film. Glad they got Aeneas in there too, much as I dislike Virgil.
It looked good: it was really well shot, I thought, although the bro got annoyed with some of Achilles’ long lingering looks. Personally I thought they fit. They must have used the Massive program from Peter Jackson – it reminded me very strongly of LOTR, in places, particularly the thousand ships.
Mum tells me that millihelens is a standard of measurement. If you’ve got 10 millihelens of beauty, you can launch 10 ships…
Van Helsing
So, so cool. Much better than I had expected. I’m very pleased with myself to discover that I was right in thinking that the same man who played Beni in The Mummy played Igor. David Wenham as Carl, a 19th-century Q-cum-good Igor, was great… and the Aussie playing Draacoola was fantastic. Very Mummy, which I expected; so close to camp, but just escaping it, with some incredibly witty bits in it. And James loved it too! Even wanting to see it again!
Too, I love seeing the ads for upcoming movies. Chronicles of Riddick looks great, I reckon, although I’m a little sceptical of Vin Diesel I must admit. We didn’t see ads for them then, but both Troy (which I’m seeing on Sunday with Mum, can’t wait) and The Day after Tomorrow look awesome.
I love movies.
Teaching film
Don’t know whether I’ll actually get to teach this next semester or not, but I hope at some stage to offer an elective – at Year 10 I think – of film studies. The first term I would call “Help!! The world is about to end”, and do things like The Core, Armageddon, Mars Attacks, Terminator 3, and maybe Thirteen Days (James’ suggestion) as a real-life example. On the way home today I had the idea for the second term: “Thieves, Crims, and Downright Scoundrels”: Hudson Hawk, Thomas Crowne Affair (the original I think), The Italian Job (possibly the remake; not sure); maybe Maltese Falcon. It would be so much fun!!
Three films in a night
We visited a friend’s place last night: they have mad surround sound and a projector, so we often do this of a weekend, and watch movies till late (well, I watch; James sleeps). Anyway, last night we got wise for the first time, and started watching a movie before 7! Very clever.
Showtime
Poor Robert de Niro. You’d think he could get better roles. It was funny, but not something I’d watch again. Interesting take on reality TV, since I would have guessed it came out at the start of the boom; although probably it’s been around longer in the US.
Judge Dredd
Stallone is a meathead. It was so Blue Screen… so angular… so Star Wars I was surprised to find out it was made in the mid 90s. Half the guards looked like they’d just walked off as extra storm troopers, and there was even a chase scene taken straight from the Forest Moon of Endor (Ewoks, remember?) and dumped into a bad-futuristic scene.
Men in Black II
Love it. Very funny. Tommy Lee Jones is a star.
Randomly Yours, Alex 