duh

Well, I would never have gone to see this film on my own.. it seems too commercial and lately all big budget action films have all kinds of over the top digital effects. Add this to the fact that I haven’t seen the other 2 and you can see why I would never have gone on my own.

But today I did see the film. And I’m posting here to show off about it. See, with the exception of the 200 other people I saw it with, nobody in the nation has seen this yet. It doesn’t open until 12am tomorrow. As you know, my company has been spending a bunch of money and resources promoting the premier and well, as a reward we got to see it today in a special screening courtesy of the studio.

So, I will give you a little review. I was overall, impressed and entertained. The film was pretty believable and wasn’t over the top at all. I suspect that the other 2 were as well since they got good reviews from most fans. This film was also surprisingly funny at times (the intercom buzzer on the editors desk, the French maitre’de). The effects were not overdone at all and in one instance (the “birth” of the sandman) quite spectacular and beautiful. There was also a sequence with a crane and a steel beam. While it was hardly plausible, it still looked real and was pretty cool. Especially when one floor collapsed into another.
I saw 2 cameos. The first one you can verify for me when and if you see the film. Look in the first classroom scene. Behind Peter I am very confident that I saw Paris Hilton.. was I right? Secondly, I loved the Stan Lee cameo. That was a great touch.
I do have a couple of complaints. First of all, the action/fight sequences were shot very close up and I had no idea what was going on at any given time. This is common in action films and I find it very sloppy and uncool. I wish directors would not use the close-up crutch to cover for a lack of detail in their action sequences. Also, I think that the villan named Brok was not motivated enough to all of a sudden want Peter dead.. that came out of left field and it was pretty lame.

Overall, I’d recommend it if you like comic book movies. Enjoy!

I don’t have the time to look up the reference right now but I read somewhere recently (think it was a blurb in The Week) that film production was an incredibly huge contributer to the greenhouse effect and a huge waster of natural resources. I think it was listed as the 2nd worst offender nationwide… Apparently the generators and trucks and electricity usage really take their toll..

In either case, I was thinking that actors and directors (many of who are hard core environmentalists) could easily begin to effect change in this arena by simply refusing to work on films that don’t take an active stance on being c-neutral. I’m sure it wouldn’t take much to force producers and studios to start thinking about their energy usage and it would be a really good way for these celebs to use their clout for good..

If you haven’t seen the cover of the Daily News today, the headline was huge and it read “Massacre at the Navy Yard”. In some ways I was happy to see it. I was expecting some super sensationalized story about our upcoming snow storm.. but instead some real news appears to have made it to the cover. On the other hand I ask you a simple question: How many dead would constitute a “massacre”? Although there is no number mentioned in the dictionary (or web searches for the definition), one thing appears common and that is that the killing is savage (ie. with a machete as was done in Rwanda) and that it occurs on many people.

Neither of these things happened at the Navy Yard last night. 3 people were killed with gunfire by a man who ended up shooting himself. That makes 4 dead total (but only 3 murdered).

Why do I care? Because this is a symptom of what is wrong in the media today. Every story has to be attention grabbing and has to seem important so papers can be sold and tv news programs can get more ratings.. It’s all about money and no more about the story. This is having a very negative affect on our society in that people are not able to discriminate on their own what is important and what isn’t.

I read something the other day that speaks to this (in a sense). As you all know, the world is in agreement now that global warming is real and that we caused it. But did you know that some scientists are saying that if we stopped all carbon emissions right now, there is nothing we could do to stop it? Some believe (and maybe more in the future) that we have passed the point of no return on this. If true, that would mean that we should have been doing something about global warming 20 years ago and not now. Who’s fault is this? It’s ours of course. Our media didn’t use it’s enormous motivating power to raise awareness of this issue when it was important and so we (being the type that only process data that is spoon fed to us by them) did nothing.

There is a movie I just saw by Mike Judge (Idiocracy) that wasn’t great in most traditional ways but made a point that was horrifying. The future (in this case 500 years from now) could turn out to be a very, very lame place, where the average IQ is under 100 and people are just illiterate, clueless slaves to the world they have created. Happy with their TV and fast food… It’s really shockingly plausible.

And yea, we can’t fix it in one place and everything is interconnected. I know that. But the thing is that we can change the world by changing ourselves. If everyone began to simply question the world and the media and their government just a little bit, if everyone would simply wonder a bit more about things, if everyone could be a tiny bit more creative and think of conspiracies (even though they may not exist).. maybe that would be the catalyst that we need to turn the world around and get on the path to a positive future.. maybe.

Sorry to have been so distant, but alas my net connection is again down and has been for 3 days now (thanks Comcast!). But I do have a couple film reviews for you. Since I had no net yesterday I had time to watch tv. Saw 2 films. First was “Born into Brothels” and it was pretty good. Not amazing, but still interesting. If you ahven’t seen it, it’s about a group of children from the Red Light area in Calcutta (India). It’s sad in a lot of ways that these kids are essentially fucked from day one and also amazing that they show these talents that make you think: “shit, they don’t deserve this life they are in”.. I guess in some ways thats the story of a lot of us.. in civilized society and otherwise.

The other film.. yea.. almost didn’t watch it but it was reccomended by someone so I had to.. I’d been putting it off for a long time since the star (Vin Diesel) was someone that I hardly respected in any way, but it was directed and co-written by Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon, Network, etc) so it had some credibility. The film was called “Find me Guilty” and it’s a courtroom drama that pretty closely follows the true story of a RICO trial in New York in the 80’s. Most of the courtroom dialog is straight from the public record of the trial.
I have to say that the film was quite good actually with Diesel the biggest surprise. I totally reccomend it if you want to see a cool mafia courtroom drama.

Well.. today was a perfect day to see the film “Why We Fight“. It’s a film about the military-industrial complex and talks about 9/11 and the war in Iraq. Let me just say this. After watching it, if there was an easy way for me to leave this country and renounce my citizneship I would. It’s not just the Bush White House, it’s not just the neo-cons. It’s the entire system we have. Congress, D and R all are in the pockets of these companies. There is this battle between capitalism and democracy and guess who’s winning? In November we need to vot out the old guard and clean house across the board!
Wow.. This film was spectacular and I think you should see it.

Saw “Snakes on a Plane” last night. I was totally entertained. I knew this film would be far fetched in the plot department so I wasn’t expecting much in terms of quality story and I was actually surprised that it had no major holes. It actually reminded me a bit of the old “Airport 77″ disaster films. It was funny and Sam Jackson took his role seriously.

Now, what I didn’t like was the theatre experience. I’ve complained before about this stuff and I will complain again. First off, $12 to see a film is pretty steep when you have studios releasing so many bad films and a reviewing infastructure that is useless. Studios need to address the quality to price issue. I’ll spend $12 for a film that I really want to see, but I won’t spend it on something that looks interesting but I’mnot sure about.

This theatre was remarkably quiet (ironically not what we wanted fot this film). No cellphones when off, nobody was talking, there was no talking back to the film, etc. No, in this case, what made me mad was the fact that while the projection was very good, the sound was miserable. There was no surround at all, there was no dynamic range at all and worst of all, it sounded like there was ony one speaker (set right behind the screen) doing it all.

I know that films come in different formats and I know that theatre PAs are complex, but there needs to be some way to assure viewers that they are going to hear the film the way the director intended. There’s just no excuse.

So, the deal is that I don’t go to films much. And for someone who loves movies, that should tell the studios something. If its the social experience, the theatre experience, or the quality of films themselves, the studios should get thier shit together and soon.