Some recent movie reviews:
X-Men Origins: Wolverine. I have never been much of an X-Men fan, so I might be out of line in saying that this movie was terrible. I went to it only because we went on a triple date with two very nice couples who have very bad taste in dates and movies. When three couples get together without their young kids, what should they do? I have an idea: something in which interaction is possible. Six people. That is six different minds willing to converse about adult things, which is exactly the kind of activity that sounds really great. Here we are: six very different people full of vibrant ideas and verbal ability, and what do we decide to do? Go see a movie whose sole purpose is to explain the origin of a superhero who has sharp knives come out of his knuckles when he gets mad. So this is how the date went: Gather in Lamberts' front yard in order to walk to the mall, have dinner inside the food court so that we could get to a movie about mutton chops and knuckle knives on time. The movie cost 11.50 a ticket, which could have easily bought us a nice slow dinner at the local restaurant, where we could have made jokes and talked for three hours with no kids. Nope, we spent it to see a guy walk away from explosions in slow motion, his knives having just retracted back into his knuckles. It got to the point where there would be random objects on the screen and I would guess which one was going to explode or be sliced and in which order before it actually happened. I was something like 12 of 15. Then at the end of the movie we walked back to our house quickly and without any meaningful conversation besides whether we did or did not like the movie. We then paid babysitters 20 dollars and called it a night. I called it a bad night. The next Sunday, one of the husbands on our date was called to be second counselor in the Bishopric, to which I almost objected because he made me go see Hugh Jackman's tan buttocks at the mall. I thought it would be really cool to object with raisng my hand and having three knives come out of my knuckles. I now hate X-men forever.
Star Trek Babies. This movie was awesome. I went to it because I was celebrating my successful dissertation proposal meeting, and I invited the guy on the next block who sometimes calls me to see really lame movies. I always say no, mainly because he wants me to go to midnight showings of Eagle Eye and Transformers, so I thought I owed him one. So I went on a man-date with a scifi nerd and it was great. To give you an example of what a great moviegoer this guy is, he couldn't stop giggling in anticipation when they were showing the preview for Transformers 2. This is also a guy who is getting a phd in Transportation Analytics in Business. So I had a good date: he kept giggling when something cool happened or they showed that Captain Kirk was from Riverside, Iowa, and I kept thinking, "This movie is awesome." It was so great that it almost erased all of the negative energy that my brother Paul's ceiling Star Trek poster emitted. Most of the time when I see big popular movies, my first thought is, "Would my brother Mark like this?" because his taste doesn't extend to indies but he likes a good political yarn, a good scifi without being overdone, or a good conspiracy movie. My other brother John's taste in movies is probably too close to mine for me to really think too hard about whether he would like the stuff I like (although John liked the Dark Knight way more than I did), and Paul's taste in movies begins and ends with the Bourne trilogy, which he recently claimed were the most important movies in the last 50 years of cinema history. Anyway, I thought Star Trek was awesome. The night ended with my man-date promising that I would watch "Star Trek: Nemesis" with him sometime. I won't take him up on that, but at least the Star Trek Babies movie was good, just like how Muppet Babies improved on the real muppets.
As one of the participants in this "bad night" I must say that you completely overlooked many of the rich opportunities that the evening provided. Conversation is stimulating, surely, but really, aren't Hugh Jackman's buttocks amazing?
ReplyDeleteON a more serious note - what you failed to perceive in the movie and the date was the radical possibilities of a post-industrial and post-biological world where the techno-melding of man and machine (embodied, of course, in Wolverine's skeleton, irreparably and technologically grafted to an ADAMantium compound that itself responds to the signals in Wolfie's brain) models the possibility of communication between the animate and inanimate in ways that make conventional person to person communication seem blase to say the least. I'm personally thrilled with the idea that I'll never have to talk to another human being again. I can just communicate with my own little ADAMantium compounds, in fact, like my comrade Hugh, I'll talk so sweetly to those little compounds that they'll do whatever I want them to. Forget knives shooting out of my hands - can you imagine the bristly nose-hairs I could grow?....that would be Ubercool.
As to your first point, I only thought Jackman's right buttocks was good, the left was a little misshapen.
ReplyDeleteAs to the second point, I didn't understand your technobabble in the same way I didn't understand what that nonsense metal was that made Hugh Jackman have knives. But as for communicating through it, okay. The nose hairs thing would be cool, I guess, but I actually think I already have that ability. I mean, I can think about growing my nose hairs right now and they will grow. Just ask Kathryn. I don't even have to think about them and they will grow.
2 Things Mr. Blog:
ReplyDelete1. You forgot to make mention of the surprise appearance from Mission Impossible II Thandie Newton as Spock's girlfriend on Star Trek Babies.
2. When will the Species I & II reviews be out? I'm trying to decide what to watch this weekend.
The part of me that likes facts (which is a very small part) knows that Spock's girlfriend was not actually Thandie Newton, and that the Thandie Newton of MI II died to me when she started rolling her eyes and howling in Oprah's movie Beloved. But the part of me that doesn't care for facts recognizes that the revelation that was Thandie Newton in MI II was almost perfectly cast in Star Trek Babies. If the Revelation that was Thandie Newton's career goes the same direction that the actual Thandie Newton's career went, she will be dead to me as well. If I had a time machine, I would have become Thandie Newton's agent just after she made MI II.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Species reviews--good idea, except that I need to be assured that my mom and sister Rebecca don't read my blog in order to clear this. They know about it I think. Maybe that was a bad idea. At any rate, don't tell Paul and Patty about it, or any of the other Palo Verde heavyweights. But you can tell Desi, the original Heavyweight that had a movie made after him.