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January 21, 2008
Media Glutton Monday, Jan 21
First of all, Happy Birthday Matt!
Ok, so my plan to blog three times last week ended up being only 66% successful, so hopefully this week I'll do a little better. But I have not been idle all that time. Oh no. I've also been consuming me some mad media.
Cloverfield
Luckily I've had a few months to get over my disappointment over the debunking of the rumor that flew around the internet for a couple of days last year that this was a movie about Cthulhu attacking New York. Sadly, there's no Cthulhu, but there is a giant monster attacking New York. Actually, I guess it could be Cthulhu since we never learn anything about the beast at all, much less it's name, but it doesn't have enough tentacles really. So I'll call it Larry. I quite enjoyed this movie. I don't ask much from a monster movie any more, mostly because they're almost all really awful. In fact, coming out of the theater I was trying to think of the last time I'd really enjoyed a monster movie and I couldn't. In retrospect I enjoyed the recent Peter Jackson King Kong, but it's undeniably a bloated movie sprinkled with some awesome monster scenes. Cloverfield is anything but bloated, coming in at about 90 minutes. As I've been writing this I struggle and struggle to find a better way of saying it, but the fact is there's only one perfect four word description of the film: Blair Witch Meets Godzilla. Sadly it's the one everyone's using. It's probably the words they used to sell the movie to the studio in the first place. And it's exactly that. Shaky cam, people running around lost. A giant monster tearing apart the city and eating people. Depressing ending. So if you can handle the occasional nausea inducing camera work and let yourself just go with the plot while not asking too many questions, the whole film is a fun ride. Definitely worth seeing in a theater with a good sound system too, as they use those bass speakers to good effect.
No Country For Old Men
Now this movie is just awesome. Just awesome. I don't even know what else to say. I guess some people are pissed off about some of the choices made at the ending of the film about what you see and what you don't, but that really worked for me, and I hear that's how the book ends, so extra kudos for standing up for the original writer's vision. The villain in this movie is the baddest of bad asses and everything else is great too. Just see it.
I did have one other thing confirmed for me though - seeing a movie in a theater full of old people can be just as annoying as seeing a flick with a bunch of kids. The old people in this theater anyway talked a hell of a lot more during the movie than most other films I go see and they didn't seem to have any shame about it at all. And this was not the first time I've noticed this. It was still only a small percentage of the audience, but man, they got on my nerves.
TV Musings
So I watched the first episode of the new Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles TV show and I'm of mixed feelings about it so far. I'll reserve judgment on it except to say that I think the world of all media needs to just give up on the tired old trope that unstoppable killing machines don't like to run and take their time putting that final bullet in you. It just rings so false. Sometimes the evil robot can run as fast as a car or, hell, even as fast as a human. But instead they stride around with what's supposed to be menacing focus of intent but which is in fact a lame excuse for the show to keep the hero alive. And really, the terminator keeps Sarah Conner alive after catching her for absolutely no reason at all. None. I mean, they let you think it's so she can be bait to lure John in, but then he just pretends to be her on the phone anyway, so what's the point? I dunno, that shit just pisses me off. Still, I'm not ready to say yay or nay on the whole show yet.
I am ready to give up on Law and Order, which recently returned sans Fred Thompson. The show is now just awful and panders to some sort of weirdly conservative, unthinking audience I can't imagine. Conservative's probably not the right word, as I don't think it's a political thing. It's just a lazy thing. Maybe The Wire has spoiled all other cop hows for me, but these new episodes are so contrived, the actions of the characters so wooden and lame, that I turned the second episode I watched (which was actually the first new one) off halfway through. Even my favorit, Criminal Intent, has gotten unbearable this year. What's up with that?
So, other than The Wire, there's not much that's exciting me on TV these days. Daily Show is back, but I get the feeling that all the liberal and moderates are avoiding crossing the strike line (good for them!) and so we've gotten this string of unbearable conservatives. Jonah Goldberg! Fuck! He's as awful as they come, as witnessed by the train wreck of an interview that the show had to cut down to even air. And John Bolton, again. Ugh.
Game wise I'm still playing Super Mario Galaxy, which continues to have a non-existent, stupid story and amazingly fun gameplay. Reading a couple books at once, both of which are good - Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes and Master and Margarita by Blugakov, which is excellent so far.
Posted by rdakan at January 21, 2008 08:22 AM