I’ve been reading the Fangbone books this week but haven’t had a whole lot of time to watch stuff on the TV… though, tonight, we’ll be watching Summerslam! at our local blast area (the one with that steak sandwich).
For the Bookclub this week, we need to have watched “Brown Betty” and to have tried to keep an open mind about “The Musical Episode”.
So… what have you been reading and/or watching?
We finally saw Watchmen last night (on the old DVD player, where it worked fine.) Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Be warned: some spoilers.)
* It was very faithful to the book, both in spirit and in detail.
* The performances were excellent, especially Kelly Leak as Rorschach.
* Malin Akerman. Laurie should have been angrier, and either chain-smoked or had some other habit to show how frustrated she was. Still, Malin Akerman.
* Using (mostly) lesser-known actors worked, removing the distraction of seeing them as themselves rather than the character. The only one that took me out of the film was Danny Woodburn as Big Figure. (Look:Kramer’s buddy.)
* The music worked too, especially the two Dylan songs.
* The space squid always seemed dumb to me, though I understand why Alan Moore wanted the plot to include co-opting and then murdering comic book artists. Making Dr. Manhattan the villain feels more like what Veidt would do.
* The slow-stop-speedup affectation for action scenes did get annoying.
* The fake John McLaughlin and Ted Koppel were just weird. I doubt that even 1% of the audience got the “metaphysical certitude” reference.
Recommended.
Really! I left the theater feeling disappointed with a handful of “well… what did you expect?”
I didn’t mind changing the ending of the space squid to Doctor Manhattan, particularly. That felt more like a change of the nature of “Peter Parker getting bitten by a radioactive spider” to “Peter Parker getting bitten by a genetically engineered spider”… as in it updated one of the things that everybody is more than happy to run with.
I loved the first… five? seven? minutes of the movie as I thought it did a great job of explaining what had happened previous but it felt like the timing was just off for the rest of the movie. The “slow-stop-speedup affectation for action scenes” explains my problem with the movie in a nutshell. The stuff that I thought was important was given seconds, the stuff that I thought was secondary was given minutes (and, in the case of Spectre II and Night Owl’s tryst on the ship, hours and hours).
You’d rather see more of people punching each other and less of naked Malin Akerman? OK….
Seriously, I think we go to movies for different things. I usually find fight/action scenes too long, and wish they’d get on with the story again. (Though in the second Star Wars trilogy, this was a dilemma, since, after yet another interminable light-saber duel, the story they’d get back to was just as boring.)
When it comes to boobage, I have an embarassment of riches.
What I don’t have is enough people punching each other.
That’s a really good rundown. I thought the Dr. Manhattan plot was a definite improvement.
The opening Dylan sequence? Brilliant!! I sometimes watch it. It actually opened my wife’s mind to reading the comic book or watching the movie, neither of which she would otherwise be inclined to do. The only criticism I have is that I thought it would have been really, really cool to have a scene of Dan showing Hollis the Owlship for the first time.
Rorchach’s voice needed to come off with his mask. The dude’s real voice has the added benefit of sounding like what I would expect Kovacs to sound like.
Reading over my old review, I apparently had quite a bit negative to say about Ozymandias on the whole. Reading it again, I agree with myself. I also complained about two things you note here: the smoking and Laughlin.
I may be the only person who thought that the sex scene was quite well done.
Is your old review somewhere online?
Sorry, meant to add it. Here is the primary review. Here is a follow-up. Here is a piece on the sexuality of the story.
A lot of the same things struck both of us.
Your comment on faces and masks reminded me: At the end of the film, when Rorschach is daring/pleading with Dr. Manhattan to kill him, at the end he takes off his mask to scream “Do it!”. Once again, that’s right for cinema (emphasis with his real face) but wrong for the character. It’s the ultimate [1] Rorschach “never compromise” moment, and he wouldn’t either say it or want it done except as Rorschach. (That moment also reminded me of the Captain Carnage story, but with Rorschach on the other end of responding to “Punish me!” with “Sure thing.”)
1. Literally.
You forgot – worst use of ‘Hallelujah’ in any movie scene, ever.
I want to watch the Ultimate Cut (interpolates the Black Freighter storyline, animated). Curious as to how that would change the rhythm of the thing.
Agreed that losing the squid was the way to go.
Yeah, I’m curious about the the Ultimate Cut too. It’s interesting that the differences among the versions is that the longer one restore more of what was in the book. That’s completely unlike LOTR, where the longer ones just have more spurious crap and longer battle scenes.
And, on a completely different note, it’s now 35 years that the world has had to get along without Groucho.
35 years! That can’t be. I’m sure I’m old enough to remember it.
Here’s from a few months prior:
Reading quality fluff, gearing up to read textbooks. Watching Glee, mostly.
Watching Phineas and Ferb with Junior and loving that the mom used to be a hot rockstar and the dad is a super nerd. I want to punch the annoying sister and I’m beginning to wonder why all the cool nerds are male. Where are the female cool nerds in children’s shows?
Velma!
OK, I’ll give you that. I mean, the character has become an icon for all nerdy girls who happen to have a little extra going on. But she is the exception to the rule in children’s media, unfortunately.
Dora?
Willow? (I guess Willow is young adult…)
Hermione!
Mmm, Hermione. That girl knows how to represent.
As for Dora? She’s not a nerd. Just a bilingual little girl who communicates with animals. Actually, she’s a little off if you think about it. I’m not familiar enough with Buffy to comment on Willow and I’m really looking at a younger audience.
I’ve been watching the first season of the Twilight Zone. I’ve been struck by how much simpler the plots were back then. There’s not an episode I’ve seen so far whose key plot points can’t be summarized in a few sentences. There’s the premise, the punchline, and twenty minutes of filler in between, just about every time.
Okay. We need to have a Twilight Zone thread.
I’m thinking that we’re in a “one man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens” territory when you talk about “filler”. Time Enough At Last? The Hitch-Hiker? THE LONELY???
Dramatic buildup, if you prefer. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with it, just that it’s different. The plots are markedly simpler than what you get with modern television shows, even sitcoms.
Time enough at last: A bank teller loves reading, and resents the constant interruptions by the demands of his wife and job. One day, while he sneaks into the bank’s vault to read in peace, a nuclear blast destroys civilization, leaving him as the last survivor. He is initially elated that he will have the rest of his life to read in peace, but his joy turns to despair when he breaks his glasses.
Plot-wise, there’s just not much there.
M. Night before M. Night.
It was the show about having a twist (or “ironic”) ending back when the convention was to be conventional. Heavily moralistic to the point of being preachy, but without… I dunno. It felt like they understood that the point of the sermon was to get you to think about being the type of person who would deserve the good twist endings instead of being the type of person who deserves the bad ones.
Golly, I love that show.
I saw one recently that really disappointed me. It’s set in a small town where the men sit in front of the general store to pass the time. One of them tells nothing but whoppers. Whatever the subject is, he knows all about it, because he invented it, and when the government has any problems with it, he’s the one they call.
It turns out that this town is the earth headquarters of a bunch of aliens, who don’t have the concept of a lie. They think Mr. Blowhard really is the most important man on earth, so they grab him, take him to their spaceship, and prepare to blast off. How does he get out of it? Obviously, since he got into this by lying, he gets out by inventing a lie so outrageous that … well, no. It turns out he brought his harmonica, whose sound, for some reason, is deadly to aliens , so he blows his way out. Now comes the ironic ending, which is that of course no one back at the store believes a word of his story.