Cathryn (formerly catslash) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
remindmeofthe) wrote2003-07-12 10:43 pm
remindmeofthe) wrote2003-07-12 10:43 pm
(no subject)
Got to use the rest of my Borders gift certificate today. I found two wonderful items.
* A copy of one of my favourite movies, Quills, which I just mentioned in my last entry because of the Geoffrey Rush factor. On DVD. For eight bucks. At Borders, people. The last place I'd look for good prices on DVDs. It's a full-fledged DVD, too, widescreen and everything. I wonder what fantastic thing I did to deserve such a gift.
* A Year at the Movies, by Kevin Murphy. You know how you see a book, and it's by someone you like so you're interested, but you're doubtful of the subject, but maybe you have some extra money or a gift certificate, so you buy it anyway, even though you expect it to be a little boring? And then you get it home, and sit down with it, and next thing you know you've been reading for four hours and your brain is starting to overload and you're having trouble concentrating on the sentences and understanding their precise meanings but you just don't want to stop? A Year at the Movies is like that. Kevin Murphy was one of the crew at Mystery Science Theater 3000 - he voiced and puppeted Tom Servo - hence my interest. However, the concept of the book - Murphy spent a full year attending a movie every single day, and did a lot of travelling in the process - sounded dubious to me, like a self-conscious project by a man not ready to let go of the thing (movies) that provided him with fame for so many years. Well, you know what? Shame on me. This book is a pleasure to read. Rather than merely putting together a collection of reviews of all the movies he saw, Murphy chose to write a chapter about each week, with a different topic or a certain gimmick, such as the one about people who get up and down and of course are sitting in the middle of the row rather than the aisle seats, or the one where he tried to live on a diet of concession stand food for a week. The book isn't so much about movies as it is about going out to see movies. Best of all, though, Murphy is eloquent and charming and funny and so very obviously adores his topic. I love this book. Click on the link above and buy this book.
And after I spent last night and some of this morning reading a book about going to the movies, I went to the movies. Rikki and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean today, and I was right. It was so, SO much better when I was alert and able to concentrate.
I want to know what happened. How is that a summer blockbuster based on an amusement park ride is so funny and entertaining and full of talented actors who do more than just show up and say their lines? It was supposed to be dumb. It was supposed to be enjoyable only through its sheer badness, and even that much was iffy. Instead, we have a genuinely fun, cammpy-as-all-hell movie. God, I had a great time, and the high lasted for a good couple of hours.
Second-time impressions as promised.
Orlando still meh. You don't really notice it in LotR, because in the two movies combined he has a total of like thirty-five lines, but the guy's just not much of an actor. His main talents seem to be looking pretty - not in a prettyboy way, but in a more ingenious way, a way where he can find the best way to look pretty on any set, and blend that prettiness in to improve the overall look of the shot - and behaving nobly. If he keeps picking roles which require these two talents, he'll do well.
Geoffrey Rush, as I suspected, does indeed do as much as he can with what he's given. Watch him in the scene where Barbossa invites Elizabeth to dinner and encourages her to eat as much as she can and not to concern herself with manners. His face is hungry as he watches her. It's something you only really notice after the first viewing, when you know about the curse, but Rush makes it very clear that Barbossa is haunted by endless, insatiable hunger for all manner of things, and that in having Elizabeth join him for dinner, he is trying his very best to enjoy a meal vicariously through her. Knowing this, Elizabeth's sudden anxiety that he's poisoned the food becomes both funny and sad, because now we know that poison is the farthest thing from his mind. All he wants is to watch her eat.
By the way, is it wrong for me to feel so deeply for these cursed pirates? What a wretched existence. I would imagine we're intended to see the Black Pearl's crew as evil and icky and not feel sorry for them in the least, but damn. It reminds me of a line from Sandman, spoken by an immortal character who has fallen on hard luck: "Do you know how hungry you can get . . . when you don't eat . . . and you don't die?" Interestingly, however, the ultimate message of the movie seems to be "Pirates, yay!", so I don't know. The fact that Rush slips in a more than one heartwrenching delivery when Barbossa explains the curse to Elizabeth didn't really help, either. And then there's the whole thing with the apples -
. . . aaaand I think maybe I'm starting to way overthink things, so moving on.
Jonathan Pryce, whom I didn't mention before, plays Elizabeth's father. He was in the movie Evita as the Argentinean dictator Juan Perón, which is the only thing I've seen him in. He's a talented actor in a bit part who could have easily gotten away with phoning it in, but he doesn't. He is very believeable as a man who loves his daughter very much and values her happiness. He's also damn funny struggling with a disembodied skeletal arm. Quite a bit of range in this little part. ;)
I was also able to take Commodore Steve more seriously this time around. I liked that the screenwriters allowed the character to be noble at the end; he had such an opportunity to prove himself a Cal Hockley-style jackass, but instead he took the high road, accepted that Elizabeth's heart lay with someone else, and allowed Jack Sparrowto escape a day's headstart. Yay Commodore Steve. Now, as I said in my reply to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
joanne_c below, if only they'd've given him a first name . . .
By the way, Captain Jack Sparrow is my new favourite character ever. I think if Johnny Depp had had any more fun playing him his heart would have exploded. (By the way, did y'all know that Depp is forty? No, really. I seriously thought he was perpentually in his twenties or something.) I adore Captain Jack and his curious sense of morals and tendency to yammer constantly regardless of who's listening and eyeliner and swishiness and effortless ability to transcend the writers' half-hearted attempts to tell us that he's straight. Lovelovelove. The end.
Of course that's not all. But, in spite of what the time stamp is telling you, it has actually become Saturday since I started writing this, so I'm thinkin' maybe I need to let go a post now.
* A copy of one of my favourite movies, Quills, which I just mentioned in my last entry because of the Geoffrey Rush factor. On DVD. For eight bucks. At Borders, people. The last place I'd look for good prices on DVDs. It's a full-fledged DVD, too, widescreen and everything. I wonder what fantastic thing I did to deserve such a gift.
* A Year at the Movies, by Kevin Murphy. You know how you see a book, and it's by someone you like so you're interested, but you're doubtful of the subject, but maybe you have some extra money or a gift certificate, so you buy it anyway, even though you expect it to be a little boring? And then you get it home, and sit down with it, and next thing you know you've been reading for four hours and your brain is starting to overload and you're having trouble concentrating on the sentences and understanding their precise meanings but you just don't want to stop? A Year at the Movies is like that. Kevin Murphy was one of the crew at Mystery Science Theater 3000 - he voiced and puppeted Tom Servo - hence my interest. However, the concept of the book - Murphy spent a full year attending a movie every single day, and did a lot of travelling in the process - sounded dubious to me, like a self-conscious project by a man not ready to let go of the thing (movies) that provided him with fame for so many years. Well, you know what? Shame on me. This book is a pleasure to read. Rather than merely putting together a collection of reviews of all the movies he saw, Murphy chose to write a chapter about each week, with a different topic or a certain gimmick, such as the one about people who get up and down and of course are sitting in the middle of the row rather than the aisle seats, or the one where he tried to live on a diet of concession stand food for a week. The book isn't so much about movies as it is about going out to see movies. Best of all, though, Murphy is eloquent and charming and funny and so very obviously adores his topic. I love this book. Click on the link above and buy this book.
And after I spent last night and some of this morning reading a book about going to the movies, I went to the movies. Rikki and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean today, and I was right. It was so, SO much better when I was alert and able to concentrate.
I want to know what happened. How is that a summer blockbuster based on an amusement park ride is so funny and entertaining and full of talented actors who do more than just show up and say their lines? It was supposed to be dumb. It was supposed to be enjoyable only through its sheer badness, and even that much was iffy. Instead, we have a genuinely fun, cammpy-as-all-hell movie. God, I had a great time, and the high lasted for a good couple of hours.
Second-time impressions as promised.
Orlando still meh. You don't really notice it in LotR, because in the two movies combined he has a total of like thirty-five lines, but the guy's just not much of an actor. His main talents seem to be looking pretty - not in a prettyboy way, but in a more ingenious way, a way where he can find the best way to look pretty on any set, and blend that prettiness in to improve the overall look of the shot - and behaving nobly. If he keeps picking roles which require these two talents, he'll do well.
Geoffrey Rush, as I suspected, does indeed do as much as he can with what he's given. Watch him in the scene where Barbossa invites Elizabeth to dinner and encourages her to eat as much as she can and not to concern herself with manners. His face is hungry as he watches her. It's something you only really notice after the first viewing, when you know about the curse, but Rush makes it very clear that Barbossa is haunted by endless, insatiable hunger for all manner of things, and that in having Elizabeth join him for dinner, he is trying his very best to enjoy a meal vicariously through her. Knowing this, Elizabeth's sudden anxiety that he's poisoned the food becomes both funny and sad, because now we know that poison is the farthest thing from his mind. All he wants is to watch her eat.
By the way, is it wrong for me to feel so deeply for these cursed pirates? What a wretched existence. I would imagine we're intended to see the Black Pearl's crew as evil and icky and not feel sorry for them in the least, but damn. It reminds me of a line from Sandman, spoken by an immortal character who has fallen on hard luck: "Do you know how hungry you can get . . . when you don't eat . . . and you don't die?" Interestingly, however, the ultimate message of the movie seems to be "Pirates, yay!", so I don't know. The fact that Rush slips in a more than one heartwrenching delivery when Barbossa explains the curse to Elizabeth didn't really help, either. And then there's the whole thing with the apples -
. . . aaaand I think maybe I'm starting to way overthink things, so moving on.
Jonathan Pryce, whom I didn't mention before, plays Elizabeth's father. He was in the movie Evita as the Argentinean dictator Juan Perón, which is the only thing I've seen him in. He's a talented actor in a bit part who could have easily gotten away with phoning it in, but he doesn't. He is very believeable as a man who loves his daughter very much and values her happiness. He's also damn funny struggling with a disembodied skeletal arm. Quite a bit of range in this little part. ;)
I was also able to take Commodore Steve more seriously this time around. I liked that the screenwriters allowed the character to be noble at the end; he had such an opportunity to prove himself a Cal Hockley-style jackass, but instead he took the high road, accepted that Elizabeth's heart lay with someone else, and allowed Jack Sparrow
joanne_c below, if only they'd've given him a first name . . .By the way, Captain Jack Sparrow is my new favourite character ever. I think if Johnny Depp had had any more fun playing him his heart would have exploded. (By the way, did y'all know that Depp is forty? No, really. I seriously thought he was perpentually in his twenties or something.) I adore Captain Jack and his curious sense of morals and tendency to yammer constantly regardless of who's listening and eyeliner and swishiness and effortless ability to transcend the writers' half-hearted attempts to tell us that he's straight. Lovelovelove. The end.
Of course that's not all. But, in spite of what the time stamp is telling you, it has actually become Saturday since I started writing this, so I'm thinkin' maybe I need to let go a post now.
Quills?
And until last week, Joaquin's Abbe was my favourite priest in a movie. What happened was that I saw the movie The Pavilion Of Women with Willem in it and I now have two favourites.
Quills is also noteworthy for containing the only necrophilia scene that does not make me feel ill.
And I am seriously adoring the POTC spoilers.
Must note on Orlando - see Ned Kelly to see him act well. It was the first movie he did anything for me in beyond pretty. Plus his chemistry with Joel Edgerton...yum! Joel is an Australian actor who's probably best known in the US for two minutes as Owen Lars in Attack Of The Clones. But don't hold that against him.
It sounds like NK is so far the only movie he's done so in, though I wouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be a good actor with the right material.