Movies April 2011

The A-Team (2010)

Good enough at the outset, but problems set in like an evening mist. Ok, so Mr. T having a nonviolence epiphany in jail, this is a nice twist. I don't think any of us expected a real attempt at character arcs. But by the end of the move his arc is... a repudiation of nonviolence? An embrace of killing as a problem solver? Also, at the climax of the movie, Face is doing the planning and Hannibal is doing the lying. Wha wha what? Did some pages get mixed up?

The villains were fantastic though. The theatrical CIA agent and his inept stooges along with the sociopathically professional security contractor were comedy gold -- separately, but especially together in the car. We watched that scene twice.

Date Night

I'm trying to put my finger on what's off about this movie, and I think the problem is a slapdash plot obscured and illuminated (in the medieval monkish sense) by excellent comedians and quality production values. Not good enough to recommend, but not bad enough to hate. You make the call, sports fan.

Movies March 2011

The Wire, Season 1, Disc 3

I like the Wire, but I don't like-like the Wire like everyone else seems to.

Dogs Decoded: Nova

Part of an ongoing experiment where we try to figure out what our dogs are thinking.

Sukiyaki Western Django

Genres collide! Unsatisfyingly!

Futurama, Season 5

Freakonomics

Based on the book of the same name.

Man, Woman, and the Wall

This movie is so Japanese.

The Princess Bride

We watched this, and then watched it again with William Goldman's commentary on. Not too revealing, but now I can say I did it. The dialogue still sparkles in this movie. I've occasionally thought as I watched this movie, that I don't think it could be successfully remade. It's not a just-perfect movie, but the chemistry and joy in its inception and production are non-reproducible. In the commentary, it was flattering to get William Goldman's validation, saying roughly the same thing.

2012

About as dumb as we thought it would be. Yep, about that dumb.

Arrested Development, Season 3

I never watched the whole 3rd season in order, so I decided to do that. Still funny, but the humor was starting to wear thin. As long as I'm heretical about people's favorite shows, I'll say that maybe it's just as well that this show ended when it did. Now it will always be James Dean, and never fat Elvis.

Soul Eater, series 1

Netflix just added a mess of anime, and I've been sampling. So far, this is the only one that's made it past the first episode for me. The story is standard, but the design sense is odd, and there's a pretty readable pattern in the way manga/anime builds stories that I'm trying to internalize. Anyway, it's fun, and the characters seem one-dimensional at first, but the story starts to builds depth into them as it goes.

Being asked for advice

More and more often these days, people come to me for advice, on issues of money management, relationships, and sundry topics. I try to meet these queries with straight face and sober application of experience. But in shallow submergence is an urge to shrug and crane my head looking for someone else with answers.

I'm happy to report that the urge stays submerged. This mastery of the WTF reflex is one of several signs of maturity I've been manifesting in the last year or so.

As a direct result, somewhere in the last 24 months or so, people have started to see me as a guy who knows where his towel is. I can think of three major things that account for this:

1. I got married, and did a good job of it. This makes it seem as though you know something.
2. The askers are generally younger, and did not know me in the near-past when I was more overtly lost and desperate.
3. I am actually sort of getting my shit together.

It's novel to grow up and fill in.

Movies February 2011

Pixar Short Films: Vol. 1

That was fun.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Yet another Terry Jones film that looks wonderful, and has some smashing ideas, and still seems like someone left out a couple pages of crucial exposition before the end sputters in. The guy is so consistent, I gotta think he's doing it on purpose. But Why? WHY?

Cartoon Noir

I love animation, but I guess I have to make an exception for this.

I Am A Sex Addict

The title. The title pulled me into this one when I was sick at home and cruising Netflix one day. It's an autobiographical documentary about a guy who finds out he has a sex addiction. It's interesting to notice where he was embarrassingly self-revelatory, and where he glossed.

Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam

A misnamed series of four DC universe shorts featuring Superman and Shazam, the Spectre, Green Arrow, and Jonah Hex respectively. Uniformly excellent. In the first one particularly, the creators seem to revel in their freedom from violence censorship that colored most of Warner Brothers' DC animation. I have never seen such loving attention in animation paid to punches -- gut punches, kidney punches, slow-motion punches to the face detailing the spit that flies out of a mouth.

Batman: Under the Red Hood

Remember that story from the comics about Jason Todd coming back from the dead to bedevil Batman? This is that in moving picture form.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

I like street art already, and so I was surprised, because this wasn't that. It was about a guy who knows street artists. A watchable, enjoyable documentary.

Ip Man

A high quality, but not life-changing martial arts movie.

Die Hard

This movie is underappreciated. Not that people don't like it, just not as much as they should. I don't recall watching another action movie with so many twists and visual bits and gags executed so deftly. I want to study the script for this flick. So much to learn.

Movies January 2011

Work and rampant volunteerism took all my giveadamn for the last quarter of 2010, so no formal record of movie watching was kept. I probably watched 900 films a month during that period. No one will ever know now.

But this month, I'm trying again!

The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Toy Story 3

Hercules Unchained (MST3K)
These things are less fun watching alone.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Good stuff.

Jab We Met
M and I love it when the local access channel shows clips from Bollywood musicals as music videos. Streets of people dancing, and a guy or a girl singing about chaste love, while moving in a way that is the entire opposite of chastity. delightful! So we looked on Netflix for Bollywood musicals and found this one. Yay!

Improved bewilderment

A consistent feature of my life up to now has been a continual sense of bewilderment. That there is constantly, constantly more going on than I apprehend, or am even able to. This must say something important and dismal about my psyche.

While driving around at work the other day, considering what has changed, what I've gained in my 39 years, I realized I might have learned to be bewildered better. Not bewildered less, just better at thriving in that environment, like a microorganism you didn't know could live in a scalding geothermal vent. More grace in the flailing, less lost in the confusion.

I feel like the eventual goal is zero confusion. For now, I'm happy with what I've got.