Movies, magic and mayhem...
I went to the movies this week. Tuesday afternoon to be precise, I have a litany of excused why it has taken me so long to get this up and I will save you all of them.
Here are some thoughts I have about what I witnessed or was party to:
First things first, the woman who sold me my matinee ticket (I am a responsible movie watcher and will almost refuse to see a full price movie these days. I just can't stomach the $9.50 charge) seemed to think that the movie I was going to see, 300, was a history. It is not. It is a comic book movie. The event that the comic book is based on is largely accepted to be a factual event but the history on the actual battle of Thermopylae is something that, as near as I can tell, is a pretty contested event. How many people Leonidas actually brought, how many Persians were there and how many other people showed up--Arcadians, Thebans, etc.,--is up to debate. But that wasn't the best part. The best part was that the ticket girls said that she wishes the Spartan boys were alive today because (and this is a quote), "...they would show these little gang-banger-wannabe punks what being tough is all about." Wow. We are doomed.
--
Second. I past a poster that filled me equal parts dread and excitement: Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. This is the part of my blog where I expose something that I am often ashamed of: I like comic books. When I was a kid (umm... high school) I was a fanatical comic book reader. But I didn't typically tend towards the mainstream stuff. I really liked the Marvel macabre books; things like Morbius, Ghost Rider, Sons of Midnight, Blade. I also really liked the more esoteric comics in DC's Vertigo line. At any rate, I am really nervous about the movie because I have always felt that Silver Surfer was a great character and one to which I could relate. But Hollywood has a way of completely destroying comic book movies. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comes to mind right away. As does every movie that bears a Marvel character except for Spiderman and X-men. DC for some reason has been fairly immune to the problems of their universe of characters being wrecked by Hollywood. I guess executives are more respectful of Superman and Batman then they are of Punisher, Capt. America and Hulk. I think I might be able to dedicate and entire post to this topic in the future so I will spare everyone the diatribe... for now.
--
There is an advertisement that is out for Pepsi, I think, that features a guy cracking open a can of soda and being taken for a pinball ride through a city. As all of this happens there is a song playing by a band called Plastic Bertrand called Ca Plane Por Moi. A great song, really fast, really loud, really... French. Anyway, about every 10 years there seems to be a shift in the music that we hear in advertisements and I imagine (this isn't much of a leap) that it is either to target a specific audience or because the people in the firms that make the decisions on what songs go into which ads is getting more into more age group and as such I am finding a lot more ads that have music with which I have a personal connection.
--
Spiderman 3, which looks like it is going to kick ass, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3, also ass-kicking good time, both come out in May, which means I am going to be broke as a joke and I have two months to plan for it. Seriously, as we get closer to the release dates for these shows, I will have whole posts dedicated to them.
--
There is an ad at the beginning of the movies that shows a bunch of people opening presents and being disappointed. Which is stupid. If you are disappointed by a gift you are a dickhead. I have gotten plenty of gifts where my first reaction is WTF but I think I have been pretty good at distinguishing the dickheadish behavior early and squashed it. But I am digressing, the point of the ad is that, Everybody like movies and if you don't know what you should get somebody you should just get them passes to our movie theater. And having said that if you are disappointed by a gift you are a dickhead, I am going to revise that. If you are disappointed by a gift that is not a gift certificate you are a dickhead. Gift certificates are the worst kind of gift and I would almost prefer to have a well-written card than some shitty gift card to a store.
My mother is the only person who makes gift cards work out well, what she does is goes out and buys you something from a store (I am going to use a bookstore as an example). So she buys a book that she wants someone to read, then she gets a gift certificate to go along with it; figuring I am going to spend $50 on your present, I know you should read this book, if you haven't already, and then here is $50 to get some stuff that you will want to read later. So you know she is thinking about it, you know that she has had that inner turmoil that mothers and brothers and sisters get when they shopping for family and used the gift card to supplement the gift she is getting. Kudos to you, mom.
--
I am always a sucker for a movie that has to do with the apocalypse (biblically speaking) and there is a movie with Hillary Swank coming out called The Reaping. One of the costars is Stephen.. err either Fry or Rea... Not Oscar Wilde the other one, from Crying Game.
And that conversation right there has been beating me up for a long time, how in the heck am I, a stupid American, expected to keep Stephen Fry and Stephen Rea separate in my head?
Here is what I came up with. I don't know that it will help necessarily anybody but me but if you know me you will see how my mind works. Stephen Rea is Irish. He is a republican. So Stephen Resents English Authority. See, I made an anagram of his name. That is really crafty of me. I am quite pleased.
Here are some thoughts I have about what I witnessed or was party to:
First things first, the woman who sold me my matinee ticket (I am a responsible movie watcher and will almost refuse to see a full price movie these days. I just can't stomach the $9.50 charge) seemed to think that the movie I was going to see, 300, was a history. It is not. It is a comic book movie. The event that the comic book is based on is largely accepted to be a factual event but the history on the actual battle of Thermopylae is something that, as near as I can tell, is a pretty contested event. How many people Leonidas actually brought, how many Persians were there and how many other people showed up--Arcadians, Thebans, etc.,--is up to debate. But that wasn't the best part. The best part was that the ticket girls said that she wishes the Spartan boys were alive today because (and this is a quote), "...they would show these little gang-banger-wannabe punks what being tough is all about." Wow. We are doomed.
--
Second. I past a poster that filled me equal parts dread and excitement: Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer. This is the part of my blog where I expose something that I am often ashamed of: I like comic books. When I was a kid (umm... high school) I was a fanatical comic book reader. But I didn't typically tend towards the mainstream stuff. I really liked the Marvel macabre books; things like Morbius, Ghost Rider, Sons of Midnight, Blade. I also really liked the more esoteric comics in DC's Vertigo line. At any rate, I am really nervous about the movie because I have always felt that Silver Surfer was a great character and one to which I could relate. But Hollywood has a way of completely destroying comic book movies. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comes to mind right away. As does every movie that bears a Marvel character except for Spiderman and X-men. DC for some reason has been fairly immune to the problems of their universe of characters being wrecked by Hollywood. I guess executives are more respectful of Superman and Batman then they are of Punisher, Capt. America and Hulk. I think I might be able to dedicate and entire post to this topic in the future so I will spare everyone the diatribe... for now.
--
There is an advertisement that is out for Pepsi, I think, that features a guy cracking open a can of soda and being taken for a pinball ride through a city. As all of this happens there is a song playing by a band called Plastic Bertrand called Ca Plane Por Moi. A great song, really fast, really loud, really... French. Anyway, about every 10 years there seems to be a shift in the music that we hear in advertisements and I imagine (this isn't much of a leap) that it is either to target a specific audience or because the people in the firms that make the decisions on what songs go into which ads is getting more into more age group and as such I am finding a lot more ads that have music with which I have a personal connection.
--
Spiderman 3, which looks like it is going to kick ass, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3, also ass-kicking good time, both come out in May, which means I am going to be broke as a joke and I have two months to plan for it. Seriously, as we get closer to the release dates for these shows, I will have whole posts dedicated to them.
--
There is an ad at the beginning of the movies that shows a bunch of people opening presents and being disappointed. Which is stupid. If you are disappointed by a gift you are a dickhead. I have gotten plenty of gifts where my first reaction is WTF but I think I have been pretty good at distinguishing the dickheadish behavior early and squashed it. But I am digressing, the point of the ad is that, Everybody like movies and if you don't know what you should get somebody you should just get them passes to our movie theater. And having said that if you are disappointed by a gift you are a dickhead, I am going to revise that. If you are disappointed by a gift that is not a gift certificate you are a dickhead. Gift certificates are the worst kind of gift and I would almost prefer to have a well-written card than some shitty gift card to a store.
My mother is the only person who makes gift cards work out well, what she does is goes out and buys you something from a store (I am going to use a bookstore as an example). So she buys a book that she wants someone to read, then she gets a gift certificate to go along with it; figuring I am going to spend $50 on your present, I know you should read this book, if you haven't already, and then here is $50 to get some stuff that you will want to read later. So you know she is thinking about it, you know that she has had that inner turmoil that mothers and brothers and sisters get when they shopping for family and used the gift card to supplement the gift she is getting. Kudos to you, mom.
--
I am always a sucker for a movie that has to do with the apocalypse (biblically speaking) and there is a movie with Hillary Swank coming out called The Reaping. One of the costars is Stephen.. err either Fry or Rea... Not Oscar Wilde the other one, from Crying Game.
And that conversation right there has been beating me up for a long time, how in the heck am I, a stupid American, expected to keep Stephen Fry and Stephen Rea separate in my head?
Here is what I came up with. I don't know that it will help necessarily anybody but me but if you know me you will see how my mind works. Stephen Rea is Irish. He is a republican. So Stephen Resents English Authority. See, I made an anagram of his name. That is really crafty of me. I am quite pleased.
posted by V. at 4:14 PM
2 Comments:
Nice post.
I like your anagram for Stephen Rea. Here's how I keep them straight:
Stephen Rea: REAlly skinny, REAlly funny looking.
Stephen Fry: FRYghtfully tall.
Reading those over, I see that those are totally unhelpful ideas, aren't they.
One of the things I forgot to mention about my adventure to the movie was that there was a couple in back of me who brought their infant baby to the show. INFANT BABY TO THE SHOW. INFANT BABY TO 300 BY ROBERT RODRIGUEZ. Seriously what is wrong with people that think it is okay to take babies to the movies?
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