den_down_unda, posts by tag: movies - LiveJournal

Usually when I weep quietly at my desk, it's because of my job. But today, we lost a legend, and a beloved elder of the sf tribe.

I'm having trouble encompassing the idea of a world without Leonard Nimoy in it. His passing is one of those that I didn't expect to resound quite so strongly, but it has and will, I suspect, continue to do so. Spock was never my favorite character on Star Trek. Bones (and to a lesser extent, Scotty) was.

But Spock best embodied the open-handed, optimistic vision of Star Trek, and Leonard Nimoy seems to have lived that vision most strongly. The outpouring of respect and love from everyone he touched, from costars to colleagues to fans, tells that story, as does the sheer breadth of his art: acting; directing; writing; photography; and even singing (which maybe wasn't as artistic as the rest). You could say that he lived out the Vulcan credo of "infinite diversity in infinite combinations" just in his own life.

Surely it's fair to say the he lived long and prospered and we also prospered for having shared in his art, even on Twitter, where he offered himself as everyone's honorary grandfather, because well, many of us needed a grandfather even if just in 140 characters. So thank you, sir, and ad astra. I loved you. Give my love to De, Jimmy, Majel, and Gene.

3. Something you wish had never happened/or had happened

I don't want to discuss really serious stuff here, and I suspect no one wants to read it. Therefore, I'm going to note that I wish Terry Gilliam had gotten the financing to do the Good Omens movie. He's literally the only director in the world that could do it right, and for a measly $50 million (at a time when Waterworld cost over four times that) he could have made a bloody brilliant movie that totally would have done justice to the book.

I also wish the Who had finished Siege in 1984, that the Police had never broken up, but let Sting do his solo thing and get back together every 3 or 4 years, like Genesis did for awhile, that the Hitchhiker's Guide movie made enough money to warrant a second movie, and that the Narnia franchise died after they made The Silver Chair

And, as an offset to the bad news, this makes me smile and smile. It's Daniel Radcliffe singing "The Elements Song" after describing Tom Lehrer as the funniest man of the 20th century.

Daniel Radcliffe just may be my new favorite celebrity.

Saw The Voyage of the Dawn Treader tonight. On the whole I liked it very much. I thought the actor who played Eustace fit the part very well, and Edmund and Lucy are in fine form. ( Collapse ) So, yes. Go see it. Take your friends and your kids, because it's a good movie, and you'll like it. But most importantly, if it does good bank, The Silver Chair will be along in a couple of years, and The Silver Chair is my favorite of all the Narnia books.

So, someone out there decided that a new Bill and Ted movie would be a good idea. Actually, it looks like two someones: Alex Winter, aka Bill S. Preston, Esq., and Keanu "Ted 'Theodore' Logan" Reeves. Some people will immediately dismiss this as a grab for money, to which I say, "What money? The original two movies didn't make any money."

Other people have to wonder who is the audience for this movie. A movie about two teenage valley dude slackers in their forties. I mean who wants to see that? Me, that's who. Apparently, I'm the audience for a new Bill and Ted movie. And I don't mean that I'm representative; I may be the entire audience, aside from members of the extended Winter and Reeves clans. And I'm okay with that. After all, I loved Hot Tub Time Machine, so Bill and Ted's Heinous Middle Age is right up my alley.

Interesting Dennis trivia, BTW. Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure was the first movie I ever saw more than twice in the theater. It was during senior year of high school. I want once with one group of friends, once with another group of friends, and once with the Pippin stage crew after we somehow adopted it as our theme movie.

The trailer for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is out. Go watch.

And if you look closely, you'll see lilies. I am a very happy man right now.

The next Potter movie will be out in less than two weeks, so I'm going to talk about Narnia. IIRC, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is about sixteen months away, but I'm very much looking forward to it, if with a little trepidation.
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From jeditigger:

When you see this, post in your own journal with your favourite quote from The Princess Bride. Preferably not "As you wish" or the Inigo Montoya speech.

"Yes, yes. You're very smart. Now shut up."

Peter Falk is awesome.

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Today's episode of Things That Annoy Dennis involves a couple of movies: David Zucker's conservative "comedy" An American Carol and Bill Maher's "documentary" Religulous. Normally I wouldn't spare too many brain cells on either movie. Maher's is a slap at religious belief and Zucker's is a slapstick attack on Evul Librul Hollywood, featuring as the main character a documentary director named Michael Malone. (Full discloure: I did root against An American Carol doing big bank because, well, it sounded really stupid.)

I'm bothered by the attitude some people are taking toward them, though. Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Someone actually bothered to celebrate Bill Maher "kicking the cons asses" or something (by one metric; the other movie had a higher gross, but also had a bigger ad campaign), as if this was a competition. It's not, for several reasons, not least of which is that both of you got your asses handed to you sevenfold by a talking chihuahua.

Also, people get very fed into their narratives about "speaking truth to power" or "Hollywood squelching dissent" or whatever, and look to the box office to validate their views. Well, the box office is never going to validate your views. Less than 1% of America will plunk down any money to see either of these movies (they may do better on DVD). Nor are the movies in direct competition. Whatever the intentions of their makers, the marketers view them as product to be sold to niche markets. Because, well, that's what they are.

And if forced to choose between competing straw men in the form of Bill Maher condescending to the worst of the people he looks down on and a movie full of liberal strawmen that only exist in Sean Hannity's mind, well, I'm going with the talking dog every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

So I finally saw Batman Begins, and it was very cool. I have to applaud Chris Nolan for, not only making a really good movie, but upping the ante and making an even better sequel.

Liam Neeson was very cool and Cillian Murphy was very twitchy in a good way. And it was very ballsy of Nolan to make his first Batman movie without any of the big four of Batman's Rogues Gallery. One off-putting thing, and I just learned this, is that Ra's al-Ghul's name is pronounced Raysh, not Rahs, like in the movie. Ah well, it was still cool, and Katie Holmes was fine, although I think I prefer Maggie Gyllenhall in Dark Knight