We saw Ben Stiller’s new comedy, Tropic Thunder, on Thursday night and it was much better than I imagined. The trailer I saw looked silly, but in a really dumb way. The real film was much wittier than I expected. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a better Ben Stiller movie. Keith will be very pleased, I’m sure.
Now I want to go back and watch some of the movies whose scenes it parodies — Platoon, Apocalypse Now and (surely a comedy already?) Predator. Also, for no reason in particular we should probably be watching Top Gun again, because it’s just that good…
Yesterday we went to see Emily and watch the entirety of The Lord of the Rings Extended Edition on DVD. We started about 11.30 and continued with reasonable breaks until just after midnight. People dropping in and out of consciousness for much of the afternoon, being variously sustained by crisps, bread, cups of tea and falafel and dips.
It was an arduous task and not everybody had the stamina to stay the course. (Though they all produced excuses like “I have to meet a friend” or “I left my spinach puffs in the oven!” we knew these were just fabrications designed to save face.)
It was a really good day, and I’m keen to do it again (maybe after some time to recover). It will be hard to get something as cohesive as The Lord of the Rings to watch next time. I’m not really as excited about a Matrix-fest. Watching the entirety of Firefly in a single day might be worth it, or worth something anyway, but I can’t remember how long they are. Probably less than an hour though, so not longer any longer than this altogether.
We went television shopping today. We’ve found something we both quite liked and I’ve found some good reviews online too. Maybe soon enough we’ll be able to return the favour and get everyone over for a marathon of TV.
On Monday the talk at Cafe Scientifique was given by New Zealand’s contender for the 2010 Winter Olympics in the skeleton bob sleigh event. He’s also doing a PhD in related areas — studying how the sledge interacts with the ice, and how the drivers’ wind profile and helmets affect their performance.
It was a damn interesting talk. We had to rush off to catch the final performance of the Antonion Forcione Quartet, but it would have been really great to stay behind and ask more questions.
The film we saw before was as good as I remembered, though Helen slept through it. Last time I took her to see a Japanese film she said it wouldn’t happen again. So it’ll be A Fistful of Dollars and Magnificent Seven from now on!
Nick was waiting in the queue for Forcione when we arrived, so we got good seats (in the third row, left of centre). There were two annoying guys behind me that would gasp and squeal and exhale sharply every time Antonion Forcione did something impressive (which of course was all the damn time). I really didn’t appreciate this running commentary. It got to the point where I would cringe after every display of virtuosity because I knew there was going to be a ridiculous exclamation from behind my right ear.
Show was awesome though. Band were really tight and enjoying themselves too. Apparently he’s been playing the Edinburgh Fringe for about 17 years now… see you there next year!
In completely unrelated news, we received a flyer through the door on Sunday for the Islam Festival in Edinburgh, that had been running concurrently with all the other festivals in August. Including a 3-day conversational course in Arabic! That would have been seriously cool — where else can you get nine hours tuition in beginners’ Arabic for fifteen quid? If we’d received the flyer when the festival started instead of when it ended that probably would have been the impetus I required to ask for time off.
There’s a lesson — don’t hand out flyers after the event has finished.
Does rent control really mean you can get an apartment large enough to film a trendy sitcom in? Will it be a steal? Two old friends are going to New York to find out, and there was a ceilidh at the weekend in their honour. Nick came along too, as there was apparently a surfeit of women and they needed men to even up the numbers. What wasn’t really explained was that most of these women were old ladies or nursing mothers who sat at the side chatting anyway. So actually, in a terrifying first for dance events, there seemed to be significantly more men on the floor than women.
Next day Helen made another Nigella recipe for breakfast. She hasn’t blogged it yet so I won’t reveal more. I didn’t particularly like it. :-( Nick and I returned to Edinburgh mid-afternoon. I was quite impressed with my ability to guide him to the flat by sheer guesswork. Well, this should be the right direction…
I got home on Sunday afternoon and watched Blade Runner (the director’s cut). I’m quite keen to know what Ridley Scott came up with for the recent Final Director’s Cut For Real This Time edition. Also, I’ve never seen the original version with the infamous voice-over. It sounds hilariously bad, and I’ve read quotes from Harrison Ford saying that they kept on dragging him back to record more and more appalling monologue, and every time he would go, kicking and screaming. I have also never seen one with the “happy ending” that Wikipedia mentions.
There’s a drinking game for Withnail and I that involves matching the characters, measure for measure (or at least trying) which I’m sure has been the ruin of many a poor boy.
There’s also some movies which encourage interaction — I’m thinking specifically of The Rocky Horror (Picture) Show, which encourages dressing in drag and shouting “slut!” at the screen, among other things.
So why not food participation too? Eat noodles with Deckard in the rain. You’ll never forget it.
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army is extremely silly, and I’m sure there was no good reason for anything to happen that did happen — besides getting to the next set piece, that is — but that’s why I went.
I realised on the way home last night, as I was attempting to compose this review in my head (and find an open shop to buy milk) that wildly inconsistent BDQ has a problem in action movies. If you remember in detective stories, the protagonist sometimes gets to know a clue that the reader/viewer doesn’t learn, which prevents them from working it out. It’s a cheap trick that forces the reader to take a back seat and just wait.
And so the conclusion I came to last night was that action films, especially ones with fantastical characters, force the viewer to do the same. There’s no way to tell whether Hellboy can survive a particular attack unscathed. Can he take the big ogre with one bunch of his mighty fist? Sometimes he’s punching guys a hundred yards through the air, and other times he seems so much weaker. It’s unpredictable, which is annoying.
This stuff is more prone to happen with fantastical characters because I don’t think anyone has really thought about the physical limits of these people. How high can they really jump? How fast do they run? And so on. (I suppose you could also mention Superman removing his spectacles to use his x-ray vision!)
All this is pretty irrelevant though. Because I thought this film was absurd and hilarious and very good. It may still have some relevance though — as a movie has less to engage the brain, does the brain engage less? I tend not to notice plot holes in movies like this because it’s all action! bam! kapow! but in more cerebral films they are more noticeable.
Whatever. Go see it, especially if you liked the first film.
If you find yourself with the chance, see Kung Fu Panda. It’s a Dreamworks CGI story about a panda in historical China that wants to be a kung fu warrior, but instead is the assistant cook and bus boy in his father’s noodle shop.
It’s got a bunch of great voice actors (including an Englishman as the bad guy — see if you can work out who it is without looking) and Jack Black is pretty perfect as the kung fu wannabe and star-struck fanatic.
We saw it in a room full of young kids, so it’s probably a PG at most (for the scary moments with the evil apprentice that went over to the dark side). So it might not be showing any time after 4pm at the moment. But it’s still worth seeing as an adult. There are a few excellent filmic references to other, more adult stuff. I particularly enjoyed the prison sequence, which reminded me a lot of The Chronicles of Riddick (of all things!).
The film is probably steeped in references to older kung fu movies. So if you’re a fan of that genre you’ll probably get even more out of it. My brother saw it not long ago in China, where it’s apparently a huge hit. And you know, can one billion people be wrong?
Saturday night was horrendously warm and muggy, and the air-conditioning in the cinema was not operating. And as The Dark Knight had only been out for a couple of days the room was full. Argh!
Luckily the film turned out to be pretty good, though not up to Batman Begins standards. Still immeasurably better than Batman Forever and Batman and Robin though. Spoilers below the cut.
We did eventually see something in the Edinburgh Film Festival, though it was pretty last minute. We saw WALL·E on the last day of the festival at the midday screening at the Filmhouse.
The audience was full of parents and little kids. I was fully expecting to see someone from my work there. It was exactly the intersection of geeky interest and child-friendly that I’d expect to draw my colleagues, who all seem to have kids. But no!
The film was great though. It managed to take the central character of a robotic can crusher and create a romance. Pixar’s ability to create emotion and expression never ceases to amaze. Not to mention our own ability to fall for their animated charms as if they were real people.
Also, contains the most intelligent cockroach ever to appear on the silver screen.