The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

A number of us went out to see the new Terry Gilliam movie, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. I was a little concerned as the reviews I'd seen were generally of the flavor: "The movie is pretty, but the story doesn't make much sense." Well, except for a bit of confusion on my part towards the end, I found the story pretty straightforward. It revolves around the eponymous Dr. Parnassus who at one point was a holy man of an esoteric religion, but had been granted life eternal as the result of winning a bet with Mr. Nick (aka the devil, as well played by Tom Waites). However, as the result of losing another bet with Mr. Nick, Doctor Parnassus is on the verge of some, well, serious consequences. The doctor travels around London in a completely implausible vehicle with a small band of performers, trying to get the good audience to pass through a magic mirror that transports them to a personalized world created from their imaginations and desires. I was afraid this movie would frustrate me like Tidelands (and to a certain extent The Brothers Grimm) did, especially after reading some of the reviews. To my pleasant surprise I enjoyed this movie probably as much as some of Gilliam's best work, a la Time Bandits or Brazil. With computer animation technology, I think Gilliam finally has the tools to show the world the crazy ideas in his head in a surreal, yet realistic way. If you're a Terry Gilliam fan, you should definitely check this movie out and even if you are unfamiliar with his work I still think this is a great movie.

Sherlock Holmes

It was all right, more of a Sherlock Holmes themed movie than a Sherlock Holmes movie. Jeremy Brett for the win!

Avatar

Went out with several friends to see James Cameron's newest adventure, Avatar. I was a little skeptical because the trailer didn't really do much for me, but on the other hand I don't think I've ever seen a James Cameron movie I've hated. Avatar was a pleasant surprise. The plot is solid if unremarkable, about earth interests who are trying to move an alien race off of their tribal lands to get the resources (Unobtainium, if you can believe it) that lay below. You can see the plot devices and developments coming from a mile away, but the ending is still emotionally satisfying, if predictable. The visuals, on the other hand, were amazing. The first half of the movie is just achingly beautiful. The character animation was also good, especially the facial expressions. The 3D where I was sitting (towards the front and to the side) was meh at times with out of focus objects becoming distractingly fuzzy. I will probably go again once more in the theaters to see this on the big screen before it leaves.

Rifftrax: Shorts-Stravaganza

Noelle and I went to see this last week. I saw the Rifftrax in-theater performance featuring Plan 9 From Outer Space and couldn't stop laughing at one, so I was really looking forward to this show. It was really funny, although not up there with Plan 9. They had some of the weirdest ass shorts I've ever seen including a tree "of no account" (the part where it gets cut down is the best part) and a weird Santa inspired dream with claymation dolls that would give me nightmares if they hadn't riffed on it. Also a promotional movie for Santa's workshop that was funny when I could understand the audio or tell what I was looking at (worst. cinematography. evar.). Oh, and they ragged on Twilight, so that was fun. It was worth going to just to hear Sparkly Vampires. Good time. Would go again.

Mission Completed

Had our annual Christmas dinner Saturday. It was a lot less crazy than last year: only 14 guests instead of 25 or whatever it was. I actually found the seating to be fairly reasonable. I was in the kitchen a lot cooking for the first part of the evening, but it was a tenderloin roast, so it wasn't too awfully demanding. The roast actually got done roughly around the time the last guests showed up, so it came out of the oven just about perfectly done. It must have been good because most of it got eaten. A nine pound roast is a lot bigger than one might think it would be. Also prepared a couple of pies and some cookies which were also popular. There was much merrymaking and a good time was had by all. Sunday was a _much_ more laid back day than Saturday, after all the excitement that had been building up. Derek stayed over because he is currently sans car, so we took him home Sunday afternoon. We went out last night and saw the animated Christmas Carol in 3D which was quite good despite Jim Carey starring. He was a lot more restrained than he could have been, considering his resume. Now back to work, which hopefully is going to be nice and quite for the next couple of weeks.

Ninja Assassin!

This movie is a 100 lb box of awesome! There are a few minutes of unnecessary talkiness, there's more CG blood than I care for, and I think that ninjas are not really hiding properly when they engage in street battles in the middle of traffic, but other than that I think this movie delivers about everything one might reasonably expect in a movie about ninjas: frenetic combat, over the top violence, and stealthy assassins who blend into the shadows of the night. The plot is spare, but straightforward, because you really aren't coming to see this movie because of the plot. The characters, other than the central character are not developed to speak of, but you aren't coming to see this movie because of the character development. You're coming to see a lot of badass ninja action, and Ninja Assassin delivers in spades for almost all of its 99 minute runtime.

2012

The earth's core is being boiled by mutating neutrinos. You can drive from LA to Yellowstone in a day. Oliver Platt makes a convincing bad guy. Roland Emmerich can blow me. Do not see this abysmal piece of shit. It is easily the worst movie I've seen in 2009. I tried to avoid it, but I was talked into wasting two hours and thirty-eight minutes of my life that I will never get back again.

Here, watch this trailer instead. Had that movie been made instead, I would feel a lot better about having seen it.

Zombieland

Best. Zombie. Movie. Evar.

The role Woody Harrelson was born to play.

District 9

A bunch of us went to see District 9 at the theater the other night. I liked it with some reservations. There were a lot more bodily fluids than I was expecting, and this is compared to Drag Me to Hell. I appreciated the irony of aliens coming to South Africa and being treated as an unwanted people who are treated as subhuman by the locals who herd them into slums where they live separately from the humans. The story centers around a bureaucrat who starts out as the worst kind of bigot who gradually becomes more sympathetic throughout the course of the movie. The start of the movie is a lot more tense than I had expected, almost painfully so. Then it sort of morphs into an action movie, which helped to relieve the tension. Overall, good flick but perhaps too intense for some.

Up

When not helping Esther move into her new house (which is beautiful and up in the hills, btw) I managed to get out to see a couple new movies, one of which was Up, the latest Pixar venture. The story of an elderly man who in his waning days decides to go on the adventure he'd always planned as a younger man, but never did. In a most unorthodox way. Ad Asner is the grumpy old man (real stretch there) and Christopher Plummer also appears as the Bad Guy. As one might expect from a Pixar movie, it looked great and was well written. While not my favorite Pixar movie, it's up there. So to speak.

Drag Me to Hell

Drag Me to Hell = Evil Dead - Ash + Mira Sorvino clone + gypsy curse + lots of bodily fluids + Mac + Modern special effects.
I saw the trailer and thought this movie looked unbelievably cheesy, then found out it was a Sam Raimi film. I was entertained. If you're expecting something serious, go elsewhere. Not Army of Darkness or even Evil Dead 2, but still fun.

Terminator: Salvation

Meh. Thought the movie was pretty good, albeit with some plot holes through most of it. Then it completely falls apart at the end. Like, head slapping bad.

Watch Watchmen

I have been hopeful since I first saw Zach Snyder talking about his Watchmen project that this movie could possibly capture the Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel upon which it is based. Well, this movie delivers the goods. Visually, it's amazing to me how well the movie looks like a representation of what Dave Gibbons drew. And it's a stunning representation. Most of the plot that was not omitted is faithful to the original book and I think overall the script is faithful to the spirit of Watchmen. Some plotlines have been left out of the theatrical release, but the movie is already at 2:45, so it's remarkable to me how much stayed in the story. I really think this is one of the best comic-book movies I've ever seen.

Notes: not for younger viewers (there's a lot of sex and violence), it's long, and the story may be confusing if you haven't read the graphic novel. The basic idea is an imagining of superheroes who have the same kinds of flaws as regular people, perhaps even worse flaws than most. Oh, and there's a lot of blue penis in this movie, if that sort of thing offends you.

Coraline

A bunch of us went out last Friday to see the Premiere of Coraline in 3D at the local theater. I felt like crap, as I appear to be recovering from _another_ frickin' cold. I was tired and cranky and ill prepared to wait in line for 45 minutes, but I did anyway.

It was worth the wait. I hadn't read Neil Gaiman's story of a bored little girl whose disinterested parents move her away from her Michigan home to darkest Oregon. Her neighbors are weird and/or irritating and her life is generally annoying. At one point she travels through the Other World in a dream, which is like the real world, only cooler. She has an Other Father and an Other Mother who are just like the parents she wishes she would have, other than having buttons for eyes. Everything there is odd, but super cool. But then things start going awry...

Anyway, I have not read the story upon which the movie is based, but I was thoroughly entertained for the hour and forty minutes or so it ran. One of the better movies I've seen in a while.

The Wrestler

I went to see Darren Aronofsky's latest movie The Wrestler with a number of people on Friday. It was a sold out show, so we ended up in the front row, with our heads craned up like Young Alex in A Clockwork Orange. I learned a few things from this movie: While pro wrestling is fake, in a way, it is also very real, in that during their performances, they really do get glass embedded in their backs, they really are bleeding, etc. Mickey Rourke has a huuuge torso. He's a little flabby, sure, but he's built like a tree. Mickey Rourke is also a very decent actor. Marissa Tomei has had <cough> body modifications. Finally, I am frightened by the sight of Mickey Rourke's ass, 15 feet wide, right in front of my face.

It was a good movie, if somewhat sad (big surprise from Aronofsky there). However, it was not as sad as the trailers would suggest.

Revolutionary Road

Meh. So disappointing. Sam Mendes directs Leonardo diCaprio and Kate Winslet. I loved American Beauty and Leo and Kate were great in Titanic. This movie was one long portrait of dysfunction. And unlike American Beauty, it was not funny dysfunction. The one bright spot was Michael Shannon as the crazy guy who seemed the least unhappy person in the film. This guy's vocal and facial mannerisms could make him Heath Ledger's replacement as the Joker.

Movies of Note

Rocknrolla - The latest Guy Ritchie flick. If you liked Snatch and/or Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, you'll probably like this story about a gangster who makes his money in London real estate and how the deal goes sour. Lots of action and the kind of quirky dialog Ritchie is known for.

Madagascar 2 - She likes to move it, move it! Honestly, I went to this with Noelle because she's been singing the song from the trailer for approximately ten months now. Low expectations worked in my favor, as this movie is actually pretty good. It's not cinema, mind you, but it was a hell of lot funnier that I had imagined. Lots of penguin action.

Synecdoche, New York - Since I saw Charlie Kaufman's first film, Being John Malkovich, I didn't think that he could make a movie that was any stranger. Well, I have been proven wrong. There's one thing in this movie that is out and out weird, like the 7 1/2 Floor from Malkovich, but weird permeates this movie in a more subtle, but in some sense more confusing way than in his earlier films. The story revolves around Caden Cotard, a playwright who is plagued by a fickle wife who doesn't love him any more, lots of mysterious physical maladies, and nearly paralyzing case of indecision. Caden is stuck in a rut, but he gets a grant to do his own work and starts on a project about life. This play is small scale replica of the world about the people he knows. Soon he has an actor playing him and others to play the other people in his messed up life. There are other people playing other people who exist in the world, but aren't directly connected to him, in the ever expanding set. It's intellectually very interesting, but also very hard to follow at times. There's a thing in computer science called "going meta" and the film does that at least a couple times. Weird, interesting stuff.

Weekend

Kind of a weird weekend. Friday night we went to see Mirrors with Rachel. If you're taking the night watchman job because they had replace the last one in a hurry, maybe you should ask why. Or inquire why the old department store you're watching over burned down in the first place. And if you see weird shit in the mirrors, perhaps you should stop working there. This Kiefer Sutherland vehicle was working ok (other than some excruciating dialog that periodically made _me_ want to cut my throat with a shard of broken mirror) as a somewhat cheesy albeit occasionally very violent horror movie until about the last twenty minutes. At that point I threw up my hands and mocked it as an Army of Darkness/Evil Dead wannabe. Don't ask. Let's just say that I think the writers painted themselves into a corner and didn't really know how to resolve the movie.

Saturday we got up really late. And then there was reading. And then some eating. And then some more reading. And some video games. It was a good, good day.

Sunday we got up late again (boy I miss that) and some of Noelle's friends from VA were in town escaping from the fog of San Bruno, so we had a hot dog with them and caught up on what was new up north. Then we nipped home for some yard work before heading over to Palo Alto to have dinner with Zak and Angie at Zao. After that we decided to check out the Clone Wars animated movie. It was ok. Better than at least than Episode I. (Noelle liked it better than two of the prequels.) Plot summary: The Jedi Knights must rescue Jabba the Hutt's kidnapped son in order to move Republican troops around the space blockade established by their enemies.

Busy Weekend

(click to see flickr set)

Noelle's BFF from high school, April came from SoCal to visit us last weekend. April wanted to go see the Monterey Bay Aquarium, so we went down to Monterey on Saturday. The aquarium had some traveling exhibits I hadn't seen before, including fresh water otters which were really cool. The jellyfish exhibits were also fascinating to watch as usual. They had an ocean sunfish there, which I haven't seen in a while at the aquarium. New since my last visit was a new entrance with a large exhibit dedicated to the history of fishing at Cannery Row (where the aquarium is located). My only disappointment was not being able to find any cuttlefish, which are probably my favorite fish there.

After extracting all the goodness possible from Monterey, we skidaddled northwards to Santa Cruz, where we were just in time to get some yummy greek food at Vasili's. Man, I love that place. I am also very fond of Cafe Pergolesi, where we went for coffee afterwards. We finally ended up at the boardwalk where Aki was sitting in at a very respectable blues band at a bar there.

The next day we got up late, but in time to go see The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor before taking April to the airport. The movie was ok. The fight scenes were very respectable, the effects were fab, the dialog caused my brain to try and escape from my skull, and the story was... average. Pretty much, there is a mummy with a dark backstory and someone wakes him up and Brendan Fraser and company have to put a stop to it. You know the drill. Oh, and there are yeti in the movie. Kung-fu yeti. I'm not making this up.

Anyway, that a whole lot of Dr Who watching pretty much took up my weekend. Which is now over. Sigh.

X-Files: I Want To Believe

Noelle, Rachel, and I went out to see the second X-Files movie Monday night. The cast was all a bit older, but otherwise it was like stepping into a regular monster of the week episode, although it was a little different because Mulder and Scully are a couple now, and they weren't through most of the series. Billy Connoly plays a former priest whose visions of a kidnapped FBI agent lead the FBI to try the talents of Fox Mulder once more. Not a revelation, but the movie is worth checking out if you're a fan of the show.