christopher's lives (v5.3)

So, I opened it last night and set it up. There has been much debate about whether to go ahead and open it or wait until Christmas morning. The final deciding factor is that, much as it seems to surprise people, this is my first REAL espresso machine and I have firmly believed it is going to take me some time to learn to use it and we want to be sipping on a drink Christmas morning while we open presents.

I was definitely right about the learning curve. I started by not even being able to figure out how to prime the pump. The manual says it should take a few seconds, but it took several minutes. But, I didn’t know what to trust, so, it was unnerving to have it sitting there pumping with nothing happening, so, I kept switching it off and staring at it, scratching my head. This took almost an hour of switching, staring, scratching, reading, Googling. Then, when I finally got all that figured out, I had to flush the system several times and that was at least another half hour. All of this would have sucked on Christmas morning, when I want to be enjoying Christmas with the family.
I won’t go through all I did last night, but, I ended up with very hot water spewing all over me and the bar at one point, hitting buttons in the wrong order and getting very unpleasant surprising results, and plenty more staring and scratching, asking myself just what the heck I was thinking getting such a nice espresso machine for a hack like me who has only ever used a $45 Mr. Coffee and a seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time Bodum Granos.
This is just a whole new world for me.
On top of everything else, I have no tamper that fits the group handle (that’s a REALLY big deal) and the frothing wand is little bitty – a fact I admittedly knew when I purchased it. This machine is well-known for lacking when it comes to steam, but I decided that good coffee should be the primary consideration and I’d figure out the rest as I go. Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it, but it is a price issue – a machine that does everything perfectly costs quite a bit more. And besides, I’m used to working with far-less-than-perfect equipment and getting results that probably exceed what anyone would think the equipment is capable of.

I should note here that I have no good beans, and am waiting until money is a little better to place an order. As with anything, you want as few variables as possible and all I pretty much have at this point are variables and no constants, so it’s hard to know where in the process I am going wrong. I hope to order some good beans in the next couple days.
Anyway, when I finally worked up the nerve to pull a shot with my substandard beans, I was STUNNED! I have a VERY cheap grinder, lousy beans, a tamper that is too small, and I’ve never used a machine of this quality, and the shot was almost pure crema pouring from the spouts! I says to myself “It can’t be this easy – it may look great, but how will it taste?”. Well, the mouthfeel was sweet and almost syrupy. That faded almost immediately into a very smooth, albeit thin yet pleasant taste! Don’t get me wrong – it wasn’t a great espresso shot, but, as I tasted it, I marveled that, if it comes out this good when so much else was wrong, what will it be like when everything is right?!
For so long, I have used equipment that, even when you have made what should be your best shot ever, it can still come out flukishly bad. It seems that even this thing’s bad shots are acceptable shots! So, maybe I no longer have to worry so much about getting a decent shot – it will pretty much always come out decent and I can now focus on the variables that produce perfection instead of constantly worrying about safeguards against potential disaster. After how ever many years of being a hobbyist barista, I am THRILLED at this prospect.

Well, I spent about six hours last night trying to learn it. This morning, I attempted to make Terra a vanilla latte and then a cappuccino for myself.
Um. Hm.
Ok, the frothing is as bad as I feared. Her steamed milk came out ok. But, apparently, you have to switch over to brew mode and then pull straight water BEFORE you try to pull a shot immediately after using steam. And I found out the hard (MESSY) way. The manual DID say to do this, but I thought it was just a helpful tip for people who didn’t know what they were doing. Hrmph. So, while her milk is sitting there getting cold, I now have to start over with the shot – beans, grind, dose, tamp, load, pull, etc.. A five minute drink turned into a ten minute or worse drink.
With my new found knowledge, I then proceeded to attempt a cappuccino. Well, the milk was hot, but, no foam (a cappuccino should be 1/3 foam). And I know I’m not that bad – it’s that little nub of a wand. So, mine was a latte in a cappuccino cup, so the drink turned cold really fast. Blech.

Eleven hundred words already??? I knew I shouldn’t have written this after having so much coffee :P

The bottom line so far is that this machine knows a helluva lot more about making coffee than I apparently do and I have to get up to it’s standards before I can even think about refining my own technique.
And therefore, I am SO glad I didn’t wait until Christmas morning to open it. I have a couple days to try to make passable drinks before Christmas morning.

I would now like to give some public credit where public credit is most certainly due.
Firstly, thanks SOOOO much to Terra’s parents. They did make it financially possible for me to get this. I have wrestled so much with their wish that this be a present opened on Christmas day, but if they read this, I think they may understand. Plus, this is a gift not only to me, but to Terra as well – we have concluded that she is one third owner of it and that math would take too long to explain :P And, speaking of Terra, I owe much thanks to her as she is the one who pushed me so hard to actually order it when I fought so hard that it cost too much and the money could be better spent. In fact, I was so humbled by the gift of her parents, I didn’t want to accept it and Terra (and my mother) pushed me on that, too. And I want to thank my mother who also fought me, for different reasons, to go ahead and get it. She has to wait on her biggest, most-coveted present so I could get this at the holiday sale price. It is safe to say that my mother paid the highest price for this. And, finally, I thank my brother and sister-in-law who, like Terra’s parents, have come to our aid when we didn’t know if we were going to be able to have a Christmas after Terra lost her job in November. Knowing there would be gifts for mom coming from them has helped me to make the decision to spend a little extra Christmas money on the machine.

And that’s it for now. I will get some pics and video up soon. You are ALL invited for coffee :) You, uh, may want to wait a few days, though :P

    Didn’t get a lot of movie time this past month, but, here’s some thoughts on what we did get to see, in reverse chronological order.
    
    
Battlestar Galactica
    I just wanted to make a few comments on this before I get into the actual movies. Terra and I have watched the pilot mini-series and the first four episodes in this last couple weeks and I love it so far. I grew up on sci-fi, but, I think sci-fi really changed in the early 90s or so. I watched the first season of ST:TNG back in the day but then lost interest in Trek altogether – especially when the god-awful fifth movie came out (followed by the god-awful sixth and god-awful seventh, etc.). But I still love the first four films and I can sit through most of the old episodes. So, as they say, “Kirk is my captain”. And I have tried various sci-fi stuff over the years and just have seen very little that is any good, especially on tv. Most sci-fi seems to have turned into action, popcorn stuff in a future/tech setting, but, little actual thoughtful stuff. Sci-fi is supposed to be about IDEAS. Good science fiction leaves you thinking and discussing long after you have seen it. 1954’s The Day The Earth Stood Still is a good example, 1982’s Blade Runner is one of my favorites, and a good recent example would be 1999’s The Matrix. Who am I to define what sci-fi is? Good question. So, perhaps all I am doing is referring to a sub-genre.
    Anyway, what I have seen of BSG so far is great sci-fi; sci-fi as I understand great sci-fi to be. And just great in general. Great premise, great stories, great characters. And I really love the sound design. I am really looking forward to seeing more and I already have so many questions.
    
    
Primer
    Speaking of great sci-fi…
    I watched this in bed on my PSP. This is my fourth time or so to do this – I still haven’t watched it any other way. I love love love this movie. I love the small scale, just a couple of guys with little lives. And, made for $7,000, this truly is a ‘garage movie’. And sci-fi of concepts, no special effects needed. I also love the way it is filmed and acted – I always feel like I am just looking in, the acting is so natural I forget I am watching performances.
    This is on my mental list of greatest science fiction films ever made. And such a unique twist on the whole time travel concept.
    
    
Vanilla Sky
    Wow, um, what to say. I remember loving this movie – watched it several times with my wife and liked it enough to listen to the commentary a couple times. And, Terra had seen it and has been wanting to see it again.
    Well, we didn’t really like it. Not sure why. Though, this was the second in a Cameron Crowe double feature. We watched Almost Famous, followed by this. Maybe it was too late at night to appreciate, maybe it couldn’t measure up to Almost Famous. Dunno’. Anyway, something just didn’t click. We both felt it took too long to tell the story. Just sitting there waiting for the surprise ending and not really getting much else from it. I have no idea how this happened.
    But, I want to give it another chance some time.
    
    
Almost Famous
    I didn’t know if Terra would like this one or not, so, I went easy on her and started off with the much shorter theatrical cut.
    I knew I loved this movie but I had forgotten how much. This easily is in my top twenty of all time and I have really been thinking it deserves top ten placement.
    This is real comfort movie material here. And it is all about the people. I want to spend more time with these people. (Maybe, like is said of the main character, they make me feel cool?) I was absolutely smitten with this film every moment it was on and I converted the director’s cut plus commentary and put it on my PSP the very next day so I can spend some real quality, personal time with it. Speaking of the commentary – this film has the best. commentary. ever. At least, if you love the film.
    I have seen it many times and, again, I remember loving it, but, anytime I have considered watching it in the last year or so, I kept finding myself trying to remember WHY I loved it and couldn’t really think of anything. Like, maybe it was just the sort of thing I was into back then. I finally chose it one night because Terra loves Frances McDormand and I thought she’d love her in this one. And I expected to like it, but, I was just totally carried along the whole time.
    I have that little list of ten movies I can’t live without on my sidebar, and I may very well bump one to add this one to the list.

     By the way, see also August Rush for a movie about the love of music.
    
    
JFK
    This was the director’s cut we watched and boy was I sorry. She had never seen this film and even the theatrical cut is just way too long. But, she loves mysteries and didn’t know much about the whole Kennedy assassination thing and I grew up in the Dallas area, so, I’ve heard it all. The problem is that Oliver Stone always takes forever to tell a story. I can’t even say it is always worth the journey. I think Natural Born Killers is and this one probably is. Obviously, you come to this one for the last forty minutes and have to sit through the first (what feels like) five hours to get to the finale.
    Yes, this is a great film, but I would almost condone invasive studio control over a director’s work in this case :P
    
    
Iron Man
    Meh.
    I am biased, I don’t like action movies. Any movie that you can sum up to someone in terms of “this happened then that happened then this happened” etc. is an action flick. I used to have a practice that, whenever I watched a genre film in a genre I was not fond of, I would make it a double feature so I could compare them to each other rather than compare one to a “real movie”. But, even if I had done that and watched this with, say, one of the new Batman movies, Batman would win hands down.
    Tony Stark was an interesting character and was well-acted, but, all that did was point out how everyone else in the movie is a cardboard cut-out. And, the plot was totally color by numbers. You knew the guy in the cave was going to be dead, you knew Jeff Bridges was going to become the bad guy, this is all typical comic book stuff. Then it was combined with typical popcorn flick stuff – action sequences and pratfall humor, etc..
    A genre film is always predictable but tries to tell the story this time around with enough stylistic and interpretive differences to try to be a replacement for the previous versions and perhaps this succeeds somewhat for the superhero movie – I don’t know the genre very well. But that doesn’t make it a good film – it will be forgotten in fifty years, it leaves no legacy, it will not endure. I read Ebert’s review and just couldn’t believe his high praise for it and he even called it one of the best of the year.
    There are much better films out there that tell a story of a bad man becoming a good man and making his wrongs right and no special effects or suspension of disbelief are required. And they WILL endure, so, if you haven’t seen them, that’s ok, they’ll still be around when you are ready.
    
    
L.A. Story
    There was a day that Terra and I wanted to have a “light movie day”. Nothing deep, nothing to explain or ponder, just entertainment.
    Heh, um, I had a REAL problem finding many like that in my collection. Just to be clear, remember I have a huge LaserDisc collection of all kinds of movies, but most of them are in storage and my DVDs and Blu-Rays are only movies I love. There are plenty of “light” movies in my LD collection.
    Anyway, I love L.A. Story. It is a very romantic love story. But, there is so much more to it – it fits into my category of ‘movies that can’t figure out what they wanted to be’. But, it is another movie I say “watch it until you don’t laugh at the jokes anymore”. Sure, it works great as a comedy (see also American Psycho for a satirical view of L.A. life) but, if you want to get the full impact of the fantasy romantic side of it, watch it until that’s all you see.
    On that note, though, it sort of failed us as a “light” movie because there were more than a few moments that I couldn’t help but pause and call Terra’s attention to something subtle. In that way, Clueless is another ’see also’ for this one. I know so many teens that love Clueless and don’t seem to see that they are being made fun of. It works so well on the surface level that it is easy to miss the underlying messages.
    There is a scene or two in L.A. Story that seem to be only there so someone could get a cameo (I’m looking at you, Rick-Moranis-as-a-gravedigger scene!), but, there are a couple scenes that are so magical. For instance, when they go for a walk and feel young again, not middle-aged and hopeless, thinking love can never find them again – they now feel so much hope, like they have their whole lives ahead of them all over again. At least, that’s my interpretation of that scene. And I still get teary when she is on the plane to leave and I always hear his words spoken earlier about what he would do if he could to stop her from leaving.
    (I have on my to-do list to make a blog post about movies that make me cry. But not today.)
    
    
Fletch
    This is just a comfort film. I have seen it more times than I can count since I was a kid. I always love Chevy Chase’s shtick. The story is ok, the acting, whatever – none of it is anything special but I love Chevy Chase in pretty much anything. I can sit through a bad movie if it has Chevy Chase in it and this is probably my favorite.
    BTW, this was the first in our “light movie day”, followed by L.A. Story.
    
    
The Matrix
    One of the greatest science fiction films ever made and I stand by that ten years after seeing it the first time. And an action move I actually like – the chase scene at the beginning is so exhilarating and a big reason why I got the game Mirror’s Edge – just so I could live something similar. And, I love the visual style of it – I wish I had a poster of the group shot of them behind the phone, the first time they all go into the Matrix.
    My main complaints with this one are as an action film, oddly enough. The fight scenes should have been done by real martial artists. Watch an old Jackie Chan film – these guys move like old men. In fact, Jackie Chan at his age now, moves faster than these young actors.
    But, this one is full of great science fiction, semi-cyberpunk moments and ideas.
    Oh, I almost forgot, this was the new Blu-ray release we watched and, um, WOW! IT looks absolutely stunning.
    
    Too bad they never made any sequels :P
    
    
So, that brings this post to this month’s bottom line:
    
Was Ready To Re-Watch It As Soon As It Was Over: Almost Famous
Would Rather Re-Watch Any Other Film In This List Than This One: JFK

i have had this urge lately to blog the movies i watch and do it once a month – not to give detailed reviews or anything, just to log them… since i had this idea late, i’ll start with the movies i watched in march in reverse chronological order…

Magnolia
this may very well be my favorite movie i have ever seen… it is so much more than a film – it is an emotional experience…
i have loved it for years, but, it became even more powerful after being at my father’s side as he suffered a long, horrible death… there are quite a few little details in the film that let me know that pt anderson has lived through watching someone die… what i mean is, there are things i have only seen twice – in this movie and with my father…
i could go on for hours about this film, but i won’t here – i want this to be a concise recap of the month…

Breakfast At Tiffany’s
meh… i liked the character of holly and the performance by audrey hepburn, but, meh…

Ed Wood
probably the only tim burton film i genuinely like and i REALLY like it… not a great film – this one is more personal… what i relate to the most is the cast of weirdos around him – it reminds me of certain times in my own life… so, i wouldn’t defend it as a truly good film or try to get anyone else to watch it – it’s one i would keep on my psp and watch alone when i need to be with friends :P

The Terminal
speaking of my psp, i had never seen this one and watched it in bed one night on my psp and really really liked it… sure, there are some problems with it – it’s another i wouldn’t defend as a great film, but, i think this will be a favorite for a long time to come…

Ringu
never saw it before – wanted to for a long time… i don’t like horror films, but, this one has influenced so much popular media, it is certainly a relevant film… glad i saw it, doubt i will watch it again…
oh, but, i still want to see the american version…

Tristan+Isolde
second time seeing this one, first time for terra… so much great about it, but so much wrong… so hard to sympathize with the characters’ plight… sure, i understand how they got in this mess, but, they should have done the right thing and therefore, i wasn’t feeling too sympathetic… i think the final third or so of this movie was MUCH better than what came before… it got very emotional for me – i was feeling everything going on…
btw, i was suspecting while watching it that this was a big summer release, heavily advertised on MTV :P i just kept thinking how much teenagers must have loved this one and how it seemed to be made for teenagers…

The Night of the Comet
The Night of the Living Dead
this was a slumber party night double feature…
night of the comet is a movie i saw countless times as a kid, so, it is indelibly ingrained in my mind… i have every moment of it memorized and know it too well to hate it… a very bad movie, but, the mall scene and the villain thereof were reason enough to watch it with someone who has never seen it…
as for night of the living dead – haven’t seen it since i was a kid and feel i didn’t miss much… but, again, it is a relevant film – starting an entire genre, so, i don’t regret seeing it…
both were a perfect choice for slumber party night…

Matrix Revolutions
i think the first in the trilogy is one of the greatest sci-fi films ever made and the other two are pretty blah… but, i keep coming back to them every few months just to give them another try… i am totally in love with the universe of the film and want to love all three films…

Delicatessen
i have loved Amelie for years and had heard good things about this one… um, it didn’t deliver… it was as strange and surreal as i expected, but, it just wasn’t that good… i know i’ll watch it again someday, though…

Matrix Reloaded
see above…

bottom line:
best i saw this month i had never seen before: The Terminal
worst i saw this month i had never seen before: probably Ringu

since i didn’t do posts for february or january and i don’t feel like going back right now, i’ll give the bottom lines for those months, without comments… maybe i’ll come back and do full posts another time…

february bottom line:
best: August Rush
worst: What Lies Beneath
even better the second time: The Dark Knight
amazing performance in a blah movie: tie between Capote and Being There
also loved: Wit, Primer, Rushmore
still great after all these years: Barefoot in the Park, Mr. Hobbs Takes A Vacation, Rear Window

january bottom line:
best i had never seen: The Darjeeling Limited
best i saw all month: Lost In Translation
worst: The Haunting
awesome beginning, all downhill from there: The Happening
most surprising disappointment: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (i used to LOVE this one and was so sorry i chose it for our slumber party night – we were bored!)
much much much better than i remembered: The Incredibles

ok, let’s do this again next month :)

i just watched it for the first time and wanted to get some thoughts down while the emotional impression is still fresh… i have not read a word about this film, nor did i even know what it was about…

(btw, i’m typing this up on my phone, which has no cut/paste… not the best way to write, but it’ll have to do and if you continue to read, you’ll have to be ready for some stream-of-consciousness disorganization…)

i watched this on the recommendation a few months ago of Tara, a good friend whose opinion when it comes to emotional movies i very much trust… she was right about the power of The Notebook so when she said similar things about August Rush, i knew she would be right… and, of course, insisted she not tell me a single thing about it – i just took her word for it…

but, as i watched, i was doubting my trust in her… it took awhile for me to get sucked in… the film is dreamy – not surreal, but fantasy to be sure and not a strictly straightforward narrative and i was a little confused initially… but, after awhile, i began to see it as more like a dream i was having and stopped trying to keep the story straight and just let it move me – carry me…

it is a story of a miracle…
i think that says it best – a miracle happens and this is the telling of the events leading up to it…
what happens is an impossibility or at least a great improbability… this is a fairy tale, a fable – and any objections to what happened i might have were less important to what it meant and how it made me feel… it is a very emotional film… and the last twenty minutes or so, it just kept repeating in my mind: “follow the music follow the music”… music is the spirituality of the film – the religion of the three key characters… music is the meaning in their lives – not simply the only thing that matters to them, but the only thing that CAN matter, the only thing that is real… and each of them has someone who doesn’t have music the way they do and is trying to harness their music for their own ends… the girl’s father, the guy’s brother, and “Wizard” in the boy’s life… the characters “need music more than food” and each has someone who needs food more than music and has – or tries to have – control… only when each follows the music are they free… alive… and neither of those words describe it – their relationship to music transcends human understanding… it is The Cause, pushing their existance forward… without music, they are just humans… and when they follow the music, they can arrive at what they were meant for…

and, the movie ends on just the perfect note… the moment of nirvana – of destiny completed – and the mood was not destroyed by words… the writer/director/whoever made the very wise choice to not have anyone say anything… we already knew the facts they would tell each other, so why ruin this flawless moment? we can imagine what happens next but there isn’t even a need to imagine – when people ride off into the sunset, there is no next day, that’s why it’s a romance… their whole life has been leading up to this moment and the maker(s) of the film doesn’t ruin it – you just wake up from this beautiful dream…

i absolutely must watch this again because i’m not certain how i will feel about it a second time…
i know the kid’s performance is great, the overall pacing is pretty good, the photography is beautiful, the use of music and sound design was superb (i hope this is available in dts), but as i said, it did take me awhile to get truly sucked in… i said to terra as the credits rolled that it is a flawed masterpiece, but a masterpiece just the same…
i have been really wanting to see films by female directors after being so moved by Sophia Coppola’s Lost In Translation – knowing that a female director will convey emotion in a completely different way… and this is certainly the most unique film i have seen in years and i truly mean that…
but i wanted it to make me cry and it didn’t… i wanted it to take my breath away and i had to settle for awe… there were a lot of smiles i had in the third act as i saw it all coming together, but it was undeniably predictable… that is probably the wrong way to say it… the hopes and dreams we share with these three came true! so, no surprise is not a bad thing! but, i knew they would come true and what was amazing was the miraculous ways they did come true… it is a rare film that can make me not only suspend disbelief but put my focus purely on the emotions of the film and this accomplishes it… but i’m almost embarrassed to be so moved when i can think of some of the flaws…

so what i am hoping for above all else is that i will see nothing but greatness on my next viewing…

SEE ALSO:
…Searching For Bobby Fischer for more on people trying to possess someone’s gift
…A.I.:Artificial Intelligence for another character/performance like the boy

this is one of many movies that, as a self-professed film snob, it is pretty much unforgivable that i have never seen it…

peter sellers was absolutely amazing – he played the role perfectly every moment, too much would have made us feel he was something less than a person, too little and he would have come across as just disinterested… i poked around a bit at the various things that have been said over the last thirty years about his performance and it has been well-covered, so, i’ll skip right to the stuff i can’t forgive…

but, before i go on, let me say that i am keeping this film and will surely view it again – but pretty much only for his performance…

my objections are simple to state – i just didn’t believe it… i didn’t buy it that these people didn’t catch on… is there a reason that the director wanted me to catch on to? maybe, but, if so, it is buried deeper than i was able to look…
this movie kept calling to mind some cartoon i saw many many years ago… somehow, a dog ends up like president of a company or something… i have scoured the net, trying to find info on this cartoon, hoping to embed/link it here, but i just remember too little… anyway, he is in some kind of power – we are talking probably nearly 20 years ago i saw it, but it was something like he was in the right place at the right time, maybe accidentally got human clothes on him, but one way or another, they made him president, all his growls and barks and grunts somehow twisted by them into what they thought they heard or wanted to hear or whatever… i remember two details clearly – the first is that they ask his name and he growls something that sounds like “rawelf gawagrrr” and they ‘repeat’ back Ralph Gallagher… and the last is when something happens that everyone suddenly figures out his true nature and someone shouting “HE’S A DOG!”… the whole incident is carried along by this device of them misunderstanding what to us are clearly dog noises as mumbled speech and we are laughing at them for not noticing the obvious fact that he is a dog…
well, in this movie we have the choked “Chance, the gardener” becoming “Chauncey Gardiner” and did the doctor figure it out at the end? seems so… but, there certainly was the attempts at being a whistleblower – not quite a “HE’S A GARDENER!”, but, i just couldn’t get the similarities off my mind… and i saw a cast of fools all focused on a very endearing character who who would have been much better off in a better written movie…

so, i’m sort of saying that it just kept coming across the same way… like it was intending to be only a comedy… which is a shame, because the first half hour or so, i was totally hooked in… i guess it was when he tried to change the channel on the would-be muggers that i started being concerned…
which, by the way, i have been thinking… so, he watched tv for all those years but didn’t learn how to use a phone? or that you can’t change the channel on real life?
ok, so, maybe that means, in his deficiency, he saw it for years but never internalized it… like it was a meaningless blur… he detailed to the two in the beginning his room and bathroom – down to the details of his tub, his toilet, his sink, and showed them his garden and perhaps that was all that was really real to him? the rest was something unreal and so he had no point of reference even with all that input? ok, sure, i could see that… of course, he had tears in his eyes in one of the last scenes… and i’m not going to be too quick to jump to any “well, see, he is now becoming aware of the world” because if he had that ability, one would think he would have clicked into something many years earlier, even if it was only a response to something on tv…

hmm…
i just don’t know…
then, of course, the very last thing that happened and i don’t even have much in the way of theories yet… i’d like to read around what others have said over the years…
but, since i had a hard time recognizing a pattern pointing to any kind of other meaning, i fear it meant nothing coherent at all…

i can’t help but think about the meaning of it all, but, i’m not certain that the director deserves for me to think about it… there was so much in there that just seemed to be no deeper than some comic effect… like the bedroom scene – you know, he “likes to watch”… i can’t come up with any reason why that was important – i think it was just meant to be funny… and i kept feeling that way about many other scenes… trying to find some reason to look for meaning and just not finding one…

i will go so far as to say that i think if peter sellers had not played this role, this would be a completely forgettable movie… i know that’s the case for me anyway…
say whatever about who or what he was, why he was or why he was the way he was, what it all means, or whatever, i don’t see that it will change my mind that WHAT HAPPENED just is not believable and i find it very hard to be moved by something i cannot believe…

ok, i am not gonna go back and edit this at all or even re-read it… i keep telling myself that i should force out a couple paragraphs every time i watch a movie and i have to start somewhere and if i go back and read it, i will change things and then decide it was a bad idea to even post – best to wait for a movie i can write something meaningful about or i will add three more paragraphs that are equally disjointed and that will only make it worse, so, i’m just gonna hit that publish button…
(i’m much fonder of this post…)

oh, i have had this “see also” thing going for years when i watch a movie, so….

see also: Meet Joe Black

i was just complaining on twitter a couple weeks ago (one, two) about the netflix rating system being very restrictive…  one star = hated it, two = didn’t like, three = liked, four – really liked, and five = loved…
there are SO FEW films i want to give a five-star rating, but, according to their system, if you love it, give it five stars…  and, since you are doing this for the social aspect of finding like-minded people, it only really works if you abide by their system…

so, it got me to thinking about what i WISH i could change them to and i came up with a couple ways of looking at it:

since i have a large movie collection, one way i thought was in terms of what i might say about a film as a collector:
5 = “I own every release ever put out on LaserDisc, DVD, and Blu-Ray”
4 = “I have the Criterion DVD, is there a Blu-Ray release date yet?”
3 = “I’m waiting to come across it on sale”
2 = “I have a badly compressed file i downloaded off BitTorrent sitting on my media server, but that’s good enough”
1 = “It’s been on my NetFlix queue for months…  Near the bottom.”

and, being a home theater enthusiast and loving to watch movies with people, i was also thinking of how i might rate movies as a host, so to speak, if someone were to suggest watching a certain movie:
5 = “Great idea!  Here, have the best seat!”
4 = “Sure, it’s been too long since I saw that one”
3 = “Um, ok, that’s cool, but make sure you’ve looked at everything else first”
2 = “Hmm, well it’s in the sell stack, but, I could dig it out if you really want to see it”
1 = “WHAT???!!!  NO I DON’T OWN THAT!!  WHAT DO YOU TAKE ME FOR?!  GET THE HELL OUTTA MY HOUSE!!”

nothing in-depth, just going to c/p the notes i took of what we saw as we watched the three movies…

this is just about the dvd/transfer quality, not about any changes to the movies (there are countless sites for that)… nor comparisons to the laserdiscs or “did they fix [insert notorious problem] yet?” stuff (short version is sometimes they did, sometimes they didn’t, again, there are many sites out there that cover that issue)…

if you want a full review, google it, there are plenty out there…

anyway, here is what i saw…

star wars

colors are very oversaturated- at times it is so bad, it reminds me of the old tnt colorized movies

things change colors in the frame sometimes- see c3po in the first desert scenes and the rocks in the background when the tusken raider jumps onto the bantha

and is that really bad edge enhancement where the dunes meet the sky as the camera pans early in the first desert scenes?

audio does REALLY funny/awful things- mainly dialogue, starts with leia before tarkin

empire strikes back

looks very good, hella better than star wars- but, the colors are also a little oversaturated on this one

return of the jedi

looks largely untouched, replete with matte lines, bad colors in some matted shots- in fact, MOST of the matte shots look really bad

again, a bit oversaturated colors

the image is not as sharp and clear as the other two- even grainy at times

probably the worst looking of the three

the empire strikes back is the clear winner here… it looked and sounded pretty much excellent…
the first movie had the really bad color issues and the sound was downright horrible in spots and return of the jedi had so many unfixed terrible-looking matte jobs that it was quite distracting…

btw, that sound issue on the first film is widely reported and seems totally inexcusable, i would have to pop in a laserdisc and see if it sounded that bad before… but, i sure don’t remember it sounding like that, yet i DO remember where a couple audio problems have always been, such as “into the garbage shoot fly boy!”, which still sounds just as bad as it always has… so, i feel pretty safe trusting my memory on this one, star wars has never sounded so bad…

seems every time we meet someone that actually has a real interest in movies, it is always horror… usually cheap, sleazy, b-grade horror… we try to be open-minded and go with the idea that maybe there is just something we don’t know and perhaps it is simply a matter of broadening our horizons, so, we decided to try a couple of horror classics to see what might be there that we never saw in horror before…

so, we have the criterion laserdisc of halloween and a standard laser release of the omen and we watched them both the other night…

first up was halloween, the film credited with starting the “slasher” genre…
and, it was not long until we were wishing it would hurry up and end…
of course, after starman, the thing, escape from new york, and now this, i think we are ready to really and truly give up on john carpenter…

the only good thing i have to say about it is that the music was very good…

one interesting device i noticed was that, as the movie built up to the climax, it seemed to me that the director was intentionally using a lot of shots to show the time of day… no indoor shots without plenty of windows and most shots prominently showed the placement of the sun, like a ticking countdown to nightfall… in fact, at one point, it is suddenly and abruptly night, which gave me a feeling of “it’s night already!? they’re out of time!”…
while this kept me (almost unconsciously) estimating how much time was left, i really could not care less if these people were actually going to survive or not… we were hardly told anything about them, so, they really did not seem like real people, just actors doing what the director told them to…
and, as is always the case, the characters seemed to behave in very unbelievable ways… i know this is a staple of the genre, but, that is one of the things that alienates me from the genre… too much of having to give up reason to follow the story… not that there is usually much of a story… i often hear horror described as a sub-genre of sci-fi, but, to me it seems more a sub-genre of action… any film where you can relate pretty much everything it covers as just “this happened, then that happened, etc.” is an action movie… no concepts to ponder, no characters to get to know better, no reason to care WHY things are happening, most of the time… all of that comes in scarce tidbits, which is why, to be totally coherent, you need a whole series of films… maybe by die hard 3, i might care what happens to john maclaine, maybe by halloween 9 i might know why michael myers killed his sister and all these others…

if they were better movies, i might take that journey…

or maybe i will listen to the commentary on halloween and see if john carpenter can reveal to me the subtle intricacies…

then, with a bad taste in our mouths, we took a chance on the omen…
this one was much better, but, there was very little action, just lots of dialogue and concepts… it was more like a mystery to be solved…
now, i must say i thought the dialogue was very weak… it got the point across, but, there was no personality, no cadence, no art… with good dialogue, you can take a line out of context and, if you know the characters, you can usually deduce who said it… and this is true of life as well… the omen is one of countless movies where you could have mixed and matched the dialogue between characters… the characters were definitely not defined by how they said what they said, they were just telling us what we needed to know to advance the plot… in a movie filled with dialogue, you need more personalized speech to really carry it, or at least to keep it interesting… (cf. david mamet, btw…)
but still, it was a good movie… pacing was good, i was never really bored, the material was great, and the music was superb, even though it was mono… the actors were varied; the kid was great (not that it was a demanding part), the various clergy were good, and the nannies were great, but, too many other parts seemed totally interchangable…

we liked it… it does not go on “the shelf”, but, i will definitely watch it again sometime to look for other nuances… i just don’t expect much from donner in that area…

i just have a hard time calling it “horror”… it was more of a mystery, as i said above… yes, there were horrific IDEAS, but, again, that makes it a movie of IDEAS, not actions…

as far as “horror” goes, we have only really seen a few and disliked most of them… (btw, remember, we pretty much only count what we have seen since we started into the world of dvd and home theater, since we now “see” movies differently than we used to… i have seen literally thousands of movies, but, i know a lot more about movies now and feel i need to give them all another chance…)
i will briefly touch on a few and try to avoid sci-fi horror, like alien, forbidden planet, or event horizon, just to try to prove we are capable of contemplating another genre…

we have seen a nightmare on elm street and wes craven’s new nightmare and only new nightmare was any good to us… i guess because it was likeable even if you scoffed at the genre… hell, it scoffed with you… but, even new nightmare is in “the pile”, not on “the shelf”… it was good once, may be again, but, we are not in any hurry… the next viewing would probably be for the commentary…

poltergeist IS on the shelf… now that is one creepy film… the chair-stacking scene chills me every time… in fact, there is so much good about that movie, i will not even get started lest i go three paragraphs…

then, there is that “m. night” dude or whatever… we have seen both signs and sixth sense and disliked both of them… and there was very little that we found disturbing, creepy, and very very little that was anything like scary… sure, a few disturbing concepts, no action movies here, but, still, they are old concepts and the films really brought very little, if anything, to the genre that we had not seen before…
and, btw, we generally despise surprise endings… in fight club, it explained a lot, in sixth sense, it seemed just a gimmick… (iow, with the former, you want to watch it again more to understand the symptoms better now that you know the cause, in the latter you want to watch again to see if the film is internally consistent with the ending…)
[must've re-written the last two sentences twenty times to ensure it was spoiler free :P]

now, one horror movie we really liked was the others (and, no, not because it had our beloved nicole in it, though that doesn’t hurt it any)…
that was one SCARY frickin’ movie!
i mean, it was disturbing!
and, one of the best uses of surround that we have ever heard…
we were jumping, cringing, hoping that what we knew must happen next would not happen; i think the others, so far, is the only movie to actually put a fright in us…
it was just plain well-directed… the kids, the rules of the house, the cinematography, including the overall look, the time setting, it just starts pulling you in to an alternate reality, so, you already have no idea what to expect and it unhinges your mind from the everyday, emptying it, so it can fill it up with what the director chooses, hopefully freeing you from expectations of normality… like misdirection… and the unfamiliarity
means it will be more unpredictable, which means it has the potential to be scarier… and the director did not disappoint, though, admittedly, the first half of the movie is much much better than the second half…
it is a dvd, not a laserdisc, so there is no “shelf vs. pile” issue (all our dvd’s are in one place), but, if there was a choice to be made, it would go on the shelf…

so, anyway, next in our horror education will probably be clive barker… we have nice laserdiscs of the serpent and the rainbow, hellraiser, and lord of illusions (or is it the frighteners? can’t remember)… i read the great and secret show and loved it (though, more fantasy than horror)… i found it to be very original, creative, and interesting, so i figure i will like more of his stuff… having seen some clive barker long ago, i think it is safe to assume it will be truly horrifying stuff, with more in common with event horizon than the other stuff i have been covering here…
hopefully in a good way…