Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Thursday, December 01, 2005 The Pitch: It's like The Morning After meets Kill and Kill Again! Okay. So it's December 1st, and I'm being very bad about continuing my nanovel. I'm essentially sitting around on my butt playing Resident Evil 4, napping, and checking my email 50,000 times. Oh, and I went and got my teeth cleaned which, considering the weather today was absurdly life-threatening, is not as slight an accomplishment as you might think.But nonetheless, I'm doing all sorts of things to keep myself from actually trying to get my protagonist out of his current jam and into the next one. To prove it, here's some very brief reviews of movies I've seen lately. In reverse order: 10 Things I Hate About You: I liked this when I first saw it, and wanted to show it Edi, since she's also a fan of Willie The Shake. It's very charming, but I noticed some very big plotholes when I saw it for the second time. There's really no reason for the prom sequence at all, or for any of the characters to pursue their respective goals or actions, except that every teen movie must have a climactic denouement at the prom. Still, Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles are charming, and I'd be surprised if Stiles ever got her self-conscious enunciation to work as well for her again. The Machinist: Somehow less than the sum of its parts, this Memento-ish thriller has a special effect so gruesome it makes the entire run of Fangoria magazine seem like Highlights for Children: Christian Bale's emaciated body which causes involuntary shuddering from the viewer whenever it's unclothed on screen. And there's also some lovely direction, art design, a strangely anachronistic soundtrack, and Jennifer Jason Leigh onhand to bless the production with the exposing of her ta-tas. It has all the makings of a classic, and yet it goes on about forty minutes too long, tries too hard to keep the viewer guessing and ultimately settles on an ending bordering on the trite. Kind of a shame. Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events: I rented this after reading the Onion A.V. Club's interview with Daniel Handler, since much of its space was given to discussing the commentary track between the director and Handler in the character of Snicket. That track is intermittently very funny (whenever anything remotely bad happens to the Baudelaire orphans, Handler/Snicket moans: "Oh, Dear God! Oh, No! Please shut this off!") but runs out of steam quickly--the director gamely tries to pretend he has no idea what's going to happen next so as to allow more situations for H/S to moan about, but it's more uncomfortable than amusing. As for the movie, its art production is exceptionally gorgeous (there's a peacock's feather design on Count Olaf's vest that still knocks me out) but because the film doesn't understand the difference between humor and wit, it's a far from successful adaptation. That said, the movie is worth seeing (if you can rent it for a dollar or so) because of the exceptional end title sequence that understands the Snicket books and their influences (Night of the Hunter, Edward Gorey, German Expressionism, gothic melodramas) with far greater acuity than the director or the countless listed producers. I watched those end titles at least three times. posted by Jeff Lester | 5:27 PM | |
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