Assorted Reviews

[hrj]

Since I've gotten into the habit of doing reviews, here are a few I want to get out of the way.

Back about a week or more ago, scotica and I went to see the second Fantastic Four movie: Rise of the Silver Surfer. I've come to the conclusion that there's very little useful point in my trying to do objective movie reviews of comic-book inspired movies. A side issue is that these movies were never intended to be Great Art, so trying to judge them on that basis is like entering a prize Holstein bull at the Westminster AKC. The casting -- while sometimes inspired (and often a make-or-break point for how well the movie works for me) -- is secondary as well. I've previously mentioned that I'd pay money to see Ioan Gruffudd read the phone book, but frankly I don't get any special enjoyment out of seeing him in the F4 movies. I'm not saying that he's wasted in them, just that I'd rather watch him read the phone book. I go to see comic-book movies because the fictional characters, their worlds, and their stories are part of my youth -- and in some cases a rather special part of my youth, filled as they were with characters who were as blatantly obviously alienated from their surroundings and alleged contemporaries as I felt. They concretized things that I didn't know how to express and had no one to express to. They weren't just weird kids, they were realio-trulio mutants, and if they were lucky they could fight their way through to finding their true peers at Professor X's school. They weren't just feeling out-of-kilter in this world -- they were genuine aliens from other universes. And if they were stuck on Earth, well, at least they had genuine memories of When It Was Different.

So what I'm saying is that when I watch a movie like Rise of the Silver Surfer, the ONLY thing that matters in whether I like the movie is whether it gives me that same vital connection with metaphoric parts of my own psyche that can only be properly expressed in the exaggerated language of comic books. So we'll cut to the chase. As works of art, both Fantastic Four movies have sucked. They have sucked great suckitude. As ventures in creative casting, they've come out fairly mediocre. To be fair, some of the mediocrity is startlingly true to the original material. Yeah, Sue Storm spends a lot of time being an only marginally competent damsel in distress. But you know what? She was like that in a lot of the comic books too. Back in the '60s we didn't have a great many inspiring female superheroes and we just tried to make do with what we had. A lot of the implementation of the F4 superpowers is unintentionally(?) comic ... but it was in the books, too. I don't remember quite such a high proportion of "we're going to destroy the city in order to save it", but maybe my memory is at fault.

But then we come to the character of the Silver Surfer, who was one of those iconic touchstones of my comic-book experience. And the movie got him right. Oh, there were a few bits of the original origin story that I missed not having on the screen, but you have to cut something in order to get all those important fight scenes in, right? The movie got the Silver Surfer right, and that makes up for everything else. I confess, I have no taste. All I have is a bundle of emotional push-buttons and the big silvery one in the middle of the board got well and truly punched. So sue me.

This past Friday scotica and I scheduled for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. So I get the whole "middle book problem" thing. And the whole problem of turning the longest of the books (so far) into the shortest of the movies (so far). And the problem that this bit of the story arc is largely about transitions and mood-building and setting things up for the build to the climax. But when the credits started rolling at the end, my reaction could be summed up by, "Eh, whatever."

I was extremely startled at the beginning by the major jump in maturity of the actors. The previous time there had been a two-year gap between films, the jump hadn't been as noticeable, and then in films 3 & 4 there was a sense of "yeah, they're clearly teenagers now, not children" but this time I found it more jarring. I think part of that is that in the books the kids are written as more on the "still children" side than on the "almost adults" side -- at least that's how it comes across to me. Yeah, they're running around trying to save the world, but the essense is still that of the "child heroes" genre of children's literature. In an odd way, I can cope better with Harry as a rampagingly angsty teenager than as the whiney spoiled brat he comes across as in the books.

But other than some interesting character development and successfully touching on the majority of key plot elements, this movie didn't do much for me. And much more so than most of the previous movies, I had the sense that it would be completely incomprehensible to anyone who hadn't read the books. (Even having seen all the previous films wouldn't fill the gap.) But all in all, meh.

The advantage of seeing HPOP in scotica's neighborhood is that I could crash the night there before continuing south Saturday morning to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk for the Big B company picnic. It also meant I had the excuse to take highway 9 over the hills rather than 17. Highway 17 is a way to get from one place to another. Highway 9 is a journey through another universe with winding forest roads through stands of redwoods and creek-filled canyons. Some day I want to try bicycling that road, although I'm not entirely sure I have the guts. It isn't a matter of stamina -- it's the narrow margins and the lack of long-range visibility. As a bicyclist, you're putting your life in the hands of all the Sunday drivers zipping around the curves while yakking on their cell phones. *shudder*

The picnic was a bit of a reminder of what sort of clout a big company can wield: with about 3000 people in attendence, we had one of the arcade buildings all to ourselves (and free) for the first couple of hours and then moved on to a large reserved picnic area for lunch (mediocre cafeteria BBQ, alas) with our own private performance of the Moscow Circus, which was performing its regular shows at the boardwalk bandstand. Now, before you get some exaggerated notion, the Moscow Circus consisted of 6 performers: a male gymnast who did all sorts of slow-changing balancing routines on top of a couple of small posts (sort of like the slow-moves parts of Olympic ring and parallel bars routines); a female rhythmic gymnast (now you know what they end up doing for a living after the Olympics are over!) who did a dance-based routine with hula hoops; a male clown/mime who did a number of audience interaction routines (including the requisite embarassment of any company bigwigs who hadn't gone into hiding); a female acrobat-contortionist who did a routine similar to the male gymnast except with more bending the body in impossible places and less brute-strength lifting; and a pair of male tumblers who did a very smooth routine involving lots of balancing, climbing over each other, and tumbling around as a single entity. It was small-town circus at its most basic, astounding you with what a well-trained human body is capable of, and presented on an immediate human scale (i.e., 6 feet away), which cuts through the jading effects of too much exposure to movie special effects.

Other than the circus performance, I spent most of the day feeling out of sync with the structure of the event. When it comes down to it, the picnic was designed to be a "family" affair. I spent most of the day wandering around trying to find people to hang out with only to find that they were focused on hanging out with the people they'd shown up with. There was lots of being introduced to spouses and children who I'd previously known only from photos on people's desks, but except for a brief period at lunch I didn't manage to attach myself to any other folks. So I went on a couple of the roller coasters (alone) and wandered up and down the boardwalk (alone) and played the arcade games (alone) and walked up and down the beach (alone). Now don't get me wrong -- I'm quite happy to enjoy activities all by myself when that's what I'm planning to do. But doing things all by myself when the larger context of the event is supposed to involve social interaction sends me into a funk. So round about 4pm I packed it in and came home, which was a pretty full day all in all, so it needn't be considered a complete failure.

Comments

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

Next time bring a date. Anne of Alanwyck and I would bring each other to our company parties, and no one at either company cared.

[ermine-rat.livejournal.com]

Ah Hwy9- my old stomping grounds...I stopped riding bikes on Hwy9 in the 70s when it got way too crowded with logging and sand trucks. I used to ride horses through Felton back in the day, but the smell and shade of the redwoods hasn't changed.