What, did people honestly expect me to write about these Heroes? When your penultimate episode is so lacklustre that you couldn’t be bothered to even watch the finale until almost a week after the fact, something is wrong.
Fortunately for Heroes, I failed to be disappointed. I yelled at the screen and felt a little angry, but it’s impossible to be disappointed when you can’t raise hackles enough to care.
My brother says that he walked out of Tales from Earthsea about two thirds of the way through. This is a concept that I find quite alien.
My friend Phill tends to give up on DVDs if he doesn’t like them in about ten minutes. My cousin Jonathan generally gives a movie he watches at home the chance of half of its running time to prove that it is worth his while. This seems like a decent enough deal. I have a hard enough time watching DVDs in the first place, so if I fear something won’t be worthwhile I generally won’t stick it in my player.
Yet walking out of a cinema seems somehow wrong to me. In theory, one would have spent money on a DVD as well, but it’s not the same level of commitment as going into a cinema, sitting down and then enduring a movie with an audience. If I was a walker out, I would not have endured Rampo Noir to completion. As it stands, I’m surprised I managed to consume the entirety of Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai on DVD at a friend’s house. Then, I’m a movie masochist: I’ve seen 300 twice.
What I want to know is, what kind of person walks out of a movie? Are they serial walkers? What does the movie have to do to offend them so? Does it have to suck, or does it have to simply mention sucking off? What is the mentality? The only analogous situation I can think of was the Popcorn Taxi for Fast Food Nation last year when people walked out of the Q&A session because it was getting late and Linklater was being stubborn in his boringness.
The human condition calls for all things to come to an end: can you leave a movie hanging?
Image: Google Top Ten for “Cinema Walk Out”. I don’t know either.
Because “Pirates from a Whole Bunch of Places” would detract from the franchise.
Not being disappointed is fun. I summarily failed to be disappointed by At World’s End, but at the same time it was not quite as fun as it should have been. More Jack, I say! More hilarious character interactions! More delivery on expectations of exposition!
Given the depth of the potential of the Pirates franchise, it’s incredibly easy to give a list of things that could have been done better of featured more. So, while this was a very enjoyable film, I find myself drawn to the lack. Still! Still indeed. No spoilers this time: they are for a later edition. This is most definitely a “lite” write up.
Call me “King Crazy”, and I’m sure you do behind my back, but I am King Excited about At World’s End. The situation is so bad that my parents, who never go to the movies, have seen it and I have not. In nigh on two hours, I will be basking in the Piratude.
It looks to me like our friend this movie is not going to review very well. I’ve seen things that have said that it’s more of the same, others that say it’s less of the same. If I turn out to love this here movie, I’m not making any apologies for it.
The majority of the things that people complain about in these movies are precisely what I love. I enjoy their “bloated”, overblown super natures. The end of Dead Man’s Chest was an excellent screw with the audience moment that pretty much vindicated the movie that had come before it. Basically I am not entirely certain what I’m saying here, but on one level I’m saying that Pirates, like death, are the next great adventure.
Last movie I was super excited about was King Kong, which was ultimately underwhelming. With Pirates, though, I believe that my feelings will be legitimate. That said, expect me to return to the internet in six hours, furious. I’m nothing if not arbitrary.
The following does not take on a review form; it is a response to an editorial from the Sun Herald columnist Miranda Devine. I do not make any personal attacks on her, fortunately, but I felt a pressing urge to deconstruct her grossly inaccurate words about The History Boys that turned, once again, into an attack on homosexuality’s place in society.
(But she has a gay friend! That means she’s beyond reproach! … As long as she keeps this friend away from children, everyone will be just fine! No need to panic!)
I will write a review of the movie later; it eventually came to grab me, and I teared up at the end. As I cite specific examples of character conduct within, this will contain spoilers. It’s a slightly edited (ie less profane, because apparently profanity weakens an argument) version of something I originally wrote for my journal.
Going into a movie expecting the worst can sometimes turn out in one’s favour: when a movie is not, in fact, terrible and can perhaps even be termed “entertaining”, this is a victory. Tales From Earthsea is one such movie.
The problem with being made by Ghibli is that a certain standard of excellence is expected. The problem with being made by Miyazaki Goro is that the film is forced to live in his father’s shadow. For my money, I enjoyed this movie infinitely more than I did Howl’s Moving Castle.
Tales from Earthsea probably sucks as an Earthsea movie – consultation with my mother reveals that an enormous amount of this movie makes no sense from an adaptation perspective, and Ursula K. Le Guin agrees with this – but otherwise it’s a perfectly engaging, albeit generic, Ghibli fantasy film.
Yes, it’s another entry about ads! I wouldn’t mention it, but it combines several of my loves: Joanna Newsom, The Chaser, and balls of wool.
Frequently when I go to the movies, I’m being told to visit other states. I’ve gone to the movies, people! I don’t want to go visit Melbourne or become an accountant! (seriously, there’s one recurring ad which is essentially “Become an accountant. See the world”)
Yet there has never been a more compelling reason to visit Victoria than the fact that they give you a giant ball of wool with which to navigate:
I was struck not only by the novelty of featuring Joanna Newsom’s intricate and mesmerising vocals in an ad, but also the very careful editing that features none of her more interesting vocal gymnastics. She’s a controversial figure, is our Joanna.
The idea of traipsing about a city with a ball of wool is intriguing indeed, and exactly the sort of thing you’d use in an Ad Road Test:
Disaster city.
(If you’re wondering what Sprout and the Bean sounds like in its entirety, below is its music video. Sometimes I give until it hurts.
I only make fun of Heroes because I like it most of the time!
Despite this, I have a difficult time reconciling a lot of the apparent contradictions involved with the web becoming ever tighter.
You may recall Flashbeer from last year. In it I lamented Australia’s lack of quality ads but then, in a freak accident involving dodgy Daily Show torrents, I chanced upon some American ads and saw how good we have it in Australia. For seriously, no wonder you guys don’t watch TV any more. I am familiar with the Superbowl ads (I believe that Coke ad in Shamus’ post is of that genre), but if Snickersgate is what they produce I’m no real fan of them either.
The above ad, which I believe is titled “Tall Men”, fills me with joy. Again, I don’t drink beer; my friend Pang, who was no big fan of Flashbeer, commended this ad on actually being about the product. This ad has been playing for a while, but when I have the TV on I rarely watch the ads; I was familiar with this song playing in the background. The first time that Tall Men had my attention was the second time I saw 300 (on that day I was awarded a special medallion for my services to masochism). It was the best part of that cinema session, and proved that the cinema is the only place where advertisements have me as their captive audience – except I normally talk through the ads. This ad, though, you have to watch. Tom Jones commands it.
Tom Jones could probably sing ice to eskimos, but he can’t sing Mars Attacks! to people with taste. Fortunately, beer to Australians is an easier sell than Tim Burton’s festival of horrors.
While I’m on the note of beer, and having already mentioned Flashbeer, The Chaser’s War on Everything featured an Ad Road Test of the Flashbeer campaign a couple of weeks ago. The results, for your delectation:
Back in the day, Australia had the idea of keeping the bastards honest. Maybe the Chaser folks aren’t quite at that point, but they’re certainly not averse to looking silly across Sydney. Every time I worry that Australia is losing a culture that I can identify with or respect, I look at this team of people and I see that not all hope is lost.
In summary: beer is entertaining.
I drink Pepsi or Coke, having frequently stocked my house with both … but have had such an uninterrupted run of Coke drinking that Pepsi isn’t exactly palatable at the moment. The last time I went to America, I found that Mountain Dew gave me headaches (it doesn’t have caffeine in Australia, but I don’t normally react badly to caffeine … so clearly American Mountain Dew contains poison).
