Wow, it's been a while since I posted. I've really been focusing my time on the shop and trying to hone my abilities, so pretty much everything else has taken a back seat for a while. Sorry if people have been posting journals in the past nearly-two weeks. I haven't been around to read them.
Yesterday a friend of mine hosted a 24-hour movie party. There were close to twenty people in his apartment for the duration, and we had a blast. I had never met most of the people as they were mostly friends from his hometown who came for the party, but that home just happens to be Winchester, Virginia, which is only seventeen miles or so from my hometown of Martinsburg, West Virginia. We swapped stories about our various ventures into each other's ponds and broke the ice rather well. His friends are nuts. I love them. I'm nuts, too.
Two movies I saw yesterday really struck me, one positively and one negatively. First the positive. If you have not seen Shaolin Soccer, you desperately need to. This is the funniest movie I've seen since Napoleon Dynamite. The title says it all. The hero of our story yearns to find a way to bring Shaolin kung-fu to mainstream attention, and he finds his chance when an aspiring soccer coach wants to field a team. He creates...Shaolin soccer. Hilarity ensues.
Now the negative. Dogville sucks! AHHHHH!!! It's three hours of the absolute worst things imaginable happening to Nicole Kidman. Here's the basic plot: Kidman plays a woman who is on the run from somebody, we don't know who, and is discovered sneaking about in a tiny remote town in Depression-era America. The guy from Master and Commander who plays the ship's doctor convinces her to stay, and she starts offering her labor to the different townspeople. She does things that don't need doing, but when done they make life easier. For a time the townspeople love her, but they eventually begin to take advantage of her services and abuse her. One bad thing leads to another, then more bad things lead to even more bad things, one rape leads to another, yadda-yadda-yadda, you get the point. I won't ruin the ending. This movie is unique in that the director didn't use a set. The entire film takes place on a stage with absolutely no scenery. There are chalk outlines of buildings on the floor, and outlines of rooms. The only things that are real are a few pieces of furniture and the actors. I like this effect, and the movie has a narrator, as if we were reading a book. It's quite clever, but it's clever to the point where it becomes irritating. I am a big fan of John Dos Passos's USA trilogy, which is narrated with almost the barest amount of detail. All we really here from his narration are the actions of the characters, without even that much dialogue. It's up to our imaginations to supply the rest. Dogville makes the same attempt, but you have to sit through about 180 minutes of slow moving depression. At the end of the movie I threw my hands up in the air, screamed, and banged my head on the floor three times. It's a very hit or miss movie. I get what they're trying to say about human nature, about privilege and abusing privilege, but for crissake...AHHHH!!! Sheesh.
That was a long rant, but it had to come out.
At least today I bought the My Chemical Romance CD. Great stuff. Go and buy it. And go watch Shaolin Soccer, too. Also, check out the Arcade Fire CD. I'm listening to it more and more and loving it more and more.
Quote of the day: "Well, I might as well use these puckered lips for something." Homer
Yesterday a friend of mine hosted a 24-hour movie party. There were close to twenty people in his apartment for the duration, and we had a blast. I had never met most of the people as they were mostly friends from his hometown who came for the party, but that home just happens to be Winchester, Virginia, which is only seventeen miles or so from my hometown of Martinsburg, West Virginia. We swapped stories about our various ventures into each other's ponds and broke the ice rather well. His friends are nuts. I love them. I'm nuts, too.
Two movies I saw yesterday really struck me, one positively and one negatively. First the positive. If you have not seen Shaolin Soccer, you desperately need to. This is the funniest movie I've seen since Napoleon Dynamite. The title says it all. The hero of our story yearns to find a way to bring Shaolin kung-fu to mainstream attention, and he finds his chance when an aspiring soccer coach wants to field a team. He creates...Shaolin soccer. Hilarity ensues.
Now the negative. Dogville sucks! AHHHHH!!! It's three hours of the absolute worst things imaginable happening to Nicole Kidman. Here's the basic plot: Kidman plays a woman who is on the run from somebody, we don't know who, and is discovered sneaking about in a tiny remote town in Depression-era America. The guy from Master and Commander who plays the ship's doctor convinces her to stay, and she starts offering her labor to the different townspeople. She does things that don't need doing, but when done they make life easier. For a time the townspeople love her, but they eventually begin to take advantage of her services and abuse her. One bad thing leads to another, then more bad things lead to even more bad things, one rape leads to another, yadda-yadda-yadda, you get the point. I won't ruin the ending. This movie is unique in that the director didn't use a set. The entire film takes place on a stage with absolutely no scenery. There are chalk outlines of buildings on the floor, and outlines of rooms. The only things that are real are a few pieces of furniture and the actors. I like this effect, and the movie has a narrator, as if we were reading a book. It's quite clever, but it's clever to the point where it becomes irritating. I am a big fan of John Dos Passos's USA trilogy, which is narrated with almost the barest amount of detail. All we really here from his narration are the actions of the characters, without even that much dialogue. It's up to our imaginations to supply the rest. Dogville makes the same attempt, but you have to sit through about 180 minutes of slow moving depression. At the end of the movie I threw my hands up in the air, screamed, and banged my head on the floor three times. It's a very hit or miss movie. I get what they're trying to say about human nature, about privilege and abusing privilege, but for crissake...AHHHH!!! Sheesh.
That was a long rant, but it had to come out.
At least today I bought the My Chemical Romance CD. Great stuff. Go and buy it. And go watch Shaolin Soccer, too. Also, check out the Arcade Fire CD. I'm listening to it more and more and loving it more and more.
Quote of the day: "Well, I might as well use these puckered lips for something." Homer
take care!