2005-12-19 - 9:34 a.m.
Let's talk about movies.
(Note: Some small spoilers are included; stop if you haven't read the book or seen the movie "Chronicles of Narnia". I'll wait here until you've seen it, I promise.) (Oh, and I have my Christmas manicure on. Excuse the typos.) Friday night, we went to see "Narnia". I suppose I have a slightly different perspective on it from my American friends, since while I was *not* around for the Blitz, I *was* forced into wearing smocked front frocks with hand-knitted cardigans for much of my childhood. I blame my grandmother, who was born in 1898, and therefore unable to accept any change in society after 1922. I had the curious childhood experience of playing with the toys my parents played with - lead soldiers, wooden blocks, and books all published prior to 1940. I was a rather strange child, but because of that, the Narnia books made a certain amount of sense to me, rather than being stories about a previous generation's childhood. Lord knows, C.S. Lewis didn't care much for anything modern - he makes that even more clear in his books for adults, in case you missed the great huge sledgehammer "modern is BAD" theme running through the Narnia books. I loved them, I really did. Since I grew up in houses that looked just like the house in the book (and the movie - the pang of recognition was almost painful), I spent a large part of my younger childhood exploring the depths of old wardrobes, looking for that magical door. Alas, all the wardrobes I explored were made of rather prosaic woods that simply kept clothes safe from moths (when the mothballs rolled out of the wardrobe at the beginning, both Bob and I made little "hmm!" noises of recognition). Despite my continuing search, I never did find the door. The movie itself was rather well-done, and they didn't overdo the religion stuff in dialogue (all of you do know that the series is just a Catholic plot to turn you all into good little Christians, right? Luckily, it's so well written that it doesn't matter - but C.S.L. was a *devout* Catholic). The center part where Alsan goes to his sacrifice is so clearly the walk in the garden of Gethsemane, and the two girls weeping over his body are also set up like a classic pieta, and the whole Christ imagery is very clear, but they don't rub your face in it too much, and I was pleased about that. I also thought Tilda Swinton made a good witch - the Witch was once a warrior queen, hard, brittle, and cruel, and Tilda does that rather well (rather *too* well; I think I'd be a little afraid to meet her). I found the white outfit a little clumsy-looking, but it's not my movie, and I was content with most of it. Movies made from beloved books cannot please everyone - no-one has the same vision in their heads when they read, and no-one is going to react well if the movie makes something look substantially different from their mind picture. The best a movie can hope for is to capture the *essence* of the book, and I felt that they managed the essential story quite well. I also thought that the boy who played Peter looked *exactly* like a young Heath Ledger, and Bob agrees. The children played their parts well, especially Edmund, since that's a difficult kind of role even for adults to play - an unlikeable person who also needs one's sympathy. Edmund is, of course, the one redeemed by the sacrifice of the Saviour, and he does handle the unwieldy-ness of the whole thing rather well. All in all, two thumbs up - well paced, sweet, and very resonant for me. Your mileage may vary, of course. The second movie we watched last night on the SciFi channel - "Dracula 3000". I wasn't quite sure, but I thought I recalled reading a review of this movie a while ago, and I did. The review is pretty good, but it doesn't quite capture the sheer *awfulness* of this movie. Right from the beginning, the plot is stupid, but it doesn't content itself with putting "captain Van Helsing" in a spaceship in the Carpathia System, it decides that even though it's the year 3000, they can't fix spinal problems so people are *still* in wheelchairs, people don't know what God is, and the ship they board had hammer and sickle insignia everywhere, even though the Soviet Union was long gone before the movie was even made, let alone the year 3000. The acting is appalling, but still not as bad as the script. This movie was worse than "Starship Troopers 2". Worse than "Anaconda: Search for the Blood Orchid". I would even venture to say it was worse than "Van Helsing", but the SomethingAwful website already used that joke (and it's a good one), and besides, I kind of enjoyed "Van Helsing", even if it didn't make much sense. I like Caspar Van Dien, poor boy - it's not his fault he can't act. The same thing goes for Tiny Lister (who also played the President in "The Fifth Element"), Coolio does some okay vampire stupidity, and Erika Eleniak whom I last saw jumping out of a cake in a Steven Seagal movie) is actually the best actor of the bunch. And that's really actually a rather scary thought. I don't know what it is about SCiFi Channel movies - they're terribly hit or miss - mostly miss. It's not like there isn't a whole bunch of really excellent science fiction out there to steal from, nor is it required to hire only really bad actors (though I think they do keep a couple of them in a vault somewhere and only let them out when they need a cheap acting job). I feel sometimes that their agents call the actors and say "Hey, at least you'll get paid". There were several points throughout the movie where the actors had that "at least I'm getting paid" expression on their faces, so I'm not guessing completely blindly, here. The dialogue was crappy, but it was made worse by the really *awful* timing in the actors' speeches - the pauses, the over and under acting (and sometimes both at the same time), and the expressions. What there was of them. The sexist banter didn't do much to make it more believable, either. Sadly, all of these complaints sank into insignificance when "Dracula" (called "Count Orlock" nudge nudge, wink wink) appeared. How to describe him and manage to do it justice? Close your eyes, and picture a slightly overweight Goth guy trying really hard to pick up chicks at a club. He's wearing too much white face makeup, but not quite enough to cover his terrible skin, he's dyed his hair black, and slicked it back badly, he's wearing patently fake fangs, and he's dressed in the "Vampyre of the GRAVE" costume that's always left on the costume clearance rack after Halloween, red-lined cape and all. Okay, now open your eyes and wash them out, because you don't need *that* image sticking around. Apparently, Dracula has not picked up *any* fashion sense in the three thousand years or so he's been hanging around - no cool leather/vinyl bodysuit, no flashy punk gear, not even a pair of attractive Italian leather dress shoes, just what appeared to be a pair of cheap Thom McAnn loafers in dark brown. It was sad, just sad. Depressing, even. So much for seducing generations of beautiful women - you'd think one of them at least could have forced him to update: "Dracula! Honey! It's 3000, don't you think you could ditch the cape? It's so two centuries ago." I mean, he's got boatloads of money; couldn't he at least get a professional haircut? But no, he's goofy looking, and the most pathetic vampire *ever*. The plot revealed that vampires are actually aliens from a distant star system (the Carpathian system, natch), and he's just trying to get home. I bet the rest of the vampires dropped him off on Earth on their way through because he was so lame they didn't want to put up with him any longer. And what's with the coffins full of *sand*?! If that's the soil of his homeland, they must all be beach bums. Sand? If it's an issue to go out in the sun, maybe they all go to the beach at night. Or maybe he really liked the beaches on Earth, and he's taking some sand back to give to all the other vampires as presents, even though they'll all think he's totally lame and can't even buy decent souvenirs, like a topless hula dancer for the control panel of the space ship. Maybe he plans to start an hourglass business when he gets home, since the sundial business went bankrupt. Maybe... Nope, there's no good explanation for the coffins full of sand, just like there's no good explanation for why they made the damn movie in the first place. I give up. Go read the other review. It may not do justice to the sheer awfulness of this film, but it is pretty damn funny, and I can't do it credit either. I do like Udo Kier, though. Does anyone remember him in that car commercial? "I am lookink for a man. In a car. Yust like zis vone." Go see him in something else. The "Masters of Horror" series on Showtime is pretty good - he's in episode #8.
Dorsal - Ventral
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