Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
The shows and movies I like (or don’t).
Coming in 2005 — a new film version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Directed by Tim Burton.
Starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka.
Hmmmmmmm…
It’s hard for me to see anyone surpassing the inspired lunacy of Gene Wilder as Wonka, but I do tend to like Burton/Depp collaborations. Reserving judgement for now, but it could be worth keeping an eye on.
(via Ryan)
iTunes: “Peter Bazooka” by Dead Milkmen, The from the album Death Rides a Pale Cow (1995, 3:07).
Kevin Smith is directing a series of short commercials where various stars urge people to go out and vote. According to Smith, one of the shorts will feature “a pair of stoners who’re coming out of semi-retirement for the cause.”
Okay, folks. If Jay and Silent Bob are going to be voting, you’ve got no excuse not to. ;)
iTunes: “Moodswings” by Purple Nine from the album Essential Chillout (1999, 5:05).
Rick came over to hang out for a bit last night, and brought along Once Upon a Time in Mexico, the latest in Robert Rodriguez’ Mariachi series. Very violent and very entertaining, but after a single watching, I’m not entirely sure I’ve really got the faintest clue quite what happened, as much of the movie consists of every character double- and triple-crossing every other character. Rick assures me that it all works out consistently — for now, I’ll just have to take his word for it. Even without total comprehension, though, it was at least good brainless fun to watch Antonio Banderas and Johnny Depp wreak havoc for a couple hours.
I’ve got a mouse in my apartment. I’m not really terribly concerned about this, as it’s kind of cute, and not a bother at all, I just occasionally catch it skittering around the corners of my room out of the corner of my eye. As Rick and I were talking last night, though, Rick started to pull a cigarette out of his pack and accidentally dropped one on the floor.
“Have a smoke — or two,” I said.
Rick laughed as he bent down to pick up the one he dropped. “That one was for the mouse.”
“Oh, I see,” I said. “Tricky. No need to buy traps or anything inhumane like that. We’ll just give the little shit cancer and wait. We’re patient.”
This mouse has met his match.
iTunes: “Switchblade 327” by Brian Setzer Orchestra, The from the album Dirty Boogie, The (1998, 3:30).
Something to bring a smile to your face (especially if, like me, you’re a life-long Trekk[ie/er]) — A love letter to Star Trek.
One year and a couple months ago, on Star Date something-or-other, my sons and I started a family tradition by accident. We rented the first disk of what seemed like an endless set of Star Trek: The Next Generation DVDs.
[…]
I don’t remember those early shows now. All I remember is watching three boys huddled under a navy blue crocheted afghan, mouths open, eyes krazy-glued to the small screen in our sunroom while reflected images of people with ridged skulls and pointed ears flickered on three glass corner windows. They were hooked.
[…]
One day, a bad bad day, when many soldiers lost lives in that distant senseless war, my middle son stood with barefeet on the cold tile floor of the kitchen, listening to NPR, and clenched his fists in frustration.
“Why don’t they stop fighting? We’re never going to join a Federation of Planets if this continues. Don’t they know that? Why don’t they want to help end starvation instead? I wish we lived in the future.”
[…]
Something about the mythology, the space, the ongoing conundrums of time, kept my sons going, kept them full of hope. They started reading books about the solar system. They followed the NASA mission to Mars and knew more about it than their teachers. They built star ships of blankets and chairs in the sunroom and spent lazy Saturday afternoons playing with styrofoam planets. All peaceful, all scientific and humane. Children from the future.
The last season of Star Trek came too fast. We watched the last episode last night. My boys have grown tall and already those Star Trek shirts are getting tight. They look forward to renting Deep Space Nine episodes. I look forward to it, too, but my heart knows this time is over, no anomalies can bring it back.
As a child who grew up on the origninal Star Trek, sitting on my dad’s lap and pointing excitedly somewhere over my shoulder as the Starship Enterprise swept across the screen, I can easily identify with the sense of wonder, excitement, and hope that these kids are just finding now.
Wil Wheaton also has some nice things to say about this post.
(via Jacqueline)
I just watched an absolutely fascinating film — Shattered Glass. It’s the story of Stephen Glass, the New Republic reporter who in 1998 was outed as having fabricated everything from minor details to entire stories during his tenure at the New Republic.
I’d heard a bit about the Glass story, especially with the recent flap about New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, but I’d never actually read enough about Glass to have picked up the entire story. Watching Glass go from handily manipulating everyone around him to a rapid implosion as his stories start to unravel under the investigation of Forbes.com reporter Adam Penenberg is simply amazing.
iTunes: “Defiant” by Lawrence, Christopher from the album Twilight (1999, 7:13).
As had been planned, Prairie and I went out to see Saved! on Saturday afternoon, and both really enjoyed it. Aside from a few moments towards the end where I felt it got a little overtly obvious with its message (falling into the “spell it out for the idiots” trap, essentially, the film did a good job of (fondly, believe it or not) satirizing the teen fundamentalist Christian scene to point out that tolerance and acceptance is really the bottom line.
Of course, my favorite character was easily Cassandra — the sole Jewish student at a Christian school, there because she’s been expelled from every other school she’s been to, and constantly out to wreak havoc. Oh, and she’s really cute too, which didn’t hurt in the least. ;)
Lots of cute lines throughout the film. While many people have been picking up at the obvious irony of Mandy Moore screeching out, “I am filled with Christ’s love!” while hurling a bible at Jenna Malone’s back, I’m actually a lot more partial to the next line. Jenna turns around, picks up the bible, and gives it back to Mandy while pointing out that, “This is not a weapon, you idiot!”
Many people aren’t going to enjoy the film as much as I did, unfortunately, especially if they lean more towards the closed-minded forms of “Christianity” that the film satirizes. However, as Roger Ebert points out in his review, the film is “…arguing not against fundamentalism but against intolerance; it argues that Jesus would have embraced the cast-outs and the misfits, and might have leaned toward situational ethics instead of rigid morality.”
iTunes: “Strawberry Fields Forever (Raspberry Ripple)” by Candyflip from the album Madstock…the Continuing Adventures of Bubblecar Fish (1990, 5:54).
The Seattle PI has an interesting (if short) Q-and-A session with director Brian Dannelly, the man behind one movie that’s been high on my radar for a few weeks now — Saved!
“Saved!” — Brian Dannelly’s first feature — is a high school comedy with a twist: It’s set in an evangelical school. It’s a world he knows well, having been educated in a Catholic elementary school and a Baptist high school (with holidays at a Jewish summer camp). His affectionate satire stars Jena Malone as a passionately Christian teen who gets pregnant after trying to “cure” her gay boyfriend and Mandy Moore as a popular student whose uses public demonstrations of devotion as social currency. The film won acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival and played to a sold-out gala presentation at the Seattle International Film Festival. It opens a regular theatrical run tomorrow in Seattle.
“Saved!” also has been polarizing viewers and critics in the Christian community. While many, young and old alike, have embraced the film’s loving approach to acceptance and diversity, it was condemned by Ted Baehr, founder of the Christian Film & Television Commission, as “a sad, bigoted, anti-Christian movie that mocks the Christian faith.” Dannelly knows he’s courting controversy, but he believes passionately about his message.
Saved! opens tomorrow, and I think that it’s definitely on my list of things to do this weekend.
iTunes: “Summer Kisses, Winter Tears” by Cruise, Julee from the album Until the End of the World (1991, 2:37).
Through no real reason other than happenstance, this became a weekend of “Part Three”s — Scary Movie 3, American Wedding (the third American Pie movie), and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban were all part of the weekend entertainment.
Actually, I have to admit, while I’m no huge fan of the series, this was easily my favorite of the three. The humor was a little less scatological in nature and tended more towards the purely absurd, the reason for which became all too clear when the end credits came up and I realized that the director was David Zucker, one third of the Zucker/Zucker/Abrams team responsible for the Airplane! series and Top Secret!, among many other spoof films.
Not as amusing as either of the prior two American Pie films, unfortunately. Too much of the film revolved around Stiffler, who works well as a secondary character, but doesn’t have enough to carry as much of the film as he was expected to here. The look of the film bugged me, too — I’m not sure how best to describe it other than to say that it looked like a beer commercial (high contrast, lots of hand-held camera work, many shots with a very shallow depth of focus). It had its moments, but wasn’t that great, either.
Prairie and I caught this one Saturday afternoon at the 12:30 show, early enough in the day that we didn’t have to stand in line to get into the theater. Interestingly enough, while we generally have fairly similar tastes in films, I ended up liking this latest installment more than she did. It is very obvious throughout the film that there’s a different director this time around, and while I very much enjoyed the end result, Prairie wasn’t as impressed. After talking it over for a while after we got out, we think that it’s simply differences in the way we pictured the books as we read them — her mental images were more in line with how Chris Columbus directed the first two films, while I found Curanzo’s vision much more in line with how I’d “seen” things as I read the books.
This isn’t to say that she didn’t like it, of course, just that she didn’t like it quite as much as she did the first two. As for myself, I’ll quite happily join the many other people declaring HPatPoA to be the best of the three films so far.
While filming the new Harry Potter film:
…during filming, when [director Alfonzo] Cuaron needed [Daniel] Radcliffe to convey the proper look of astonishment, he took his young charge aside and coached: “Pretend you’re seeing Cameron Diaz in a G-string.” (Cuaron: “It worked. I’ll let audiences guess what shot it is. I don’t want everyone thinking about Cameron Diaz in a G-string.”)
iTunes: “Dance or Die” by Dance or Die from the album German Mystic Sound Sampler Vol. II (1989, 4:05).
Three trailers caught my eye today while I was waiting for The Day After Tomorrow to start.
Collateral: Tom Cruise finally loses the floppy in-the-face haircut, gains a more hard-edged look, and becomes a bad guy. Not sure one way or the other right now, but it didn’t get dismissed immediately.
Alexander: Oliver Stone biopic of Alexander the Great. I waffle back and forth on Oliver Stone’s films, but I’m betting that at the very least, he’ll be able to churn something out that’s both more entertaining and more accurate than Troy ended up being. Besides, the cast list (Colin Farrell, Jared Leto, Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie, Val Kilmer) looks pretty decent, and I’m just happy about seeing Val Kilmer showing up in something again.
The Stepford Wives: Sure, this one’s been on my radar for a while now, but this is the first time I’d actually seen a full trailer. Having done so, I have to admit, I’m a lot less trepidatious about the film than I was before. Not only does presenting it as a comedy rather than as a thriller look more likely, but I noticed quite a few shots in the trailer that look to be practically lifted directly from the original movie, so they’re apparently making an attempt to respect the original film version, rather than just reworking the original novel entirely from scratch. Definitely encouraging.
iTunes: “Burn the Beat” by Jams, The from the album History of the Jams, The (1987, 6:31).