Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
While I’m not nearly as much of a movie buff as many, I do like ’em and watch ’em when I can.
So.
You’re the head of a highly secretive company.
You’re known for being temperamental and very mysterious.
The goods your company produces are highly popular, but they’re developed in secret.
When they’re introduced, they’re invariably accompanied by much anticipation, a media blitz, and fans worldwide salivating over the newest products.
Who are you?
While she’s not posting much at the moment due to work on a book, Cleolinda Jones has graced us with another Movies in 15 Minutes parody: The Phantom of the Opera.
VOICE FROM THE DAAÉ TOMB: Christine! Come to me!
CHRISTINE: Daddy? Is that you?
VOICE FROM THE DAAÉ TOMB: …Sure, if that’s your kink.
[Raoul rides up, leaps off his white charger, and tosses his hair urgently.]
RAOUL: Christine! That’s not your dad! That’s just the Phantom!
VOICE FROM THE DAAÉ TOMB: NO IT’S NOT! I’M TOTALLY HER DAD! DADDY LOVES YOU, CHRISTINE!
RAOUL: Oh, COME ON, Christine! You hung out with this guy! You fell in love with his stupid voice! You ought to be able to recognize it!
CHRISTINE: Well, it does sound kind of familiar…
RAOUL: And you saw his face, right?
CHRISTINE: Well… yeah… I mean… he bears kind of a passing resemblance to my father… I mean, aside from the giant Sunburn of Doom… He really looked like my dad when we were singing about the Music of the Night and he was running his hands all over me.
RAOUL: YOU ARE WRONG IN THE HEAD.
THE PHANTOM: I KEEL YOU, FABIO!
Even without having seen the movie adaptation, I know the story well enough to get the jokes in here. Quite cute (and with that many mentions of breasts, I just might have a reason to see the movie after all…).
“Dragonflies (Überzone’s Strapped to Your Bed)” by Povi from the album Plastic Compilation Vol. III (1999, 4:09).
I’m not really sure when I put The Lion in Winter in my queue, nor what prompted me to do so. When I popped it in tonight, I wasn’t really sure that I was in a mood for a historical drama, either, but I figured that I’d at least give it a shot. In the end, I’m very glad I did — what a wonderful, deliciously wicked film!
It’s Christmas in England, and Henry II (Peter O’Toole) needs to name the heir to his throne. He favors younger son John (Nigel Terry), his wife Eleanor of Aquitane (Katharine Hepburn, in an Oscar-winning performance) — who he releases from imprisonment to join the family for the holiday — favors elder son Richard (Anthony Hopkins, in his first screen role), while middle son Geoffrey (John Castle) stands nearby, nearly ignored. France’s King Philip (Timothy Dalton), whose sister Alais (Jane Merrow) is to be married to the Henry’s successor — and who has become Henry’s mistress in the interim — joins the party to ensure that his interests are looked to. Everyone here is motivated purely in their own interests, however, and the gathering soon devolves into some of the most vicious scheming, plotting, and verbal backstabbing I’ve seen in quite a while.
James Goldman‘s script, adapted from his own play, is a masterpiece, full of clever wordplay and innuendo. Watching the characters tear into each other, I was reminded strongly of two more recent films that I enjoy — The Ref and War of the Roses — only where those movies carry the viciousness beyond the verbal realm and into out and out physical battles, much of the fun in The Lion in Winter is that not only are all the battles fought merely with words, but there’s no need for actual physical violence, and the tale would suffer for it if it were there.
There’s no need for a literal knife in the back when a well-sharpened tongue can cut just as deeply, and often leave a more lasting scar. The pen is mightier than the sword, indeed.
“Menofearthereaper (Concrete No Fee No Fear)” by Pop Will Eat Itself from the album Two Fingers My Friends! (1995, 5:54).
I’ve just added a new page to the site (and linked it in the header navigation of every page): my Netflix queues.
Thanks to the plugin goodness of the Netflix Suite, it lists the movies I currently have checked out, the last 90 days (?) of movies I’ve watched and returned along with what I’ve rated them, and my entire Netflix queue (sitting pretty at 441 as of this moment).
Really, really good. Admittedly, they had a couple things going for them to start with — interesting subject matter and a powerhouse cast (Geoffrey Rush as the Marquis de Sade, Kate Winslet as Madeline, Michael Caine as Dr. Royer-Collard, and Joaquin Phoenix as the Abbe du Coulmier) — but that’s not always a guaranteed success.
Geoffrey Rush was loads of fun to watch, though, as the Marquis. I commented to Prairie not long after the movie started that while there are a lot of actors who can read and deliver their lines competently, Rush is one who obviously loves language and all the verbal games that can be played with it, and the Marquis’ neverending stream of innuendo (and frequent out-and-out blatant obscenities) was perfect for him.
“Well worth the dig!”
“Ignore the Machine” by Alien Sex Fiend from the album Gothik (1983, 6:42).
Psychiatrists in select cities nationwide have reported a surge in Post-Melodramatic Stress Disorder cases following the Dec. 22 release of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom Of The Opera.
“We’re seeing a barrage of psychological consequences in those who have been exposed to the violently overblown acting and protracted, heightened emotions in The Phantom Of The Opera,” said Bill Lambert, a psychology professor at the University of Chicago. “After such intense abuse of their artistic sensibilities, melodrama victims are finding themselves plagued by extreme sentimentality, flashbacks to especially torturous scenes, and canned-emotional detachment.”
According to Lambert, a good portion of PMSD sufferers are experiencing distress so great that it is interfering with their jobs as overweight receptionists, struggling fashion designers, and community-theater actors.
“PMSD sufferers walk through their days with the specter of an unnecessary musical number hanging over them like a mask,” Lambert said. “The prelude is constantly playing in their unconscious minds, threatening to crescendo into exaggerated, choreographed action at any moment. Anything can set them off: a chandelier, a strain of saccharine music, a gaudy outfit.”
Okay, okay, I’ll admit it — I actually like The Phantom of the Opera. It goes beyond that, too — I like quite a few of Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s musicals…in fact, I tend to like musicals. I’ve even seen quite a few of them on stage (Phantom, Cats [twice], Jesus Christ Superstar [three times], Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Tommy, Les Miserables).
In my defense, though (if a defense can even be mounted), I couldn’t help it. I’ve been brainwashed!
For a full ten years — some of the most formative years of my childhood, and nearly a third of my life to date — I was a member of the Alaska Children’s Choir (well, first I was a member of the Anchorage Boys Choir, then the Anchorage Girls and Boys Choir, then the Anchorage Children’s Choir, then the Alaska Children’s Choir). As such, I was exposed from an early age to a wide range of choral music, both classical and popular, and of course, the Webber repetoire was well-represented. There’s hardly a song in Webber’s most popular works that I don’t still have memorized, as if I wasn’t singing one piece or another in one of our concerts, I had the soundtrack albums at home.
Some of us just can’t be helped (though on the bright side, I’m probably immune to PMSD).
Of course, while I do like it, Phantom is hardly my favorite of Webber’s works. That honor is reserved for Jesus Christ Superstar, which is not only my favorite of Webber’s musicals, but my favorite musical across the board (though Chess does come in a very close second — pity I’ve never had a chance to see that one on stage). Three versions of the JCS soundtrack show up in my music collection (the original, the 20th Anniversary, and the Resurrection)…one notable version that I don’t own, though, is the actual soundtrack to the motion picture, for as good as the movie is visually, it is by far the worst version I’ve heard from a musical standpoint.
As far as the Phantom movie goes, I’m really not sure if I’m going to see it in the theater or not. As appealing as it sounds (speaking as an admitted fan of the show), two things worry me. The first is simply that Joel Schumacher is directing — but then, he has done things other than Batman and Robin, some of which I actually enjoy (The Lost Boys, Falling Down), so that doesn’t entirely rule things out right off the bat.
The bigger worry is simply that what I’ve heard of the music so far entirely fails to impress me. Admittedly, it’s only snippets in the trailer and 30-second samples on the iTunes Music Store, but the feeling I’ve gotten so far is that it may be falling into the same bin as the theatrical version of JCS, where the movie is fun visually, but disappointing musically.
So far, the reviews aren’t promising, either, as they seem to be boiling down to “if you already like Phantom, you’ll like it, otherwise, find something else to do.”
At the moment, I’m leaning towards renting — so I can’t be that rabid of a Webberphile, can I? ;)
(via Dad)
Part of Prairie’s scheme to familiarize me with Stephen King’s work has included renting some of the many adaptations of his work to film. Quality varies, of course, but when they’re good, they’re good, and when they’re bad, it’s generally fun to look at the differences between the original story and the filmed version and see what went wrong.
This past weekend, we went with a recent TV miniseries version of ‘Salem’s Lot.
It started out rather promising, with a strong cast (Rob Lowe as Ben Mears, Donald Sutherland as Richard Straker, Rutger Hauer as Kurt Barlowe, and James Cromwell as Father Callahan), and the first half of the show was overall fairly well done — while there were definite alterations made, due both to moving the story to the small screen and updating it for a modern setting, most of them weren’t very troubling, and the tone of the film was dead on.
There were two definite “What??” moments in the first half, though. The film opened with a scene (Ben attacking Father Calahan and hospitalizing both of them after a fall out of a second-story window) that was not anywhere in the book, and had Prairie and I both quite confused, as it didn’t seem to make any sense for either of the characters — though we decided to give the film the benefit of the doubt, and see where things led, especially when the next few scenes covering Ben’s arrival in the town were handled quite well. Also, the doctor was combined with another character in the book, which ended up drastically changing his character for the worse. That bothered both of us, as he was one of the nicer characters in the book.
Other changes were more acceptable, though — various characters being combined, slight tweaks here and there — and most of what we noticed were differences in interpretation. For instance, we had each pictured Straker as far more slick and smooth, and very politely menacing, while Sutherland played him a little more wild. Still, the feel of the book was captured quite well, so even with the slight changes, things seemed to be going fairly well.
Then we hit the second half, and things suddenly starting going downhill. Mark, the boy hero of the book who survives in large part due to his childhood innocence and open acceptance of ghoulies, ghosties, and things that go bump in the night, is made far more cynical and something of a troublemaker, robbing his character of many of the qualities that allowed him to survive through the book. The changes made to the doctor’s character continued to eat away at our perception of him, making him far less sympathetic.
But the real crimes were in the sudden and drastic deviations from the plot of the book as the movie drew to a close. Ben’s encounter with Hubie Marsten in the old Marsten house is substantially changed, and ends up being nowhere near as creepy or effective as in the book. Susan’s death, one of the big moments for Ben in his struggle to deal with the situation, doesn’t happen when it should, instead being pushed into an absolutely ludicrously silly final confrontation near the end of the movie. Father Callahan goes from being a very interesting and ultimately tragic figure to being little more than evil and rather dumb. The vampire “dusting” effects are just silly — surely they could have found another way to distinguish their vampire deaths from those of other shows without having the vamps suddenly levitate towards the ceiling and explode into glitter. And Barlowe’s final moments are just laughable.
In the end, it was one of the more disappointing adaptations I’ve seen, simply because it seemed to start so well — to have it take such a drastic turn for the worse was more frustrating than if had simply been bad through and through from the start.
“Kiss, The” by Cure, The from the album Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me (1987, 6:14).
I saw a couple movies in my Netflix New Releases feed that made me laugh today…
Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid — Anaconda plus Adaptation? It’s actually a sequel to Anaconda, has gotten worse reviews than the original (which is amusing, as I hated the original), and I’m sure it has absolutely nothing to do with Adaptation, but the idea of trying to combine the two amuses me.
Alien Species — Alien plus Species? Aside from both being sci-fi/horror films featuring creatures conceived by H.R. Geiger, they’re not really that similar, and this just looks like a generic sci-fi flick. The cover image (here it is on Netflix, Amazon apparently doesn’t have one) even looks like they’re ripping off the martian attack machines from the old film version of War of the Worlds.
Some days it really seems like we’ve run out of original ideas.
“Lover Boy/Lover Girl (B[Eat Me Up])” by Lords of Acid from the album Lover Boy/Lover Girl (2000, 5:36).
Well, we survived!
Man, that’s a lot of movie. When all’s said and done, it was a lot of fun, and all agreed that it was well worth doing, and definitely something that should be done again.
In a year or so.
The Extended Edition of Return of the King is wonderful, though — at least as good as, if not better than, the extended versions of each of the first two films. A few major additions and a number of minor ones that do an incredible job of fleshing out the film.
However, it’s now almost 12:30, and as we’re well worn out from a long day of sitting on our butts, it’s bedtime for us.
After adding as many of the 100 overlooked films to my Netflix queue as I could, my queue is now 389 discs long (not counting the four discs of Buffy and West Wing I have left).
Assuming an average of two hours per movie, that’s 32.4 days of movies lined up. Something tells me that that’s going to take a while to get through. ;)
Right now, my queue is ordered only by the order that I’ve added items to it. I’m halfway debating sorting it by year of release and starting with the oldest films, working my way towards more recent titles. Anybody tried this? Think it might be worth it?
For the terminally curious, here’s my queue (358k .pdf).
“In Dreams” by Masters from the album Essential Chillout (2000, 6:27).