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.
Is it just me, or does this guy (I’m assuming it’s the villain)…
…look a lot like John Lithgow’s character in the Sylvester Stallone movie Cliffhanger?
iTunes: “Difficult Listening Hour – 02v2” by Various Artists from the album Difficult Listening Hour (2000, 1:04:41).
Brad, Brad, Brad — so close, and yet so far away.
Actor Brad Pitt said Sunday that fashion-conscious men may be wearing Greek-style skirts soon after his big-budget film about the Trojan War opens this week.
“Men will be wearing skirts by next summer. That’s my prediction and proclamation,” he said with a laugh. “The film answers to both genders. We were going for realism and Greeks wore skirts all the time then.”
Some of us don’t need to see Brad Pitt running around in a Greek-style skirt to be comfortable enough with our masculinity to wear something other than pants…and look damn good while doing it! ;)
iTunes: “Sweet Jane” by Cowboy Junkies from the album Natural Born Killers (1988, 3:23).
Prairie and I watched Kill Bill this weekend — the whole thing, renting Volume One Saturday night and going out to see Volume Two on Sunday. I’d seen the first half already when it was in the theaters, but Prairie hadn’t, and it was quite fun to watch them both back-to-back. I’ve got to say that I think that Kill Bill is easily the best work I’ve seen from Quentin Tarantino.
Violent? Well, of course — it’s Tarrantino. After watching Kill Bill, I don’t think Tarantino could film someone getting a paper cut without attaching a spurting jet of blood to it (which, to me at least, is a fairly amusing mental image). It was all extremely over-the-top, though, to the point where it’s extremely difficult to take seriously (I joked at one point that the Kill Bill movies could be subtitled “Quentin Tarantino goes balls-out nuts”).
Watching Vol. 1 the second time, I was struck by how perfect of a decision it was to flesh out O-Ren Ishi-i’s backstory with anime, as it allowed Tarantino to present what is really one of the most disturbing storylines in a manner that’s in some ways actually more intense than he would have been able to do it had he tried to make it a live-action sequence.
Elle Driver is easily one of my favorite characters in the film, I think. Of the five members of the DiVAS, much of the time she struck me as the most snake-like: cold, unfeeling, and vicious — which made the few moments when she broke that mold (her moment of pouting after Bill tells her to leave the bride alive in the hospital towards the beginning of Vol. 1) that much more amusing.
The fight with Elle in Budd’s camper was wonderfully done, too, with Elle constantly unable to draw her sword out of its sheath due to the cramped quarters. I’m quite curious if that’s an intentional movie reference by Tarantino that’s been missed on the Kill Bill References Guide, specifically to the trailer fight in the Coen Brothers’ Raising Arizona. Not to mention that the bride’s final blow to Elle really caught me off guard — a perfect way to end the fight, but entirely unexpected (and cringe-inducing).
What really surprised me about Vol. 2 was the end, which was far more touching and tender than I ever would have expected from Tarantino. After around three and a half hours of violent, bloody revenge, to wrap it all up with sequences that manage to tug at the heartstrings without being schmaltzy was a surprising and perfect way to end the film.
iTunes: “Steamroller” by Pigface from the album Preaching to the Perverted (1994, 2:10).
How would you feel if a major reason for your existence in the world, possibly the primary reason for your conception, was to act as a genetically guaranteed donor to cure your older sibling of a disease?
Kind of weird to think about.
Sure, this kind of thing has been done for years, just without the benefit of Gattaca-style genetic screening to ensure a compatibility match, but it was a far more private matter. With the news stories surrounding these more recent children, how might they feel if somewhere down the line, when they’re old enough to understand, what if they somehow find out that they are one of these kids?
“Well, we weren’t planning on having another child, but then your brother got sick….”
Better or worse than finding out you’re adopted?
What if there was any favoritism — real or perceived — in how the two children were treated before this aspect was discovered? If the older child (the recipient) was seen as the “favorite”, how much could that affect the younger child’s perception of themself? Or if the younger was perceived as the “favorite”?
That could easily be enough to screw you up for a long, long time.
How incredibly cool — Donnie Darko, which disappeared from most theaters practically before it was released, has become such a cult favorite that its studio is going to be re-releasing it to theaters, starting right here in Seattle!
“Donnie Darko,” which made a paltry \$517,375 when it was released in October 2001, will get a second chance.
Newmarket Films, which holds domestic distrib rights, is looking to cash in on the pic’s growing cult status by rereleasing a director’s cut this summer.
New cut, which includes 21 minutes of footage not in the original release, will premiere May 29 at the Seattle Film Festival.
Newmarket topper Bob Berney said the company then plans to release the pic on about 10 screens in the city as a test run for a wider national release.
“I want to see if we can play it in the malls and multiplexes,” Berney said, adding that the company planned TV and print ad buys commensurate with a big-budget release.
Newmarket says it will use the results of the Seattle release to determine the pattern for a national rollout.
Count me in on this one!
(via LJ Seattle)
iTunes: “Velvet Pants” by Propellerheads from the album Decksandrumsandrockandroll (1998, 5:47).
Okay, here’s part two of my online garage sale: the majority of my DVD collection is going up for grabs.
As shipping on DVDs is a lot more reasonable than it would be for the electronics, though, this one’s open to anyone who might be interested. As before, please leave comments on this post for what you’re interested in instead of contacting me directly, as it will allow me to keep track of things on a “first-come-first-serve” basis, and I’ll get back to you to set up the details. As far as payment goes, PayPal will be preferred, but local buyers will also have the choice of cash or check if it can be handed directly to me.
And with that, here’s the list…
Paul Allen’s new addition to the EMP, the Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, is due to open in approximately two months, according to the Seattle P-I.
About 13,000 square feet of the Frank Gehry-designed EMP will be dedicated to the new Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame (which was initially dubbed SFX, for Science Fiction Experience). This new sci-fi wing will have three levels of exhibit space and add more than 1,000 square feet of performance space to EMP.
Exhibits and artifacts celebrating such movies and television programs as “Star Trek,” “Planet of the Apes” and “Dr. Strangelove” will be complemented by objects or exhibits aimed at demonstrating how the literary genre sometimes leads to real scientific developments or technological achievements.
I’ll be very interested in checking it out, of course — my only worry is that I found the EMP to be fairly ridiculously overpriced, and I wasn’t a large fan of how the displays were set up (very little textual information, as there were PDA-ish handheld audio devices to guide you through, which were too heavy and kind of a pain to use). Hopefully the SFX doesn’t have these same issues, though as they are part of the same complex, who knows.
Guess I’ll find out in June, huh?
This is more than a little tempting: This year’s Rocky Horror Picture Show convention, Rockypalooza, will be here in Seattle next month.
Rockypalooza II: Forbidden Palooza draws Rocky Horror fans from all over this end of the continent. It’s an excuse to share our fabulous obsession through shows, preshows and, ahem, post shows. It gives us an opportunity to get to know other people that perform in the area and to share a larger, more elaborate experience with theatergoers. We can find and share Rocky memorabilia. Also, we can settle that whole being-turned-to-a-pillar-of-salt/ getting run out of town by a pitchfork n’ torch mob thing once and for all.
(via LJ Seattle)
Every so often, Prairie and I will go through Apple’s movie trailer page, checking out what’s coming up in the next few months and seeing what interests us. Here’s today’s batch of possibilities (in no particular order)…
iTunes: “Kooler Than Jesus (Electric Messiah)” by My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult from the album Confessions of A Knife (1990, 4:12).
About three weeks ago, a reader of my site surprised me with the gift of a new biography of Alfred Hitchcock. I didn’t start it immediately, as I was in the middle of another book, but when I lost that book along with my bookbag I started reading the Hitchcock biography.
So far, it’s fascinating, and I’m only about a third of the way through (up to Hitch moving to America and working on Rebecca, his first American-made film). I did, however, realize that while I’ve certainly enjoyed what I’ve seen of Hitchcock’s films, I’ve actually seen very few: Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds are the only ones!
So, in an attempt to rectify that situation, I’ve gone through and added every single Hitchcock DVD available to my NetFlix queue. In chronological order, no less.
Admittedly, I added them to the end of my queue, so I won’t actually start going through them unless I take the time to rearrange my queue, but still, they’re there, so at some point in the future, I’ll be able to drastically increase my Hitchcock knowledge.
iTunes: “Wandering Minstrel, The/Jackson’s Morning Brush” by Ennis, Séamus from the album Wandering Minstrel, The (1974, 5:34).