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| Tuesday, January 11, 2005 06:28 AM |
| Reviews! |
 by Fëanor |
I'm currently listening to the Phantom of the Paradise soundtrack, which I recently purchased from Amazon (it's ridiculously expensive because it's an import, but luckily I had a gift certificate, so it cost me less than a dollar), and I can't believe how much I'm enjoying it. The songs are much better than I remembered from the movie, and much cleverer. For instance, I only just realized that "Upholstery" is the deliberately corny and commercialized version of the song "Faust." Great stuff.
In other reviews, poppy and I sat down to watch The Mummy's Ghost last night. She then got up about half way through to escape it, because it was so very, very bad. As is my custom, however, I sat through the entire thing. The story is very, very, painfully familiar to anyone who's seen The Mummy's Hand and The Mummy's Tomb (which we unfortunately have). Another Egyptian priest (this time played by John Carradine, who actually looks young in this film, which is really disturbing, because he's the perenial creepy old guy in horror movies) is sent out by his superior (who is the same old high priest from the two previous movies, despite the fact that he died in both of those movies!!) to find the two mummies of Kharis and Ananka and bring them back. While he's busy trying to accomplish this, Kharis starts wandering around looking for those damn magic leaves again and killing random people who happen to be nearby. Meanwhile, we are introduced to the most unlikable main character of any of these movies (which is really saying something, seeing as how they were all total chumps): a big, whiny, 30-year-old college student named Tom Hervey, whose idea of comforting his girlfriend, Amina Mansouri, is telling her to laugh and stop imagining things. But of course, she isn't imagining things. In fact, she's the reincarnation of Ananka, and Kharis and the priest are going to have to collect her and bring her back with them. But inevitably, having acquired her, the priest is seduced by her beauty and decides the two of them should live together forever. What is it about the women in these movies that make men who've never met them or even talked to them before want to put aside everything they believe in in order to offer them an endless, skeevy relationship?
Anyway, up to this point, the film has been utterly incompetently made. Terrible dialogue, worse acting, clumsy camera work, you name it (as poppy pointed out to me, the day-for-night shooting is particularly transparent here; it's clearly noon when it's supposed to be midnight--it reminded me of that one Magritte painting). This movie is only an hour long, but due to its poor quality, dull story, and its plodding pace, it seems to last forever. But eventually we do get to the climactic chase of the film, wherein the mummy is shambling slowly away from a mob--which seems to consist of all the men in the town (who are all really old for some reason)--carrying the unconscious Amina awkwardly in his arms. And here's where the movie gets a little interesting, if not actually good. I've mentioned before how I tend to root for the bad guys in these films, mostly because the good guys are bland dumbasses defending boring conservative values. So I was kind of excited when at the end of this movie, the mummy kind of wins. He escapes the mob by walking into a swamp and sinking into the water, the girl still in his arms. Our big, blustery main character seems determined to still follow after and save her, until he notices that his girlfriend has somehow gotten all wrinkly and old (a transformation which isn't really explained in the film, although the suggestion is that it has something to do with one of those old Egyptian curses). Then he kind of grimaces, climbs back to shore, and leaves with the gang of old men, who pat him consolingly on the back.
What a movie!
In more personal news, I've been down lately. This is because I haven't really been working on any of my projects. I haven't been working on any of my projects because I didn't want to. I always feel useless and pointless when I'm not completing some kind of task that I feel is important, but lately I've also felt really sluggish and lazy and unable to motivate myself. Luckily, today I made myself get back to work on a project that poppy wanted me to do for her, and I've been toiling along on that quite happily.
poppy, unfortunately, is not so happy. Her leg keeps doing that thing where it pops away from her hip for some reason. Today she's getting a shot or two in her side to tighten her ligaments and hopefully keep that leg from getting away from her anymore. Please wish her luck. |
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