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| Friday, September 23, 2005 04:50 PM |
| Eyebrows and Earlobes |
 by Fëanor |
- Last night I stayed up late watching my tape of "Destination: Lost" (one of the specials they air to catch you up on what's happened so far in the show; I watched the previous one of these, too, but this one had different clips, so I sat through it, as well) and the season premier of "Lost" itself (I've got the series premier of "Invasion" on that tape, too, but I haven't watched that yet). I felt better this morning than I did yesterday morning, despite the fact that I had less sleep last night than the night before, but I think that's just because I managed to wake up at the end of a sleep cycle this time; now that it's late afternoon/early evening, the cost of my late night is beginning to come due in the form of feelings of exhaustion and confusion, verging now on immobility and collapse, and I think the quality of my blogging is also suffering. For that I apologize.
But, this does mean that you may now, if you so wish, speak of this show to me again, in the comments or in person, without fear of your imminent demise.
And btw, I enjoyed the episode. It was totally creepy and moving and bewildering and fantastic. I love the way that show f's with me.
- Previous to my late night "Lost" debauchery, poppy and I wasted our early evening watching Be Cool, the sequel to the clever and fantastic Get Shorty. Be Cool, sadly, is neither clever nor fantastic. It's one of those pathetic Hollywood sequels which is but a pale shadow of the original. It's as if they knew the first one was a hit, but they didn't really know why, so they just copied as much of the outlines of it as they could without actually making exactly the same movie again. They've brought back a number of characters, as well as at least one actor who's now playing a different character (Harvey Keitel; he had a hilarious cameo at the end of the first film, apparently as himself, but in this film he has a much larger part as a sleazy and annoying record producer). Characters that weren't carried over were simply replaced with new characters of the same basic type. The plot is also very similar, except this time Chili Palmer is getting into the music business instead of the movie business, and the intrigues and double-crosses aren't as smart or interesting. They've even got some of the same running gags, but they just aren't as funny this time.
Also, while I'm willing to suspend my disbelief quite a bit for a film, I am not willing to pretend that bad music is good, and that's what Be Cool asks us to do in the case of the supposedly shockingly great songs (which are really tepid reruns of the usual pop crap) by Linda Moon, the talented unknown that Chili Palmer discovers singing in a club for an abusive and irritating manager (Vince Vaughn).
Still, the movie is not all bad. It has its moments. For instance, I particularly enjoyed the scenes featuring Andre Benjamin (AKA Andre 3000 of Outkast) as the punk with the itchy trigger finger named Dabu.
All in all, however, Be Cool is (as my Dad warned me after he'd seen it) pretty disappointing.
- This is cool: a lost short film by French filmmaker Georges Méliès has been found. Méliès was one of the first filmmakers ever, and I've always preferred his films to the others made by early directors (like the Lumiere brothers, for instance) because his are so fantastical, and really revel in the magic of the medium (Méliès had, in fact, been a magician before he discovered moving pictures).
- I've never actually seen the original Shinobi (in fact, before I read this article, I didn't know there was an original), or even played any of the famous video games of the same name, but despite that, and despite the typically bitter and dismissive sarcasm of this Cinematical post (sometimes they really piss me off with that shit), I could see the Wachowski's doing quite well with a movie about intrigue and ninjas.
- Defective Yeti's recent review of the cooperative fantasy boardgame Shadows Over Camelot was getting me really excited about the game, until I got to the end, where he admits that he enjoys it despite the fact that it has numerous flaws and is really pretty mediocre. That kind of deflated my enthusiasm for it a bit. I'd still be curious to try this one some time, but I'm not curious enough to actually pay forty bucks for the privilege.
- Cinematical's recent trailer park post pointed me to a trailer for a film I'd never heard of before: The Ice Harvest. It looks like a sort of comedic film noir, in which John Cusack bilks the mob out of some money, and then all of his attempts to escape with it go hilariously awry. It also looks pretty good, which is lucky for me, since poppy will almost certainly make me watch it, to feed her insatiable Cusack-lust.
- Coppola is off to Romania to find himself, and to make a movie based on a Romanian novella called Youth Without Youth, which is apparently about an academic type who experiences some kind of life crisis just before the beginning of WWII. Coppola wrote the screenplay and Tim Roth and Bruno Ganz are on board to star. Exciting stuff! Here's hoping Coppola rediscovers his genius with this one.
- Thanks to Sarcasmo's Corner for the link to VirtuSphere, which is apparently a giant plastic ball you can play video games in, by running around in it while wearing virtual reality gear (such as goggles and a gun). A VirtuSphere was at the most recent Penny Arcade Expo (I hear they're going to have one of those on the east coast eventually--woo hoo!), and it was a big hit there. I'd love to check it out myself. It's probably just a fun fad, and not "the future of video games" or anything like that, but still.
- Speaking of video games, maybe I should get a master's in them? U. of Penn, for instance, is offering a graduate degree in computer graphics and game technology. Sounds sweet.
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