Tag: movies

Weekend Report

Friday: Stuck at work trying frantically to finish a website redesign that had to be done by that evening. I honestly don’t remember anything about the evening, as the still-not-gone cold slammed into me full force once the adrenaline rush wore off.

Saturday: alenxa and I risked going out to lunch, and managed not to cough all over the restaurant. Watched a couple episodes of Justice League and finally saw The Bride of Frankenstein (which I suspect I saw when I was maybe 10, because I recognized the framing sequence — more about that later — but I don’t remember much more). It’s interesting to see just how much of the Frankenstein mythos not only isn’t in the book, but isn’t in the first movie. Much of the tearing around the countryside is in Bride, for instance, and Igor doesn’t even show up until the third movie, Son of Frankenstein (and he’s a far cry from the mad doctor’s faithful assistant!) Watched an episode of Crusade, “The Well of Forever,” which explores hyperspace and starts to hint at Galen’s backstory (told in much more detail in the Technomage novels.)

I also caught up on some graphic novels, including Sam Kieth’s Four Women (disturbing and creepy, but a good story) and The Sandwalk Adventures, a somewhat offbeat story that covers the basics of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Sort of the “Cartoon History of Evolution.”

Sunday: Ran some errands. Finished Black Powder War. Actually ran the air conditioner for a while, though the floorplan means it doesn’t actually accomplish much. Went to Orange’s International Street Fair for dinner.

Monday: More errands. Re-read the second round of Tangent Comics that DC put out in 1998. This was the series where they took the names of various heroes and villains and created entirely new characters. Overall, the first set was better, but it was still an interesting side universe that I would have liked to see more of. Caught up on a couple of items I’d been meaning to add to my website. Also read half of the first book of A Distant Soil, which I first heard about ~20 years go and have been meaning to check out for ~10 years. After several issues of setting up a major space epic, it’s suddenly shifted to an Arthurian battle. I assume the plotlines will converge by the end of the book. Watched about half of Grosse Point Blank. It wasn’t as good as I remembered, and when Katie said it just wasn’t grabbing her, I realized I was more interested in showing her the movie than re-watching it myself.

I’m finally getting over this #$!@ cold, though I’m still coughing from time to time. And with the heat and dehydration, it’s still leaving me feeling completely wiped out several times a day. Oddly enough, I found myself looking forward to going back to work because the AC (when it’s running, anyway) is more effective than what we have at home. At least my ears are finally getting unplugged. Lunch on Saturday was really odd, because voices were muffled, but the background music wasn’t. Of course now everything sounds oddly loud.

The Dread Pirate Katie

We went out to the Spectrum on Friday to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. alenxa dressed up for the occasion, in the latest variation of her pirate costume.

The Dread Pirate Katie

Still in Line

As you can see, she was far from the only pirate in line. Two groups ahead of us there were about 5 or six people in full pirate regalia, who swelled to around a dozen, some quite elaborate, by the time the line let in. Once their whole group was there, they got someone to take a group photo.

Oh, on the subject of those cosplay photos from Comic-Con… the 2004 set has gotten a lot of hits from people searching for Elizabeth Swann costume. PageRank can do funny things…

Moulin Rouge

Went to see a screening of Moulin Rouge last night. It was a strange experience — stranger than watching it with a small group of friends — though that was largely due to the problem with the theater sound system.

The picture was perfect throughout the whole movie, but the sound would occasionally cut out or become distorted. If you’ve ever tried renaming a non-sound file as a .wav and trying to play it, that’s kind of what it sounded like. “Fortunately,” the largely late-teen-early-20s female audience knew all the words and sang Nicole Kidman’s part while a smaller group ran back to tell the manager that yes, the sound was out again.

Then there was “Spectacular, Spectacular,” which unfolded with a mental overlay of the AMV…

The Long Weekend

Friday: Goo Goo Dolls/ Counting Crows concert at it’s-still-Irvine-Meadows-’cause-“Verizon-Wireless-Amphitheater”-just-sounds-dumb. Nifty view of the central Orange County valley before the sun set.

Saturday. Spent the day lying on the couch with a fan running, catching up on the Babylon 5 script book commentaries. So far I’ve only read about 1/4 of one script, but the introductions are a fascinating insight into the process of making the show. Given how much was out in the open (since JMS spent several hours a night online during production), some of the stuff that wasn’t revealed back then is mighty interesting. (Example: we all thought season 4 was compressed because they weren’t sure they’d get a season 5, and wanted to get as much done as they could. It turns out that at the beginning of the season, they were told in no uncertain terms that there would not be a season 5. So getting that fifth season on TNT was a real surprise.)

Dinner at CPK, then Superman Returns Enjoyed it, but no interest in seeing it again. It already felt like deja vu since there were so many references to the first two movies with Christopher Reeve. There were some great moments, but overall it was just kind of okay.

Sunday: Finished Bad Twin. Decent book, but not exactly a major insight into the secrets of Lost. Waited several hours until checking my email, at which point I discovered I really should’ve checked earlier… so I could bring a server back online. Went down to the office, brought the server up. alenxa tagged along and we had lunch at the crepe place at the Spectrum. Happened to glance over at one of the wall alcoves, which held a vinegar bottle… labeled Temeraire. After some shopping for food for upcoming family get-togethers, went home and played Heroes V for a few hours. Fortunately I was still awake when the same server went down again at 1AM. So I drove back, brought it online, figured out a way to make sure that it would automatically start up again next time, then came home. Still trying to diagnose the cause, but whatever it is does seem to like holiday weekends…

Monday: Traditionally, the 4th of July consists of hanging around at home followed by looking for fireworks. This year, both our families wanted to get together. So on Monday we went to visit my grandparents, carpooling with my parents and my brother. My aunt and her husband brought their dogs, which meant I spent most of the afternoon in a Benadryl-induced funk, despite drinking way too much Dr. Pepper to offset it.

Tuesday: I squeezed in an hour or two of Heroes in the morning, then it was off to visit Katie’s family, with more BBQ. Dinner was relatively early, so we cleared out around 7:00 so we could make it back to Laguna Beach for the fireworks display there. They launch the fireworks off one of the bluffs, out over the ocean, and the viewing is pretty good from the beach. We caught the tail end of it a couple of years ago, while driving around looking for displays. Two years ago we got there too late and missed the entire show while we walked from the car out to the beach. (Hey, have you ever tried finding parking in Laguna Beach?) Last year I was sick, so we just walked out to where we could see the local display. This year we made it with plenty of time to spare, parking up on Forest (roughly in line with the Laguna Playhouse, and maybe a few hundred feet from the entrance to Tivoli Terrace, where we had our wedding), and snagged a spot on the beach. The wind blew the smoke in our direction, so a lot of the fireworks were half-obscured, but they lit up the smoke a lot more than I can remember seeing anywhere else. After the show, we did our semi-traditional stop at Diedrich across the street.

Today: Back to work. I’ve been stress-testing the server, trying to get it to crash under controlled circumstances so I can get some information about what’s causing the problem… and it just won’t crash!

Weekend of Movies

alenxa and I don’t go to movies very often. Usually we just don’t get around to it until whatever film it was isn’t in theaters anymore (unless it’s something one or both of us really wants to see). Sometime last year we started making a list of movies we’d missed, movies one of us wanted to show the other, and movies we wanted to see again. We watched a few, and then the list got buried on my desk, and then I had to clean off my desk and it got buried in a pile on the floor in front of a shelf.

After we rented Underworld a few weeks ago (a film which takes itself waaay too seriously, and which gets misfiled in Horror instead of Action because it has vampires and werewolves in it), I tracked down the list and we started working through it. We don’t watch enough to justify paying for Netflix (though I keep meaning to check out their selection, which would be the tipping point), but we can get a 2-for-1 deal at Blockbuster if we rent early in the week. It makes it easier to rent movies that we know are going to be MSTK fodder in a couple of decades, since we can get them free with a better film.

Anyway, to this weekend. On Thursday, I went with wayens to see a showing of Ghostbusters in an actual movie theater. It really holds up. The jokes are still funny, the story still works, and even the effects hold up pretty well. (The main exception would be the stop-motion version of the terror dogs, which is probably a combination of compositing and lack of motion blur). One thing I noticed was that the story itself is treated 100% seriously. The humor is in the characters, the dialogue, the attitude. The Stay-Puft Marshmallow man, for instance, is incredibly silly — but because there’s a logical in-sroty reason for it, and the characters treat it as a real threat, it works. Wayne was remarking about how tightly the movie is put together. It goes from their breakthrough, to their first case, to the main plot, with montages serving to fill in the gaps.

Saturday I finally watched From Hell while Katie was blockading. Since it’s been over a year since I read the book, and I knew to expect a historical drama/horror rather than a documentary, I actually thought it was a fairly decent Jack the Ripper film (if there is such a thing). Unfortunately they ripped out some of the key parts of the book — all the symbolism in London’s architecture, for instance, wouldn’t have fit onscreen anyway, but I rather liked the flash-forwards to the 20th century during his psychotic break after the final murder. One of the main points was that this version of Jack believed he was ushering in the future. They kept the line, but left out everything that supported it.

Then last night we watched Ben-Hur. I hadn’t seen it before, but Katie had, and she recommended it especially for the chariot race. Now I knew that the pod race in The Phantom Menace was full of homages to this, but I hadn’t realized it was practically a blow-by-blow remake… even down to the music!

Finally, today we went out to the nearby second-run theater to watch Madagascar. The last time we went there, we were surprised that the theater was in better condition than it had been back when it showed first-run films. They were charging something like $2 for matinees and $4 for evenings. There were maybe 10-20 people in the theater with us. Now, they’ve lowered their prices. Matinees are only $1. I have no idea how they plan on staying in business…but you know what, the theater was almost full. Lower prices + more customers = more revenue (if the coefficients are right). Fun movie, nothing I’d want to rush out and see again, though I was amazed how much of the music was chosen as in-jokes. Who in their target audience is going to recognize Chariots of Fire?

So, has anyone seen The Brothers Grimm? Is it any good?

Secondhand Rows

Finally got out to see The Kingdom of Heaven at one of the local second-run theaters. Once upon a time it was Edwards Woodbridge. Never a flagship theater, it was getting pretty run down by the time they sold it off. I think the last movie I saw there was Star Wars: Episode I three or four months after it came out.

The real shock was that the theater was in great shape. Certainly much better shape than last time, back when the carpet was ragged and stained, some of the seats were ready to fall apart, etc. One of the new owners (there’ve been at least three, I think) put in new carpet, new tiles, new paint, fixed the seats… and is still offering $2 matinees. Even the film was in decent shape. The focus was a bit off on the right side of the screen, but it wasn’t nearly as scratched as I’d expect it to be after 2 1/2 months.

Better movies through time-shifting

The Hollywood blockbuster formula:

  1. Make a movie with some sort of draw—action, big-name star, whatever. Don’t worry too much about quality, since it won’t matter.
  2. Publicize the heck out of it.
  3. Watch lots of people go see it opening weekend.
  4. Watch as attendence drops off sharply because they all told their friends it sucked. Who cares? You already made tons of money the first week!
  5. Release on DVD two months later with special features. You’ll make enough on sales and rentals to cover your expenses.
  6. Repeat.

The end result: tons of substandard movies that nobody really likes, but that make plenty of money. More to the point, there’s not much incentive to make anything better

I had an idea on how to deal with the problem, based partly on mine and alenxa’s viewing habits: Unless you’re reasonably certain the movie will be worth seeing, wait until the second week it’s out. Aside from saving you from ghastly lines, it gives you a chance to pick up the word-of-mouth. If it turns out to be lousy, you save yourself 2 hours (more like three when you throw in parking) and 10 bucks. More importantly, if enough people wait for week 2, films will need to keep second-week ticket sales, which should encourage studios to make films that will have first-weekend people saying, “I loved it! It was better than Cats!” and recommend it to all their second-weekend friends.

It’ll never happen, but it’s at least an idea.

Movie Turnover

There was a story on NPR today about the evolution of the term blockbuster from simply meaning a movie that’s very successful to meaning a particular type of movie (the overblown summer action flick). It got me thinking about the increased number of movie theaters in the area, and then is it really that big an increase, or is it just in line with population growth?

Then I realized: nearly every movie theater I’ve been to in the past couple of years, I remember being new. And all the ones I remember going to as a kid are gone or, if they’re lucky, converted into art house cinema.

  • AMC Orange Mall? Gone. I think it’s part of the Wal-Mart parking lot now.
  • Edwards Town Center? I think the building is still there, but I’m not so sure.
  • The Cinedome? Long gone, and whatever replaced it was also recently razed to the ground.
  • Those theaters across the street from South Coast Plaza? Finally closed down a few years ago.
  • Edwards Woodbridge? Sold off and became a second-run theater.
  • Edwards University? Art-house.
  • South Coast Village? (Not that I remember going there much, if at all.) Art-house.

In fact, the only one I remember going to regularly that’s still first-run is Edwards Hutton Center, and I have a vague feeling it might have been new at the time. At least, I think it was still there the last time I drove past it. With so many other theaters around, I’m not sure I’ve actually been there since high school.

Big Newport has escaped the encroachment of the new, mainly because it’s, well, the biggest screen this side of the Rockies (according to legend, anyway). And I’ve probably been to University and South Coast Village more often since they became art houses than I did “back in the day.”