Book: Where's the doctor? Not back yet? Zoe: (beat) We don't make him hurry for the little stuff. He'll be along. Book: He could hurry... a little.

'Safe'


Buffista Movies 3: Panned and Scanned  

A place to talk about movies--Old and new, good and bad, high art and high cheese. It's the place to place your kittens on the award winners, gossip about upcoming fims and discuss DVD releases and extras. Spoiler policy: White font all plot-related discussion until a movie's been in wide release two weeks, and keep the major HSQ in white font until two weeks after the video/DVD release.


Betsy HP - Aug 08, 2004 4:41:05 pm PDT #2510 of 10001
If I only had a brain...

The weird thing is that Hugh Jackman can open a musical -- everybody, hands-down, agrees that the only thing that made The Boy From Oz worth seeing was Jackman, and that Jackman made it well worth seeing. They're closing it when he leaves -- even the producers know it's a lost cause.

Jackman can keep a musical alive, but not a movie.


Scrappy - Aug 08, 2004 4:44:49 pm PDT #2511 of 10001
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

That's a movie that gets film geeks at each other's throats, Suela. One camp find it a pointed satire on fascism and patriotism using visual tropes from propaganda films in interesting ways, the other (heretofore known as the "right" camp, as it's the one I'm in) feels that it doesn't work as satire because the commentary needs to be read into it, rather than being there to be understood. For the right camp, it's a flat sci-fi film loaded with dull 2-D characters.


§ ita § - Aug 08, 2004 4:51:07 pm PDT #2512 of 10001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Jackman can keep a musical alive, but not a movie.

You say that, but let them try and mount Swordfish! and see how that fares.

I'm glad he made the show, and not just in a rubbernecking sort of way -- it wasn't like Jordan selling Barons tickets, was it?


sumi - Aug 08, 2004 5:01:16 pm PDT #2513 of 10001
Art Crawl!!!

Didn't he get a Tony? Or at least a Tony nom?

That doesn't sound like Jordan selling Barons tickets to me.


§ ita § - Aug 08, 2004 5:03:12 pm PDT #2514 of 10001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

Knowing nothing about the facts, I'm always deeply cynical of the amount of attention garnered by crossovers. But concomitantly happy when it's not a Barons thing.


Scrappy - Aug 08, 2004 5:08:32 pm PDT #2515 of 10001
Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

But Jackman started in theater--it's not a crossover. Some actors, like Kevin Kline or Matthew Broderick, go back and forth between theater and film all the time.


Dana - Aug 08, 2004 5:10:45 pm PDT #2516 of 10001
I'm terrifically busy with my ennui.

He got a Tony, and it was an astonishing performance. The woman I saw it with said "He was as good as the show was bad."

So yeah, the show's closing because it sucks, but it's been a success because he was the star.


alienprayer - Aug 08, 2004 5:12:34 pm PDT #2517 of 10001
Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others. -Bierce

Count me amoung the right with Starship Troopers. It also really bothered me that the book I remembered had a bleak and impersonal mechanized battlefield, and juxtaposed that with the traditional human training.

I do not recall the film having much to do with the book though.


Jesse - Aug 08, 2004 5:17:14 pm PDT #2518 of 10001
Sometimes I trip on how happy we could be.

ita! I came up with an analogy to my Denzel "type" thing. Let's see if it works: If someone asked me to describe "a Buffy episode," I'd pretty much describe a MOTW ep from earlier in the run -- the gang fighting some scary thing, with quips along the way, etc. It clearly doesn't describe every episode, or even the preponderance of later episodes, and it definitely doesn't describe most of the great ones. But it's still my general feeling of what "a Buffy episode" is like.

Did that make any sense?


Consuela - Aug 08, 2004 5:17:47 pm PDT #2519 of 10001
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix

feels that it doesn't work as satire because the commentary needs to be read into it, rather than being there to be understood.

Thank you, Robin, yes. This is what I just said to a friend in chat:

me: a friend claimed that it was all ironic, that it becomes clear humans are the aggressors.
my friend: you know, I *know* that's what it was supposed to be, but I totally didn't see it.
me: but given that NONE of the characters indicate any moral or ethical uncertainty, I find it insufficient to make me like the movie. It could have been good -- well, better -- with decent writing and acting. And lots less blood. Instead it just fetished the violence without any critical thinking
my friend: ayup. Very hard to take it as social commentary when it looked like interstellar Rambo
me: the irony inherent in the newsreel footage didn't show up ANYWHERE else

So, bleah. I was never so glad for the fast-forward button, and the judicious application of whiskey. Now somehow I have to tell the friend who lent it to me that she's on monkey crack.