Last night I finally saw Seabiscuit, which I enjoyed quite a bit. I was sorry there wasn't any text on the screen at the end, saying what happened to the characters and the horse later on.
Also watched: The Mummy Returns, which I found very disappointing, although the ending was pretty cool.
Started watching I Am Sam last night. Now, I had fairly low expectations for this movie, but I was not expected to hate it as much as I did. I haven't seen the last 45 minutes or so yet, but I'm not expecting it to get better.
You've got the cliched lawyer who's about to learn a Very Important Lesson, lots of montages of "Look how much he loves his daughter!", creepy Dakota Fanning (I swear, she's an adult in a very tiny body) ... I'm sure there's more, but even just typing this makes me frown.
What was the Buffista consensus on this one?
Ouch (and heh) - from Matt Zoller Seitz's review of BEYOND THE SEA in the New York Press:
Now that Spacey's dream has come true, viewers have the chance to see a two-hour film with little film sense, about a phenomenally selfish entertainer who was a prick to pretty much everyone, played by an actor who's 15 years too old for the part and who insists on doing all his own singing and dancing even though he's not very good. To quote Dallas Observer columnist Robert Wilonsky's observation about Vanilla Ice during his ganja-and-dredlocks phase, "The kid's got balls of steel. Too bad they're rolling around in his head."
AND
Darin was a graceful dancer, and his singing boasted spot-on rhythm and an easy mastery of phrasing and pitch; Spacey dances like Pee-Wee Herman on a hot plate, and his off-pitch, rhythm-free singing is so lackluster that if he wasn't playing Darin and singing Darin's hits, you would never be able to guess whom he was imitating. And yet, movie star ass-kissing being what it is, we're forced to endure scene after scene where Spacey mangles Darin's hits only to be applauded by shrieking girls—and in one case, by a studio full of professional musicians.
Now that Spacey's dream has come true, viewers have the chance to see a two-hour film with little film sense, about a phenomenally selfish entertainer who was a prick to pretty much everyone, played by an actor who's 15 years too old for the part and who insists on doing all his own singing and dancing even though he's not very good.
Oh, ouch. And yet, so so true, except that I thought Spacey's performance in the musical numbers was terrific. They almost made the movie worth watching. (Actually, I quite enjoyed a lot of it. It has an air of "Love me, love my absurd sense of melodrama" that made the general suckiness of the framing device kind of fun in spite of itself.)
If I liked Spacey at all I'd feel horribly embarrassed and sorry for him over the reviews this trainwreck has been getting. As it is, they fill me with wonderful malicious glee.
If I liked Spacey at all I'd feel horribly embarrassed and sorry for him over the reviews this trainwreck has been getting. As it is, they fill me with wonderful malicious glee.
His live show in San Francisco got an absolute rave.
Sure, rain on my parade. Ah well, maybe he'll run afoul of a truant officer while there, or somesuch.
Sure, rain on my parade. Ah well, maybe he'll run afoul of a truant officer while there, or somesuch.
If it's any consolation, the clip on the last Daily Show looked kind of terrible.
If it's any consolation, the clip on the last Daily Show looked kind of terrible.
Other than the musical numbers, the movie is flat-out horrible on every level. I enjoyed most of it anyway, but that's because I sometimes like wrong things.
Eeee! I got
Kill Bill, Volume One
for Christmas!
