Saffron: You're a good man. Mal: You clearly haven't been talking to anyone else on this boat.

'Our Mrs. Reynolds'


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.


JZ - Jul 10, 2004 7:40:06 pm PDT #93 of 10001
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.

Gnyargh. Got back a little while ago from (finally) seeing Spider-Man 2 with Hec and Emmett, both Hec and I all sniffly and overwrought in a happy, cathartically wrung-out kind of way, and now I finally go back and read all the whitefont in Movies 2 and feel like an idiot for getting whomped so hard by it, catching exactly none of the continuity errors (except (whitefonting just in case we're not actually the last Buffistas on the continent to see it) the cake ), and being such a low-rent emotional whore as to willingly and cheerfully handwave all the stuff like the fictional downtown el and the Big Fake Science and the Passion of the Spidey and the trainful of people who saw his face and didn't grab their picture phones (my fanwank: Fuck knows, if a superhero had just saved ME from plunging several hundred feet to death by simultaneous pulverizing and drowning, my first thought wouldn't be "Hey, easy money here! Where's my camera phone?" -- it might occur to me many hours later, safe in my apartment with the cat in my lap, after the shudders had worn off) and all that.

Phoo. I don't care. It sucked me in and swept me away right from the gorgeous Alex Ross-illustrated credit sequence, and I am perfectly happy to be a slack-jawed low-rent no-brains moviegoer. Tobey Maguire's Peter broke me into little pieces -- especially the Class Protector Award scene and the middle-aged man saying in soft dad-voiced wonder, "He's just a kid" -- and it is brutally unfair that James Franco should be both that stunningly gorgeous and that gifted an actor. The drunken puffy-eyed multiple bitch-slaps kicked goddamn ass. Alfred Molina had such awful doomy magnificence and one of the all-time greatest tragic villain faces in film history. Kirsten Dunst's MJ didn't suck, and she rightfully demanded, and got, at least a little scrap of agency in the end (and she called him Tiger!).

I'm a cheap wretched whore, but oh I loved it. And I'm selfishly glad that Hec had to get up four or five times to take Emmett to the bathroom, because that means he missed so much that we're guaranteed a second viewing before the end of next week.


Betsy HP - Jul 10, 2004 7:47:36 pm PDT #94 of 10001
If I only had a brain...

Is Five-Minute Methos like Three Minutes In The Closet?


Dana - Jul 10, 2004 7:48:19 pm PDT #95 of 10001
"I'm useless alone." // "We're all useless alone. It's a good thing you're not alone."

If only.


Consuela - Jul 10, 2004 8:04:43 pm PDT #96 of 10001
We are Buffistas. This isn't our first apocalypse. -- Pix

with Wingfield and Lambert but without Adrian Paul? Oy.

And frankly I could live without Lambert, even if the character weren't dead. Adrian Paul looks a helluva lot better than Lambert does now.

It's cooler to love Methos, but I do enjoy watching Duncan. t wanders off to fire up that "Ability to Swing" vid...


Polter-Cow - Jul 10, 2004 8:05:42 pm PDT #97 of 10001
What else besides ramen can you scoop? YOU CAN SCOOP THIS WORLD FROM DARKNESS!

Aww. JZ experienced the movie like I did, mostly.


Steph L. - Jul 10, 2004 8:05:44 pm PDT #98 of 10001
the hardest to learn / was the least complicated

JZ, if loving Spider-Man makes you a cheap wretched whore, then count me among the slatternly. I saw the damn thing twice in less than 24 hours, so that ought to give you some idea of how much I loved it.

The only scene that made me teary was when Peter told Aunt May all about Uncle Ben's death, and why he (Peter) felt responsible -- I was teary both while Peter was talking, and at Aunt May's reaction of just silently walking away.

The train scene, though, felt kind of manipulative, like I was supposed to get teary, and I can't stand that.

Oh! Another sort-of-teary moment was Harry's reaction when he took Spidey's mask off and realized it was Peter. Just this whole big ball of emotion -- shock and betrayal and leftover grief and disbelief and anger -- it was fucking beautiful.

I think maybe I just like pretty guys who are hurt (see also, Wyndam-Price, Wesley).

And James Franco is just so HOTT. I want to bite his lower lip.


§ ita § - Jul 10, 2004 8:11:10 pm PDT #99 of 10001
Well not canonically, no, but this is transformative fiction.

What IMDB says about I, Robot:

The movie originally started as a screenplay entitled "Hardwired", a classical-style murder mystery that read like a stage play, and was very much in the spirit of Asimov's "three laws" mysteries. When the original "Hardwired" script eventually reached Fox, after being developed at Disney with director Bryan Singer, new director Alex Proyas and writer Jeff Vintar opened up the story to fit a big budget studio film. When Fox acquired the rights to Isaac Asimov's story collection, Vintar spent two years adapting "Hardwired" to serve as a tenth story in the Asimov canon, complete with Susan Calvin and the Three Laws of Robotics. Writer Akiva Goldsman came on late in the process to tailor the script to Will Smith.


JZ - Jul 10, 2004 8:17:54 pm PDT #100 of 10001
See? I gave everybody here an opportunity to tell me what a bad person I am and nobody did, because I fuckin' rule.

Teppy, I blubbered at both your sort-of-teary moments. And I loved Aunt May's reaction, the deadly quietness of it and Peter's silent devastation, and I love the film for being large enough to carry both the big, gloriously cheesy moments of High Melodrama and the small subtle emotionally true moments.


Steph L. - Jul 10, 2004 8:20:07 pm PDT #101 of 10001
the hardest to learn / was the least complicated

Seriously, Peter's big revelation to Aunt May just blew me away. It was such a powerful moment.


tommyrot - Jul 10, 2004 8:22:25 pm PDT #102 of 10001
Sir, it's not an offence to let your cat eat your bacon. Okay? And we don't arrest cats, I'm very sorry.

I am now watching Logan's Run. I am surprised at how little of it I remember. BTW, is the remake of it still happening?

Just got back from Anchorman. Anyone else see it? I have nothing to say about it. Nothing. But my throat and stomach hurt from laughing so much. My head also hurts, but I don't know if that's because if the laughing.

Oh, poor Logan. He had to leave the Renewal thingie (I forget what it's called) to go chase a Runner. Hmm. his weapon seems to involve sparklers.

edit: The Renewal thingie is called Carousel.