Got
Batman Begins
for Christmas, watched it last night. Random thoughts:
- Liam Neeson's ears: still pointy.
- Dude! That was
Gary Oldman
!!!?!? I never even came close to recognizing him.
- Cillian Murphy: still awesome.
- Some really good moments, but a little too weighted down with being a Movie.
- Nice CGI. And nice that with CGI they could open Gotham up and get away from the claustrophoic, enclosed, soundstagy feeling of the other Batman movies.
- The citizens of The Narrows closing in on Batman like a pack of zombies was great imagery on its own, and really fun as a meta-conversation with the scene in
Spiderman 2
where the citizens of NYC carry Peter Parker, Christ-like, to safety. And with that contrast in mind, the El battles in both were fun to contrast also.
A non-Batman question: a book I'm reading includes this phrase: "Now largely forgotten, during the 1920s Clara Bow had been one of Hollywood's biggest sex symbols." I didn't think the It Girl was forgotten at all - you guys?
I didn't think the It Girl was forgotten at all - you guys?
Not by people who are buffs of that era, but by the general public? Yes. Most Americans couldn't tell you who she was. But, then again, a shameful percentage of Americans can't even tell you which hemisphere they live in.
I didn't think the It Girl was forgotten at all - you guys?
Not by me, but then I've got a Silent Movies star bookmarked. And JZ is a total silent movie whore. (We went to a bar once because they were showing a Lillian Gish movie.)
There are, of course, the numerous takes during LotR in which Viggo was injured. All of which seemed to be the takes that PJ liked best, and made it in to the final cut.
If I were an actor and got injured during various takes, I'd prefer that those be the ones making the final cut so the pain wasn't all for nothing.
I'd prefer that those be the ones making the final cut so the pain wasn't all for nothing.
Heh. One of the deleted scenes in
Punch Drunk Love
is a commercial that Philip Seymour Hoffman's sleezy mattress king is shooting. Hoffman is filmed on top of a building dropping down onto a huge stack of mattresses - and then he goes sproing up and off the stack and falls down to the ground about 12 feet on his back where he yelped:
"Fuck that hurt! Did you get it on camera?"
I didn't think the It Girl was forgotten at all - you guys?
Forget those eyes? I don't think so.
There's an outtake in the supplementary material of The Frighteners where Michael J. Fox is running through the woods, takes a bad tumble out of frame and badly injures his foot. You can hear him say "Ow, fuck." off camera.
I just had
Meet The Feebles
recommended to me. So surreal to see that discussed enthusiastically by people who aren't invisible.
On other fronts, I caught Rollergirls on cable tonight, which is a surprisingly affecting documentary tv show about the TX Rollergirls here in Austin.
Oh, that's good. I will def check it out now. There was an article in the NYT last year about the resurgence of roller derby in NYC and I was totally like, "that's the sport for me!" but of course did nothing about it. At least I can enjoy it vicariously.
There was an article in the NYT last year about the resurgence of roller derby in NYC and I was totally like, "that's the sport for me!"
The very first professional sporting event Emmett ever saw was Rollerderby. They tried to revive it locally (where the Bay City Bombers had been huge in the 60s) and had an event at Kezar Stadium about two blocks from my house. We saw it when Emmett was 3 and then when he was 4. He keeps asking when it will come back.
