DH and I realized after seeing Superman that it is almost impossible to hum a different famous John Williams theme than the one currently in your head. If you have just seen Superman, you will not be able to correctly hum either Star Wars or Indiana Jones without considerable mental effort. They're just too alike.

I've felt this way forever, and I like Williams best when he's at his least Williamsey (Ref: Empire of the Sun, Catch Me If You Can). What's always a little amusing is when you've got a snatch of Williams stuck in your head, and you spend fifteen minutes going "It's not Star Wars, it's not Superman, it's not Raiders.....," and then you realize it's the NBC nightly news theme.

ION, I just saw a trailer for Nic Cage and Oliver Stone's World Trade Center. Obviously, any movie about 9/11 comes with all kinds of issues (although I think "It's too soon" is a moot point now, that line is back there a ways), but I think I want to see it now (of all the movies that were scheduled for this year, this one is the one I've been most dubious of).

It makes it both hard and inevitable that he'd be jealous--but when the woman you're in love with asks you to go back and save the man she loves, putting you and the kid you've been raising as your own in jeopardy, well, it's Superman. You have to do that.

To be fair, Superman had just saved his life, and hers, and that of the kid that he'd been raising as his own. Kinda tough for an all-American pilot-journalist to look himself in the mirror if he turns his back on that.

I thought I was being fair. I said he had to do what he had to do, and the bit about having been rescued needn't even come into the equation. Hell, being more than a decent guy isn't even required to make it balance.

Neil Gaiman on Stardust:

it exists half-way between The Princess Bride and Pirates of the Caribbean

He sure knows which of my buttons to push.

Great cast too.

I still occasionally get Williams theme for The Cowboys confused with Copland's Rodeo. I also love his music for The Rievers. Later stuff, NSM.

Superman Returns:

That was fun, though I don't know if I'd see it again. I thought Brandon Routh did a pretty good job; I felt like I knew who he was, as both Clark and Superman, and I could see the differences between them. The moment that Jessica mentioned, when his glasses fall off as he's helping Lois gather up the things from her purse, was nicely done and helped bridge the gap between Clark and Supes. Most of the time that Superman was on screen, he looked so airbrushed or CGI'd that it really added to his alienness; it was a little distracting, but I think it worked well for Superman. Routh's acting, similarly, was just off enough to have the same effect.

As for the rest of them, I liked both Kate Bosworth and James Marsden more than I expected to, but overall Jimmy Olsen might have been my favorite character.

One deeply geeky question: Is Zool a Superman thing? Because in the scene where Superman crashes into the field behind the Kent farm, there's a shot of a Scrabble board in the house and the word "Zool" is spelled out. I don't know if that was intentional or not (it was actually spelled ZOO L, with the space before the L, which formed the beginning of another word) .

As in "there is only Zool"? That's from Ghostbusters.

Ghostbusters is "Zuul." Googling shows there's an Amiga game called "Zool," so if it's a ref it's tres obscure.

I thought it was just a random result of the tiles shifting.

As in "there is only Zool"?

Yeah, that's what I meant. Is it really spelled "Zuul"? I know I've seen it spelled "Zool" before.

I thought it was just a random result

You're right. I just didn't remember where it was from, so I didn't know if it was an intentional reference or not.