'War Stories'
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.
Finally watched the third Mummy movie this weekend. It was really very enjoyable, I thought. I mean, yes, no plot, but anyone who actually goes into those films with the idea of having much plot is going to be disappointed anyway.
Plus, bonus! Shirtless Brendan Fraser.
This!
And I agree that Maria Bello was charming as hell.
I didn't mind the kids, but I was much more All About Rick and Evie. I didn't feel that they were sidelined - I still read them as the main characters. But ymmv.
I love Maria Bello, but Evie will always be Rachel Weiss in my heart. This is why I haven't seen Mummy 3 yet. It's a lame reason, but it's my reason.
I didn't mind the kid's story. It was fun to see something that paralleled Rick and Evie's original adventure and yet to see that Rick and Evie still were central in fighting the bad guys. It's not as if they were completely shunted aside in their rockers.
And John Hannah continues to crack me up monumentally.
Plus - Jet Li! And Michelle Yeoh!
It struck me, as I was watching TM3:CotDE that there really wasn't much need to make the Amelia Peabody books into movies. Because they'll only be disappointing, more likely than not, and really the Mummy series pretty much scratches that itch for me. With added monsters.
(Mind you, it does drive me insane that these movies have convinced kids that scarabs are flesh-eating demon monster beetles. When trying to teach Ancient Egypt, the kids are all 'yes, yes, we know about scarabs - they EAT YOU ALIVE!!!!' To which I'm all '...er, no. Not so much. But they do roll big balls of poo around, which is still pretty good value for money.' And they just give you these pitying looks, and insist that scarabs eat you alive. And when you start to jump up and down and rail at the heavens, and point out to them that THEY ARE EGYPTIAN KIDS and that THERE ARE SCARABS OUT THERE IN THE PLAYGROUND RIGHT NOW, and that said scarabs are not, in fact, stripping the flesh from the kindergarteners' bones, but are instead calmly rolling along balls of dung, the kids Will. Not. Believe. You. Because they saw it in the movie.
shakes tiny fist at universe.
Guh!
said scarabs are not, in fact, stripping the flesh from the kindergarteners' bones,
Sounds like a field trip to me.
From the Scott NYT review linked above:
For all its pious, earnest air, “Seven Pounds” cries out to be remade as an Asian horror movie, so that the deep, creepy grotesqueness of its governing premise might be allowed to flourish, rather than to fester beneath the surface.
Wow.
From the Scott NYT review linked above:
Man, that's almost got as much haughty disdain as your typical NYT book review.
There's been discussion (and, of course, spoilage) of Seven Pounds in the Spoilers thread. The whole premise of the movie sounds utterly, utterly depressing. Also, weird.