I caught Beetlejuice over the weekend too, though I sadly missed the Day-O dinner party.

I'd forgotten how scorchingly hot Alec Baldwin was back at the start of his career.

Saw Watchmen. I think the movie greatly suffers by being made released 2009, although the CGI of today definitely helped it. But we're in a post XMen 3 world, a post Ang Lee's Hulk world. The superhero sensibility just isn't what it was when the comic came out, and I think that if Snyder were film-capable of what Moore & Gibbons accomplished in comics, well, he wouldn't be just Zack Snyder, would he?

Does that make sense? I think that in a post Watchmen world, rereading Watchmen holds up well because it's that good, even though the ground can't be unbroken again. Zack Snyder is not the man to break that ground with the superhero movie genre.

I'm sure being post X3 with a six foot + Wolverine is why we had so much ninja skills in Watchmen--why put on a silly suit if you're not physically capable far and beyond normal people?

I have never heard it called the "Red Curtain Trilogy."

I bought the films as a boxed set by that name. Not sure if it's marketed thus in America.

it is.

I decided that it was Ozy's hair...

For me it was that and the occasional pursed mouth - just a little too Church Lady-ish.

Re: my earlier commentary comment. It's not that I have no interest in commentary at all, it's just that there are plenty of movies I rent where I have no interest in it.

Classic movies? Most movies I own? Sure.

The commentary on many Criterion editions was very useful when I was teaching. My dissertation advisor did the commentary for 1/2 of Criterion's Les Enfants du paradis.

But I often use my Netflix to quickly catch up on things I haven't seen. Usually I don't want to watch them twice before returning them, so I can see the reasoning behind special "no features" editions. Besides, that is often the edition that first comes out anyway. Most of the movies in my recent Oscar blitz were pretty stripped down feature-wise.

And, remember, many people didn't even care when most movies were pan and scan. I doubt they get into features much.

gah! film broke during the opening credits and they cancelled the show. We're trying again on Wednesday.

the thing that gets me is that those three movies of Baz have nothing in common with each other, except they were directed by him. So to sell them as a trilogy doesn't quite work for me.

Questions for people who have seen Watchmen but not read the book:

1: Did you understand what the Keene Act was?

2: What did you think the implications were of Rorschach's journal being published by The New Frontiersman?

I was talking about the movie with a co-worker yesterday and the people who hadn't read the book in the group he saw it with missed the point BIG time on both of those. (Which we both agree was not their fault, since Snyder kind of forgot to put them in the movie.)

I think Baz himself came up with the "Red Curtain Trilogy" thing, but I could be wrong there.