Catchy Name Needed

Aquaman

Thu, 27 Dec 2018 04:43:01 GMT

We went to see Aquaman tonight, and I didn't love it. I didn't hate it, but I was kind of bored, off & on. It seemed kind of like a kids' movie. And there were a lot of kids there - it was packed, in fact - and there was applause at the end, so somebody liked it much better than I did. It was... hmm, maybe better than Batman vs. Superman, because I was bored with that one some, too. Not quite as good as Justice League, as best I can remember Justice League at all. And of course, not remotely in the same league as Wonder Woman.

I have some more-specific thoughts, which I'll put under a cut assuming I can remember how to do one.

( SPOILERS!! )

I took a long nap when we came home from Galveston last night, and then, of course, I stayed up all night. I mean, til WAY after dawn. It might be that I was a little cranky about Aquaman because I was still sleepy, I don't know. And I feel a little like I might be coming down with something - which happens after Christmas a lot. We weren't even around any kids this year to be disease vectors. Well, I've had a flu shot and so has Rob, so if we're actually coming down with anything it will hopefully be over fast, at least.

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Movies: Wonder Woman (not terribly spoilery)

Mon, 05 Jun 2017 10:03:44 GMT

I mentioned lately that I was a big fan of the late-60s Wonder Woman comics. In retrospect, they may not have been as wonderful (so to speak) as I remember, but there was just nothing else like that out there at that time. (I wish I still had my old comics, but I think they were falling to shreds anyway.) What I remember is that there was some stuff on "Paradise Island" - I don't think it got named Themy-whatever until later on - and then there was the plotline similar to the 70s TV show where Diana goes to America and calls herself Diana Prince and maybe loses her superpowers for a while? I'm not sure. I probably need to go back and read up on this in Wikipedia or something. In a way it was sort of a defanged, powerless version of Wonder Woman. (I started to say "emasculated" but well, no.) Even the 70s version had some powers. In any case, I remember those comics fondly, whether they actually deserved it or not.

And I've wanted to see some sort of female superhero in her own movie for ages. I was never sure about Joss Whedon's efforts to get a WW movie made - if I'm remembering this right Gal Gadot's name first surfaced some years ago in connection with the Whedon version, and I didn't know who the hell this Gal person was and honestly, much as I've always loved Joss Whedon, I never quite trusted him about that whole project. Maybe I was just waiting for the day when they'd actually entrust it to a woman. (I do have to admit that I couldn't have told you Patty Jenkins' name until recently, and actually I couldn't even have told you the name of that movie of hers that won Charlize Theron her Oscar - Monster, in case you don't remember either - even though I saw it in the theater at the time and really liked it.)

Well, so, amazingly it got made, directed by a woman (screenplay still by a man, mind you) - and it's pretty good. It's not perfect, by any means, but it's good. It has the same third-act problems that pretty much every superhero movie has, that whole Big Action Climax thing. They're all the same. (Write your own joke there.) Back to Joss - he pulled the third act thing off best, in the Avengers, and he did it by making it funny. Wonder Woman lost its sense of humor at the end, although at least it had one in the first place. Also I have to say that if Joss really is the person responsible for first suggesting Gal for this, well, he was right about that part, She is awesome. The best part of the movie is the middle, the No Man's Land part and the Belgian-village section that comes afterwards, although really like I liked almost all of it til it bogged down at the end.

And did anybody else notice that once they left Paradise Island, it was pretty much just as gray and dreary as any other DC movie? That's not really intended as a slam, because at least it was well-made gray-and-dreary, but I just thought that was sort of amusing and I hadn't seen anybody mention it at all.

I say I liked the whole movie up til the end, but actually we went to a 3D showing (just because it was at the time that we wanted to go) and I thought for a while that I was going to feel uncomfortable for the whole movie about the 3D, because the whole island section had this really weird look to it, where it looked like it was almost in 3D but then it wasn't. I felt like my eyes were trying to focus and refocus on it as it went in and out of 3D - does that make sense? Really I don't like 3D at all, but what happens most of the time I notice the 3D for about 5 minutes, if that, and then forget about it completely, for most movies. But in this movie, the whole island section seemed like really-badly-made 3D and then once they got off the island I forgot about it like I usually do. There was something about the way they shot the island part that looked really weird and almost ruined it for me. (But obviously it didn't, really, or I wouldn't have forgotten about it until 5 paragraphs in.) (The fact is, I don't like 3D and really I should stop paying extra for a "feature" that I don't even like and then depending on my brain's ability to ignore it.)

Added: I've been watching various videos about this, like I always do these days, and I did see somebody else say that something was off about the Theymiscira (sp?) sequence. But I don't know whether they saw it in 3D or not. Since so many people have seen this and I haven't seen more complaining than that, I assume the 2D version is fine.

Added (even later): I saw somewhere in the last couple of days that it was actually Zack Snyder who first wanted to cast Gal Gadot, not Whedon. And Patty Jenkins said that she didn't think it was a good idea at first, that she would have cast an American actress, probably, although obviously she was won over eventually.

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Movies generally, including Guardians of the Galaxy (definitely SPOILERS here)

Tue, 30 May 2017 04:33:44 GMT

(Sorry, hopefully this is not completely incoherent - certainly it's totally parenthesis-riddled - but I already posted it by accident so I'm going with it as is!!)

The beginning credits of GotG2 are the best thing in the movie. Maybe my favorite movie credits ever, actually. (I'd have to think about that some more, though.)

And apparently there's a reason for that. I read somewhere - one of the umpteen things about this I've read, and I tried to find it again and had no luck with that - that James Gunn has been working on that credits sequence since the original GotG movie came out - three years ago. Maybe he should have worked that hard on the rest of the movie.

Not that it's bad, it's not. But that opening credits really captures the - whatever it is, magic, I guess! - that made the first movie so extraordinary. And the rest of the movie is brilliant off & on but not consistently, and there was a long stretch when they're on Ego's planet (which I guess is just Ego, but that sounds weird) where I was flat-out bored for a while. Anyway, I did like it (and it's been a couple of weeks ago now so I'm a bit fuzzy on the details) and I definitely want to see it again. (Rob doesn't seem to be quite as enthusiastic but he never wants to rewatch stuff as much as I do, that's pretty normal for us.)

We actually have not been to see anything together since then. I couldn't work up any enthusiasm for Alien Covenant so Rob finally went by himself. (He came back laughing, he seemed to think it was pretty ludicrous.) Certainly no Baywatch for us. I was going to mention the Joss Whedon news bit that I just saw - not only is he apparently directing a Batgirl movie but he is doing the reshoots for Justice League since Snyder is not available. (I was watching that Kevin Smith YouTube thing, here. But if you want to know what happened with Zack Snyder, google it, because they didn't talk about it and and it's depressing as hell so I'm not going to either.)

I'm sure we will go to Wonder Woman next week, since (even though actually reviews are still embargoed) the general consensus seems to be positive. I adored Wonder Woman as a kid - I'm talking about 60s comics, not the 70s TV series, although I watched that too. (It comes on METV or someplace and I've seen a couple of those recently - for 70s TV it doesn't hold up all that badly. Although it's still pretty ludicrious.)

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