Another week, another set of movies to watch. I think you’re getting the idea by now. Once again Friday night was filled with socialising, but we managed to squeeze some movies in this weekend anyway. I can tell it’s going to end up that we have the viewings spread out throughout the week rather than keeping them just for the weekend. At the moment we’re too lazy to watch anything during the week, but maybe once we get to a theme where we want to watch all five films we’ll have to spread them out. Don’t want to get film fatigue.
Anyway. This week was “Movies Based on True Stories (that aren’t really true)”. This theme was interesting in that Marc Fennell didn’t make the obvious choices of Blair Witch Project or those other films that are obvious but slipping my mind at this moment in time. He made some interesting decisions for this week.
We started off with Fargo. Down-and-out Jerry Lundergaard (William H Macy) hires two guys to kidnap his wife so he can trick his father-in-law out of some money for some reason. Pregnant Police Officer Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) gets involved when things start going wrong and the stupid kidnappers start shooting people and things escalate and more people get shot.
Neither of us had seen it before and had been meaning to, so it was pretty much a given that we would when we saw that it was one of the suggestions. It was definitely entertaining, I will give it that. Ben and I have been talking like Marge Gunderson ever since we watched it, and will probably buy a copy of it or at least watch it again. That being said, there were multiple times that I just turned to Ben and asked “what the hell is going on?” and the end I was so confused about what I had just watched. It wasn’t that the plot was hard to follow, it was more the tone of it? It’s hard to explain. It wasn’t until he reminded me that the Coen Brothers did Old Country For No Men that I realised that this is their thing. Both of those movies really threw me and made me feel like I was missing some vital bit of information that would magically make it all make sense. I liked the movie, sure, but I don’t understand why people fall over themselves to praise the Coen Brothers. Maybe the part of my brain that is supposed to appreciate them is the same part of my brain that is supposed to be able to solve physics games; It seems that everyone else can understand them so easily and I am left feeling frustrated and left out. Maybe if I watch it again I will understand it better. Maybe I’m not supposed to understand it at all. Either way I had a vague feeling of disappointment when the credits started rolling. I really wanted this movie to live up to the hype, and while it was pretty good, it wasn’t what I was expecting so I felt a little let down.
The next movie was Good Morning Vietnam. We had both seen this one before, but figured a familiar movie would be a better way to finish movie night than another one we (or just I) hadn’t seen before. Robin Williams is Adrian Cronauer, hilarious radio DJ in the Air Force brought to Vietnam to make the soldiers’ lives better through his radio show. Or something like that. He befriends some Vietnamese local, gets a crush on a girl, gets caught in the atrocities of war.
I had seen this movie because my Dad liked that one scene where they play What a Wonderful World over things being blown up and people dying, so he made me watch it. All I could remember was that Robin Williams was in it and that scene. Even now all I can really remember of it is Robin Williams playing himself as if he was in the Vietnam War. I like to think that the film’s message was supposed to be more “The Vietnam War was a terrible thing, war is bad” than “Lookit Robin Williams, isn’t he wacky?”, but the latter is what kinda came across more. It doesn’t help that in all the movies I have seen of his he seems to play the same kind of wacky character who does funny voices (that are all the same across the various films) rather than the character he is supposed to be playing. He seemed to overpower anyone else in the story and every time there was a scene where he was on the radio it was really over the top and too much for me to process that it was just annoying noise. The story overall was moving and all that jazz, but could he just tone it down a bit please?
We realised when watching the credits that it was filmed entirely in Thailand and one of the main actors was Thai, not Vietnamese. So I guess that means a heap of extras were probably Thai also, but it makes me feel uncomfortable in a “well they all look the same so people won’t notice” way. Which is fair enough, I didn’t notice the difference, but I still feel like I was inadvertently racist.
On Sunday I figured I would watch one more film, and went with A Beautiful Mind, where Russell Crowe is a genius mathematician who is employed by the government to help with the Cold War but goes crazy.
This movie was so boring that I couldn’t finish it. I tried, really I did, but after an hour of watching and still not caring about any of the characters I figured enough was enough. Also Ben told me it doesn’t get any better, which was why I struggled through an hour in the first place. The story was bring, the characters were boring, the music was boring, even the action sequences bored me. The only thing of note was how terrible Russell Crowe’s accent was. Even the trailer was bland and saccharine and terrible. I’m glad we didn’t start the weekend with this one.
I decided recently that I was going to get out of the house at least once a week, and take photos while I was at it. This is good on two levels because a) i’m getting exercise and not sitting in my pyjamas eating chocolate all day, and b) it will make me more comfortable taking photos in public and hopefully improve my photography skills as well. On Wednesday I had to go pick up a birthday present for Ben, so I figured I might as well take the camera along too. Since I quit my job in December I haven’t been visiting Newtown as much as I used to, and things change so quickly there. Even Erskineville had changed since the last time I’d been there. I feel like the world is moving on without me and I am missing it all by sitting at home stagnating.
It took me a while to get into the photo-taking mood, and was a little discouraged when my old boss made fun of me for taking photos, so there are only two nice ones of Erskineville. I will try better next time, I promise. Later in the afternoon, Jeph Jacques was having a meet up while he was briefly in the country, so I figured I might as well try again. I feel weird taking photos of people, but I figured if the urge came over me my camera would be better than my phone. I ended up mostly taking photos of people I knew, but I am pretty happy with the results anyway.
The meetup was ridiculous. There were probably about 60-70 people there, if not more, and Jeph drew pictures for everyone who wanted them. I got there at 5pm and we didn’t leave to get food until about 10pm. Half the photos I took were blurry from my hands shaking out of hunger. It was an awesome afternoon, I talked to some interesting people and had a chance to take photos of people without them caring. But by the end of the day I just wanted to come home and crash.
This movie weekend wasn’t as successful as the previous one, for a number of reasons, but I am going to write about it anyway. Look at this commitment, people.
Week Two was “We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Sequel: a beginner’s guide to shark movies”. Ben and I aren’t fans of shark movies so we weren’t really feeling it this week. Add to that an actual social life and you end up with only one movie watched. That movie was, of course, Jaws.
Roy Scheider is Chief of Police on tourist Island and is also scared of the water. A lady and dude and a kid get eaten by a shark and his own son is almost eaten. He miraculously overcomes his fear and with the help of Shark Expert Dude and Piratey Shark Hunter Guy they go out and hunt down this nasty shark.
(not an official trailer, but all the ones I could find wouldn’t let me embed it and this one was pretty good considering)
I have a number factual complaints about this film. In about the first two minutes I was already going “But a shark wouldn’t do that at all!” I know that it is a movie and I should be suspending disbelief and all that, but seriously. A shark will not swim right up to near the surface to grab a person’s leg and just waggle them around a bit. It will grab them and drag them down underwater. Also, if people were so scared about a shark attack but reeeeeally wanted to go into the water, why didn’t they just stay in the shallow water where a shark literally couldn’t get to? Why go “oh, there has been evidence that a shark has been around, and while one has been killed that doesn’t mean it’s fine. But I really want to go swimming, so let’s go way out where something could swim up underneath me and kill me!” No. Wrong. Dumb. I’m not even getting into a shark following a boat that is filled with people repeatedly shooting at it. Also, how did the Chief of Police get over his fear of drowning so easily? I wish I could get over my fear of drowning by just getting on a boat in the middle of the ocean.
That being said, it was a good enough movie. The fashions dated it a little, and the shark did look pretty clunky and bad, but it wasn’t as painful as Total Recall was. They did the best they could with the limitations of the time, and that is obvious. It was still kinda cheesy and not overly scary though; Ben jumped once which made me laugh at him being a scaredy cat, but in general you could kinda tell what was going to happen. I liked that there wasn’t a completely happy ending, and that you didn’t see the survivors reunited with their families and all this rubbish. The way it ended definitely suited the film. No way in hell am I going to watch the sequels, though. After it finished Ben and I had a talk about how film making has changed over the years. If Jaws had been made now there could have been a heap of explosions and everyone would have been gorgeous and the ending would probably have been really open ended to make sure there would be a sequel. The shark probably wouldn’t have even died.
The other movies for this theme were Deep Blue Sea (which we were going to watch, but watched Doctor Who instead), Open Water (we didn’t really want to watch a couple stuck in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy), Mega Shark Versus Giant Octopus and Mega Shark Versus Crocosaurus (both which sounded hilariously terrible but would have been better suited for a group, not just the two of us). As someone who is pretty uncomfortable with the ocean and subsequent sea life, I am pretty proud that I actually watched any of the movies this week at all. Plus I can tick off another film off my list of movies I should have seen by now but hadn’t.
My mother taught me to knit when I was 6 years old. I remember that first scarf I made, with all the different kinds of yarns, it getting wider and wider and wobblier as it went along. We were over in England for the year and I was pretty sick for part of that time, as well as still being quite young, so my memory of that time isn’t great but I definitely remember that scarf. It has been lost over the years from multiple moves, but I don’t know if I would have wanted to keep it anyway. I picked it up every now and then over the years, but didn’t really move much further from scarves, other than three socks and two pairs of fingerless gloves. I was never that confident with it, so I never really felt comfortable trying more complex things.
I still loved looking at yarn though, and would always try and work out a way to justify buying some when I probably wasn’t going to do anything with it. Late last year I did my regular visit to pine over the products and saw the crochet hooks and figured I might give it a go, grabbed a hook and a ball of Noro yarn. A few days later I had worked out the basic stitches and made two wobbly little squares. It was a revelation. With knitting I was constantly worrying about making mistakes or dropping stitches whenever I stopped paying attention. Because knitting takes so long to do anything, any mistakes means a lot to fix. Crochet seemed to come together quicker and the one loop means less risk of losing them all when putting the stuff in my bag.
I quickly moved on to granny sqaures and fell in love. They come together really quickly, are easy to fix if I make a mistake, and best of all keep my hands busy. I figured I would make a blanket out of them, as I always seem to get cold very easily, win-win!
I have 71 squares made up now, I just have to put a darker border around them all and connect them up. But until I can get the darker yarn I have been using up any scraps I have hanging about. That resulted in these two small balls.
Scout loves playing with them, so when I made the blue one I put a bell in it. I kinda want to make a heap of these just to throw around for Scout to chase. It’s so cute! I have all these ideas for future projects and am super excited about making things, and I haven’t really felt this excited in a while. I hope I keep it up.
Last weekend we were finally able to start with my latest book purchase, Marc Fennell‘s ‘That Movie Book’. It’s a guide to various movie themes or producers and the like, in a weekend-by-weekend format for a year. It starts with one on Friday, then if you liked that there are two more for Saturday and two more on Sunday if you really have no life. I bought the book in November last year but the first theme wasn’t supposed to be until the new year, so I was suitably excited about finally getting around to this.
Week 1’s theme was “Memory Loss? Memory Gained!: a guide to cinematic amnesia”, in relation to New Year’s Eve and celebrating enough to not remember what happened that night. I hadn’t seen any of the films suggested, so I was excited to get this going.
First up was The Bourne Identity. Matt Damon is found in the middle of the ocean with amnesia and spends the rest of the movie trying to work out who he is while killing people a mysterious government agency has sent to try and kill him. Also there is a lady who helps out and he gives her a strange haircut.
It was actually not that bad! It was not something I would have sought out, but it was entertaining in that slightly mindless way. The action scenes were actiony and didn’t seem overly choreographed, which can be a problem sometimes. It actually looked somewhat reminiscent to real fighting compared to some other action movies. That being said I probably won’t go and watch the others in the trilogy. Bourne Identity resolves itself quite nicely, so I feel like if I watch the others the whole time I will just be feeling like I would have been better off just not bothering.
Then we moved on to A Scanner Darkly. It was supposed to be watched on Saturday, but what can I say, we’re eager. Keanu Reeves is an undercover cop trying to catch out a drug dealer, and follows the dealer’s life. But, SPOILER ALERT (not really), he is also the drug dealer. The drug he takes has messed up his brain and creates this weird disassociation so he doesn’t realise he is both people. Then his brain crumbles into bits and he is institutionalised. Cheery stuff right there.
This movie left me really confused. It’s based on a Philip K Dick novel, and what I have experienced of his stuff normally makes me go “What the hell just happened?” at the end of it. This movie is no exception. Also we went from easy-to-digest action flick to weird commentary on drug addicts and the people the people who want to encourage/stop them, which probably didn’t help either. I think the main thing that troubled me about the movie was the kind of half-animation that was used. I know it was a very deliberate stylistic choice, but I kept getting distracted by it more than anything and wished it had gone one way or another rather than settling with the strange middle ground. The acting was good, I will admit that much. Is that like saying that Keanu Reeves sure can act like someone on drugs? Anyway. I haven’t read the book this was based on, but Ben has, so he explained to me how the storyline had been changed and made less open ended, which I can understand why they did so. At the end I still felt a bit disappointed because I couldn’t actually work out what I just watched. All in all not the best thing to watch just before bedtime.
On Saturday we watched another film based on Philip K Dick’s writing, Total Recall. It’s the future, and Arnold Schwarzenegger is a construction worker who dreams about being on Mars and tries to get a simulated trip to there. This sets off a series of events which results in him actually going to Mars to try help insurgents and save the planet from its evil dictatory person.
This movie was ridiculous. There were obvious similarities between this and The Bourne Identity (no memory of previous life; actually was a secret agent; people suddenly trying to kill him constantly; something something governmenty people aren’t very nice?) but, uh I guess there are probably a fair few of those kind of movies around. My major issue is that this movie hasn’t aged well at all. It is very late 80’s looking, the effects are clunky and dear god why Arnold Schwarzenegger. This movie would have been so much better if they chose an actual actor who could actually act. Everything else would have been less irritating if I wasn’t cringing at Arnie’s terrible acting every few seconds. In writing this I have found out there’s going to be a new version of this at some point this year. I’m not sure if it’s going to be an better, but at least it will look nicer than the one I watched. Ben doesn’t think there should be a remake, but hey, whatever man.
The other two movies for this week were Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Machinist, but we didn’t get around to watching those. Eternal Sunshine is pretty damn depressing and The Machinist sounds pretty weird as well so we decided two nights of movies was enough. I kinda want to watch them to round it off but I am a bit too lazy to. The movie night deal was fun and Friday night is already Pizza Night, so hopefully we keep this up.
Week One of Movie Night: Success!
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