DEATH TO PIGEONS!

[psychick]

Stupid flying rats. I was awoken not once but TWICE this morning by pigeons outside my window. I have now put my paintbrush box right below it so that I can POKE THEM SAVAGELY next time. Bastards can do it on someone else's windowsill.

On a more positive note, I saw A Scanner Darkly this weekend with some of my peeps (we was chillin'). It's based on a Philip K. Dick story, and it is starring everyone's friend Kanoonoo, so I went in with a little trepidation but I'm happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised. I wouldn't call it my favorite movie of the year (*coughPIRATESahemcough*) but I liked the characters, the level of complexity that was achieved, and the overall message. The first two I am particularly pleased about because I have a lot of problems with PKD in that direction, as he really really really does like being weird and twisty with his plots and I've yet to find myself able to finish one of his books. Kafka, yes. PKD, no. There was weird and there was twisty, and I could see his thumbprint on it, but in all the was very approachable and intriguing without being just confusing and offputting. The art was cool - the 'special effects' were very well done and friendly to an animated medium, and they would have been 1) a pain to do, and 2) possibly too visually weird/distracting to be done in photorealism, so I'm very pleased with the choice that they made there. (Also: to repeat the memo to America, ANIMATED != FOR KIDS ALL THE TIME!) I definately feel that it's a movie that will want watching twice or more, and that new levels and details will be revealed every time.

Comments

[steelvictory.livejournal.com]

I'd been debating seeing that movie...mayhaps with that recommendation a trip will have to be organized this weekend with friends. At least one crazy theater in Baltimore's got to have it.

[psychick.livejournal.com]

It's interesting, and I don't feel bad for spending the $10 to go see it. The writers did an excellent job of creating a believable and understandable plot but keeping the occasional PKD moments of "uh...what?" The ending feels a little rushed, and I'd be curious to see what they would have done with 15 minutes more time to make some of the transitions more meaningful, but it wasn't grossly jarring.

[steelvictory.livejournal.com]

Okay, cool.

Well, it's at the Charles and at Arundel Mills, so I'll see who I can con into seeing it with me on Friday night...

Have you seen the trailer for the new Call of Cthulu movie they made? It's in the style of an earlier twentieth century silent film, complete with title cards! We're trying to convine one of our friend's wives to let him get it so we can all watch it, the justification being that we'd all troupe to the theatre and spend way more than the cost of the DVD.

:O

[psychick.livejournal.com]

WHAT?! NO!!! Holy crap that's awesome!

I must inform my tribe...

Re: :O

[steelvictory.livejournal.com]

I'll get the link for the trailer from Lyric and post it when I get home.

Favorite movie of the YAR...

[tiredinnuendo.livejournal.com]

With your proclamation of Pirates as winner of the year, I have to ask, have you actually seen it yet?

- J

Re: Favorite movie of the YAR...

[psychick.livejournal.com]

Holy crap it's you!

Yes, I've seen it. I am aware of it's flaws (hello, pacing?), and I mourn the fact that the world can apparently ONLY have two female characters in it so they replaced Anna Maria with Voodoo Hoochie, but I was laughing and gasping and cheering the whole time nonetheless. It was more fun than I've had in a theater in a long time.

Re: Favorite movie of the YAR...

[tiredinnuendo.livejournal.com]

I had... a different opinion of the film, and after seeing it went on at length about how, when Hollywood accidentally makes a good movie now, they no longer make a bad sequel, they make a bad planned trilogy, so that people will be forced to see (and pay for) two bad movies instead of one.

Normally I'd assume that since I am a boy and you are a girl, that Depp was in it and therefore you didn't actually see the trash you paid for, but:

1) Amanda was with me, and agreed with my sentiments.
2) Depp is teh hotness.

- J

Re: Favorite movie of the YAR...

[snapples-apples.livejournal.com]

Perhaps we went to see the movie for different reasons. Personally, I enjoyed what they did with the characters (re: Norrington who hell YES would have been stripped of rank and his entire life after what he did at the end of the first movie), and was interested to see a less happy-fluffy, Disneyified continuation of the story but still be set in the same goofy world as the ride the whole thing is based on, and one that works above and beyond Jack Sparrow being a crazy syphillitic drunk with a flamboyant swash under his buckle.

I think it's always hard to have the second of three movies. You look at Two Towers (which was AWFUL in theaters) and Empire Strikes Back and they're just not as good as the first or third movies, but they are part of a series and thus we appreciate them as parts of a greater whole. The end of Dead Man's Chest one was 30-ft high flashing letters of WTF? but I retain enough faith in the people who wrote the first one to wait for the third to see the WHOLE story before writing it off as just another stupid sequel.

Also, I'm very glad that you are not linking my gender with my ability to interpret quality. If my barometer for good movies was based solely on how pretty the people in it are, I would have killed myself over Troy, and that would be a sorry death indeed.

Re: Favorite movie of the YAR...

[tiredinnuendo.livejournal.com]

You lost all the inertia you'd built with the claim that Empire was less than New Hope and Jedi, as card carrying geek knows that it's far and away the best movie in the whole series, including 1 through 3.

And I wasn't saying anything about your gender other than that they tend to be.... weaker to Johnny Depp than males usually are. But I'm the type of male that really appreciates Depp's beauty, so that line of logic is void.

I guess my problems with the movie were (to keep this really, really short):
1) They tried way too hard to work in way too many old faces, and it bothered me.
2) Was there anyone in this movie who wasn't a pirate? Even the EITC seemed to want to get in on that action.
3) Recycled, thrown-down-and-savaged jokes from the first one. (OMG! Will broke a candle in the first one, so let's have the governer break one this time!)
4) Long. Good lord... something about Bruckheimer and LONG movies involving lots of rolling objects.
5) Creepy Voodoo Woman. I kinda liked the unexplained compass. We didn't need this. Also, why in the hell did they go back to her after they left the Pearl? They avoided that place for ages, as I recall. Why? TO BRING BACK MORE UNREQUIRED CHARACTERS FROM THE FIRST ONE.

- J

Re: Favorite movie of the YAR...

[snapples-apples.livejournal.com]

(Uh, this is me, Abby, as well. Made a new journal to talk about rp stuff specifically, for I am a huge nerd. La.)