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Feb. 7th, 2010 08:23 pm
muchabstracted: (trickster)
I enjoyed Avatar. The world, Pandora, was beautiful, and watching it in IMAX 3D was worth the price of admission all by itself. It doesn't hurt that the religion on Pandora was the sort I love to bask in: everything living has energy and is sacred, taken seriously, and seen with wonder. (Which is to say those of you do not share those tendencies towards that kind of thinking will probably roll your eyes a lot at those aspects of the movie; but it is very very pretty to watch while they are espousing these beliefs, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.)

Wherein there are many spoilers )

I spent the entire movie waiting for the Evil Technology Money People to destroy the lives of the Noble Savage Forest People. When that conflict actually happened, instead of cringing with annoyance at the trope or with anger at the villains, I found myself thinking about my clients' often antagonistic relationships with classmates or partners. We grow up hearing, "It takes two to fight." But, you know? That's not always the case. Sometimes, if one side is sufficiently determined or powerful, the other side doesn't have a choice. They can only capitulate or fight back.
muchabstracted: (Default)
Apparently, powder bleach is more effective than liquid Clorox. My bathtub is no longer spotty just in time for me to no longer use it. Yay!

Last weekend, I saw Stardust with [livejournal.com profile] lynnoxford, so I'll join the chorus of people recommending it. It was cute, it was well done, and it had a sufficient number of moments that made me think, "Neil Gaiman wrote this movie/book/graphic novel."

Glancing at movie reviews afterwards, I saw a few that compared it to The Princess Bride. Which was interesting, because it led me to realize that I am physically and mentally incapable of comparing any movie to The Princess Bride. It's not that I'm a rabid fan of The Princess Bride -- I'm not. I like it a lot, but I've never gone crazy over it the way I have, say, over The Faerie Queen or Jim Henson's Labyrinth. (Despite the good example my friends set for me.) I think the problem is that The Princess Bride isn't a movie so much as it is a collection of memories of my high school friends. It's, uh, sort of like high school, the good parts version. :)

Before the movie started, we saw the trailer for The Movie That Must Not Be Named. My opinion is behind this cut-tag, out of deference to rymenhild's request. )
muchabstracted: (Default)
[livejournal.com profile] lynnoxford and I saw Pan's Labyrinth yesterday, with much excitement. The short, non-spoilery review is that it was beautiful, grotesque, artistically solid, and not what we were expecting. Lest I mislead anyone, I will add that, though I would recommend it (mostly for the sake of the first three adjectives just listed), I do not do so unambiguously.

Given [livejournal.com profile] ayelle's review, however, I might change my mind about that if I'm able to talk with her about it. I did pick up on some of the references, but I know a missed a number, and more allusion always makes me happy. There are certainly enough layers and allusions that I would see the movie again, to try to pick up more.

Cut for serious spoilers, for the sake of talking with the two or three people who have seen the movie *cough*ayelle*cough* )
muchabstracted: (gorey)
[livejournal.com profile] ayelle and I saw An Inconvenient Truth just now. The short version of the review? It's good. Go see it. There is horror, unexpected humor, snark*, science**, and suspense. I would have gone to see the movie even if it were dull and unremittingly horrifying; fortunately, it is neither, and I recommend it with a clear conscience.

*Mostly this consists of insults about the environmental acumen of various Republican presidents and dodgy political appointees. It might appear to be partisan, but I suspect that the people being insulted, while arguably positive decision makers in other respects, do genuinely and unarguably have bad environmental records. Also, it was good snark. None of that low-quality brainless bashing.

**Admittedly not much of a draw, for most people.


Al Gore once again comes off as the man I wanted to see as president. But I find myself hoping he won't run again, because if he does, I'm sure he will disappear back into What The Voters Might Want.

In other news, ah, the 9/11 movie is coming out. Can I say how very much I'm not looking forward to that? I'm sure it's a brilliant movie, and one that probably needed to be made. But as soon as it's out, my older clients are going to start coming in with vicarious traumatization. Betcha.
muchabstracted: (books)
[livejournal.com profile] lynnoxford and I have seen a movie. Apparently, this means that I update my LJ. We went to She's the Man, the latest Modern High School adaptation of a classic work (in this case, Twelfth Night), expecting it to be mostly hilariously bad.

It was great.

Viola cross-dressing looked, realistically, like a boy. A 14 year old boy, with a round face and kind of girly cheekbones, but a boy. She and Sebastian looked realistically alike, which was a nice touch. The "madness ensues" portions were funny, and even the part of me that was occasionally squirming in embarassment for Viola enjoyed itself. The two main romances were well done -- Duke was great, Viola was great, Duke and Viola together were lovely, and a background character/plot twist they added made it more believable that Olivia might genuinely transfer her crush on Viola to Sebastian.

Just on a sociological level, the grrrrl power message was well done and consistent, and had no problematic undertones that I could catch. I wouldn't have enjoyed the movie less if it wasn't, but it is just such a relief to come out of a movie and not be quietly fuming on some internal political level.

...I want to see it again.
muchabstracted: (Default)
[livejournal.com profile] lynnoxford and I went to see Tristan + Isolde. The first half was unremarkable; I was disappointed, in fact, because although I was certain they were getting everything wrong, I wasn't familiar enough with the story to know exactly what I could be mocking. Most of the time. There were a few moments I'm pretty sure I was right to mock.

The first half of the second half was irritating, because I don't actually like adultery stories, and because King Mark is great. We know that Isolde wasn't superficial, because she went for Tristan over King Mark. Clearly, if she were just paying attention to general attractiveness, she would have had no problem staying faithful. Though to be fair, she shouldn't have had trouble staying faithful if she were paying attention to personality, either. Note: There is no love potion in this version, so that's no excuse.

The last quarter? Everything I could have hoped for. AKA: Spoiler warning. I'm about to tell you the ending in detail. )

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