Sittin' in the movie-show, thinkin' nasty thoughts...

[la_belle_laide]

So I saw three movies this weekend and I need to comment on all of them, duh!

First, Big Talking Robots And Bimbo In Short Shorts or, “Transformers 2.” SPOILER! Optimus Prime gets killed but gets resurrected. In between those two events is lots of explosions, a few lame jokes--most of which are built around stereotypes--and some phenomenally bad acting by some chick in tight clothes, the geek wish-fulfillment actor Shia LeBeouf, and a couple of doofy character actors. The voice acting was pretty bad too. The only cool part was that big machine that sucked everything in. In short, and I totally say this as someone who's been known to wet her pants over huge transforming mecha: "yawn," and I'm glad I saw this one for free.

Last night I watched The Secret Life Of Bees. I didn't know what it was going to be about, only that Paul Bettany was in it and I was feeling kind of cheap and uninspired and I wanted to see something with a hot guy in it. SPOILER! May Boatright dies. I typically don't like movies that have purposefully emotionally charged montages to indie songs, but the acting really saved the day in this movie. I actually quite liked it. Although I did have a few issues with it, however. I don't know dude, it just seems like Hollywood has such a weird relationship with race. I guess because Hollywood really is white. It seems like they try hard to do right by people of all different colors and races, but at the end of the day still somehow manage to marginalize them anyway. "Black people sure are great when they are helping white people, aren't they?" That's nice, but I've rarely seen a movie that deals with race in any way other than "this is their effect on white people." No matter how good the intentions, it still comes across as being from white people's point of view. Obviously I am not black so maybe I can't even make that judgment call, and like I said, it was a really sweet movie with a really sweet, and I believe heartfelt, message. Queen Latifah is pretty great and Alicia Keys, OMG I had no idea that was her, she is so gorge. The acting was really great all around but she really stood out. But I don't know dude, it just seems like every movie with people of any color other than white in it has to have some kind of message about how those people are in relation to white people.

And the movie that really confronted this, brilliantly I think, was Tropic Thunder.

But I'm getting off the topic. Paul Bettany, dude I know he was so bad and nasty and evil and abusive, but goddamn he is so hot and I felt really bad while I was watching how nasty and terrible he was and thinking, "oh yeah, I'd hit that." One other thing the movie did was ask you to consider the feelings of this terrible and abusive bastard. And then, like it or not, you kind of do consider them. Which feels a little unnatural and taboo. I mean, he beat on his wife and little daughter. People who do this are like demons and you're rarely asked to see them as anything other than that. But this movie went there.

Then today I went to the movies and saw Your Mom's A Horcrux a.k.a. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. But before I saw it, I saw some trailers! For example, I saw the trailer for the new Twatlight movie, something about a ridiculously white and sparkly Cedric Diggory freaking out on some Mary Sue because she got a paper cut, and then some black dude with red eyes threatens her and then Remus Lupin turns into a wolf and they have a battle or something, I don't know, Stephanie Meyers is a toolbox.

I also saw the trailer for Sherlock Holmes, which looks at once both retarded and really awesome. Umm, why is Sherlock Holmes doing Wing Chun Kung Fu, and I'm pretty sure a little CLF long-arm? Surely not because Robert Downy Jr. can do Wing Chun Kung Fu. Surely not. There was some tough-love bromance and a girl without much clothes on just to make sure that no one got any funny ideas about Holmes and Watson, although I like to think that RDJ is probably partial to "funny ideas" and probably wouldn't mind. Either way, I'll go and see it in the movie theater.

Anyway, onto Harry Potter: SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE LOLOLOLOL. Well, first I should say that this bitch is really long. Like as in, I finished my ice cream before anything really started to happen, and then I also had to get up and pee before the movie was over. Also my ass was a little numb. That kind of long.

Umm, I don't know, it was Harry Potter. The kids have come a long way. I know they're not Oscar material but to be fair, neither are most of the people who've won Oscars. I like them though. They really fell into the characters, even if Hermione's huffiness and tears seem a little forced, and Ron's goofiness a little overdone, and Harry's earnestness like really EARNEST, LIKE THIS, IN ALL CAPS. I thought the kid who played Draco did a great job with this one. What is he like about 6'7" by now or something? Anyway, weirdly enough he was the most believable of all the kids in this one. The girl who played Lavender was way too over the top, even though she was supposed to be. I still didn't like her. Alan Rickman, umm, you could ask him to play a pet rock or a piece of fungus and you'd walk out of the theater going, "I've never enjoyed watching a pet rock or a piece of fungus so much." Homeboy knows how to work the long black coat.

Another one I really liked was Luna Lovegood. I think she does a smashing job; her timing is right on, and she's just so likable too.

One of the best performances in the whole movie was also one of the briefest. Frank Dillane, who played 16 year old Tom Riddle, had like ten lines in the whole thing but he was the most convincing one in the film. He was so oily and so creepy and really believable. I immediately and self-indulgently thought he's make the perfect young Sahrek, you know, when I'm the next JKR and they're making my books into movies.

I began to miss the older movies, and the old characters. There just wasn't enough time to get everyone in there, and I get that, but I missed them. They used to round out the whole experience and give the HP world a sense of being populated. Seamus Finnegan, Hagrid, the rest of the Weasleys, all the other teachers. They just got crowded out of this film. The plot ran a little bit like "this happens and that happens and then this" and sometimes it seemed like one thing did totally not lead to the other.

In the book, the "half blood prince" and his potions book were a lot more meaningful. Hence, you know, Harry Potter And The Half Blood Prince. However in the movie it was like, "Oh look, here's a book which has all the answers, wonder who it belongs to, oh here's a good spell, yikes that's kind of mean. Okay let's hide this book and give it one line of significance towards the end. Look! Hormonal teenagers!"

As I said to my friend skitty_kitty who, weirdly enough saw the movie THE SAME TIME I SAW IT and did her own review: The thing about these films is that they are made for people who've read the books. When you try to show them to people who've never even cracked the book they are invariably like, "WTMFF? How the hell did this come to be?" Then you sit there going, "Err, well, in the book she went into much more detail and, yeah..."

There were, however, incredible and jaw-dropping special effects. (Bellatrix LeStrange had one of the best entrances I've ever seen!) Visually, the movie is a total experience. I think people should really see this on the big screen. It made me wonder how movies are going to possibly top themselves ten, fifteen, thirty years down the road. God, what will they look like then? I can't even imagine it! And oh my god, the money they must have spent to realize this vision!

When in fact, acting itself is free. I think people lose sight of that.

OTOH, when I'm the next JKR* and they're making my books into movies, will my movies get a huge big budget and lots of neato special effects? Will my characters have their own theme song that will creep up on you during the specially-designed opening logo? Will people watch my characters grow and evolve through nine movies, and will some chick with too much time on her hands one weekend sit there and pick it apart on livejournal?

One can only hope. ^_^

Anyway, seeing the trailer for Twatlight before seeing Harry Potter--however flawed the HP movie might have been--really makes you realize the difference between some mediocre hack who purposely appeals to the most base and underdeveloped emotions of teens (which teens have every right to have; I had them too!) and someone like JK Rowling, who, in fact, can write a novel.

All of this makes me sincerely, sincerely, sincerely hope that I am no SMeyers and that I can, you know, write a novel.

And those were my three movies!




*GOOD HEAVENS allow me one more edit. Anyone who knows me can hear by inflection how completely tongue-in-cheek I am being when I call myself "the next JKR." It's a joke, yo. Because seriously.