Saturday, June 28, 2008

You Know You're Back in America When...

...you have a moment like this. The flight to Cleveland was long, and included persistent kicking from the 8 year old in the seat behind, and an annoying conversation from two rather bitchy women sitting next to me. I was airsick, angry, and tired when we finally pulled up to the gate; and then we sat there for 10 minutes waiting for them to connect up the gangway and let us out. By the time I'd stood through the ABSOLUTE SLOWEST of the 5 passport control lines, and the entire crew of the aircraft had cut in line ahead of me, and the passport guy'd asked me some totally dumb questions, and then I had to get my bag and go through intensive X-Ray security AGAIN including taking off my damn shoes and belt and showing all my 3.5 oz liquid containers (which I still feel is a direct violation of my protection against unreasonable search and seizure) and I was struggling to put my shoes back on while leaning against a wall and hanging desperately onto my 400 lb shoulder bag, I was close to white-hot fury. Then I rounded a corner to the escalator, and what was playing full blast on the overhead speakers in the Cleveland airport? The Pina Colada song. One of the dumbest, most hilariously cheesy songs in the American pop music canon. I almost fell over laughing. Home, home, home.

More trip blogging shortly--unlike The Noz I didn't manage to find internet cafes on every corner so wasn't able to do the remote blogging thing...

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Tux


Tux
Originally uploaded by blackbear88
First Thing's First.

I regret to say that due to the dappled sunlight effect, I don't think the Rick's hair question has been answered by this photo one way or the other. But you can form your own opinions.

Second--a brief return to the question of films. Specifically, Indiana Jones and the Big Disappointment. Look, I'm not saying it wasn't fun to watch, and I'm certainly not saying people shouldn't go see it on the big screen. But here's the thing--last weekend, I went to see Iron Man. I was not a fan of the Iron Man comic book as a kid--I never read the Avengers, and I'm purely an X-Men girl. I'm not a fan of Robert Downey Jr. either. But MAN--what a FUCKIN' AWESOME movie!! I liked it start to finish, overlooked its goofier plot elements and slightly strange timeline, and you know why? Because the script was awesome. There's a big difference between story and script, and that I think is the problem with Indiana Jones IV. Here's an example:

STORY: Ok, so they're looking down in the pit, and it's full of snakes, and Indy's scared of snakes.

SCRIPT:

Indy (rolling over and staring blankly off into space): Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

Sallah (peering down into the hole): Ooh. Asps. Very dangerous! (pause.) You go first.

You see what I'm getting at here? The story of each Indiana Jones film has been standard pulp fare, more or less. The story of Temple of Doom is pretty outlandish, and that's what hurts it even more than the loss of Karen Allen and the addition of Short Round. But Crystal Skull has a perfectly OK story, and one godawful script. As Miss Alex pointed out--"Knowledge was their treasure...their treasure was knowledge." Seriously? SERIOUSLY? Lines like that run throughout the damn film. Then you add on top of that the poor use of CGI (the ants weren't scary. The monkeys...were. and don't even talk to me about that damn snake.) AND the fact that they made Cate Blanchett completely unattractive, which is a feat I would never have thought possible. AND the near complete lack of chemistry/banter between Indy and Marian... I'm not going to nitpick all the little stuff, but the big things that were bad were just. Bad. In comparison, Iron Man took a character I had no pre-viewing love for, built him up to be completely likeable yet a total asshole, and then spun a kick-ass story that left me waiting on the edge of my seat for the upcoming Avengers film. All because the script was good. The story wasn't that much better or more believable than Indy IV; it's all about the script.

I also saw an Israeli film called "Cafe Tales" this week--hilarious, borderline surreal film about 5 totally insane guys and a coffeeshop. Totally recommend it.

Wednesday, June 04, 2008

Well, That's....Hmmmm.

So I was an usher at a friend's wedding last weekend. What with the norovirus and the power outage and all, I didn't have time for a haircut beforehand. Not wanting to reinforce my general reputation as a slob, I broke out the styling gel and hairdryer, and did my damnedest to make myself look more or less intentionally tidy. It was an uphill battle, and the results were not completely clear to me even after I got the tux on and ran a brush through it one final time. So I asked Andy how my hair looked, and he said, "You look kind of like Rick Springfield."

It only occurred to me later that I should have asked if he meant Young Rick, or Current Rick. I sure hope it was the former. As my mom said the other day, Current Rick is lookin' a little like he was rode hard and put away wet. Gone are the days when my best friend and I stood on tiptoe in the horse barn at the State Fairgrounds to get a glimpse of Rick and his perfectly feathered coiffure arriving for a concert. Ah well--at least the tuxedo fit.

Monday, June 02, 2008

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Broken Hip

OK, I was going to come home and write an extended review of the new Indiana Jones movie, but it's late. So I'll give you the short version now:

Karen Allen reprising Marian Ravenwood = +50 cool points.

The dialogue and general level of ridiculousness = minus several million bajillion cool points.

Seriously, I'm pretty tolerant and I did have fun watching it--but holy shit, did the scriptwriter for the first couple movies die in the intervening decades? You could have fit all the clever repartee in this one in a teacup and still had room for milk and two sugars. Sigh.

Sunday, June 01, 2008

Not Dead

I'm not dead, but my comments appear to be so. I'll try to sort that out later, I think it's got something to do with my old comments system (enetation) still being invisibly linked here via code... but not sure how that's bollocksing up the new comments system (Haloscan.) Oh well. Y'all didn't want to say anything anyway, right?