Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall

I was more involved in gaming this week. No Man Sky brought out Expedition 23. 

Cowboys and Aliens is a forgettable, tedious, and unengaging action-adventure film.

Given some of the most beautiful terrain that you've ever seen, there wasn't much to look at. This film had no cinematography game.

The costumes were boring.

This called itself a wester, but it was written and produced by people who'd only heard about westerns in podcasts. They checked off boxes yet they failed to hit their target.

This is a fine drinking movie. Nobody has to pay attention about anything. The alcohol dulls the pain. It has no sense of fun, so it's not a popcorn flick.

I've wrapped up my rewatch of Ultraman 1966.

I was romantically struck by Fuji the whole time. I don't remember her face from when I was a kid, but oh my, am I ever so taken by her. What a face. When she wears her Science Team helmet, she looks so kissable. My boyhood self must have thought that she looked very pretty. I'd call her more handsome than pretty, with dashes of sexy, lovely, charming, and sweet thrown in. The makeup team gave all the team members a nice skin glow and a seemingly natural look, and this complimented her. 

I have to wonder just how many men crushed on that woman.

The show itself was made for the kids, but the producers chose to entertain all the adults who were watching. It's a surprisingly entertaining show, well produced in so many ways. All the technical aspects are up there in skill level and professionalism. This show had a big budget and nobody wanted it to fail.

When watching, I enjoy a meta-analysis of where the FX budget is going. Gliding into the end, they found reasons to reuse monster suits and limit miniature building. One of the last episodes featured some new space models, and I suspect that they were either doing R&D for the next Ultraman season, directly building their way into it, or possibly just having fun while they could.

I ran into quite a few episodes that triggered episode memories.

Some episodes were sad. There's one episode where a monster lands on earth, and everybody keeps attacking it. All it wants is to go back to outer space. In another episode, a spirit yeti protects an orphan girl, and it's not a real monster at all.

In one particular episode, the Science Team holds a shinto funeral service for all the monsters that they destroyed. They didn't want to destroy those monsters, but they were forced to. It's not the monsters fault that they were strong as powerful. I've encountered such thoughts from some hunting cultures, where the hunters honor the creatures that they kill. 

The miniatures and the monster costumes might looked silly and clunky by today's standards, but this was the cinematic standard for Japan. Stop-motion would have been far too expensive and slow to produce a show of this type, and because the Toho kaiju films were live-action, this is the standard that the public wanted.

Strangely enough, a character that feels incredibly under-developed is Hayata, who turned into Ultraman. We never learn much about him. I think that he's the team's best pilot, but I'm not sure. 

In all, Ultraman (1996) holds up incredibly well, and its flaws back then were its same flaws today.

I've seen few films cringier than American Pie. Wow, that was painful, and I had to stop multiple times. Every time that a scene ended, it hopped into a new cringe.

I completed this film by turning up the speed to 2x.

I deeply disfavor unfunny comedies.

This film aged like milk. I found every character insincere from beginning to end. I found it too rapish. It's 100% orientation on sex was exhausting.

I watched this film because it was a big hit for the era and often referenced. Obviously, it spoke to somebody, but not to me. 

Dog Day Afternoon (1975) - A botched bank robbery turns into a hostage siege. I could write a book gushing about this film. Al Pachino was on a completely different level from the rest of the cast. As a kid, I could have never understood it, but its intensity, combined with it's internal confusion and indecision, combined for a mighty narrative. 

What's most interesting is the depiction of a trans character. In 1975, this would have been completely loopy and beyond comprehension. The reaction of the cops to the situation was 100% accurate for the day. While the cops all lump everything into "gay", because that was the only bucket that they had, the film makers and actors understood the finer grains, and the performance shows that.

A Million Ways to Die in the West (2014) - What killed the American comedy? I don't know, but this film was DOA on arrival. It was a deeply unfunny film, whose jokes weren't even jokes. The best part were the titles, where some third unit went out and filmed mesas, and those were beautiful. I somehow made it halfway through, jumped to the end, fully understood the situation, and called it a day. DID NOT FINISH.

Glee: The Concert Movie (2011) - This one wasn't for me, but it was entertaining, being a love letter to the Glee community.

Hello, Dolly (1969) - This is among the finest 1950's musicals ever made in 1969. In its era, it would have been sublime, but in 1969, it was tone deaf. After the success of "Hello, Dolly" on the pop charts, this film seemed like a winner, but sincere farces were out of fashion. "The Producers" was 1967, showing the change in comedy, with its insincere farce of modern business, diving into the tasteless. In two more years, "The Godfather" would win awards. The world of "Hello, Dolly" was gone, both in a figurative and a literal sense, bringing the roadshow era to a crashing and unprofitable end.

Paint Your Wagon (1969) - An epic western musical, with wacky hijinx, featuring a throuple of two men and a woman, was not what I was expecting. It got more right than it got wrong, reflecting America's changing mood in comedy, but it still missed. It's entertaining once you get your head wrapped around its sense of humor. 

I sat down with the the film version of Phantom of the Opera (2004), the stage musical. I had fully expected to hate it, but instead, I was reasonably entertained. With all the hype over all the years, I'd never gotten around to either seeing this production or listening to the soundtrack. For me, this show was entirely new.

Moving from stage to screen is traumatic, being the place where everything can go wrong. Instead, this adaptation seizes screen as an opportunity, and the results are visually stunning. The opera house is a sight to behold, being a character in its own right.

It's not just the opera house that you see, it's the entire opera operation. We have a full opera company on display, the stage crew, costumers, cleaning women, ballet dancers, and a backstage. It's all bigger than the stage show could ever be, but not infinitely big, just opera big.

This is a film where i could turn off the sound and just watch, admiring the visuals. The cinematographer earned their pay.

The editors did their job well, pacing this film consonant with its emotional flow.

As for the music, I had expected more issues with it, but it was an Andrew Lloyd Weber, so it was fairly consonant with what he usually did. 

With this film, I went from a scoffer to a restrained admirer. I see why some folks loved this show so much, 

I've finished listening through His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman. I've been at it since the spring.

He's a pantser, all right, for better and worse.

This wasn't the series that I was expecting. I'm not sure that this was the series that Philip was expecting. Yet, here were are, and it is what it is.

I listened through the audiobook version, recorded in 2001, making my way in 10 or 20 minute increments on most nights, or longer increments on some others. My set was pulled from tape, so the files were 45 minutes each, which made for awkward times if I needed to quickly move forward or backward. My little Sansa doesn't fast-forward that fast.

These particular books leave me mixed. I think that The Golden Compass works well in one way, that The Subtle Knife works well another, and that The Amber Spyglass struggles to work at all, needing to resolve all the issues of the first two books. Book schedules and contracts being what they were, it's what Philip could do.

In all, I don't know what to think about the tale or how to think it. I don't want to bring in my own creative brain, associating all sorts of ties within and between the movements of this story. That would be easy, any maybe it's as intended, but there's equally as many gaps, false paths, and shaky foundations. It's impressive what he's done, given the complexity and the subject matter, but if called upon to do it again, I feel that he would choose quite differently.

I partly want to cozy in with this work, and in other ways, I want to part ways. Pullman seems at his best when he's at his most personal, his most human. The bigger his fantasy gets, the shakier that it gets. To me, the great battles feel hollow and grandiose, interruptions in the narrative rather than products of it. 

What I enjoyed most was the small fantasy, such as the demons and what they meant, or those wheeled creatures and those tall trees. Fortunately, there's many such episodes, so I found the overall work more engaging than not. When these books were being what I didn't expect, what I hadn't asked for, I was most engaged.

I wanted to like Sherlock. I have Season 1, and I wanted to like it. I adore the actors. I appreciate the modernization. I like the chemistry. The list goes on and on about all the good things in that show.

Even with all that, I don't care for this show.

The episodes are too long, and they're too long for no particular reason. I feel as if they were made longer for the sake of making them longer.

For some reason, I just don't like how things play out. The overall style of the show, its overall sensibility, leaves me behind. It's doing a something that I don't fully understand, for an audience that I am not part of.

The Moriarty subplot is stupid. It feels forced. It feels inappropriately matched to the subject matter. Rather than the episodes feeling settled in the end, the inclusion of Moriarty makes the ending feel unsettled, which is not satisfactory for a mystery. It breaks the literary rule that a mystery begins with an overturning and ends with a restoration, a setting things right.

It's rare that I feel such extremes about a show, but there we are. It's a good show, but not for me.

I've wrapped up my first year of heavy film watching.

Going into Year 2, I have about 70 films in my to-watch queue. I've been buying DVDs faster than I can watch them. For the last few months, I've completely ignored NetFix, and I've still fallen behind.

Have I learned anything? I don't know.

I've learned that I enjoy bonkers films, which is to say, films that are so true unto themselves, in their own idiosyncratic way, that they become experiences unto themselves.

I enjoy films for their time periods, especially the material world of those periods.

I have no fear of foreign films, and I can reasonably surmise the plot and action.

I don't have a favorite film era.

I began watching films on TV, whatever was available, so I already have a wide experience with many genres. I know how to watch films that I'm minimally invested in.

90 minutes is a wonderful length for a feature film.

I enjoy being surprised by a film, in both good ways and bad.

I don't need my hand held. I'll watch what I want.

I still don't prefer horror, and I've actively avoided that genre, but if a film is famous enough, I'll watch it for the historical value.

True Grit (1969) looks like a made-for-TV movie, almost entirely lacking in any cinematics worth mentioning. It lack such visual nuance and depth that you'd think it was a modern NetFlix film, but those look better. The most notables notables are John Wayne and Glen Campbell, the singing star.

For a movie that claims to be True Grit, this thing ain't true and it ain't grit.

The acting also felt made-for-TV. How fast did they throw this thing together? The cast dressed in brown, even the women. Yes, there was some color, but it was all muted. This film fully and completely avoids the Technicolor feel, and in doing so, replaces it with visual sludge.

The lead woman had a very modern haircut, which caused me constant pain. She's also got no screen presence. She gives it a good go, but not quite. I have a sneaking suspicion that she was originally supposed to be an older woman, maybe in her 40's or 50's, who was used to running the family business, but they put in a far younger woman instead. 

I found the script passable, but also like mud. Sometimes it dives into the awkward and clutzy.

I found the editing simple and workaday. 

The soundtrack minimalist but otherwise fun, but its tunes aren't very memorable.

I enjoyed the sets and the props. Those were the best part. The sound work is also fine.

At least they filmed it in the actual west, likely in a northern state. I'm grateful for anything that isn't California or the desert. My guess is Montana, but I'm no expert here.

I must accept that this film exemplifies the decay of the classic western. This film must have gotten a small budget, even with John Wayne as the star, little time, and a weak production team. If the leading lady had been older, this would have been a far more solid film, but with a younger lead, it just doesn't have the zip it needs.