The Mister and I had tickets today for the noon showing of The Dark Knight at the Imax theater at the Minnesota Zoo. We arrived about an hour and 20 minutes early to pick up our tickets from will call, where the the cashier told us that the folks ahead of us had bought tickets for the show before The Dark Knight as well (a documentary called African Adventure 3D). This meant they would already be seated in the theater when the crowd coming to see only The Dark Knight arrived, giving them good seats without standing in line for an hour. She pointed out that with their double feature special (they offer tickets to a second Imax film on the same day at a discounted rate) it was a good deal all around. Would we like to do the same?
We needed to kill an hour anyway - might as well do it in an air conditioned theater. So we paid a bit more cash and joined the other handful of early arrivals in line for the 3D safari. Fun documentary. Impressive visuals. You feel like you're this close to a lot of amazing critters.
And The Dark Knight?
By the sauce of His Noodliness, it really does live up to the hype it's getting, and then some. I'm not going to try to summarize how freaking amazing it is, or what about it makes it so. Everyone else on the web has done that for me already. Just take everyone's word for it. If you are even vaguely a fan of action films, super heroes, super villians, or scifi for that matter, and you aren't in the subset of such fans who are too young or squeamish to descend into the grim bowels of Gotham City via the big screen, you must see this film.
Oh... and I think a super villain must've been by our house, because we came home to an air conditioner on the fritz... The Heat Miser maybe?
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movie. Show all posts
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Joss Whedon strikes again
I'm a little late in tuning in to Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Act 3 was released today, so I saw the full series in one shot. I gather it will be on the web for just a short time, and then will be distributed via a web download for a small fee*. The Mister and I both loved it - no surprise given some of the blog posts I'd already seen floating around about it. We couldn't stop laughing, the cast were all delightful in their roles, and the songs are now stuck firmly in my brainpan. So, since it's not going to be viewable on the web indefinitely, we bought all three acts through iTunes for very few shiny gold rocks.
If you hold your geekhood dear, don't miss seeing this super musical miniseries.
J!NX is currently out of stock on all of the women's Dr. Horrible t-shirts**. I hope that means they've just not received them yet, and not that they've already sold out.
In other news, I received a copy of Photoshop CS3 for my birthday so I will probably spend a big chunk of the weekend pushing buttons and exploring new options and features that I've only drooled over until now (I have been using Photoshop 7 for ages, which is many revisions out of date). And we've got our tickets already to see The Dark Knight in Imax tomorrow.
edit 20080731:
*It's available on the web again for free. Go see it!!!
** Jinx got more shirts in. Ours are on their way.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
dvd eve
I spent the evening watching The Patriot on DVD. I guess it was the whole Mel Gibson film, caricature of good and pure heroes vs. sadists and buffoons impression I got of the story that put me off since it's in a pseudo-historical context. I dislike historical fiction that wanders so far off into the "fiction" department that it comes off like a skewed propaganda film. So I'd avoided it until now.
That said, I decided it was time to watch it since it's a film with Peter Woodward in it that I hadn't seen yet. And to my surprise, I quite liked it, despite it's living up to my initial pessimistic impressions of the plot. I had to decide going into it that I was going to watch it as a "fantasy" film, rooted in no way in actual history, which helped.
Of course I enjoyed Peter Woodward's performance as General O'Hara. That's a no-brainer. But how is it I'd never heard before that along with Mr. Woodward, it also has Jason Isaacs in it? Or Adam Baldwin, Rene Auberjonois and Heath Ledger? That's what I get for ignoring it based on it being a Mel Gibson flick.
And as for Jason Isaacs... his performance as the vile and dastardly Colonel Tavington was yummy... er I mean very well done. Can't really root for Tavington... he's too good at being dag nasty evil for that, but he makes you love to hate him.
I would have liked to see where the heck the film was trying to go with Adam Baldwin's character, Captain Wilkins. Wilkins seemed to be rolling along on a trajectory toward a climax of character development of some sort, but it felt to me like that ride never quite made it to its destination.
So for the film in general, how to rate it? Out of 5 points I'd say it gets negative 3 for historical accuracy. The plot is predictable and disappointing, so no points there. But for yummy villains it gets a 5. So if my math is right that ends up with a final score of 2.
That said, I decided it was time to watch it since it's a film with Peter Woodward in it that I hadn't seen yet. And to my surprise, I quite liked it, despite it's living up to my initial pessimistic impressions of the plot. I had to decide going into it that I was going to watch it as a "fantasy" film, rooted in no way in actual history, which helped.
Of course I enjoyed Peter Woodward's performance as General O'Hara. That's a no-brainer. But how is it I'd never heard before that along with Mr. Woodward, it also has Jason Isaacs in it? Or Adam Baldwin, Rene Auberjonois and Heath Ledger? That's what I get for ignoring it based on it being a Mel Gibson flick.
And as for Jason Isaacs... his performance as the vile and dastardly Colonel Tavington was yummy... er I mean very well done. Can't really root for Tavington... he's too good at being dag nasty evil for that, but he makes you love to hate him.
I would have liked to see where the heck the film was trying to go with Adam Baldwin's character, Captain Wilkins. Wilkins seemed to be rolling along on a trajectory toward a climax of character development of some sort, but it felt to me like that ride never quite made it to its destination.
So for the film in general, how to rate it? Out of 5 points I'd say it gets negative 3 for historical accuracy. The plot is predictable and disappointing, so no points there. But for yummy villains it gets a 5. So if my math is right that ends up with a final score of 2.
Sunday, May 4, 2008
U.S. RDA of Iron Man
Just got back from the theater where I met my U.S. Recommended Dietary Allowance of Iron Man.
I have too many hobbies. One of the things I've always thought was cool, but never had much room in my free time and/or budget for was comic books. So I'm not hip to the Iron Man scene like a proper comic book geek would be.
That said, even without a proper foundation in Tony Stark History 101, the movie Iron Man was awesome. The special effects, while critical to the movie, didn't overwhelm the rest of the film, which had plenty of substance, humor, tension, plot (!) and good acting to carry itself respectably as more than a special effects flick. The script didn't pander to the lowest common denominator in the audience, either, IMHO, which was a bonus. I got the feeling that the creators of the Iron Man movie gave us more credit for functioning brain cells than most summer films tend to do. Not that it was highbrow. They just didn't dumb things down and drive plot points in with a piledriver when an artificially intelligent sledgehammer sized fist would do.
The humor appealed to both my funny bone, and my Mister's, which isn't a given. And it had the rest of the theater laughing at all the appropriate moments, too, which also isn't always a given.
I agree with some critics I've read who've said that the score was uninspiring. My Mister disagreed on that point. He did take it well, however, when I said I thought Iron Man was a better film than Transformers, which for the record, I also enjoyed. Maybe it's because Iron Man was more of a "grown up" film -- all things being relative. I can't help but make the comparison, though, because of the nature of the special effects.
I did find a few of the product placements in Iron Man a bit on the obvious side, which is just a bit distracting for me. Only because my brain starts involuntarily playing "spot the product placement" as soon as one leaps off the screen at me, and I can't stop noticing them after that. But promotion of consumer goods is a part of the whole entertainment package now, even more than ever. And if they were too subtle, they wouldn't work as product placements. So I don't have any illusions that they're going to go away any time soon.
No spoilers here. Just stay put for the whole rolling of the credits.
Oh, and one more thing. Some folks have noticed this already, I guess, but apparently I wasn't paying attention. Has Robert Downey Jr. always been dead sexy? Or is that the Tony Stark mystique?
I have too many hobbies. One of the things I've always thought was cool, but never had much room in my free time and/or budget for was comic books. So I'm not hip to the Iron Man scene like a proper comic book geek would be.
That said, even without a proper foundation in Tony Stark History 101, the movie Iron Man was awesome. The special effects, while critical to the movie, didn't overwhelm the rest of the film, which had plenty of substance, humor, tension, plot (!) and good acting to carry itself respectably as more than a special effects flick. The script didn't pander to the lowest common denominator in the audience, either, IMHO, which was a bonus. I got the feeling that the creators of the Iron Man movie gave us more credit for functioning brain cells than most summer films tend to do. Not that it was highbrow. They just didn't dumb things down and drive plot points in with a piledriver when an artificially intelligent sledgehammer sized fist would do.
The humor appealed to both my funny bone, and my Mister's, which isn't a given. And it had the rest of the theater laughing at all the appropriate moments, too, which also isn't always a given.
I agree with some critics I've read who've said that the score was uninspiring. My Mister disagreed on that point. He did take it well, however, when I said I thought Iron Man was a better film than Transformers, which for the record, I also enjoyed. Maybe it's because Iron Man was more of a "grown up" film -- all things being relative. I can't help but make the comparison, though, because of the nature of the special effects.
I did find a few of the product placements in Iron Man a bit on the obvious side, which is just a bit distracting for me. Only because my brain starts involuntarily playing "spot the product placement" as soon as one leaps off the screen at me, and I can't stop noticing them after that. But promotion of consumer goods is a part of the whole entertainment package now, even more than ever. And if they were too subtle, they wouldn't work as product placements. So I don't have any illusions that they're going to go away any time soon.
No spoilers here. Just stay put for the whole rolling of the credits.
Oh, and one more thing. Some folks have noticed this already, I guess, but apparently I wasn't paying attention. Has Robert Downey Jr. always been dead sexy? Or is that the Tony Stark mystique?
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