Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Happy Post-4th of July. It was an action packed weekend--a veritable roller coaster ride of thrills, chills and spills. We woke up a little too late for the water tubing adventure on Saturday, but ended up going downtown with Amy (who looked great) and stayed up until 4:00AM. Somehow we ended up with the Christian Fellowship guys:

Me: "So..you guys are from a bible study?"
Them: "Yes, we all kind of met studying the teachings of Our Lord, Jesus Christ."
Me: "Oh..ok."
Them: "But now we're looking to get wasted and prowling for CHICKS! CHICKS DUDE! CHICKS!"

Then, a round of high-fives followed by howling.

Interesting fact: At some point, I fell asleep on the futon and Emily/Amy fell asleep on my bed. But why? Because two Chatty Kathy's is two Chatty Kathy's too much.

The following Sunday was followed by..BATMAN BEGINS. In all honesty, an absolutely great character study on a popular pulp icon. I can't get over how raw and intense the first half of the 'making of Bruce Wayne' is. I'm squarely placing it somewhere in the vicinity of Spider-Man/Spider-Man 2 in my personal hall of great comic book movies.

Is Batman Begins better than Tim Burton's original Batman? I think so, because where the original Batman definately succeeds in presenting style and substance to the franchise, Begins focuses intently on what makes Bruce Wayne tick. It does so without being overdrawn, pretentious and being morally subjective. If you think I'm a geek for overanalyzing it, you're probably right.

In addition, everyone tells me to see Garden State, so I finally saw Garden State. I'll admit that I was underwhelmed by the film for trying too hard to be something/nothing at the same time. At one point, I really wanted to give Natalie Portman a ridlin. And that scene where they're yelling into the canyon? Come on. People only do that shit when they're inserting tubes into your genitals. If you think I'm being too anal for overanalyzing it, you're probably right.

My friends think that I'm the worst critic in the world, because I hate everything. I had an argument with The General over his love affair with Ron Howard (who I think is a mediocre filmmaker at best) and he couldn't understand why I didn't like his films. To put it bluntly: he takes boring subjects and makes oatmeal out of it. A Beautiful Mind is not that great of a film, regardless of the 'mental health adversity' angle it takes.

If you want adversity, check out Mask. Yeah, Mask, with Eric Stoltz and Cher. The scene where the blind girl's parents shoo, shoo, shoo Stoltz away because he looks like a swollen penis..man, it don't get no more adverse than that. Oh well, I'll end it on that note.

Amy's new in-laws have got me talking about films because they're Theatre Masters (literally, they have Masters in Theatre Production/Performance) and somehow our conversations veered towards performance in general. Being Masters of the Theatre Universe, they pushed my own meager knowledge of theater to it's theoretical limits:

They: "..And you said you're an avid theatre buff?"

Me: "Ah yes, uh...Have you seen my niece's raucous kindergarten rendition of These Fifty United States? She played N. Dakota with a passion unseen since Laura Dern originated the role when she was 5."

Just kidding, I didn't say anything that stupid, but it could of easily happend and with merit.
posted by HZA | 10:23 AM | email | archive