Hmm...on second thought

I did come up with a give-and-take scenario that I guess would be applicable to the situation in the previous article. I made my husband go with me to see "Girl, Interrupted" because it was the first movie I ever got really excited about when I saw the preview. I had read the book back in high school, so I even knew some of the lines, so I went to see it opening night. He, in turn, dragged me to see "Fight Club" a few weeks later. Here was the gender ratio at both movies -- 7:1. The larger number is the gender you expect to see at the film (naturally). The "Girl, Interrupted" showing had a questionnaire about mental health that we had to fill out afterwards, which I thought was interesting. My husband cried at the end of my movie (but to this day he fervently denies it with every fiber of his being), and I was so angry at the end of his movie that I wanted to get in a fight just to get out my aggression.

That was very rare, and was spurred on my a literary desire (because I would've seen "Fight Club" anyway because I didn't know I was going to hate it so much), but I still don't agree that there is a give-and-take when it comes to movies. People see what they like and if they are willing to get pigeon-holed, then that's their problem.

By the way, Winona Ryder was robbed of the Oscar that year. They rewarded Angelina Jolie for acting crazy? Do you remember how she was back then, with the kissing of her brother and all that jazz? Crazy wasn't a stretch then. And I'm still pissed at Ebert for not liking the film because you don't find out what happens to the other characters at the end. It's called read a book, damnit! It was about the one character, not the whole nut-house.

Sigh.

I'll cut him some slack; he is sick and all.

Where was I? Oh yeah; I'm trying to see the balance that is mentioned in my previous posting (that whole give-and-take on men and women and films), but since I can't sit through chick flicks, and the male equivalent (which I had a name for, but the blog that it's on seems to have disappeared) is just as grating, maybe I'm just not meant to understand this concept. Oh well...

A Tale of Two Movies

I saw Speed Racer on Sunday and while it was fun film to watch, I sat there thinking "A person should not walk out of Speed Racer thinking "Wow, I really want to see Iron Man again." So I shouldn't have been surprised when this article about Speed Racer's poor opening appeared online. Speed Racer was not a bad movie; John Goodman was the quintessential Pops, and Christina Ricci did give Trixie some justice (that girl could not get any love in the cartoon), but some of the things wrong with it were that there was a little too much emphasis on how the Wachowski brothers were going to revolutionize movie-making, and I think they could've tamed down the Technicolor world a bit. The races were spectacular, and I'm not one to enjoy a film just for its visual candy, but it is not re-watchable. Once you know how everything is going to turn out, it loses a little something. The world they lived in was more Technicolor than the cartoon ever was [and it may seem like blasphemy that I'm not calling the show an anime, but what we got here in the U.S. was nothing like its original Japanese counterpart which, ironically enough, wasn't that popular in its native country (Wacky Races is more fondly remembered) and so I'm calling it what it was for us] and I found that a little distracting. That, and the fact that Inspector Detective looked like a white Malcolm X and Sparky was a redneck with a British accent was a bit silly. There were more cuts than on a suicidal teenager (tacky, but apt) with probably 60+ cut scenes using people's faces as the different "wipes" (like that star wipe Homer Simpson was fond of) and it took too long to build up to the point of the film. I didn't want to give the Wachowski brothers my money because I don't like their films, but it wasn't as bad as the media is making it out to be. Funny enough, though, it felt more like a superhero movie than Iron Man did.

Iron Man, even with Gweneth Paltrow as the Marvel Moneypenny (I don't remember the name of her character but it was something similar), was a good film. Not a good superhero movie, but a good movie in general. I rarely want to pay full price to see something twice, but I do want to see it again. We saw it the Friday it opened and I really liked it. I think the industry is being stupid in assuming that people like troubled superheroes because they are more empathetic because they are missing the point; the film has to be good to draw an audience. It doesn't matter if the character is likable or not; if the movie sucks, people are not going to throw away their hard-earned cash on it. What they did right on this film was hire a man who could play (for lack of better word) an asshole. Tony Stark is, essentially, 007 and Q combined. I didn't know anything about the comic before seeing the film (I didn't read anything other than Archie comics when I was a kid), but I really enjoyed it and look forward to more sequels as long as they are well-done. What sucked the life out of Spiderman was that the second sequel wasn't as good as the others and, much more damagingly, the principle actors in the film bitched about having to make it (yeah, like Kirsten Dunst had so many work offers poring in). I hope the Marvel people pay attention to that lesson and make good on Iron Man II.

I almost feel bad for the Wachowski brothers. I say "almost" because I didn't really like the Matrix, the first sequel was terrible and the second sequel was so bad one of my girlfriends told my husband and I the entire plot from start to finish to keep us from wasting our money on it. Speed Racer is a fun film that might be worth waiting to see at a dollar theater, but it's not bad bad. [Fans of the series should at least give it a chance and ignore the commercials for it.] It just wasn't as stellar as Iron Man (but it did make me want to race around town for awhile; high gas prices kept me from probably landing in jail).

And on an unrelated note, will someone please tell George Lucas to stop making these damnedable Star Wars films? He's releasing a CGI movie to sell a series which will focus on the Clone Wars, and he must be stopped. Just let it go, man!