Now Playing: counting crows - hard candy
been a few days since the last entry--not sure how many and don't feel like checking--so i'll just cover the last few days, the so-called weekend.
there was a parade in montrose. hayley was in it. it was cold
there was pizza, barbecue chicken pizza on friday, steak lover's on saturday. there was cake (chocolate mayonaise cake with caramel chocolate whipped frosting amde by me for saer's third birthday friday). there was homemade chili... which i just realized i forgot an ingredient--so i guess that particular ingredient isn't too important
there was watching of:
- most of charlie and the chocolate factory, not all as it was just tween parade return time saturday night and pizza eating time, afterwhich kids went to bed. funny still, pretty sure i already covered it in one of these blog thingies
- war of the worlds - benefitted from cruise playing a guy who was fairly unlikable--i'd like to see him play a sadistic killer or something; that would be fun--and some only ok special effects. i expected it to look better. simplistic plot, trite dialogue, and that abrupt ending that would have been cool if the movie wasn't trying so hard to be a big action epic. what we need is something a little more like signs, some folks on the sidelines, aliens invade, invasion destroys things then a) inexplicably (and i mean without any attempt at explanation) the invasion ends and aliens leave or b) folks all die and we get no explanation. even signs had the water thing and the god thing and a denouement.
- king kong - the original. while it might appear racist and mysogynist (as sarah pointed out after), i think the racism was just uniformed and uninterested filmmakers, intent on making a monster film--hell, it was speciesest as well; those dinosaurs were all either the wrong size or acting inappropriately (brontosaurus chomping on people, anyone?). as for the mysogny, i'd say it's inherent in the plot but not an aspect of the point of the film, certainly. still, made in 1933, some inherent racism and sexism was to be expected. you don't watch this film for the realism anyway, but rather those state-of-the-art (at the time) effects
- kiss kiss bang bang - surprisingly funny, memorable, and all around good, a great mystery, some deconstruction/reconstruction of the PI subgenre with superlative use of film conventions, edits, narration, etc. shane black took advantage of being the director to turn his writing into a driving force behind the film and its structure. good for him. and the three leads, downey jr, kilmer and monaghan were fantastic
- sleeper cell - i still say "terrorists" have no reason to attack los angeles and probably never would, but still this played out like the beginning of what could be a great character study (of the cell leader and of the agent), or what could easily turn into something... well, less than its parts. we'll see how part two is tonight
- grey's anatomy - consistently good, and one of the best shows on the air these days, certainly better than the end of desperate housewives just before it, allowing its characters to be unlikable when they need to be, to do stupid things when they need to, to be more like real people than the heroics folks you would get in some medical shows