What dreams may come

Last night, I had a dream that I was visiting the United Kingdom for some kind of event (I’m not really quite sure what), and while I was there, I met latexiron and kjersti. Why them? I have no idea. I don’t know either one of them.

I sometimes dream about people on LiveJournal I’ve never met, in contexts like maurading dragons or purple gumballs. I wonder if it’s because a forum such as LiveJournal can create the illusion that you know someone, or that you share something with someone, when the reality is nothing of the sort.

Clearly, those parts of our brains which are responsible for our social drives, the parts that create a sense of familiarity and connection with other people has not evolved rapidly enough to keep up with changes in communication.

Movies

Underworld

Eye candy. No doubt about it.

This movie owes its stylistic sense to The Matrix and Dark City. Every frame is gorgeous, and no doubt about it, vampires have the best wardrobes. It’s hard to complain about a hot chick in a rubber bodysuit and a corset.

Still, it’s nothing but fluff. The plot is muddled, the dialog rarely rises above so-so, the characters are all about style but are hardly believable. It’s the Goth answer to action-adventure flicks–good, mindless fun, and it certainly is pretty.

The Secretary

Can someone please explain to me just why the hell everyone thought this movie was so awesome?

Watching this movie is like watching the most boring parts of “9 1/2 Weeks,” only with more neurotic characters. It has all the charm of a Victoria’s Secret TV ad with none of the sexiness. I’ve seen more believable plots in Spider-Man comic books. There’s a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back…

The Last unicorn

This is an old animated movie that’s one of Shelly’s all-time favorites. She watched it with us last week.

The animation is terrible. No getting around it, the animation is just plain bad.

But once you get past that, it’s a very, very, very good movie. It’s the perfect antidote to Disney and harry potter; it shows that a movie written for children does not have to be childish.

We’ve come to expect certain things from children’s stories: simple morals, a cartoonish sense of good and evil, clearly-defined heros and villains.

The adversarial characters in The Last unicorn are deeply wounded, but they are not evil. The philosophical ideas in the movie are surprisingly sophisticated. The animation may be poor, but the movie has things that most modern children’s movies lack: complexity, nuance, and substance. Hey, Disney, you paying attention? Movies made for children do not have to be drivel!

American Pie

I am, I think, one of the few people left in the world who’s never seen American Pie, at least until last week. Now, I am no longer a cultural pariah; I have seen American Pie.

Yay.

How this movie got to be such a cultural touchstone is quite beyond me. It’s a “frustrated teenagers trying to get laid” flick. We’ve all seen a hundred of these, and they’re all the same. There’s always the Big Prom, at which at least one character is utterly humiliated by an Embarrassing Revelation, and hilarity ensues. There’s always the Horny Teenager who is caught at an Awkward Moment, and hilarity ensues. *Yawn*

It may have revitalized the “teen flick” formula, but make no mistake: it’s still formula.

feardotcom

lamedotcom. I’ve seen scarier things in my breakfast cereal.