Sunday!
We went into Jurassic World expecting a Summer Spectacle and, yeah, we got it.
More seriously, the movie was an exercise in “okay, now that we know that this ball is, in fact, an idiot ball, who wants to pick it up?” and then people take turns picking up the idiot ball. Say what you will about the idea of making dinosaurs in the first place (nod to the first movie) but after you do that a half dozen times and each time ends up with a higher pile of bodies, you’d think that you wouldn’t ask the question “well, what if we started combining these dinosaurs with those dinosaurs to make even awesomer dinosaurs?” unless you were trying to make a summer movie.
The fan theory about the movie that I’ve enjoyed the most is that this isn’t a Jurassic Park movie at all but a daydream of Andy from Parks and Recreation of what *HIS* Jurassic Park movie would be like if it starred Burt Macklin.
I think I prefer this particular interpretation as it gets rid of the idiot ball entirely, turns the awesome dinosaurs into really, really awesome dinosaurs, and otherwise makes the movie into the movie that you hoped you would be seeing when you bought the ticket in the first place.
If you’re hoping to enjoy Bryce Dallas Howard in a movie, just see The Village. (That movie isn’t so bad in retrospect. Sure, the twist exposed M. Night for being a poor scriptwriter but the first half of the movie was pretty good and Bryce Dallas Howard was *AMAZING*.)
We’re fixing to see Inside Out later this morning and the main thing I’ve heard about that was “PIXAR IS BACK, BABY!” and so we’ll see if that’s accurate.
So… what are you reading and/or watching?
(Photo is “Movie Night“, taken by Ginny, used under a creative commons license.)
I also saw Jurassic World on Monday. I guess I was entertained. I never checked my watch out of boredom and I wasn’t tempted to leave but it just got really over the top. What happened to the poor assistant was absurd to the point of being comical though I think it was meant to be thrilling/scary. But there are some indications that the pterodactyl seen was meant to be played partially for laughs. The evidence for this is a brief scene with someone known as Margritaguy.
The smarter critics I know have commented that Jurassic World does have a bunch of winks in it and tries to have its cake and eat it too.
The filmmakers know how to do suspense. There were some moments of genuine surprise and tension. But the ending was just so over the top that I rolled my eyes.
I am currently reading What’s Bred in the Bone by Robertson Davies.Report
Is this the first Robertson Davies that you have read? If it is, I would recommend Fifth Business and the Deptford Trilogy, though my personal favorite is The Cunning Man.Report
I’ve read The Rebel Angels which is the first novel in The Cornish Trilogy. Whats Breed in the Bone is the second. I have omnibus collections of all of his trilogies.
I loved the Rebel Angels but it was clearly written in its time. “Don’t tell me you are one of the gays?” is clearly a line from 1980 when gay people were starting to be out and open but it still had an unknown and exotic quality. Especially because the answering character complains that gay is such a boring and middle-class term and he is just an old bugger who likes it rough.Report
Davis is a whole lot of fun! Knowing that you have all of the trilogies makes me quite happy.Report
Yeah, there’s really not much to it in terms of story. It’s the same mistakes from Jurassic Park, presented with less flair, and none of the thrill of the initial creation of the idea of the park and actually bringing it into being. No, “OMG, that actually is a fishing dinosaur down there.”
I maintain that Jurassic Park is actually one of Spielberg’s very best movies – a masterclass in dramatic pacing and suspenseful exposition (not to mention insanely great effects for 1993). All sequels were basically doomed from jump. But there still really isn’t much to JW.Report
And yet it has the biggest Box Office weekend opening ever. It even beat Avenger 2. Though I wonder if we are going to see a summer collapse one year. A year in which nearly every opening movie just does poorly or not as well as expected. I doubt it though. Audiences can’t get enough of CGI and Bang Wow. They are like drugs.Report
Commenting to update the comments.Report
There will always be a new crop of twelve year old boys, even as people age out of the summer blockbuster market. I haven’t the slightest urge to go see Jurassic World. I aged out from that market about twenty years ago. I see the new Star Trek/Star Wars movies as they come out, out of generational geek obligation. The most recent Trek movie may have beaten that out of me. It will depend on the reviews for whatever comes next. As for Star Wars, I’ll likely see the next one regardless of the reviews, but the leash will be short for anything that follows. Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I’ll watch them. On the other hand, I only saw Episodes I through III the one time each, in their initial run.
As for what I am doing now, I just now finally got around to starting Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. It has long been in my vague read-sometime queue, and the new TV show kicked it to the top.Report
CGI done well is awesome. CGI done poorly just looks like it would be better to make a video game and have done with it.Report
Been watching Seinfeld, just gorging on it.
Reading Moby Dick still, just kinda savoring it Also reading some Conrad short stories, and an intro to Calculus.Report
Had a very pleasant lunch at Zankou Chicken with an interesting fellow. Hope we get to hang out again in the future.
After we parted ways, my wife and I had a pleasant walk around the Los Angeles County Arboretum.Report
I’ve heard of this place! It sounds amazing.Report
Discovered a brand new Korean fried chicken place in my hometown, which had fantastic reviews online. Tried to go there for lunch today and it was closed. Disappointed, I audibled to the BonChon a few towns over and spent the evening walking across the GWB and through Washington Heights, eating good but not great K*FC.
*KoreanReport
I hope to see “Jurassic World” but when I learned off the plot, I couldn’t help but think, “Have the people in that universe learned nothing?” And then I thought that, far more implausible than the idea of bringing dinosaurs back to life is that no one in that universe stood up and said, “Have we learned nothing?” when someone said, “Hey, remember that failed dinosaur zoo? Let’s do that but bigger!”
I anticipate thoroughly enjoying the movie (REMEMBER I PUT THE FAST&FURIOUS FRANCHISE ON THE MOUNT RUSHMORE OF MOVIE SERIES AND THAT WAS BEFORE FURIOUS 7 WHICH WAS THE PERFECTEST MOVIE EVER AND NOW I WANT TO WATCH IT AGAIN!) but I think I would find even greater enjoyment in a movie that featured 120 minutes of a board meeting where all of the pro-JW people were getting more and more excited about the idea (“What if we bring back dinosaurs?” “What if we crossbreed them to make super dinosaurs?” “What if we hire an idiot to train our super dinosaurs?!?!”) with one guy just banging his fist against the table futilely screaming, “Why? Why? Seriously? THEY’RE GOING TO EAT EVERYONE? AM I TAKING CRAZY PILLS?!?!”
I’d watch the shit out of that second movie. Especially if we can bring Phil Hartman back from the dead to play the voice of reason…
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/pearl-harbor/2868112Report
I hope to see “Jurassic World” but when I learned off the plot, I couldn’t help but think, “Have the people in that universe learned nothing?”
Whereas my first thought was ‘How was InGen not been sued into the ground because of that T-Rex in San Diego thing?’
But then I said to myself, wait, I bet this isn’t InGen…I bet it’s the unnamed corporation that was trying to steal the dinosaur embryos in the first film…but apparently not! I haven’t seem the film, but apparently it’s the same corporation!
Also, it’s apparently in the same place *as* the original park, which raises the additional question: What the hell is wrong with Costa Rico in that they’d let them keep using that island after they had to *napalm* that island flat?Report
I saw Inside Out with Junior and one of my best friends today. It was really good. 🙂
I received Poison by Sarah Pinborough as a gift from my boyfriend today. I collect Snow White stories so this was an AMAZING surprise gift. I’m trying not to read the whole thing in one night. 🙂 I’m helped by the fact that I’ve been prepping for the class I’m teaching tomorrow for the past three hours, unfortunately.Report
Inside Out will be the topic of Next Week’s Post.
I have opinions about it.Report
I watched a bunch of movies: Carolina, which was entertaining and yet somehow so predictable / non-compelling that I didn’t bother with the last 30 minutes; The Prince and Me (just as predictable but far more chemistry/spark); Clueless (a movie I’d watched several times when younger, and it was time to revisit it); and The Business of Strangers which was incredibly well done but so ambiguous I felt sick after watching it. Right now as I post this I am watching the very mannered / formal The Cry of the Owl.
TVwise I’ve started watching Frankie and Grace, still also watching How I Met Your Mother and Third Rock. I’m not sure if I mentioned last week, but I binge-watched all of season 2 of Nashville and season 3 of Orange Is the New Black in the same few-day span.
I just finished reading the quite charming YA novel Hold Me Closer Necromancer – I have a soft spot for “average teenage guy books” (cf Chris Crutcher, Pete Hauptman) and this is is the first urban fantasy book I’ve read that felt like it was crossing over with that genre rather than the more usual suspects. Other even more delightful young people’s novels: Counting by 7s and The Truth Commission. Also a lot of comics: continuing to read Saga and Hawkeye, and I’ve started Sex Criminals. Read a few more books this week but those are the most interesting ones :).Report
I saw the new Terminator yesterday, and I loved it.
And I also found it somewhat funny how much it borrows from The Sarah Connor Chronicles without making any reference to that show at all. Seriously, it’s like ‘That happened on T:TSCC…that also happened on T:TSCC…that sorta happened…’
Meanwhile, time travelers are just sorta showing up from unknown timelines…there’s at least four of them we literally have no idea what timeline they’re from(1), and they *can’t* be from any of the timelines we see in the movie.
The Terminator universe is, quite hilariously, disintegrating under the weight of all the time travelers…*which is exactly how that universe should end up*, when you think about it.
1) Although I have a theory that the gjb frag onpx gb gur friragvrf, Cbcf naq gur yvdhvq zrgny bar, jrer npghnyyl gur fnzr gjb nf jr tbg va gur frpbaq zbivr, whfg frag gb n qvssrerag cynpr, sebz n gvzryvar jurer Fxlarg pbhyqa’g ybpngr Fnenu naq Wbua Pbaabe va 95. Va bgure jbeqf, Cbcf vf npghnyyl gur fnzr grezvangbe gung jnf va G2.(2)
Meanwhile, I have no idea where the yvdhvq zrgny bar va gur rvtugvrf is from.
2) ROT-13 doesn’t do numbers, a real problem when talking about T-1000s and dates and stuff.Report