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This was an okay movie but I hereby declare I must stop paying attention to Netflix recommendations. They’re so... depressing, usually.
Story follows two young men, one who thinks he was abducted by aliens when he was 8 or 9 years old, the other a hustler. Their lives have crossed on more than one occasion, told mostly in jerkily edited flashbacks interspersed with each boy’s current life events, until the big denouement and a rather abrupt ending which serves the movie pretty well in some ways but also just... dribbles off into nowhere, unsatisfactorily. I wanted to know more about what happened to each character from that point onward, but the credits roll immediately.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt (pictured on the DVD cover) puts in a strong performance. The last role I saw him in was in Latter Days, another Netflix recommendation, where he played a homophobic Mormon missionary—the polar opposite of his character in this film. Brady Corbet’s portrayal of the allegedly alien-abucted teen is also absorbing and believable; he manages to be vulnerable and strangely strong at the same time, uncertain of what’s happened to him even while he reacts to situations because his mind is moving closer to revealing the truth in his memories.
Worth a single viewing but not a repeat, and only if you’re in the mood to follow slightly convoluted storytelling that just... stops.
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I’ve never been a fan of comic books, but this telling of the Batman story seems more true to the idea I had of the character from the comics and graphic novels I have seen: Darker, brooding, in no way campy like the 1960s television series and the first round of Batman movies. And I think Michael Caine is a perfect choice to play harried butler Alfred.
That said, I’m not so sure Christian Bale is the right person to fill the role of Bruce Wayne/Batman, even if a brooding character is what they were trying to achieve. Bale certainly does that well, of course; he’s known for getting into his roles in various amazing ways (he lost something like 60 pounds for a role as an emaciated insomniac in 2004’s The Machinist) and he played a psychotic killer to chilling effect in American Psycho. But somehow he didn’t seem quite... right, I don’t know why exactly, for this part. Like it was slightly forced somehow.
At any rate, I enjoyed his performance in this movie, and Michael Caine’s turn as Alfred was spot-on. I didn’t recognize Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon (a sergeant in this flick) until the credits rolled; I was amazed. Liam Neeson did a good job as the mentor/trainer at the beginning of the movie; I found him somewhat forgettable, however. Cillian Murphy was suitably creepy as Dr. Crane, though I initially laughed out loud when I heard them refer to the psychiatrist from Arkham Asylum as Dr. Crane; immediately flashed back to Frasier.
No one else made an impression except Katie Holmes, and she only because I slightly liked her until her recent insanity fling with Tom Cruise; now I discount her.
Beyond the acting, however, the entire movie just seemed more realistic. By dispensing with the camp angle from the previous theatrical releases, Christopher Nolan could make a movie that allowed Gotham to be any of several major cities we could all identify, and the Batgadgets were much more realistic as well. Morgan Freeman’s turn as the gadget guru was a masterful stroke; he’s commanding but understated in the role, so the gadgets can outshine him as they should.
An enjoyable reworking of the Batman film franchise, and I liked the ending’s lead toward the next villain. I’m looking forward to more films with this group of actors.
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This recording of the resident Cirque du Soleil show at Walt Disney World suffers from the same problem as every other filmed Cirque du Soleil performance I’ve seen: Enthralling live performances chopped to hell by bad camera angles and horrible editing choices.
I’ve been lucky to see several Cirque du Soleil shows live since 2002. The first I saw was Dralion, Cirque’s fusion of their own stylized productions with Chinese circus tradition. About half a year later I saw La Nouba at Walt Disney World, and later that same year Alegría, which I remember liking quite a bit but remember nothing of the plot or theme (and the description at the Cirque web site jogs my memory not at all).
I saw Dralion on Bravo several months after the live show and came away wondering just how the hell they’d made their editing decisions. Like most video productions nowadays, all of which have to cater to the MTV generation with visual razzle-dazzle that’s usually accomplished by dipshit quick cuts at random times, Dralion was just bad on television. The spectacle and grandiosity of the production were utterly lost in the clutter of the stupid camera-angle choices and the bad timing of the scene cuts.
I haven’t seen Quidam live, and I have no desire to see it live because I already saw it on Bravo. I’m pretty sure it’s much better live, but the recorded performance with its similarly bad editing has left me completely cold on it.
Similarly with La Nouba. It was an amazing show to see live. The bicyclists and trampoline performers alone were absolutely incredible, and much of the spectacle of it relied on seeing it without interruption. There’s a good reason why live shows don’t require the audience to stand up and run from one part of the seating area to another repeatedly throughout the show, so why do that in recorded performances?
Oh sure, they want to show the action from multiple vantage points, blah blah blah. In my estimation, about all they manage to do is ruin a good live performance for the DVD watcher and probably for the audience that was in the taping, with the camera booms and operators blocking the views now and then.
A five-star show rendered four stars (3.5 if Netflix allowed half-star ratings) by dippy editing choices. The biggest saving grace: The music and singing, always performed live for each show, suffered not at all by the silly visual-editing choices.
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I hate these damned things, but they do a fine job of protecting the screens from scratches and nicks and dents.
They’re an absolute PAIN IN THE ASS to install, however, with their adhesive and the fingerprints and the air bubbles and my poor debit card as the smoother and all such fun.
But now my Tungsten T3 is protected again. And happy. The two-year mark is rapidly approaching for this PDA, the longest I’ve had a single model, and it’s held up quite well despite several missing screws on the slide and several drops onto concrete and carpet and tile floors over the years.
::knock on wood::
Crazy hair
Flickr: Don NunnBeen awake about an hour, hair’s still several kinds of insane
I don’t bother trying to catch performances by dance troupes I haven’t encountered before, so I miss a lot of good dance performances. I was thus pleased to stumble across Pilobolus in Seattle-area events listings in September. I had never heard of them but when I saw they were performing three shows at Meany Hall for the Performing Arts’ 1,200-seat Meany Theater as part of the UW World Series, I snapped up a couple tickets.
Attended the Thu 11/17 20:00 show and I came away pleased but with my general take on small dance troupes confirmed:
These dancers are consummate athletes—lithe and strong, possessed of amazing senses of rhythm and the ability to convey enormous range of emotion via body movement alone—but they suffer a universal lack of group timing. Odd as it sounds, they do a wonderful job of staying individually synchronized to the music, but they are almost never synchronized to each other. At times when they should obviously be making the same movements at the same time, they’re off by just this much.
The net effect is quite distracting and this was the one negative characteristic of an otherwise first-rate performance.
Pilobolus is described as six dancers—though seven performers appeared on-stage at the curtain call—who move through five separate dance pieces in a roughly 100-minute show (including 20-minute intermission). The dance pieces use music ranging from freely formed classical-sounding strings and horns to driving rock sounds and approximations of thunder and animal noises. The music and sounds combine with the dancers’ movements to convey mostly remarkably lucid stories in 10 to 20 minutes apiece.
The program we received didn’t identify the dancers by photograph, nor did it list which dancers performed in each piece, so I’m not sure who was who and thus won’t delve into individual dancers’ performances at all. Rather, I’ll recount my impressions of each piece, in program order:
The crowd gave Pilobolus a standing ovation at the end, which I joined out of appreciation for the obviously intense physical conditioning and athletic skill these dancers exhibited. While I enjoyed the show, I won’t rush to catch the troupe again on their next visit, unlike many other audience members around us who raved about it and swore they’d be first in line next time the troupe made a Seattle appearance.
Fuzzy bunnies = park problems:
Seattle Times: Woodland Park plan bids farewell to bunnies
By Stuart Eskenazi
Seattle Times staff reporter
Probably best not to tell the kiddos, but a rabbit round-up at Woodland Park is to begin in mid-January, and with it, the popular attraction of watching and feeding the bunnies will go bye-bye.
The bunnies, however, are not—repeat, not—doomed. They’re just headed to a sanctuary in Redmond.
DEAN RUTZ / SEATTLE TIMES
A rabbit scampers off with a carrot at Woodland Park. The rabbits have drawn quite a human audience.At a parks-board meeting Thursday night, a city official laid out a plan to trap, sterilize and relocate an estimated 300 to 500 rabbits that live in and around Woodland Park—a population that has migrated as far as the north end of Green Lake Park and infiltrated Woodland Park Zoo. The parks board is expected to approve the plan next month. Several animal-advocate groups, including Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS) and Seattle Animal Shelter, support the plan.
Though the bunnies live in the wild, they are domesticated. The park population likely began with family pets that were abandoned at the park. Many end up being attacked by other animals—or abused by people.
“They are pet rabbits, and they have a horrible, horrible life there, and it’s a short one,” said Mark Pilger, a Green Lake resident who has rescued two of the feral rabbits, including one that had been abused. Pilger said he has seen so many dead rabbits while jogging at the lake that he no longer runs there because it is too upsetting.
DEAN RUTZ / SEATTLE TIMES
The parks department wants to remove the rabbits at Woodland Park because they have damaged trees and dug holes and tunnels that can be hazardous for park users.The parks department wants to remove the rabbits because they have damaged trees and dug holes and tunnels that can be hazardous for park users. Some rabbits carry parasites and diseases, and there also is anecdotal evidence that they have begun moving into surrounding neighborhoods, said Barb DeCaro, resource-conservation coordinator for the parks department.
At the same time, though, the rabbits have drawn quite an audience of humans, primarily at an outcropping of rocks in Woodland Park and a triangular-shaped meadow west of Green Lake.
At the start of the year, box traps would be placed in areas of the park where the rabbits gather, with carrots and apples used as lures. Captured rabbits would be kept for as long as three days at a Magnuson Park building before visiting the vet.
After sterilization, they would return to Magnuson briefly and then head to Rabbit Meadows Sanctuary in Redmond, an enclosed outdoor space operated by the nonprofit House Rabbit Society, which is overseeing the relocation plan.
Relocating the rabbits
The House Rabbit Society is accepting contributions to help pay to relocate rabbits in and around Woodland Park. Tax-deductible contributions may be made to the society and sent to P.O. Box 3242, Redmond, WA 98073.Sandi Ackerman, who runs the sanctuary, estimated that it would take three to four months to complete the relocation. Since all it takes is one male and one female rabbit to make more rabbits, the city and the House Rabbit Society would continue to trap rabbits after the initial round-up, DeCaro said.
She said she hopes that by removing the rabbits from the park, people will be less inclined to abandon their pet bunnies there.
The cost for relocating each rabbit is estimated at $100, or $50,000 for 500. Parks and animal-welfare groups hope to fund the program through donations.
Good, looks like things are clearing up much faster than I expected.
I’m happy I’m not traveling tonight.
