Tiny Update and Movie Madness!
Been a busy week at Casa Reddick.
Meg was sick on Monday and Tuesday but I didn't catch it til Wednesday, making the rest of my work week challenging.
Five days of teaching in one whole week! I'm becoming a regular. I'm already signed on for three days next week too.
Too bad I'm too busy dying of the friggin' bird flu to enjoy the weekend.
I know I promised samples (well, maybe not samples) of some stuff I'm working on at the moment but nothing is anywhere near the stage that I would want to parade it around in front of the scrutinizing eyes of the internet. Things are in motion.
I am preparing the big eBay Comic Purge of 2005 this weekend so hopefully I'll have it done by Sunday.
Meg and I rented a wack of films for the weekend and we've watched a few already. Here are some mini reviews:
The Delicate Art of Parking
An hilarious Canadian Mockumentary that acts as an insider's look at parking enforcement in Vancouver. It stars a few folks from Corner Gas and that kid who played "the nerd" in every kids television show Canada produced between 1989 and 1996. Now he plays the filmmaker.
While it cannot hold a candle to that other Canadian Mockumentary that may or may not be the greatest film ever made (Hard Core Logo) it still kicks all kinds of ass. Somewhere in the rambling hilarity of the film's beginning a story is introduced and you begin to care about these characters. Good stuff.
It was the acting that drove this one.
The Bunker
Supernatural/WWII film. This one is told from the perspective of a diminishing platoon of German soldiers retreating from the front lines of the war to an anti-tank bunker on the border of Germany and Belgium. I have never seen a horror/war film work very well before (Death Watch was OK I guess) because the horror of war is more than enough to drive a movie.
Here, however, we have a group of German soldiers (only one of them is really a Nazi; the others are just fighting someone else's war) terrified at the utter spanking they are getting from the Allies who retreat to a fortified bunker run by an old man and a young boy. Reservists. All of the other soldiers have been sent to the front lines.
You forget that these guys are what would normally be considered the "bad guys" due to three major factors: 1) the story is done well enough that you care about the characters enough to put it aside, 2) you never really see the American soldiers they speak so meekly of and 3) they speak with British accents! I hate when they do that in the movies.
The only thing worse than Nazis with British accents in movies is Nazis with bad German accents in movies so I'll be thankful for that.
Charley Boorman is the only actor I can name. Only because I know him as Ewan MacGregor's friend in the BBC documentary series "Long Way Round" (a fantastic collection of road diaries while the 2 drive their motorcycles from London to New York via Europe). He's piss poor in this one though.
I was expecting zombies in this one. It was the reason I picked it up. I love my zombies! But alas, no zombies. Instead they are haunted by their own fragmented minds and the memories of the things they'd done. Lovely.
The Stepford Wives
Yes, the remake.
I sought to rent a few films that Meg and I could watch together. You can imagine a horror film starring Nazis was not appealing for her.
I was quite impressed with this one. Very funny and extremely well-acted. Nicole Kidman, Glenn Close and, of course, Christopher Walken are all really good. Even Matthew Broderick (who hasn't been decent since Ferris Bueller's Day Off: you know you've seen it 6,743 times!) wasn't half bad.
A lot of the satire translated through decades intact and a few more were added for modern sensibilities. They end up going a little too far with the moralizing at the end but it may be necessary so that Johnny Dumbass doesn't come away from the film thinking "I wants me a robot Womanslave!"
That is all for now but I'll be back very soon. We have 3 more films to get through including A Short Film about John Bolton, May and Bubba Ho-Tep.
Meg was sick on Monday and Tuesday but I didn't catch it til Wednesday, making the rest of my work week challenging.
Five days of teaching in one whole week! I'm becoming a regular. I'm already signed on for three days next week too.
Too bad I'm too busy dying of the friggin' bird flu to enjoy the weekend.
I know I promised samples (well, maybe not samples) of some stuff I'm working on at the moment but nothing is anywhere near the stage that I would want to parade it around in front of the scrutinizing eyes of the internet. Things are in motion.
I am preparing the big eBay Comic Purge of 2005 this weekend so hopefully I'll have it done by Sunday.
Meg and I rented a wack of films for the weekend and we've watched a few already. Here are some mini reviews:
The Delicate Art of Parking
An hilarious Canadian Mockumentary that acts as an insider's look at parking enforcement in Vancouver. It stars a few folks from Corner Gas and that kid who played "the nerd" in every kids television show Canada produced between 1989 and 1996. Now he plays the filmmaker.
While it cannot hold a candle to that other Canadian Mockumentary that may or may not be the greatest film ever made (Hard Core Logo) it still kicks all kinds of ass. Somewhere in the rambling hilarity of the film's beginning a story is introduced and you begin to care about these characters. Good stuff.
It was the acting that drove this one.
The Bunker
Supernatural/WWII film. This one is told from the perspective of a diminishing platoon of German soldiers retreating from the front lines of the war to an anti-tank bunker on the border of Germany and Belgium. I have never seen a horror/war film work very well before (Death Watch was OK I guess) because the horror of war is more than enough to drive a movie.
Here, however, we have a group of German soldiers (only one of them is really a Nazi; the others are just fighting someone else's war) terrified at the utter spanking they are getting from the Allies who retreat to a fortified bunker run by an old man and a young boy. Reservists. All of the other soldiers have been sent to the front lines.
You forget that these guys are what would normally be considered the "bad guys" due to three major factors: 1) the story is done well enough that you care about the characters enough to put it aside, 2) you never really see the American soldiers they speak so meekly of and 3) they speak with British accents! I hate when they do that in the movies.
The only thing worse than Nazis with British accents in movies is Nazis with bad German accents in movies so I'll be thankful for that.
Charley Boorman is the only actor I can name. Only because I know him as Ewan MacGregor's friend in the BBC documentary series "Long Way Round" (a fantastic collection of road diaries while the 2 drive their motorcycles from London to New York via Europe). He's piss poor in this one though.
I was expecting zombies in this one. It was the reason I picked it up. I love my zombies! But alas, no zombies. Instead they are haunted by their own fragmented minds and the memories of the things they'd done. Lovely.
The Stepford Wives
Yes, the remake.
I sought to rent a few films that Meg and I could watch together. You can imagine a horror film starring Nazis was not appealing for her.
I was quite impressed with this one. Very funny and extremely well-acted. Nicole Kidman, Glenn Close and, of course, Christopher Walken are all really good. Even Matthew Broderick (who hasn't been decent since Ferris Bueller's Day Off: you know you've seen it 6,743 times!) wasn't half bad.
A lot of the satire translated through decades intact and a few more were added for modern sensibilities. They end up going a little too far with the moralizing at the end but it may be necessary so that Johnny Dumbass doesn't come away from the film thinking "I wants me a robot Womanslave!"
That is all for now but I'll be back very soon. We have 3 more films to get through including A Short Film about John Bolton, May and Bubba Ho-Tep.
posted by Des at 2:50 am
3 Bitching, Moaning and Praise
I saw the Stepford Wives. I thought it was fairly good, although like you I had major problems with the ending.
Come to think of it, I'd be interested in watching it again. I like the visuals -- what they wear, the little looks Kidman gives, the details of the houses, etc...
How many films is a "wack" of films?
7. "Wack" is the official certification of the number 7 referred to in grammatical terms. It's a Canadian law.
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