Movie day...

[fajrdrako]

Today was a day to watch movies. I was ensconced on maaseru's sofa from an early hour, watching movies with josanpq, maaboroshi and lunacy_gal.

We watched:

• Ice Blues, the fourth Donald Strachey movie, which I'd seen before;
  
  
• Big Eden, which I'd also seen before, but which I think I enjoyed more the second time round, knowing what to expect. I certainly enjoy watching Eric Schweig!
  
  
• Shakespeare Retold: The Taming of the Shew, with Rufus Sewell and Shirley Henderson. Rufus Sewell is one of those actors I adore and would watch in anything - and Petrucchio just might be his best role yet. Shirley Henderson was Ursula in the remarkable Doctor Who episode "Love and Monsters" and Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter. This adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew was magnificent, in my opinion: it is in so many ways one of Shakespeare's more problematic plays for our time, and yet, done right, is exceptionally clever and funny.
  
  Actually, the more remarkable thing about Henderson's performance here is that she reminded me of the first woman I ever fell in love with. I imagine that gave me an extra bit of identification with Petrucchio.
  
  
• Theatre of Blood, with Vincent Price and Diana Rigg, from 1973. A wildly lurid and somewhat silly story about an actor who, driven mad by critics' opinions of his play, become a serial killer enacting revenge upon the critics by killing them in the manner of murders in Shakepeare's plays. It was a real treat to see the young Diana Rigg again. In one scene, a man's beloved poodles are brutally murdered; I couldn't help thinking of Captain John Hart.

Then maaseru and I actually ventured out into the world to see The Dark Knight at a movie theatre. I had many thoughts on the movie. As always, I'm fussy about movies based on comics, especially comic and characters I love, and I certainly love Batman. The movie Batman is not the comic book Batman, and I generally prefer the one in the comic - with the caveat that there is no one comic book version of the character. None of the Batman movies capture what I most love about Batman¹, but I do like Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne.

1. Heath Ledger as the Joker was as good as they say. It wasn't just his doing: the direction and writing on the Joker was superb. Loved it that he was a 'mad dog', an agent of chaos; loved it that he had a different version of his origin every time he told it. Loved it that he really wore make-up, and didn't have his skin stained in a chemical factory accident. Loved his Nurse Jane scene with Harvey Dent. The Joker was the best thing about the movie.
   
   
2. The second best thing about the movie was Garry Oldman as Jim Gordon . Convincing, interesting, a good friend and foil to Batman. He has a son in the movie: this surprised me, as I've only ever known him to have a daughter (Barbara); but I see from the Wikipedia entry that in pre-Crisis continuity he had a son named Tony.
   
   
3. Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Daws was infinitely better than Katie Holmes, or at least, much more convincing as an Assistant D.A. She still was not the equal of Bruce Wayne or Harvey Dent, and a prime example of a Refrigerator Woman - something movies do much more blatantly than comics, in my opinion.
   
   She did have a role in the plot that I loved, though: the whole theme of her choosing between Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent, and writing the letter to Bruce, which Alfred burned after the fact. I loved that with a passion.
   
   
4. In terms of weakness, I thought the movie was very badly paced, repetitious, a little too long, and sometimes difficult to follow. I'd have edited it so differently. And I'd have added gargoyles and narrow dark alleyways.
   
   
5. They didn't identify Detective Ramirez by name for a long time, and for a long time I was all excited because I thought the movie was featuring Renée Montoya, one of my favourite DC characters. It wasn't. Damn.
   
   
6. Michael Caine remains delightful as Alfred.
   
   
7. I spent the whole movie, of course, waiting for the accident that would turn Harvey Dent into Two-Face.

One further Batman-related comment: a week ago a bunch of my friends were discussing the movie, which I hadn't then seen. The were commenting on Christian Bale in the Batman role, and several of them said how much they'd loved the old show with Adam West. I had to bite my tongue not to rant about how much I hated that show in general, and Adam West in particular. Even at the very worst, I look at versions of Batman and thing, "At least it isn't Adam West."

¹ Which I'd love to go into but not now. Later sometime.

Comments

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

To her, Latin was only the Church's language, and it could never have
vulgar things in it. Gad, imagine!

And this woman made it as far as college? Egad. (And I can't resist saying: hadn't she ever heard the phrase 'vulgar Latin'?) Not even mentioning the fact that Latin predated Christianity by many centuries.

so there may be a trackable source of your dislike of comedy...

That didn't help.

what's with you and the ultra-extended bedtime these days, hm?

Sigh. Bad behaviour and lack of self-control?

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

And this woman made it as far as college? Egad. (And I can't resist saying: hadn't she ever heard the phrase 'vulgar Latin'?) Not even mentioning the fact that Latin predated Christianity by many centuries.

And needs to read The Wandering Scholars!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Absolutely!

[silverwhistle.livejournal.com]

Vivat Archipoeta!

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

And this woman made it as far as college? Egad.

Heh. She had many such blind spots! She was youngest of five siblings, and all five of them had attended college ("university," to you), and none of them took out loans to do it... their dad worked for the electric company and paid their way through. Ahem. Compare that to me, who attended college thanks to my mother's dad having bought me savings bonds for it (and I just barely had enough, too). Yet she referred to me and others like me (non-Catholics, basically) as "booszhh." That's insulting-short for "... shit, I can't even begin to spell the word. Karl Marx's word for the arrogant middle class, right? Bougiose? No, but I got the first letter right! Ah, such fun dyslexia is.

Anyway! Her family actually was this middle class, while mine was true-blue dirt-poor creative/intellectual/Evangelical United Brethren, and she really couldn't see the intense irony there. And, no, she never did believe me about Latin being a language of everyday people. Heh.

Re disliking comedy.... Do you dislike all comedy, or just certain sorts? I know you enjoy humor. But only quality humor.

I'm getting a strong impression that your dislike of comedy is akin to my dislike of being looked at too long. Ask me later.

Sigh. Bad behaviour and lack of self-control?

Yeah, but more fun for me! ...Actually, seems your days are shorter now that you have an external schedule to keep again, and the quiet end of the day is just a good time for being online, no?

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Bourgoisie is the word you wanted. It just means 'middle-class'. All the middle class, whether arrogant or not. Nothing to do with religion, just the economic role - people who were neither working class nor aristocrats.

The world has changed since Marx's time and the words don't quite apply the way they used to.

I am suspicious of all comedy, but I do like some - though almost never movies who are just billed as 'comedy'. It needs an adjective in front of it. Social comedy, romantic comedy, musical comedy - that I like. Shakespearean comedy. Sitcoms: no. Farces: only if they're live on stage.

I'm getting a strong impression that your dislike of comedy is akin to my dislike of being looked at too long. Ask me later.

That sounds as if you think it's related to an embarrassment factor. It isn't. More likely related to my dislike of puns, but not necessarily that either. A lot of comedy is ridiculing subjects or people and I don't much like that. Sometimes it's just setting up ridiculous situations that make no sense.

I did like Monty Python, when it was on.

seems your days are shorter now that you have an external schedule to keep again, and the quiet end of the day is just a good time for being online, no?

Not to mention one of the few times I get to read and answer email and write in my LJ.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

[ I'm getting a strong impression that your dislike of comedy is akin to my dislike of being looked at too long. Ask me later. ]

That sounds as if you think it's related to an embarrassment factor. It isn't.

No, not at all. I was referring to the intrinsic mechanism which makes you dislike comedy, and which makes me not like being stared at. As I said -- ask me later. Sorry!

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I don't think there is an intrinsic mechanism. I think it's just something I don't much like.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

Yes, it means "middle class," those with expendable income who are able to pay for their children's college tuition themselves, out of savings. Which she was one of. And I, who was being casually attacked for being "boozsh," was the one who was the true proletariat. As far as I know, she never did grow up and quit playing diva... ah, well.

The world has changed since Marx's time and the words don't quite apply the way they used to.

The world has changed since Adam Smith's time, too, and I am increasingly bemused that people keep calling out "survival of the fittest" and "free marketplace" and "the law of supply and demand" to make excuses for the excesses of greed in this present-day economy which is ruled by huge corporations who want money at all costs. Smith had it right back in the day, but things have evolved in economics as the world has gotten incresingly more inter-connected. What do you think? Do I have economics all wrong, there?

Comedy -- later.

Or maybe not. Sorry again, I am totally wiped out by sensory onslaught, here, and part of it is from the single other user of the computer lab, who had been talking on her phone at will when I was in the outer room, and now -- not my choice -- is facing directly at me through the window separating the back room of quiet from the front room of anything goes within reason... and her gaze is adding to my sensory-input overload. I'm doing typos like mad, and doing them again when trying to correct them, and my tight collar is suddenly three times as annoying as it was in the outer room, and... oh, gad, do I sound insane or what? How could another person's direct gaze (and annoyance at me for being so bothered by her phoen calls that I silently stood up from my other computer and walked into the quiet room, shutting the door behind me) actually affect me in these direct and practical ways? Yeah, sure, I'm imagining it.

Let me tell you the stories about how Ilearned how to make people trip while they're walking past me. I can do it still. I just don't, because it is too unpleasant to then feel their feelings after they do it.

A bad pun, a bad comedic set-up, is the same thing as an unwanted blast of direct energy: it sets you up and you are open to accept it, and then when it plays out and you realize it's crappy and unfunny, you are still stuck in "receive" mode and thus get a cupfull of distasteful, time-wasting crap poured into your input sector. That's how lousy comedy is like an unwanted direct gaze.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Why would you want to trip someone?

Hope your sensory problems ease soon.

[walkingowl.livejournal.com]

I don't. But the person who taught me this was self-centered and very into "I can so I have the right," and I showed bad judgement. I think I felt so awful after doing it just once or twice that I refused to try it ever again, and after 30 years I still feel ashamed about it.

Thank you... today was rough again, and I just don't know why. Then again, that week and a half of lesser problems seems, sadly, to have been the anomaly. At least so far this year. I'm seriously wondering if this is my natural state, and somehow I un-numbed my intakes (so to speak) by getting myself off the soy-laden foods...? Ai, what a thought. I just don't know.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

It's hard to find the answers, isn't it? I wish I had something helpful to add! I don't know why your good days happen, or your bad days, in terms of sensory input. I hope you have more good days.