The State of the Cabins (7/21/10)

Yay - it's back after last week's hiatus!

Movies watched for the first time (non-theatrically) since last week:
* City of Ember
I'm not sure why I'd been so keen on seeing City of Ember in the first place: based on a book I'd never heard of, meant for an audience much younger than me, didn't look terribly original.

But I guess the combination of hearing some good things and a cast that includes Tim Robbins and Bill Murray (and Martin Landau, but I didn't know that until I watched it) was enough, and I'm glad I did. There's hardly anything about it that should make this connection, but the experience of watching it reminded me of the 2003 Shia LaBeouf vehicle Holes, which I think is a tremendous "kids" movie and one that would have been amongst my favorites had I been 10 or 12 when it came out.

Ember's not quite as good, but along with that cast, which includes stars Saoirse Ronan and Harry Treadway (she a decade younger though they're playing the same age...hmmm), it's got a likable story and a charming way of telling it, all the more impressive that it's ultimately a depressing tale of a dying planet and the means that a few went to to save it.

The result is a Logan's Run meets The Fifth Element story, executed well but with a lackluster, somewhat abrupt finale.

Fletch's Film Rating:

	Expectation: "Darn tootin."
	Reality: "Darn tootin."

Music I'm currently obsessed with:
More thoughts than anything in particular:

* Why was Bloc Party's second album so much worse than their first?

* When is The Go Team!'s next album coming out?

* After the success of Sufjan Stevens Illinois, there were questions about just how he was going to complete his "50 States Project" (an album for each state) in this century. I'd been wondering that, too. Just got my answer from Wiki: according to an interview he did with The Guardian in 2009, ""I have no qualms about admitting it was a promotional gimmick". Lame.

* You can't listen to a full album or pick your songs, and commercials are embedded, so why does Pandora limit you to 40 free hours of listening in a month? This is a (the?) leading internet music service?

* Yes! Arcade Fire's next disc comes out in less than two weeks!

Book I'm currently reading:
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. I first learned of this many years ago but just never remembered it/was able to find it/etc. The cover does nothing less than call it a masterpiece, so I'm expecting great things. So far, so good (but not great) - it's certainly got colorful characters, but I'm not yet far enough into it for the action to have really picked up any steam (maybe 50 pages).

Recently finished The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman. Really, really enjoyed it - it deserves all of the acclaim it's gotten thus far. After finishing off the Millenium trilogy, the prospect of reading another book about the publishing industry (in this case, a newspaper) actually appealed to me, and this one certainly had an international flavor as well, being set mostly in Rome, but also in Paris, Egypt, and stateside. The format of it initially threw me off - it's more an interconnected series of short stories than a continuous narrative - but I came 'round on it and now my only gripe was its brevity, as it clocks in at less than 300 pages. Rachman writes beautifully - incredible insight into the human condition, humor, pool-deep sadness - it's got it all. I can't wait to re-read it in a few years.

And then...

The State of the Cabins (7/7/10)

At this rate, I'll have seen every movie ever made by March 23rd, 2014.

Movies watched for the first time (non-theatrically) since last week:
* Big Fan
This was a bit of a letdown. Directed by the writer of The Wrestler, starring Patton Oswalt in a dramatic role, and that was even before I knew that my main man Kevin Corrigan co-starred (and in a significant role, to boot) as well as a small appearance by Michael Rapaport. I'd heard that the movie was pretty money (Mikey) and that Oswalt was great. Well, Oswalt was pretty good, and the film was just okay.

Patton plays the kind of guy that hopefully none of you know in real life; the guy that sits on hold for hours a day waiting to read off his carefully crafted script on a sports talk radio show. In other words, not just a fan, but a fanatic, a loser, maybe even a deadbeat. It did a decent job of humanizing them, but it just felt a bit empty, and the ending, though I was glad to see it take a twist, remained a letdown. Kind of a no-win situation, I suppose; it's grounded in reality and pretty much stays there - unfortunately, that didn't make for the best film in this case.

Fletch's Film Rating:

	Expectation: "Darn tootin."
	Reality: "You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."

* The Neverending Story
OMG Fletch! You never saw The Neverending Story!?!?

No, and I can't say that I ever felt lacking for having not seen it. It's never seemed to be quite in the Goonies/Labyrinth category for people of a certain age - in other words, I've never felt like it was all that loved, so I wasn't missing much, short of seeing the giant dog thing fly (come to find out it's a dragon).

So, of course, I kind of liked it. For a film that came out the same year as The Karate Kid (which has aged so poorly - currently re-watching it right now, oh yeah) and yet contains much more potential to age poorly via being an effects-heavy extravaganza, I was pretty impressed with how well it held up. Sure, there's some poor puppeteering and such, but the flying and modeled fantasy world (creatively titled Fantasia) looked great.

Other random thoughts:

* Gerald McRaney! Didn't see his name in the credits (though I'm sure it was there).

* Much as I liked a lot of aspects of this, the theme song that plays over the opening and closing credits is just about bad enough to ruin it all. I just kept thinking of the Reading Rainbow song instead, which wasn't that much of an improvement.

* The main kid (Bastian - what an awful name) was kind of a poor actor.

* The other main kid (Atreyu) was much better, and had the handicap of working with much harder circumstances (puppets, differently-scaled co-stars, a horse). Kudos to him.

* I can't believe they killed said horse, and so quickly! What was funny was that I swear I saw terror in the horse's eye as it sunk into the quicksand-like swamp. That's some kickass animal acting right there.

* The Empress' house place looked pretty sweet.

* Why bother introducing Top Hat Guy Who Rides a Snail and Other Weird Guy Who Rides a Bat as seemingly important characters, only to ditch them all so soon? A waste there.

* Gotta say, I was pretty surprised/impressed at how bare and voluptuous the Sphinx were. This was a PG-rated kids flick! Ahhh, the 80s. Had I seen this when I was 10, I would have seen it a lot more, that's all I'm saying (yes, I'm a perv, what's your point?)

* The ending was pretty shitty. Spoilerz! I can see how it worked on kids - "yay, he got those bullies and showed 'em what for!" - but wow, what a shitty message to send to the children watching. "Maybe if you're lucky and keep your creativity alive, a dragon from a fantasy world will help you scare the crap out of your tormentors." Way to solve his problems in the real world there.

Fletch's Film Rating:

	Expectation: "You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."
	Reality: "Darn tootin."

* Sex Drive
Mostly forgettable teen sex romp. I did, however, watch the unrated yada yada version via Netflix (even though the filmmakers told me not to experience that version first) and am glad I did. Much to their credit, they didn't bullshit around with the "unrated" label. You want gratuitous nudity? This is the movie for you - loads of not only T & A but also quite a bit of B & C & Bs as well - there's a little something for everyone.

I don't think I laughed a ton, and it's pretty stupid, but I didn't hate it, either. The high points were Seth Green's Amish guy, Clark Duke (who has "It," whatever it is), and the characters of Randy and Andy, who might well be ripoffs of Beavis and Butthead, but were far and away the highlight of the flim for me. I would watch their spin-off gladly.

Fletch's Film Rating:

	Expectation: "Whatever."
	Reality: "You seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you."

Music I'm currently obsessed with:
Just got Royksopp's The Understanding CD in the mail yesterday. That'll be on heavy rotation in preparation for Senior, which is coming out soon. I loves me some Royksopp.

Book I'm currently reading:
Finished Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I didn't love it or dislike it. It's a good story, just one that I don't think is all that particularly well-written (I say of an award-winning author). I'm sure the argument could be made that it was written in the tone of the narrator (since it's all first-person and told in flashback form), but that doesn't excuse it in my book. Annoying writing habits are annoying writing habits, no matter how good one's narrative may be; for instance, if the pseudo-Russian of A Clockwork Orange turned you off, there's not much to be said for it in your eyes - you probably didn't like the book.

There's nothing quite so...blunt in Never Let Me Go, just enough to slightly irritate me and distract me from the overall story. Still, I'm looking forward to the movie (which seems to have been cast pretty well) and would recommend the book for those interested in a light sci-fi novel with a heavy British boarding school vibe.

Next up: The Imperfectionists, by Tom Rachman. I know almost nothing about this other than it's set in Rome and about a publisher or something, and that it's a hot property in Hollywood (specifically with Brad Pitt's production company), and that it's Rachman's first novel. And I'm going to go start it right....now.

And then...