DVD Logging
Sep. 5th, 2008 11:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckE.T. - Scott thought Cordelia was ready for this, so I put a hold on it at the library. He was right. She seemed to enjoy the movie a lot. The guys in spacesuits scared her a little bit, but we had a family cuddle. Scott and I had forgotten the frog dissection scene and were worried when we remembered it, but Cordelia didn't even seen to notice that part. She knew Elliott was acting weird and was more concerned about why than she was with the frogs.
Scott talked to Cordelia a lot, explaining what was going on. I think she needed that because a lot of what was going on didn't quite make sense to her. She was interested as long as she had the explanations. She told him at bedtime that she wants to see the movie again. He says he's not sure if she meant it or not, but we take it as an encouraging sign.
Film Crew: Killers From Outer Space - We badly wanted to like this because we used to enjoy MST3K a lot. Unfortunately, it had a deadly combination of poor sound quality and the jokes simply not hitting reliably. We had trouble hearing the comments at all, and the host segments were hard to follow. We got a few laughs, but we didn't make it all the way through the movie. It's a pity because if one of the two problems hadn't been there, we'd probably have finished the movie and would probably consider another in the series. There were also a few too many penis jokes.
At any rate, either the weak jokes or the poor sound quality would have been bearable. Does anybody know if either of those are better on other Film Crew movies?
Greatest Irish Artists - I enjoyed this. Not all of the music was to my taste, but enough of it was that I found watching the DVD relaxing. I'm probably not going to remember most of it in another week, but I also wouldn't mind watching it again. It was perfect for the exhausted, semi-migraine state I was in.
Though it is a bit disconcerting to realize that I'd rather listen to step dancing than watch it. I don't care what it looks like. I do like how it sounds-- massive percussion.
Jumper - We didn't expect this to have much of anything to do with the book ('loosely based on the book cover' was our assumption), and we didn't have very high expectations otherwise. The movie met our low expectations and challenged itself to go below them.
The problem wasn't the way the story varied from the book so much as the ways the story was deeply stupid. Many things that happened relied on characters acting like morons. I spent a while after the movie ending trying to figure out how it would have worked if people with a little bit of common sense were involved in the basic plot. It could make an interesting role playing game, possibly even a fascinating one.
Still, when I look at characters who are supposedly fighting for their lives and think that I could lay a better ambush with the contents of Cordelia's toy box than they're managing with actual functioning weapons, I know that they must be really, really dumb. If you arrive in a place before your enemies and can lead them to any place you want, if you know that they'll arrive in exactly the same place that you did, you can lay spectacular ambushes. If they're fanatics who're trying to hunt down people like you and murder you and you're willing to kill them, it's not really that hard, especially not if you have access to weapons. ::bangs head::
Jumpers can teleport to any place they've seen. I get the impression that a photograph can be enough (but I wasn't paying that much attention). They leave a temporary connection between the place they've jumped from and the place they've jumped to. The 'paladins,' the bad guys who want to kill all jumpers for being against God's will, have a machine that can force open a recently used jump path so that the paladins can follow a jumper and not let him (or her, I assume, though all the jumpers we saw were male) escape. To me, this means that there ought to be a *lot* of dead paladins.
Of course, the existence and apparent level of influence and organization of the paladins implies that (a) there are a lot of jumpers or (b) there's a lot of money involved in the organization that nobody's figured out how to 'repurpose' or (c) someone has some other motive in keeping the organization going. Scott suggested that it's actually run by a handful of old, very competent jumpers who don't want the newbies outing the existence of jumpers to the world at large.
Sadly, the movie couldn't be bothered to world build or even to develop characters.
Rome 1.3-1.5 - I can't bring myself to pay attention to this more than half the time. I can tell that anybody I actually like is Doomed, Doomed, Doomed-- or at least doomed-- and it's hard to take comfort in the fact that I don't like most of the characters. I'm also getting a certain amount of been there, done that as I watch, based as far as I can tell on my having read I, Claudius a couple of times.
Rosemary & Thyme 3.4-3.6 - I guessed the solution to the first mystery here fairly quickly. I still enjoyed it, though, as I don't watch or read mysteries for the puzzle so much as for the characters. The second episode on this DVD threatened to put me off. I was terrified that it was going to be a dead-baby episode. Fortunately, it wasn't. I'd have had to skip the episode at best and might have stopped the series altogether. The third episode was another one set in Spain. I'm not sure if that's two or three in the run of the series. I wonder if it's cheap to film there or if somebody knows somebody. I've liked the episodes set there, and I remember enough of my Spanish to be able to follow the snippets of dialog in Spanish.
Maybe I should see if I can find some movies in Spanish from Netflix. There's got to be something in my preferred genres out there...
Tsubasa 6-10 - Pretty with a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing much (immediately obvious). I put this in as filler, largely, and that seems to have been appropriate. I suspect that, if I watched carefully and took notes, I could find clues that might mean something later. I can't be bothered.
Has anybody else watched this? Is it worth the time investment from a story point of view or should I keep viewing it as something for when I've nothing better to do?
Scott talked to Cordelia a lot, explaining what was going on. I think she needed that because a lot of what was going on didn't quite make sense to her. She was interested as long as she had the explanations. She told him at bedtime that she wants to see the movie again. He says he's not sure if she meant it or not, but we take it as an encouraging sign.
Film Crew: Killers From Outer Space - We badly wanted to like this because we used to enjoy MST3K a lot. Unfortunately, it had a deadly combination of poor sound quality and the jokes simply not hitting reliably. We had trouble hearing the comments at all, and the host segments were hard to follow. We got a few laughs, but we didn't make it all the way through the movie. It's a pity because if one of the two problems hadn't been there, we'd probably have finished the movie and would probably consider another in the series. There were also a few too many penis jokes.
At any rate, either the weak jokes or the poor sound quality would have been bearable. Does anybody know if either of those are better on other Film Crew movies?
Greatest Irish Artists - I enjoyed this. Not all of the music was to my taste, but enough of it was that I found watching the DVD relaxing. I'm probably not going to remember most of it in another week, but I also wouldn't mind watching it again. It was perfect for the exhausted, semi-migraine state I was in.
Though it is a bit disconcerting to realize that I'd rather listen to step dancing than watch it. I don't care what it looks like. I do like how it sounds-- massive percussion.
Jumper - We didn't expect this to have much of anything to do with the book ('loosely based on the book cover' was our assumption), and we didn't have very high expectations otherwise. The movie met our low expectations and challenged itself to go below them.
The problem wasn't the way the story varied from the book so much as the ways the story was deeply stupid. Many things that happened relied on characters acting like morons. I spent a while after the movie ending trying to figure out how it would have worked if people with a little bit of common sense were involved in the basic plot. It could make an interesting role playing game, possibly even a fascinating one.
Still, when I look at characters who are supposedly fighting for their lives and think that I could lay a better ambush with the contents of Cordelia's toy box than they're managing with actual functioning weapons, I know that they must be really, really dumb. If you arrive in a place before your enemies and can lead them to any place you want, if you know that they'll arrive in exactly the same place that you did, you can lay spectacular ambushes. If they're fanatics who're trying to hunt down people like you and murder you and you're willing to kill them, it's not really that hard, especially not if you have access to weapons. ::bangs head::
Jumpers can teleport to any place they've seen. I get the impression that a photograph can be enough (but I wasn't paying that much attention). They leave a temporary connection between the place they've jumped from and the place they've jumped to. The 'paladins,' the bad guys who want to kill all jumpers for being against God's will, have a machine that can force open a recently used jump path so that the paladins can follow a jumper and not let him (or her, I assume, though all the jumpers we saw were male) escape. To me, this means that there ought to be a *lot* of dead paladins.
Of course, the existence and apparent level of influence and organization of the paladins implies that (a) there are a lot of jumpers or (b) there's a lot of money involved in the organization that nobody's figured out how to 'repurpose' or (c) someone has some other motive in keeping the organization going. Scott suggested that it's actually run by a handful of old, very competent jumpers who don't want the newbies outing the existence of jumpers to the world at large.
Sadly, the movie couldn't be bothered to world build or even to develop characters.
Rome 1.3-1.5 - I can't bring myself to pay attention to this more than half the time. I can tell that anybody I actually like is Doomed, Doomed, Doomed-- or at least doomed-- and it's hard to take comfort in the fact that I don't like most of the characters. I'm also getting a certain amount of been there, done that as I watch, based as far as I can tell on my having read I, Claudius a couple of times.
Rosemary & Thyme 3.4-3.6 - I guessed the solution to the first mystery here fairly quickly. I still enjoyed it, though, as I don't watch or read mysteries for the puzzle so much as for the characters. The second episode on this DVD threatened to put me off. I was terrified that it was going to be a dead-baby episode. Fortunately, it wasn't. I'd have had to skip the episode at best and might have stopped the series altogether. The third episode was another one set in Spain. I'm not sure if that's two or three in the run of the series. I wonder if it's cheap to film there or if somebody knows somebody. I've liked the episodes set there, and I remember enough of my Spanish to be able to follow the snippets of dialog in Spanish.
Maybe I should see if I can find some movies in Spanish from Netflix. There's got to be something in my preferred genres out there...
Tsubasa 6-10 - Pretty with a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing much (immediately obvious). I put this in as filler, largely, and that seems to have been appropriate. I suspect that, if I watched carefully and took notes, I could find clues that might mean something later. I can't be bothered.
Has anybody else watched this? Is it worth the time investment from a story point of view or should I keep viewing it as something for when I've nothing better to do?
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 05:32 pm (UTC)Word on Jumper: for such an exciting premise, I thought it was a very dull movie. I like Scott's suggestion, but I wish there had been a hint of some kind of development in the movie itself. Is the book any better?
Have no idea about Tsubasa, I think I stopped watching around the same episodes you did.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-10 03:32 pm (UTC)Jumper is an excellent book. Scott and I both loved it. The movie really is *loosely* based on the book cover. The book has a lot more emphasis on the boy growing up, learning what he can and can't do and should and shouldn't do. If I recall correctly, there aren't other jumpers, and I'm almost entirely certain (it has been many years but I wouldn't think I'd forget this) that the Paladins are purely a movie invention. Apparently, a kid growing up and learning to deal with having a superpower isn't enough conflict. ::grumbles::
no subject
Date: 2008-09-08 01:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-10 03:33 pm (UTC)