Posted by barb on Dec 21, 2003 in
Movies 3.5/5 stars
I recently realized that I had never actually watched Planet of the Apes from beginning to end in one sitting. I’d certainly seen bits and pieces of it while dial-spinning on a Saturday afternoon, and I knew the basic story, but I wanted to put it all together.
I was surprised by how unlikable Charlton Heston’s character was in the beginning of the film. I also hadn’t realized that the original mission of the crew was to test relativity (i.e. the twins’ paradox), but thought their return to Earth two millennia after leaving was some kind of accident (I must have been mixing it up with Buck Rogers!).
Overall, it was entertaining, even 30 years later. I also think I agree that it’s superior to the recent remake starring Mark Wahlberg (though I quite enjoyed the new one, too).
Posted by barb on Dec 21, 2003 in
Movies 5/5 stars
I don’t know what I can say about this one. The final installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy upholds the excellent standards set by the first two. I must confess that I never finished reading the trilogy (I stopped somewhere in the middle of The Two Towers), so I don’t know how close the ending was to the books, but I was satisfied. I’d heard some complaints on the numerous “endings” to the movie — just as the screen goes white, the audience thinks the movie is over, and then another final scene comes up. I can see the point, but I was glad that all the ends seemed to be tied up. (You’ll know the ending is really coming when the screen goes to black instead of white).
Posted by barb on Dec 14, 2003 in
TV A few months ago, I ranted about SciFi channel’s new Battlestar Galactic miniseries, based on the things I had read on SciFi’s official BG site. I was concerned that they were going to offend fans of the show with some of the changes they made. Now that I’ve watched the show, I thought I should write some of my reactions.
I haven’t decided how I feel about the miniseries — I’m torn. As a fan of the original show, I must say that this was not the original show. But then, it wasn’t trying to be. I think that if this was the only BG I’d ever watched, I might have been able to enjoy it quite a bit more. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy this one — I did.
The series was quite good. It gave much more background to the story than the original series, and made the story much more “human”. We had time to get to know the characters and their back-stories more than in the original movie.
Having said that, there are some glaring differences from the original movie — and I think watching these and mulling them over was one reason I couldn’t just sit back and enjoy the new series. Not all the changes are bad or unsettling, but I wanted to catalog them nonetheless, in order to decide if I liked them or not.
<spoilers ahead>
I liked the new cylons (though was happy to see that the machine-looking ones still had the hypnotic red eye).
I’m not sure I liked that Baltar was an unwitting accomplice to the cylons — in the original he was the picture of pure evil, a conniving human looking for power. He’s too sympathetic for my tastes now.
I don’t like that Starbuck is a woman. She’s not Starbuck. She might smoke a cigar, play poker, and punch a superior officer, but she is not Starbuck. They did try to give her a few campy, cheesy lines, but they didn’t work. She’s not Starbuck.
I think the initial conflict between Adama and Apollo is growing on me, though I’m disappointed that Zach is already dead.
I’m hopeful that Boxy will not become a major character, especially now that he’s not Apollo’s step-son.
<major spoiler>
If they had to change Starbuck into a woman, I’m not happy that they changed Boomer, too. And I don’t like that she is a cyclon sleeper agent.
</end major spoiler>
I’d certainly watch the series, if it gets picked up, but this is not your childhood BG.
Posted by barb on Dec 6, 2003 in
Movies 0.5/5 stars
I watched this movie on the recommendation of a friend who usually picks great movies. Not this time. I was tempted throughout this movie to just turn it off — by the time we got to the end, I wished we had turned it off.
Ana Morelos hears disturbing news from her doctor, and the same evening she receives a drunken phone call from her husband who confesses to cheating on her. She decides to take up two teenaged boys on their offer that she accompany them on a road trip to a secret beach.
The story is old — someone finds out they have a terminal illness and decide to go on one last fling. In this case, it’s given a somewhat disturbing wrapper of a 30-something woman going on a road trip with two teenagers, both of whom lust after her. Intertwined into the story are short interludes with narration about various other people who peripherally come in contact with the boys — for example, they passed an accident scene and we heard about the man who had been hit. Andrew saw these as a means to show how our stories are all intertwined with others, but each of these interludes told of some tragedy or sadness, so I saw it as a means to show us how life sucks for everyone.
I can’t recommend this one.
Posted by barb on Dec 4, 2003 in
Books by John Grisham
With their daughter heading across the world, Luther and Nora Krank decide that Christmas just won’t be the same. In fact, after crunching some numbers, Luther discovers that last year they spent around $6000 on Christmas — more than enough to finance a holiday cruise. So he talks Nora into skipping Christmas. Skipping the presents, the tree, the decorations (even the obligatory neighborhood Frosty on the roof), the parties, the cookies, the dinners. Everything. Instead, they book a cruise to someplace warm that leaves Christmas day.
This was a fun, lighthearted book.
Posted by barb on Nov 29, 2003 in
Movies 0.5/5 stars
This came on Oxygen, and Melissa begged for us to watch, so we did. I tried reading my novel through most of it, but was too drawn in by the utter cheese to get very far. Olivia Newton-John is a muse who has come to Earth to help inspire artist Sonny Malone. Sonny partners up with Danny McGuire to build a mega-huge roller dome. If that’s not a story for that ages, I don’t know what is.
Posted by barb on Nov 29, 2003 in
Movies 3.5/5 stars
I don’t usually get into horror flicks, but this one did pull me in more than most. Halle Barry plays a psychiatrist at a secure mental hospital. She wakes up after a car accident, and finds that she is now a patient in that very hospital, accused of killing her husband. But she can’t remember what happened.
The “spring-loaded cats”, as Andrew calls them, are generally quite effective. Even more fun, though, were Melissa’s reactions to them (she gasps louder than anyone I’ve heard). I had some trouble with the ending, though, this is not a movie to see for the plot.
Posted by barb on Nov 29, 2003 in
Movies 4/5 stars
This movie is based on the claims of XXX, creator of many game shows and host of the Gong Show in the 70s, that he was an agent for the CIA. The movie follows his missions to assassinate enemies of the US, often his travels were disguised as part of his official duties as chaperone for the prime time Dating Game.
Do I believe it? It doesn’t really matter. One the one hand, he is the perfect kind of person to be an agent, I mean, who would ever suspect him? On the other hand, the movie doesn’t have to be completely believable. It’s fun.
Posted by barb on Nov 23, 2003 in
Movies 4/5 stars
The orders of the English ship, the Surprise, are to hunt down the Acheron, a French ship, and burn, sink or take it home as a prize. Captain Jack Aubrey (Russell Crowe) takes his ship to the ends of the Earth, and beyond, to fulfill his orders. The Surprise finds itself rounding South America, and then trekking back north to the Galapagos Islands.
I was glad that we were able to see this movie on a big screen — it would have lost something on a TV screen. We toured the USS Constellation in the Baltimore Inner Harbor this past spring, and it felt very claustrophobic, even without a full crew — the movie captured this feeling of claustrophobia quite well. The opening scene shows the men in their hammocks below decks — they are packed in there! The movie did lose me when the doctor (Paul Bettany) preformed surgery on himself — until then I was fully taken in by the movie, it’s scenery, plot and characters.
Posted by barb on Nov 22, 2003 in
Movies 3/5 stars
During the biggest solar storms of memorable history, Frank and John Sullivan find that they are able to speak to each other through time. On October 10, 1999, John hears a voice on the other side of his father’s old ham radio. The voice identifies itself as Frank Sullivan, John’s father who died on October 12, 1969. He thinks the guy is playing a joke on him, until Frank accidentally burns the desk, creating a burn on the desk Frank is sitting at, only it’s cold. John gives Frank some advice on the fire he’ll fight the next day (“don’t go with your instinct…go the other way”) But in changing his father’s fate, he changes his mother’s as well, who subsequently becomes a victim of a serial killer. Together, Frank and John work across time to fix what they put wrong.
As with most movies involving time travel or faster than light communications, I had to turn my inner-scientist off for this movie. But factoring out the questionable science, I enjoyed the movie. It borders on touching — telling a story of second chances — but doesn’t become overly sentimental.