Them Talkies Sure Are Swell!

More movies you should or should not see in your spare time.

The Bucket List
See it if you must. I mean, it was somewhat better than I expected, but I'm not about to rush out and buy it on DVD. Basically Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson are both dying (in the movie, not in real life!!! Calm down, for Pete's sake!!!) and they make a list of stuff to accomplish before they die. Or, rather, Morgan Freeman makes a list which Jack Nicholson then steals and edits to suit his own purposes. Madcap adventures ensue. We can learn several lessons from this movie:
- Don't be an ass about the way you manage your hospitals, because karma dictates that you yourself will soon be hospitalized in one of those dumps.
- Always check the weather before attempting to hike in the Himalayas.
- Men: when a woman much younger than you (and when I say "much younger" I mean "could be your granddaughter") hits on you in some random Asian bar, assume that your friend sent her.
- Ladies: if your husband has heart problems and you suddenly cannot find him, do not assume that he is "hiding." He is actually lying on the ground behind the bed convulsing just out of your frame of vision.
- When you have a terminal illness, abandoning your family to travel the world with some rando will kind of piss them off.
- Ditto for hiring guys to make your daughter's husband "disappear."

Dune
Long, confusing, and really, really weird. Jess and I only managed to make it through the movie because Jess's mom happened to be watching with us and explaining all the plot points (if, in fact, there actually were any). The basic idea, I guess, was that that in the deserts of Arrackis there is some kind of valuable spice and that interplanetary economy and politics were controlled by the mining thereof. I think that's what it was, anyway. And then there was...Paul. And he had dreams that were actually visions. And the bad guys (led by Sting and Creepy Fat Guy) killed his father...or, no, wait. Somebody (the Traitor...with a capital T) implanted a fake tooth in Paul's dad's head so he could kill the bad guy leader (aka Creepy Fat Guy) by biting down on it and blowing the poison inside said fake tooth (because who wants a fake tooth if it's not full of poisonous gases?) into the bad guy's face, thus killing him. However, Paul's dad, being apparently not the brightest bulb in the bunch, blows the poison into the face of the bad guy's minion, not the leader, thus pissing the bad guy off even more but not accomplishing much else other than that. (Seriously, Paul's Dad, what kind of leader are you that you can't even tell the difference between your arch enemy and his minion?! Really?!)

Anyway, Paul has been creepily dreaming about some girl, and he finally meets her and is all, "I've dreeeeeeamed about you (creepily)!" And the girl's all, "Really? Sweet. Let's make out." Meanwhile, her tribe or whatever makes Paul's pregnant mom their leader, she gives birth, and they ask Paul and his mother to teach them "the Weirding Way," not necessarily in that order. (Apparently, Paul and his mom are of Weirding descent, which is I guess some sort of race or ethnicity or something, and they have special powers. Can I just say though - the Weirding Way? Really?!) Anyway, Paul's sister is creepy and her facial features glow blue, which is - sadly enough - probably the least creepy thing about her. Seriously, I'm going to have a nightmare about her one of these days.

But yeah. Oh, I forgot to mention that Paul has managed to defeat/control the giant sandworms (think those giant sandworms in Beetlejuice) that live in the desert and prevent the easy acquisition of that pesky spice. (I italicize "spice" because that's how everyone always said it in the movie, with a really obvious emphasis, in case the audience hadn't yet realized that the spice was important to the movie.) I also forgot that every time any character had a thought, it was represented by a close-up of their face and an intense whispering voiceover.

But after speaking to other people in their heads for awhile (because that's the Weirding Way, natch), Paul, his mom, and his creepy sister manage to defeat the bad guys and make it rain on the planet Arrackis, which was apparently the goal all along (or not...? It's hard to tell. Plus I was pretty tired by that point.).

This movie literally changed my life. For example, using Arrackis as a metaphor for a middle eastern country like, oh, Iraq, I surmised that someday our crazy competition over the resources (the oil) there will lead to interplanetary--or at least international--warfare (oh, wait...). I also learned that whispering your thoughts in a very intense, urgent manner is always amusing. Jessalyn and I spent a good while practicing our own version of the Weirding Way:
Jess: Wow, I'm tired.
Me: I wonder what I'll have for lunch tomorrow.
Jess: I don't understand this movie.
Me: What exactly is "the Weirding Way?"

And so on. And then we imdb'd it and were amazed at its moderately good rating. Crazy stuff, man. Crazy stuff.

Roman Holiday
Ever since I saw To Kill A Mockingbird, I've loved Gregory Peck. My one question about Roman Holiday is this: WHY DID I WAIT SO LONG TO SEE IT?!

Gregory Peck = LOVE. I only wish I'd been born like 70 years earlier.

Splendor in the Grass
As much as I love Gregory Peck in Roman Holiday (or, okay, anything), that's how much I hated Bud's dad. My hatred for him is rivaled only by my hatred for Deanie's manipulative psycho-bitch of a mother. I hated her even more than Bud's dad, who earned points with me when he threw himself off a building. I spent most of the movie yelling "SHUT UP!!!" at the screen whenever either he or Mrs. Loomis was present.

Other than that, Splendor in the Grass was all right. It's one of Mich's favorite movies, and I will admit that Warren Beatty was quite the looker back in the day, and that Natalie Wood really has the whole "crazy eyes" thing down pat. It was okay, I thought. Not my new favorite (sorry, Mich), but okay.

Rachel Getting Married
It was good. It would have been better if it had been about 20 minutes shorter--there was way too much uninteresting footage of extras dancing around, etc., but the movie really made you feel excited, like you were one of the wedding guests, and Anne Hathaway's performance was incredible. It was such a different role for her, and I hope to see her in other interesting roles (ie, not the cookie-cutter good-girl princessy roles she's been wont to play in the past...the Princess Diaries, Ella Enchanted, etc. I am excluding Brokeback Mountain, of course, but she was only a background player there.)

Anyway, the movie's billed, I believe, as a "dark comedy," but it's definitely a drama. I didn't really laugh, but I definitely cried. And not just because I had a giant blister on my foot from using the walk to the movie theatre to break in my new boots.

Girl With A Pearl Earring
Yes, I finally saw it!!! Colin Firth was as sexy as sin, but other than that it was nothing special. I didn't really pay attention, to tell you the truth. The cinematography wasn't bad, but all in all the movie wasn't anything to write home about.

Little Miss Sunshine
I know, everyone and their mom has already seen this, but I finally got around to watching it over winter break--and it was nothing like I'd expected. It was funny, heartbreaking, touching, etc., etc., etc. If you haven't seen it yet, do it. Do it now.

The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice
Ridiculous. It involved Noah Wyle going around like an Indiana Jones knockoff, being all, "Hello, ladies, I'm a librarian."
Ladies: SWOON!!!

No, seriously. And he was trying to stop some sort of evil plot involving (you guessed it) the Judas chalice, the chalice Christ supposedly drank from at the last supper. And he's helped by some French chick who turns out to be - gasp! - a vampire! Just like the bad guy! Just like his minions! And just like Judas (allegedly). And then they got betrayed by someone - I don't remember who - and then at the end Noah Wyle's vampire lover kills herself by sitting with him on a bench at sunrise (which incinerates her, for those who aren't up on their vampire lore).

And there was a guy who kept calling Noah Wyle "Mistah Pro-fessah Man," which was demeaning on so many levels. Come on, now, people.

And I think that's about it...for now.

A Crime of Italics

I promised Mich I'd finish reading my stuff for religion class, but this is just ridiculous. The author of this very boring manifesto on cosmology is very fond of using long, flowery words with no dictionary definitions. (Words like "hierophany," for example. WTF does that mean? Why will you not explain, O Crazy Writer?!)

But that's not the most annoying bit. Oh no, that honor goes to the author's apparent obsession with italics, especially italics that make no sense. I'm quite sure that I've gone through entire books that were effective, clear, and direct without using italics AT ALL. So why does this author feel the need to italicize not only random words, but entire sentences?! It's indescribably annoying. But, hey, maybe it's fun to do. Let's try it out, shall we?

Today is Tuesday. This morning I woke up at quarter of ten because I didn't have class until two in the afternoon. Thus, I got to sleep in (you know you're totally jealous). I went to the gym but I'm so incredibly out of shape from all the eating I did over break that I wussed out after twenty minutes on the bike. I took a shower and met my two favorite on-campus Michelles for lunch at Collis. At two I went to class. After, I just hung around at home.

See?! Isn't that ANNOYING?!?! The worst part is that I'm not even exaggerating. It's that bad.

But I still need to finish, as "excessive italics" is not a valid excuse for failing to do the reading.

Right?