This being the first week I’ve had the house to myself, it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride being able to take advantage of watching movies without headphones and rising & shining to a movie on the bedroom TV. Plenty of little hiccups have been getting in my way of bachelor-nirvana, but I think I’ve finally got my head in the game and I’m ready for next week’s barrage of new TV shows. Anyways, here’s my summary of the week so far.
The Good
I got struck with an odd movie craving, which are the most important ones to follow because they take you to unexpected places, so I started off the week in Zombieland (although I didn’t actually watch Zombieland). As soon as I got home from work I finally sat down to watch my blu-ray copy of 28 Days Later. While it might seem like a bit of a gyp since it’s a 1080 format presentation of a film that was shot in DV, there’s more to a blu-ray than HD picture (like the beefy audio, and vast array of features). Love this movie, and I love it for so many reasons too: Danny Boyle, Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, soundtrack, desolate London, crazy photography, fast-moving zombies. When I was done with that I moved on to Shaun of the Dead, which I hadn’t watched in years, but figured I should revisit if I’m going to be moving Edgar Wright over to the “Favourite Director” shelf of my collection. As I’ve become more indoctrinated into British movies, and Wright’s style as well, SotD is even better now than the first time I saw it. So much fun, and with both of these, it’s more “zombie lite” with tweaks on the usual storyline and sprinkles of other genres to make ‘em special. I thought about moving on to Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, but I just didn’t have the strength to go on.
The Bad
The True Blood season finale was a major disappointment, with creator Alan Ball back in the saddle, deciding to write in a whole bunch of new subplots into the last hour of the season. For some reason he thought it would be a good idea to seize the reins at the end of the year and set up a whole bunch of cliffhangers for things we don’t care about. It’s tricky to be specific without spoiling anything, but at least let me say that I’m no longer sure it was a good idea to keep Lafayette around past season 1. It’s the first time I’ve actually been turned off watching a subsequent season after watching a season finale. Smarten up, Mr. Ball!
The Ugly
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1. The Ugly:
I would also feel bad for saying no to a talented actress like Gemma Arterton. At the same time, I’m not surprised by your verdict. In fact, I’m usually disappointed by films based on video games for reasons because of their focus on the eye-candies (i.e. action scenes, special/visual effects, etc.).
2. The Bad:
Even though True Blood is on my “to watch” list, I still haven’t seen it.
3. The Good:
I saw 28 Days Later about a year ago and I like most people, I loved it. Before watching it, I wasn’t really turned on by the film because I’ve always been under the impression that zombie films just show gory scenes for the sake of it. Hopefully, it wasn’t the case for 28 Days Later. In fact, the use of zombies by Boyle serves as a metaphor that brilliantly looks at how a catastrophe can bring to the surface people’s good qualities (i.e. generosity, team spirit, etc.) as well the bad ones (greed, self-interest, etc.).
1. I don’t know why it’s been so hard to adapt video games. You’d think the movie industry would be dedicating more attention to getting it right, considering how much of a bite video games are taking out of their revenues.
2. Season 2 of True Blood was great and most of Season 3 was great too – from all indications it looks like Season 4 might fall flat on his face.
3. If you liked the way that 28 Days Later put a mirror up to society, you should really check out Blindness. Although, knowing your Canadian proclivities, you probably already have.
“Why did Jake Gyllenhaal waste so much time making this movie? He could have made 2 or 3 great independent films in the time he spent on this”
Uh money?
Wait a second. They get to be in movies and they get paid too? Sign me up!
A bunch of us TIFF-going folk were just talking about 28 DAYS LATER the other night. We were going on about how it was written by Alex Garland – the author who wrote the novel for the book and has just written the screenplay for NEVER LET ME GO. It’s been a little too long since I watched it, but I’d wager it’s horror and tension still holds up quite nicely.
Good call on a movie night pick!
C’mon, Prince of Persia is far from good, but turnoffable? Even I, a Bruckhater (woohoo, coined a phrase…maybe) was nowhere near that line of thinking with it. And I watched that POS 44 Inch Chest (for you, no less) all the way through.
Yeah, but you made your way through 44 Inch Chest either because you promised us you would, or because you thought it might actually be going somewhere. I had neither of the same suspicions when it came to Prince of Persia.
Ha..ha… yeah, like Castor said, a dump truck full of moolah definitely have something to do with Jake in PoP. But rumor has it he wanted a ‘superhero’ type role, but with so many to choose from, he chose THIS one??
Btw, I included this post on my Everybody’s Chattin’ series, good one Steve!
Thanks for that! This post was an easy one to write ’cause it was pretty off the cuff, sitting on the couch in between movies. Less is more sometimes, I guess.
Jake must have been thinking he was going to get the Captain Jack Sparrow treatment from this film, which is the only explanation for how much of himself went into some of the ridiculous scenes in this film. I think he offered too much trust to his director (and his pocketbook) on this one.