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revdorothyl at 07:41am on 10/10/2004 under movie reviews
revdorothyl at 07:41am on 10/10/2004 under movie reviewsMy parents left to drive back to Wisconsin Monday morning (having remembered to tell me, less than twenty-four hours after the fact, that they'd very much enjoyed and appreciated my preaching the day before -- that's practically instant praise in my family!), and I've been trying to get and keep my life together ever since. It was just so very, very nice to have someone around who cares about me and with whom I could talk and share meals.
I'm beginning to think that the solo life of an unofficial and unrecognized monastic may not have been the best possible choice for me, after all. Better to have joined an established monastic order, perhaps, than to have just fallen into doing it on my own, with no social credit and no one to keep me company while I'm doing it. But then, on second thought, I'm remembering that monastic orders usually involve vows of obedience, don't they?
Okay, scratch that. Mystery solved. I didn't join a monastic order because I've never been very keen on taking orders from anyone. Plus, there's the fact that I'm a Presbyterian clergywoman, and Presbyterian cloisters aren't exactly common (or even known to exist at all).
As a token gesture toward being less isolationist and possibly keeping up with the clean kitchen and clean dishes my mother left me with (first time in months -- literally! -- that I didn't have dirty dishes piled up in the kitchen sinks or even in the bathtub), I did invite my Scrabble buddy to come over to my apartment for our weekly dinner and Scrabble game on Thursday. That went okay (I even cleaned the bathroom before she came over, just in case), and I've invited her to come back next Thursday. A step forward, if only a baby step.
And I went to see two more movies this week: First Daughter and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Brief reviews follow.
--------------
First Daughter -- went to see it for Mark Blucas, mainly, and to enjoy a break from mental efforts of any kind, and was not really disappointed. Plus, there was lots of purple in the movie, and purple (especially in the lighter shades of violet and lavender, etc.) is undisputably my favorite color.
(Don't laugh! Liking the dominant color of a movie can be very important. For instance, I don't know if I'd have enjoyed First Knight as much if it hadn't been for all that wonderful use of blue and silver in the costumes and set dressing.)
Mark Blucas seemed to be playing Riley Finn if the Initiative had never messed with his body chemistry and brain, and the parallels between his romance with the first daughter in this film and Riley's rocky romance with Buffy were hard to miss (especially in the sharp sense of betrayal, upon learning that he's not really the nice, normal college boyfriend he was supposed to be -- but, then, what's so great about normal, anyway?).
In addition to Blucas as the boyfriend, First Daughter also offered several other sci-fi veterans in prominent roles -- most notably, the actress who played Lisa Wiseman (widow of John Goodman and unknowing wife of Eric Close) in the too-short-lived series Now and Again as the first lady, and Michael Keaton (darkest of the dark knights in the Batman movies to date) as the president.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow -- or, "The Incredible Plastic Movie". I was prepared to really enjoy this one, but it never really engaged me in any meaningful way. I never forgot that I was looking at a movie happening up on the screen, rather than being drawn into the characters and story. What a waste of good actors and a lot of sci-fi 'in-jokes' and tributes to movies past.
I realized something had gone rather seriously wrong with this flick when, early on, I noted with half my mind that Polly the reporter didn't really seem to be sharing the same space and time with the giant robots whose feet she was supposedly dodging (and the ripping your narrow skirt up the side so you can move more easily was much more effective when Lucy Lawless did it in "The Xena Scrolls", preparatory to kicking Ares' butt yet again, rather than when it's just a prelude to Gwyneth Paltrow running slightly less slowly in high heels between the feet of CGI mechanical monsters).
The other half of my mind was busy debating what I should make for dinner with the bay scallops I'd already defrosted at home (when you've got time and attention to write and re-write a dinner menu six times during the course of a less-than-two-hour movie, you know something's not right).
There just didn't seem to be any real sense of physical interaction between the actors and the blue screen situations they were in -- no real sense of speed or inertia when Jude Law was supposedly fighting on the back of a speeding vehicle, or of impact when a giant robot crashed close to where Paltrow was supposedly running.
I would have loved the references to Fritz Lang's Metropolis (especially the Bai Ling 'character') and to the original King Kong and the Jules-Verne-meets-Hayao-Miyazaki-esque aesthetic of the flying contraptions, plus the whole art deco patina, if only there had been a real movie in there somewhere.
------------------
It's just a good thing for me that I had my Artist's Way group meeting Friday morning (we're still calling it that, even though we're working through the second book, Walking in this World), where I could be encouraged by all the good news and positive break-throughs experienced by my friends who paint and write children's books and sing. I was ready for some good news, and not sensing a whole lot of it in my own life, just then.
However, meeting with that group reminded me that maybe being a perpetual mystic/seeker and not feeling entirely at home anywhere isn't such a bad thing. It does give me a unique and (according to my friends in the support group) occasionally valuable perspective on life.
Plus, they all insisted that I try something called a "neti pot" for my sinuses and generally rotten health so far this year, and that some B-complex vitamins with pantothenic acid and Q10 co-enzymes (or whatever they're called -- I haven't got the bottles handy) wouldn't hurt either. At this point, I'll try anything, so I guess I'll be getting myself a "neti pot".
I'm beginning to think that the solo life of an unofficial and unrecognized monastic may not have been the best possible choice for me, after all. Better to have joined an established monastic order, perhaps, than to have just fallen into doing it on my own, with no social credit and no one to keep me company while I'm doing it. But then, on second thought, I'm remembering that monastic orders usually involve vows of obedience, don't they?
Okay, scratch that. Mystery solved. I didn't join a monastic order because I've never been very keen on taking orders from anyone. Plus, there's the fact that I'm a Presbyterian clergywoman, and Presbyterian cloisters aren't exactly common (or even known to exist at all).
As a token gesture toward being less isolationist and possibly keeping up with the clean kitchen and clean dishes my mother left me with (first time in months -- literally! -- that I didn't have dirty dishes piled up in the kitchen sinks or even in the bathtub), I did invite my Scrabble buddy to come over to my apartment for our weekly dinner and Scrabble game on Thursday. That went okay (I even cleaned the bathroom before she came over, just in case), and I've invited her to come back next Thursday. A step forward, if only a baby step.
And I went to see two more movies this week: First Daughter and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Brief reviews follow.
--------------
First Daughter -- went to see it for Mark Blucas, mainly, and to enjoy a break from mental efforts of any kind, and was not really disappointed. Plus, there was lots of purple in the movie, and purple (especially in the lighter shades of violet and lavender, etc.) is undisputably my favorite color.
(Don't laugh! Liking the dominant color of a movie can be very important. For instance, I don't know if I'd have enjoyed First Knight as much if it hadn't been for all that wonderful use of blue and silver in the costumes and set dressing.)
Mark Blucas seemed to be playing Riley Finn if the Initiative had never messed with his body chemistry and brain, and the parallels between his romance with the first daughter in this film and Riley's rocky romance with Buffy were hard to miss (especially in the sharp sense of betrayal, upon learning that he's not really the nice, normal college boyfriend he was supposed to be -- but, then, what's so great about normal, anyway?).
In addition to Blucas as the boyfriend, First Daughter also offered several other sci-fi veterans in prominent roles -- most notably, the actress who played Lisa Wiseman (widow of John Goodman and unknowing wife of Eric Close) in the too-short-lived series Now and Again as the first lady, and Michael Keaton (darkest of the dark knights in the Batman movies to date) as the president.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow -- or, "The Incredible Plastic Movie". I was prepared to really enjoy this one, but it never really engaged me in any meaningful way. I never forgot that I was looking at a movie happening up on the screen, rather than being drawn into the characters and story. What a waste of good actors and a lot of sci-fi 'in-jokes' and tributes to movies past.
I realized something had gone rather seriously wrong with this flick when, early on, I noted with half my mind that Polly the reporter didn't really seem to be sharing the same space and time with the giant robots whose feet she was supposedly dodging (and the ripping your narrow skirt up the side so you can move more easily was much more effective when Lucy Lawless did it in "The Xena Scrolls", preparatory to kicking Ares' butt yet again, rather than when it's just a prelude to Gwyneth Paltrow running slightly less slowly in high heels between the feet of CGI mechanical monsters).
The other half of my mind was busy debating what I should make for dinner with the bay scallops I'd already defrosted at home (when you've got time and attention to write and re-write a dinner menu six times during the course of a less-than-two-hour movie, you know something's not right).
There just didn't seem to be any real sense of physical interaction between the actors and the blue screen situations they were in -- no real sense of speed or inertia when Jude Law was supposedly fighting on the back of a speeding vehicle, or of impact when a giant robot crashed close to where Paltrow was supposedly running.
I would have loved the references to Fritz Lang's Metropolis (especially the Bai Ling 'character') and to the original King Kong and the Jules-Verne-meets-Hayao-Miyazaki-esque aesthetic of the flying contraptions, plus the whole art deco patina, if only there had been a real movie in there somewhere.
------------------
It's just a good thing for me that I had my Artist's Way group meeting Friday morning (we're still calling it that, even though we're working through the second book, Walking in this World), where I could be encouraged by all the good news and positive break-throughs experienced by my friends who paint and write children's books and sing. I was ready for some good news, and not sensing a whole lot of it in my own life, just then.
However, meeting with that group reminded me that maybe being a perpetual mystic/seeker and not feeling entirely at home anywhere isn't such a bad thing. It does give me a unique and (according to my friends in the support group) occasionally valuable perspective on life.
Plus, they all insisted that I try something called a "neti pot" for my sinuses and generally rotten health so far this year, and that some B-complex vitamins with pantothenic acid and Q10 co-enzymes (or whatever they're called -- I haven't got the bottles handy) wouldn't hurt either. At this point, I'll try anything, so I guess I'll be getting myself a "neti pot".
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