Blind Prophecy

It’s been a big movie weekend. Last Thursday I went to movie night in the park at Mission Dolores where they promised a screening of either Dial M for Murder or the original House of Wax based on audience applause-o-meter. The crowd chose Dial M for Murder and I got bored after twenty minutes and went home. It was too crowded anyway.

On Friday I went straight from work to Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Will it be winning any Oscars? No. But it was better than the first. What I really appreciated about it was that the story stayed more true to the original comic book source material than any other Marvel movie in this recent age of comic book movies (post X-Men). Unforunately, they didn’t stick with that pattern on Galactus. Instead of a huge purple guy with tuning forks on his head (or even a swarm of robotic life forms as seen in the Ultimate series), Galactus was a huge cloud of energy that resembled the death-of-your-firstborn plague in The Ten Commandments, only bigger.

Where the concept of sticking to the original source material fell flat, however, was in the characterizations of the team. I’m a big fan of my modern-day FF, where Sue is a bit more empowered, more intelligent, and… well, more modern. Movie!Sue, however, is more like the 60s comic version, the “heart” of the team who worried about “girly” things like her perfect wedding and looks very much like a damsel in distress (even when she can create a forcefield inside someone’s body and make it expand until they explode). But the entire movie literally hinges on a platitude from Susan–as the mother and “heart” of the team, she is the first to see the Silver Surfer as something other than an enemy and importantly tells him “There’s Always a Choice” ::bats eyes:: ::thrust boobs forward::

Unlike the Spider-man movies, where character development was central to the plot, FF:RotSS was almost devoid of character growth. Ben Grimm had none. Seriously, none. Same guy going into and coming out of the movie. I’m not even sure he uttered an “It’s Clobberin’ Time!” because he had nothing to do in this film. Johnny figures out that maybe monogamy ain’t so bad, Reed learns an important lesson about being a team, and Sue figures out that they have a responsibility to the world. Doom makes an appearance to be a pain-in-the-ass, but mostly he shows up so that everyone will know why he’s at large in the inevitable third movie.

And the movie contains the absolute worst product placement ever! Seriously, never in my life have I seen a more clunky, less organic piece of advertising smuggled into a film. At the big reveal of the Fantasticar, the camera awkwardly pans down to the hood where we get the “Dodge” logo. Then Johnny asks “HEMI?” and Reed replies, “Of course.” SERIOUSLY? Okay, let’s forget the fact that it’s a hovercraft/spaceship capable of splitting into three seperate ships (which, surely, doesn’t run on a fuel-burning internal combustion engine)… but Reed Richards is (as he puts it) one of the greatest minds on Earth. Frankly, the science behind the Fantasticar should be so far ahead of HEMI that it would be like looking at a Hybrid and asking “How many horses d’ya figure it’ll take that pull that thing?”

Despite all that, I really did enjoy the movie. It was fun, had more clever one-liners in classic comic book style than Spider-man 3 (which was my biggest complaint about S-m3, the lack of Peter Parker quips) and some great action sequences. There are better comic book movies being made these days, but there are also many worse ones (::koff:: ::mumbles”Elektra”:: ::koff::)

After FF:RotSS, I met up with the usual gang plus their friends Matt and Vanessa for drinks on upper Haight. The girls and I sat at one end of the bar talking about boys and broadway and stuff; the boys sat at the other end of the group and drank a lot and acted silly.

On Saturday, I went to a neighborhood cafe and tried to study for the LSAT. Didn’t do very well with the studying (it was too cold and crowded). Later that evening, Jennifer and Daniel and I went to see Paprika. I wasn’t blown away by the animation as the hype tried to suggest, but it was an interesting story told in a visually appealing way. I just don’t think I’d see it again.

On Sunday, Jen was heading to the office and we met up for brunch. We went shopping for a few minutes after that before finding a cafe again and this time I did study. For several hours, actually. Logic puzzles hurt my brain, although the ones hurting my brain were at the end of the chapter and were meant to be very, very difficult. This is why I’m studying now, even though the test in 6 months away, because even following along with the book’s explanation, I still didn’t get it all. (What, how did you reach that deduction? That contrapositive makes no sense! etc.) Anyway, I was still sitting in the same place Jen left me (although, with three more Mocha Lattes in me) when she called ot invite me out to dinner at El Toro with Ken and Jenna and Daniel. We finished the night with a few drinks at the Latin American Club in the Mission.

I spent what was left of my weekend downloading music (i.e. the London Cast of the new Mary Poppins musical, some songs by Michael Arden of Bare, and some songs by Jay Brannan of Shortbus).

So far, I only know of one friend from my pre-San Francisco life coming into town for Pride this weekend, so if anyone else is headed this way, drop me a note so I know you’re coming!

Filed under: livejournal, movies by Jere Keys