Thursday, August 26, 2004

Film: two tidbits

First off, Master and Commander: Far Side of the World must be the most overrated movie ever. The giant tortoises the crew sees on the Galapagos Islands can waddle faster than the movie's plot develops. And not to be heartless, but I couldn't give a shit when anybody died. Seriously, I saw Dodgeball last night, and I think those characters were much more loveable. The only bright spot in MaC:FSotW is Paul Bettany as the ship's surgeon/naturalist. Unlike in A Beautiful Mind, Russell Crowe's character is so flat and devoid of any appreciable human conflict (wah! wah! i have to show the men discipline!) that Bettany's character overwhelms him. For more fun w/ Bettany, you might want to check out his performance as Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight's Tale, by no means a great piece of cinema, but an underrated comedy at least.

Second, a group of scientists polled chose Blade Runner as the best sci-fi movie ever. Great call. Blade Runner is Ridley Scott and Harrison Ford at their best, and so many movies before and after have emulated the theme (including other renditions of Philip K. Dick fiction), and failed evoke the so-near-but-so-far-away presence of barely-futurisic BR Los Angeles.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes! we finally agree. blade runner is the best! and i've seen master & commander. what a sausage fest that was. there was one chick in the entire movie, total screen time probably 5 seconds. i want my money back.

mikey

Garrett said...

dude, i can't remember any chicks at all... must have conked out somewhere in there. i don't know why i was expecting more out of that movie. apparently in the book, the Acheron (prolly called something else) is an American vessel, but they didn't want to have the Americans being the bad guys, so in the movie, it's French.