Journal

300. But who’s counting?

23 Comments

Okay, I’ve now been “friended” 300 times. Where’s my free toaster?

In unrelated news, I saw “The Manchurian Candidate” last night. Dark, twisty, and moody. The straight-on filming of faces was creepy — it made you part of a reality you really don’t want to take any part in.

Regarding the rating: There’s R-rated violence that desensitizes us, like the shoot-em-ups in True Lies or Total Recall (a pair of Governator films I really enjoyed), and then there’s violence that heightens our sensitivity, reminding us that life is precious and OW OW OW BE CAREFUL WITH THAT. This movie has the second kind of R-rated violence.

Wanna know how it ends? So did I.

–Howard

23 thoughts on “300. But who’s counting?”

  1. Howard, just get Kevin to make you something with the fabber.

    Look, a toaster. And thanks for the mini-review. I’m now even more determined to go see the movie now.

    1. Be very careful. Kevin is probably a literalist. Say something like

      “Make me a toaster with the fabber.”

      And he may well interpret that as ‘turn me into a toaster’.

      Oooh. It just occurred to me that (if the fabber isn’t destroyed in the current episode), then having a situation where the good doctor has to reprogram the thing for emergency battlefield surgery will have it installing toasters into people…

        1. I haven’t seen it, so I won’t comment. I’m more sad on principle about the plague of remakes than about any one movie in particular.

        2. “Remake” doesn’t do this film justice. It’s, in my opinion, a considerably different film than the original, and quite a bit more powerful.

          –Howard

      2. Yep. Unfortunately catching the original in theatres is kinda hard to do these days. I love those 60’s-ish era cold war-ish movies. Maybe I should make a game based on them, been way too long since I made an RPG …

      3. This is one of the things about being several thousand kilometres away from the lot of you; the MPAA’s markting machine won’t kick into gear for this for a little while yet.

        1. Which is why P2P is so successful … it fills a need the MPAA could very well fill themselves, but won’t do. If they did, they wouldn’t have to push for draconian laws to try to protect their outdated business model. Seriously, most people I know who download, download because they can’t get stuff any other way; they all own hundreds of DVD’s, collector’s editions, boxed sets etc., and usually buy stuff they’ve downloaded as well. Unless it’s cruft of course …

          1. But that’s the problem – if it’s cruft, you won’t buy it… and the MPAA won’t let you get away with not buying something because it’s awful. No, they’ll have you buy it (ideally) in order to find out you’d rather not have bought it in the first place. That way, they get paid.

            The other option is to make money off downloads, or else to make fewer movies that suck… but that’d put them out of their pools and their jets and their resorts. 😛

  5. I know exactly what you mean about the Manchurian Candidate. This is probably the best performace I’ve seen Denzel Washington put on yet, and he simply contributed to a magnificent whole.

  7. I knwo how the movie ends!

    With credits!

    …I agree with what you said about the violence in this movie – there were only a few instances of violence (well, relative to an action flick, maybe) and they were all incredibly powerful. I guess a lot of it was that every instance of violence meant something.

    I have to admit, I was actually worried about sleeping well, that night.

  9. I really wish I knew which number I was!

    It’s funny, the only people I stalk (have on my friends list but am not on theirs) are webcomic people. One girl who I added started a comic shortly aftwerwards.

    I’m eager to see Manchurian Candidate after seeing the original. I think that this more than any remake will strike a chord with a crowd by not just retelling a story but completely modernizing it.

    I would have seen the movie by now but we went to a the theater with Brooke, the only one amongst us who wasn’t excited about I Robot or Manchurian Candidate. We put the choice to her and when she was undecided I put it to her this way,
    “Who’s cuter, Denzel or Will Smith.”
    We went to I Robot.

    Interesting follow up, I overheard last night at AvP that the I Robot role was written for Denzel and that all of Smith’s acting in it was a Denzel impression.

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