Disturbia

Last night, after we saw “Disturbia,” we found a freakishly large, freakishly lime green grasshopper katydid on the roof of our car. Here’s a close-up of the little, er, big guy. I didn’t realize that they came in that size. He was a cool critter, but I was a little, uh, disturbed.

Anyway, the movie was fun. Most of the remakes-for-teen-agers that have been released in the last few years have been really, really bad. You have to go back to “Cruel Intentions” for one that worked. And that one may have worked because it was so, so wrong and so, so campy. But “Disturbia” worked, more or less. And “Rear Window” is one of my favorite movies. Despite the utter sacrilege, I liked the update/rip-off/twist of

  1. setting it in suburbia, high school, and 2007 (instead of New York, early middle-age, and the mid-1950s)
  2. putting the protagonist under house arrest (instead of a cast and a wheelchair)
  3. having a wacky Asian friend (instead a sarcastic, sexless female friend)
  4. using all the modern, though still very limited, technologies for surveillance (instead of one telephoto lens)
  5. having the very cute, very charismatic Shia LaBeouf carry the movies (instead of, ya know, the great Jimmy Stewart)

Neverthess, there were some problems. Obviously. You don’t redo one of the greatest films ever made and get off scott free! (Unless, of course, you’re Tim Burton, and it’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and your version is so, so, so much better, and anyone who thinks the creepy Gene Wilder version is “great” had too much sugar before they saw it. So there.) Yeah, so there were some problems, like

  1. the replacement of Grace Kelly with Sarah Roemer wasn’t quite so great (probably because Roemer only has a career because she looks like a teen-aged Gwyneth)
  2. the replacement of the very creepy Raymond Burr with the pretty creepy David Morse didn’t quite work (possibly because Morse’s hair was so bad)
  3. turning the wife killer into a serial killer made the situation less believable and therefore less scary (and it had “make the movie bloodier!” notes-from-a-studio-exec written all over it)
  4. allowing LaBeouf to be able to fight back instead of being truly trapped made the situation less tense and therefore less scary (and it had “give the thing more action!” notes-from-a-studio-exec written all over it)

Eh. Still, it was fun. And the several dozen teen-aged girls just loved it.

Oh, the previews were pretty good. In fact, one was just plain awesome. I can’t believe I’m saying this about a Michael Bay movie, but I cannot wait to see “Transformers” (which is another Shia LeBeouf film, and he’s been cast in the next Indian Jones film, so I guess he’s having a good year.) I also love the hilarious fanboy discourse about the movie. I love that some of them are refusing to see the movie because the Transformers aren’t going to transform the way the toys did in 1985. Well, if you’re going to go that route, why not demand that the Transformer not be able to transform unless an 8-year-old boy fumbles with its plastic parts for ten minutes. Fanboys can so, so strident.

Clearly, I’ve gone soft. It’s the suburbia. Disturbing, hunh?

(Even my prose has become cliched. Shit.)

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The Surface

I’m not sure how I managed to miss out on this video for the last six weeks. I only saw a mention to it today, when it appeared on the Yahoo! buzz list. I clicked through and found the best, so far, parody trailer I’ve yet to see. Even better than the romantic comedy version of “The Shining.” Really. It’s moments like these that I thank my lucky stars for post-modern pastiche. Anyway, here it is, my first embedded YouTube video, “Titanic 2: The Surface,” created by Derek Johnson:

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The Da Vinci Code is TRUE!

Kidding!

Rob and I saw “The Da Vinci Code” in a packed matinee in La Jolla yesterday afternoon, and, well, it was pretty boring and pretty ridiculous and not very thrilling, and it was obvious. After about a half-hour, or maybe it was three hours, whatever would be a third of the way in, I said to Rob, [SPOILER ALERT!] “She’s the grail.” And then we had to wait another day or so before Landgon had his epiphany and tells Sophie. Lordy. Anyway, Ian McKellen is awesome, of course, and Audrey Tautou was lovely and appealing. (Somehow, I never saw “Amelie,” so this was my first Tautou, as it were.) Paul Bettany, as always, was brilliant. And freaky creepy. Tom Hanks was Tom Hanks, ya know, Everyman. I did like a lot of Ron Howard’s special effecty flourishes. The plot is pretty well-known by now, but after seeing it all put together I understood why the fundies, Catholic and Protestant, are obsessed with it: For the last few weeks, the religious kids at UCSD have had banners and tables and piles of leaflets and pamphlets all devoted to how the book isn’t true, because I guess the fact that it’s a novel doesn’t make that patently obvious. I also get why any Christian with an ability to think for him/herself is pretty amused by it. I was thinking about that for a couple hours last night, and then this morning, after seeing that the movie had made a gazillion dollars, I read the great Times piece–I love real-deal anthro journalism–on the phenom…which I have hypocritically posted after the jump.
Continue…

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Some historical perspective on last night’s Debacle

I’ve decided to start referring to “Crash” winning best picture over “Brokeback Mountain” as “the Debacle.” Because I’m like that. I care wayyy too much. Anyway, there is a lot of historical precedent for the Debacle. I mean, besides institutionalized homophobia. Lots of bad movies have beaten lots of really good movies for Best Picture. But which is the worst movie to beat an awesome movie? Heh. So I made a poll. To the left. Have fun!

UPDATE:

The results:

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I hated “Crash”

I know y’all were waiting with bated breath for my column on “Crash,” which should have been posted three weeks ago. Well, it’s up. It’s a little better than I remember it being (and I was kinda worried about it because one of my professors wanted to read it) but it still needs some copy-editing. Well, beggers can’t be choosers. Anyhoo: I hated “Crash” and I’ll lose my shit if it wins Best Picture. (And I did.) One of the biggest problems the movie had is the scene from which this pic comes from. Some people seem to think this is where Matt Dillon’s character redeems himself–he may be a racist but he saved the black lady from a burning car! Um, whatever. He did his job. I’m sure he’s still a racist. And Thandie Newton is still traumatized from being sexually assaulted by Dillon in a previous scene. So: Whatev.

A wee quote:

In these movies, dramatic conflict almost always seems to revolve around racist monsters hurting good people, or good people suffering because of monstrous racism. The stories are nearly always appallingly violent; physically, socially and/or emotionally. There is usually one of two endings—either the racist loses and goodness prevails (A Time to Kill) or the conflicts in the story are resolved but the overall problem of racism is depicted as a shameful, endless system (Crash). Either way, I don’t need to see it.

So, please click and read and leave a comment. I’d like to know what everyone thinks about the movie.

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