So, I have it, thinking I couldn’t get it and now I’m reading it. What a weird experience. I am going to buy it, but I’m in this place where a good portion of the known world is waiting, waiting to read it. And I’m reading it, peacefully. I feel like I’m in an emotional stasis, waiting to see how I’ll feel during tomorrow. Some of my friends are very perturbed. They’re acting like I’m performing stem-cell research in my basement. D– pleaded with me not to read it and not to tell him until after the bar. I’m excellent at maintaining secrets, so no fear there. But still his plaintive cry made me wonder, am I Snape’s bastard?
Jul 192007
So, I got all geeked and saw Harry Potter: The Order of the Phoenix. I guess I was hoping that this film would make a book that I mostly did not like into something that I might. I was wrong, very wrong. Mind you, I do lust for Daniel Radcliffe every maturing day. I do find Imelda Staunton to be a remarkable actress. Maggie Smith, Emma Thompson, and Alan Rickman can handle their parts while sleepwalking. (I must note that Michael Gambon continues to grate my nerves with greater alacrity in each successive film.)
Is it possible to have excellent performances in a movie and still have a terrible film? In this case, yes. It’s just that the movie’s writers and director were simply not up to the task of cutting two-thirds of a novel’s content into a two-and-a-half hour film. I was feeling some form of senility while watching the film: Wait, this isn’t what happened in the book… I can’t remember exactly what it was that happened in the book, but this is wrong, I tell you, wrong! There will be some debate on whether this is as bad as the third film, but that’s a parlor game for geeks. It’s just kinda ho-hum and I felt sorry for those watching the film without having read the book since its pacing and editing is slipshod and mad-dash.
I think there were a lot of creative choices that were just stupid.
<SPOILERS>
Ms. Umbridge: What makes Ms. Umbridge one of the most memorable villains in literature (paraphrasing Stephen King) is that she is simultaneously ostentatiously well-kept, implicitly repulsive, and psychotically serene. She is also a bureaucrat, which in Rowling’s world, is evil yet entirely different from Voldemort’s. Most importantly, she hates Harry deeply and that laser-like hatred steers her arc perfectly, almost admirably, through the text. All this being said, what should not have happened in this film was the flippant way in which Harry’s “lines” are revealed and it should not have happened that all of Dumbledore’s Army were required to also write “lines” while Ms. Umbridge observes. This is a wrong-headed approach to portraying Ms. Umbridge’s nature. In the book, Harry spends most of the year being tortured by Ms. Umbridge and her lines. It is only found out very late. He isolates himself in this punishment and for the most part Ms. Umbridge reserves this punishment for Harry. This torture becomes a perverted bond between the two and I think that is one of the reasons why she is such a memorable villain. In our age, corporal punishment to children is morally wrong and this secret abuse exhibits what Rowlings wants us to think of her character extremely effectively. Making Umbridge a de facto Fascist was really a disappointment.
The shoes: You’re the director. You don’t want a children’s movie to end on a total downer. You want to lighten things up a bit with some spacey-smiled interaction with Luna. To underscore Luna’s retarded aphorisms, we see what I believe to be Luna’s shoes at the end of the film hanging from an arch. Directing 101: You should have exhibited them prominently earlier in the film (LIKE WHEN WE’RE INTRODUCED TO HER IN THE CARRIAGE AND NOT WASTE TIME TALKING ABOUT A NECKLACE!). I walked away thinking, “Why didn’t we see those ugly-ass shoes before? Seeing them now, I can tell you, I DON’T CARE ABOUT HER SHOES!
3D Effects: They were pointless. Did it make any real difference to see Harry flying at you or to have a flaming snake coming at you? Not for me, but then I’ve seen 3D effects before and the kiddies might not have.
The prophecy: Some time and thought should have gone into outlining or at least somewhat describing the prophecy’s importance. Anyone not reading the books had to be completely lost as to why it was so important to have and what was the consequence for it being shattered. Directing 101: Exhibit this discussion during the denouement speech with Dumbledore, nitwit.
The budget: After watching the HBO junket-fest, I was disappointed to see so many of the sets rehashed. I was also disappointed in seeing that damned covered cat-walk used constantly and that the catwalk is actually a giant blue-screen effect. C’mon Warner Bros, this franchise makes money like crazy. Spend a little money on appropriately needed special effects LIKE: In the book, the statues at the Ministry of Mysteries are animated during the duel. You exhibit the statues repeatedly and they just sit there! Couldn’t you borrow the same concept from the first movie to animate them? ALSO (off-topic since it’s from the last movie but I’m noticing a trend of stinginess): In the Goblet of Fire, what happened to the Sphinx and the spider in the labyrinth? Did you really have to resort to the special effects of lashing bushes from The Shining?
<END SPOILERS>
I’m sure this movie’s project was not to embitter me, but they did a magnificent job ruining my drive to see Harry Potter movies on the big screen opening day.
Jul 092007
So, I’m 197 lbs now. In April, I was 185 lbs. I really should put together some pics or something. I am proud since last year I was 200 lbs with a waistline stretching 38″. I was going through a chub phase. That was fine for football. But then football f-cked up my shoulders (the blocking guidelines are retarded). The gym fell away since my shoulders hurt terribly and I really was adrift. A good friend, T, reminded me that if I wanted to be able to help other people (like bf) I needed to take care of myself (in the name of Oprah, Reform!). It clicked and I’ve been very assiduous and disciplined in my diet, sleep, and training for the past few months. Now, I’m 197 w/34″ waist. The faint lines of the six pack are discernible in infrared light and I figure in another month or so I should be able to see them in moonlight.
What are the goals? Well, I’d like to see what 250 lbs feels like, but for now I’m shooting for a nice, solid 220 by the end of the year. Ultimately, (this fills me with dread and bewilderment simultaneously) I’m planning to compete in the Gay Games 2010 bodybuilding exhibition. It will be in Cologne, Germany–the fatherland, as it were. I will be 39, so I should be ripe for either a breakdown or midlife crisis, take your pick.
Deep Thoughts
I’ve been wrestling with this weird emotion, pride. And I am just noticing how debilitating my cynical nature is. I’ll never finish anything. I will fail. You know, the usual pep talk. This pride that I’ve only recently cultivated is extremely fragile. I don’t say anything explicitly about the discipline needed to eat, sleep and train properly, but I am pleased with my determination. I’m also pleased with the results so far. Oh, it’s not at all iron-clad and perfectly consistent, but it’s generally consistent. And when I fall down (skip a day of proper eating, taking a day off from the gym, skipping the cardio), I just get up and try again. Amazing.
My fairy princess, R, might mock me for finally squaring off with my own rampant depression (since I’ve accused her of the same), and there is probably much truth in my coping as a depressive. The weird part is that I’m starting to feel the tendrils of depression before they really grab hold. I’m a little less hysterical when I feel my obsessive-compulsiveness start to click on. I listen closely for the doomed soliloquies that will throw me into a catatonia. I’m allowed to be bored with work and still find a goal to strive for. I’m allowed to be horny and frustrated about it. I’m learning to say, “It doesn’t have to be perfect, it can’t possibly always be this bad, just try to get some of it done and see where you are in fifteen minutes, etc.” Yeah, they’re cheap affirmations but if I say them quietly enough I fool myself into deeming them profound.
Jul 082007
Apple
So, it’s been a while. I probably should be doing something productive, but rather than cry about it or castigate the effort as paltry and insufficient, I thought, why not? Everybody else is writing their tedious lives. Why can’t I? Enough with the cynicism, I just read this article exhibiting Apple’s complete product line. It made me a little sad. Turns out I used Apple right from the start and then somehow it fell apart for us after 1990. Even though I went to a university that long been affiliated with Mac, after freshmen year, I just stopped using them. The memory of my FORTRAN classes programming on a Macintosh Classic still makes me shiver. Work pulled me into the Borg consciousness of Unix and all small biz lives on Microsquish. It’s only the iPod that drew me back and that was only recently. I have very strong reservations about the iPhone and its innovations. I’m not easily enamored by form if it is mostly functionless. End-Of-Thought