walkingshadow (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
walkingshadow) wrote2005-07-28 03:56 am
walkingshadow) wrote2005-07-28 03:56 am
I like reality. It tastes of bread.
Parents and I saw Charlie and Chocolate Factory on . . . huh. Um, Sunday? Maybe? I know there are people (e.g. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
synchronik) who hated it and articulated why, which is great, because my mother and my cousin M. loved it, and I would have wondered at my own sanity and taste if I'd been the only one who thought it was horrifyingly awful. Embarrassingly awful. Points at which I was embarrassed for the movie: whenever the Oompa Loompa songs passed the 1:30 mark; the stare-into-space, wavy-image fades into the flashbacks; and almost every time Johnny Depp opened his mouth. I like Johnny Depp. I am convinced of the depth and power of his acting skills. I have no idea what he was doing here, or why. It was as if he purposely created a weak character—one who spoke weakly, moved meekly, and acted diffidently on uncertain motives—and then Tim Burton made him the focus of the film. Depp could have ditched the makeup and the haircut, kept the suit and the hat, deepened his voice, grown up twenty years, stopped smoking up, and played it relatively straight to make a really good Wonka, mysterious and ambiguous and slightly creepy. Of all the ways he could have played it, why in the world would they have chosen this one?
The flashbacks were so bad in both idea and execution that I'm at a loss to explain their presence. First of all, this is not a story that reaches backward. It sets us up in the present, and then we spend our time either redeeming or damning the characters and looking to the future. Not only that, but to give Willy Wonka a backstory to explain the daddy issues that drove him into the candy-making business flies in the face of one of the explicit messages of the film, namely "Candy doesn't have to have a point—that's why it's candy." But the execution! The man literally gazed into the middle distance while his image went wavy and melted into the next scene. And then he shook himself out of it like it had been precipitated by a weakness for LSD in his misspent adolescence rather than the fulfillment of a bizarre plot device. And since the flasbacks had nothing to do with anything that was happening onscreen, they broke up the film so thoroughly that the action came to a grinding halt every time we flitted to Willy's sugar-free childhood, and had to be coaxed into starting up again when we got back to the factory. It felt like two unrelated movies spliced together. The pacing, overall, sucked. See again: the Oompa Loompa songs. Deep Roy as every Oompa Loompa was clever and successful, but the production numbers were so wildly over the top and went on so long while even the characters looked bored that I seriously start to wonder if they shot all the prologue scenes and the factory scenes, ended up with about thirty minutes of edited film, and had to pad the balance.
And then—it didn't end. Instead Willy Wonka went fucking soul-searching (he actually lies on a couch and babbles at an Oompa-Loompa; Charlie is nowhere in evidence—I thought this was his movie?) and had to have his teeth examined by Christopher Lee before Charlie could inherit the factory and everyone could live happily ever after blah blah. Wonka is so self-absorbed that not only doesn't he care about Charlie or his family, but he doesn't even seem too interested in candy. His presence isn't nearly strong enough to suggest he owns and manages a candy empire—or that he's particularly invested in or attached to the factory itself—and any talk of his candy inventions feels forced and recited.
Did anyone else keep getting distracted by the force of Johnny Depp's five o'clock shadow?
I will say the movie looked a whole lot better than it actually was: the colors were vivid and appropriate, from the verdant field by the chocolate river to the pure white of the television room; Charlie's house was perfectly, hyperbolically ramshackle; and the sets were fantastic, both city and factory. The boat was great, but Wonka missed a great song cue while he was off in Daddy-never-let-me-rot-my-teeth Land. In conclusion: could have been a radical and interesting reinterpretation but instead almost makes me want my money back.
*
I've started working out again regularly (three times in the last four days) and if there are ten kinds of awesome, I feel them ALL. My body remembers the health club, and I started feeling perky and healthy and self-righteous as soon as I'd started the elliptical machine going, before I'd even worked up a sweat. The bloodmobile was parked outside last night, so I got to donate for the first time in a while. Juice and cookies and an extra-large t-shirt, your basic haul.
*
My mother did end up having to move classrooms, I don't know if I said, so my dad and I have been helping out, packing and transporting boxes and then setting things up as directed. It's utter crap, but hopefully she won't be moving again (current count is seven times in fourteen years) until retirement. We have all crossed our fingers and toes. Teachers go back to work next Monday and the new school year starts the week after that. My parents never made it to a vacation this summer, but my mom is talking very seriously about two weeks in Tuscany next June. I don't think I've been invited.
*
I've raved already about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and "Details of the War" right? Would anyone like to help me decipher the lyrics? I've listened very carefully fourteen million times, but I can't make it all out. Here is a yousendit link: Details of the War. It has harmonica! And I'm convinced it's the theme song of Major John Sheppard and the Story of His Life. You be the judge?
ETA:
Bloody sheets, tenderly she moves me
An opera star, dying hard for love
Say I'm hurt, I will take your word
Leather pants, happiness
A hundred dollars, buy success
Hanging with your fashionable whores
And I'm a wounded bird, I will take your word
You and Tom to the prom
Camel dick, crucifix
Everyone's the same and on and on
Emerging from the football stands
Clinging to his broken hand
It's over, I have seen it all before
Nakedness, flying lessons
Tattered dress, sunburned chest
You will pay for your excessive charm
With a boy who knows less than he thinks
Drinks up his expensive drinks
Be careful with the details of the war
(cue harmonica omg)
Speaking of John Sheppard,rageprufrock posted Chapter 2 of Hindsight (John thinks, why do the crazy ones always imprint on me?) and I love John an absurd amount. ABSURD.
*
I shared a metaphor for life with my parents the other day. My father's very—well, not helpful, but certainly earnest about helping me find a direction in life and meaningful, gainful employment, but all his job models are business models, office models, and I keep trying to explain why the idea of traditional office jobs sap my will to live. So the other night, in the kitchen while my mom was preparing dinner and declining to help me articulate my feelings, I told them about the epiphany I'd had one day in a History of the American West lecture:
We debunked a lot of mythology in that class, deeply ingrained false histories of rugged individualism and the spirit of the pioneers and go West, young man, because the West was defined largely by corporations: corporate-owned ranches, farms, railroads, mines, etc. Even within an industry itself—a mine, for example—the support staff is huge: people to oversee the workers, people to hire and fire workers, bureaucrats to pray over paper, accountants to tabulate the money, security to watch the goods, management to ensure the transfer of product and payment. And each of those industries spurs the growth and proliferation of service industries: restaurants, hotels, brothels and theaters, banks and law enforcement (and the history of development in the American West is largely the history of urban development, crowded city streets with nothingness stretching between them), spiraling out into a bigger and bigger community, with the result that very few people anymore are down in the mines getting their hands dirty and their backs broken. And I want to work in the mines.
I'm fascinated by distillation. I don't really buy into the celebrity cult of personality, so I had a conversation once withgjstruthseeker about the phenomenon of, for example, Justin Timberlake. This was at the height of Justified, and I remember expressing bemusement that all the mega-stardom, the magazine covers, world-tour, bells-and-whistles arena concerts, etc., etc., all boiled down essentially to thirteen tracks of music. I care about the music, I know, I know—if I were old I'd be showing my age. But that's what I'm concerned with, the nugget at the core, the source. Whatever is being done, I want to be doing. In the doctor's office I worked in last summer, there was one doctor and fourteen staff, fifteen people making the office run. I am the doctor, not the staff. And it isn't that I want a staff: I'm as happy not giving orders as I am not taking them. But I don't do support very well. I am not your number two; I am not your right hand. As for what this means in terms of meaningful, gainful employment? I don't know. I don't need to get my hands dirty, necessarily, but I do need something to sink my hands into, deep, deep.
*
And while we're on the subject of future plans, S. and I got together yet again for GRE self-flagellation (again: I rock at geometry but not arithmetic; my Algebra II teacher warned us sometime before our first test of the year that most of the mistakes we would make would be careless errors, and that is the life I am living). But the best part of the day was when I ventured into the test-prep section to fetch us a book with practice tests we could practice on, and on the shelf behind me I found VOCABULARY NOVELS. Sparknotes makes them, and they are seriously the best things ever: 1,000 common SAT words stuffed into a YA novel! The novels are so bad (sample titles: Busted, Vampire Dreams, Sun-Kissed), and often include meta- vocabulary study (the characters are studying for the SAT too!), and they are the best argument against testing low-frequency vocabulary words, because they stand out like sore thumbs in the narrative, clashing badly with the otherwise super-casual tone and word choice. In terms of test-prep though, the idea is a great one, getting your vocab review in an easily-accessible context; the fact that they're unintentionally (unintentionally? let's assume so) HILARIOUS is just icing on the cake. S. and I broke up our study session with dramatic readings and laughed ourselves sick.
synchronik) who hated it and articulated why, which is great, because my mother and my cousin M. loved it, and I would have wondered at my own sanity and taste if I'd been the only one who thought it was horrifyingly awful. Embarrassingly awful. Points at which I was embarrassed for the movie: whenever the Oompa Loompa songs passed the 1:30 mark; the stare-into-space, wavy-image fades into the flashbacks; and almost every time Johnny Depp opened his mouth. I like Johnny Depp. I am convinced of the depth and power of his acting skills. I have no idea what he was doing here, or why. It was as if he purposely created a weak character—one who spoke weakly, moved meekly, and acted diffidently on uncertain motives—and then Tim Burton made him the focus of the film. Depp could have ditched the makeup and the haircut, kept the suit and the hat, deepened his voice, grown up twenty years, stopped smoking up, and played it relatively straight to make a really good Wonka, mysterious and ambiguous and slightly creepy. Of all the ways he could have played it, why in the world would they have chosen this one?The flashbacks were so bad in both idea and execution that I'm at a loss to explain their presence. First of all, this is not a story that reaches backward. It sets us up in the present, and then we spend our time either redeeming or damning the characters and looking to the future. Not only that, but to give Willy Wonka a backstory to explain the daddy issues that drove him into the candy-making business flies in the face of one of the explicit messages of the film, namely "Candy doesn't have to have a point—that's why it's candy." But the execution! The man literally gazed into the middle distance while his image went wavy and melted into the next scene. And then he shook himself out of it like it had been precipitated by a weakness for LSD in his misspent adolescence rather than the fulfillment of a bizarre plot device. And since the flasbacks had nothing to do with anything that was happening onscreen, they broke up the film so thoroughly that the action came to a grinding halt every time we flitted to Willy's sugar-free childhood, and had to be coaxed into starting up again when we got back to the factory. It felt like two unrelated movies spliced together. The pacing, overall, sucked. See again: the Oompa Loompa songs. Deep Roy as every Oompa Loompa was clever and successful, but the production numbers were so wildly over the top and went on so long while even the characters looked bored that I seriously start to wonder if they shot all the prologue scenes and the factory scenes, ended up with about thirty minutes of edited film, and had to pad the balance.
And then—it didn't end. Instead Willy Wonka went fucking soul-searching (he actually lies on a couch and babbles at an Oompa-Loompa; Charlie is nowhere in evidence—I thought this was his movie?) and had to have his teeth examined by Christopher Lee before Charlie could inherit the factory and everyone could live happily ever after blah blah. Wonka is so self-absorbed that not only doesn't he care about Charlie or his family, but he doesn't even seem too interested in candy. His presence isn't nearly strong enough to suggest he owns and manages a candy empire—or that he's particularly invested in or attached to the factory itself—and any talk of his candy inventions feels forced and recited.
Did anyone else keep getting distracted by the force of Johnny Depp's five o'clock shadow?
I will say the movie looked a whole lot better than it actually was: the colors were vivid and appropriate, from the verdant field by the chocolate river to the pure white of the television room; Charlie's house was perfectly, hyperbolically ramshackle; and the sets were fantastic, both city and factory. The boat was great, but Wonka missed a great song cue while he was off in Daddy-never-let-me-rot-my-teeth Land. In conclusion: could have been a radical and interesting reinterpretation but instead almost makes me want my money back.
*
I've started working out again regularly (three times in the last four days) and if there are ten kinds of awesome, I feel them ALL. My body remembers the health club, and I started feeling perky and healthy and self-righteous as soon as I'd started the elliptical machine going, before I'd even worked up a sweat. The bloodmobile was parked outside last night, so I got to donate for the first time in a while. Juice and cookies and an extra-large t-shirt, your basic haul.
*
My mother did end up having to move classrooms, I don't know if I said, so my dad and I have been helping out, packing and transporting boxes and then setting things up as directed. It's utter crap, but hopefully she won't be moving again (current count is seven times in fourteen years) until retirement. We have all crossed our fingers and toes. Teachers go back to work next Monday and the new school year starts the week after that. My parents never made it to a vacation this summer, but my mom is talking very seriously about two weeks in Tuscany next June. I don't think I've been invited.
*
I've raved already about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and "Details of the War" right? Would anyone like to help me decipher the lyrics? I've listened very carefully fourteen million times, but I can't make it all out. Here is a yousendit link: Details of the War. It has harmonica! And I'm convinced it's the theme song of Major John Sheppard and the Story of His Life. You be the judge?
ETA:
Bloody sheets, tenderly she moves me
An opera star, dying hard for love
Say I'm hurt, I will take your word
Leather pants, happiness
A hundred dollars, buy success
Hanging with your fashionable whores
And I'm a wounded bird, I will take your word
You and Tom to the prom
Camel dick, crucifix
Everyone's the same and on and on
Emerging from the football stands
Clinging to his broken hand
It's over, I have seen it all before
Nakedness, flying lessons
Tattered dress, sunburned chest
You will pay for your excessive charm
With a boy who knows less than he thinks
Drinks up his expensive drinks
Be careful with the details of the war
(cue harmonica omg)
Speaking of John Sheppard,
rageprufrock posted Chapter 2 of Hindsight (John thinks, why do the crazy ones always imprint on me?) and I love John an absurd amount. ABSURD.*
I shared a metaphor for life with my parents the other day. My father's very—well, not helpful, but certainly earnest about helping me find a direction in life and meaningful, gainful employment, but all his job models are business models, office models, and I keep trying to explain why the idea of traditional office jobs sap my will to live. So the other night, in the kitchen while my mom was preparing dinner and declining to help me articulate my feelings, I told them about the epiphany I'd had one day in a History of the American West lecture:
We debunked a lot of mythology in that class, deeply ingrained false histories of rugged individualism and the spirit of the pioneers and go West, young man, because the West was defined largely by corporations: corporate-owned ranches, farms, railroads, mines, etc. Even within an industry itself—a mine, for example—the support staff is huge: people to oversee the workers, people to hire and fire workers, bureaucrats to pray over paper, accountants to tabulate the money, security to watch the goods, management to ensure the transfer of product and payment. And each of those industries spurs the growth and proliferation of service industries: restaurants, hotels, brothels and theaters, banks and law enforcement (and the history of development in the American West is largely the history of urban development, crowded city streets with nothingness stretching between them), spiraling out into a bigger and bigger community, with the result that very few people anymore are down in the mines getting their hands dirty and their backs broken. And I want to work in the mines.
I'm fascinated by distillation. I don't really buy into the celebrity cult of personality, so I had a conversation once with
gjstruthseeker about the phenomenon of, for example, Justin Timberlake. This was at the height of Justified, and I remember expressing bemusement that all the mega-stardom, the magazine covers, world-tour, bells-and-whistles arena concerts, etc., etc., all boiled down essentially to thirteen tracks of music. I care about the music, I know, I know—if I were old I'd be showing my age. But that's what I'm concerned with, the nugget at the core, the source. Whatever is being done, I want to be doing. In the doctor's office I worked in last summer, there was one doctor and fourteen staff, fifteen people making the office run. I am the doctor, not the staff. And it isn't that I want a staff: I'm as happy not giving orders as I am not taking them. But I don't do support very well. I am not your number two; I am not your right hand. As for what this means in terms of meaningful, gainful employment? I don't know. I don't need to get my hands dirty, necessarily, but I do need something to sink my hands into, deep, deep.*
And while we're on the subject of future plans, S. and I got together yet again for GRE self-flagellation (again: I rock at geometry but not arithmetic; my Algebra II teacher warned us sometime before our first test of the year that most of the mistakes we would make would be careless errors, and that is the life I am living). But the best part of the day was when I ventured into the test-prep section to fetch us a book with practice tests we could practice on, and on the shelf behind me I found VOCABULARY NOVELS. Sparknotes makes them, and they are seriously the best things ever: 1,000 common SAT words stuffed into a YA novel! The novels are so bad (sample titles: Busted, Vampire Dreams, Sun-Kissed), and often include meta- vocabulary study (the characters are studying for the SAT too!), and they are the best argument against testing low-frequency vocabulary words, because they stand out like sore thumbs in the narrative, clashing badly with the otherwise super-casual tone and word choice. In terms of test-prep though, the idea is a great one, getting your vocab review in an easily-accessible context; the fact that they're unintentionally (unintentionally? let's assume so) HILARIOUS is just icing on the cake. S. and I broke up our study session with dramatic readings and laughed ourselves sick.
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