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gah, it was a late, late night that turned into morning, and i'm already into a 2nd celebration of hoboken st pats ((read: GUINNESS! guinness for breakfast!)) that has actually managed to soothe my wack stomach from last night, so here are some echoed thoughts from the NYT review of Watchmen, which we saw on IMAX last night in the enormous Palisades Mall (while a comic book fan with previous exposure to Alan Moore (not the biggest fan), I only read Watchmen this December. I liked it for its cultural value, and for certain elements (my fave bits? the strange switching of the NYC boy reading Robinson Crusoe comics and the apocalyptic timings of the story, and the whole idea of Dr. Manhattan is pretty cool (seemed Xmenlike to me)). I love the *look* of Zack Snyder's stuff and him as a director though, he gets things so visually perfect.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/movies/06Watc.html
(No real spoilers in this review/excerpts below)
"Dr. Manhattan’s existence is busy and fairly melancholy, but I do envy him his ability to perceive every moment of past and future time as a part of a continuous present.If I had that power, the 2 hours 40 minutes of Zack Snyder’s grim and grisly excursion into comic-book mythology might not have felt quite so interminable. ....The book was very much a product of its moment, both in the history of comics — which were scouting new horizons of complexity and thematic ambition — and in the wider world that “Watchmen” mirrored....Indeed, the ideal viewer — or reviewer, as the case may be — of the “Watchmen” movie would probably be a mid-’80s college sophomore with a smattering of Nietzsche, an extensive record collection and a comic-book nerd for a roommate. The film’s carefully preserved themes of apocalypse and decay might have proved powerfully unsettling to that anxious undergraduate sitting in his dorm room, listening to “99 Luftballons” and waiting for the world to end or the Berlin Wall to come down...But it’s possible to imagine that our imaginary student would at least have found some food for thought in Mr. Snyder’s grandiose, meticulously art-directed vision of blood, cruelty and metaphysical dread. As it is, the film is more curiosity than provocation, an artifact of a faded world brought to zombie half-life by the cinematic technology of the present....
But brutality is not merely part of Mr. Snyder’s repertory of effects; it is more like a cause, a principle, an ideology. And his commitment to violence brings into relief the shallow nihilism that has always lurked beneath the intellectual pretensions of “Watchmen.” The only action that makes sense in this world — the only sure basis for ethics or politics, the only expression of love or loyalty or conviction — is killing. And the dramatic conflict revealed, at long last, in the film’s climactic arguments is between a wholesale, idealistic approach to mass death and one that is more cynical and individualistic.This idea is sickening but also, finally, unpersuasive, because it is rooted in a view of human behavior that is fundamentally immature, self-pitying and sentimental."
played LASER TAG with kikibird and runstaverun and kingfox last night, and it was AWESOME as expected. kikibird won and blew us all away the most times. and there were a few little kids in there to shoot as well so that made it even more enjoyable.
today, beer is helping me to recover a good temperment, as my body is pissed that i was up for 24 hours and is making me anxious for the timechange this weekend...i'm beered up, but tired. tired of driving all over NJ, tired of school and all of its stuff, tired of lots of things. the collegelike return of a junkie's need for caffeine is not helping matters, and i can't seem to force myself into an exercise regimen, and get more depressed over the physical state of things. maybe i'll beer up, and then go stagger around hoboken and tell myself that it's exercise. beer and old movie popcorn for breakfast, breakfast of thirty year old champions.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/movies/06Watc.html
(No real spoilers in this review/excerpts below)
"Dr. Manhattan’s existence is busy and fairly melancholy, but I do envy him his ability to perceive every moment of past and future time as a part of a continuous present.If I had that power, the 2 hours 40 minutes of Zack Snyder’s grim and grisly excursion into comic-book mythology might not have felt quite so interminable. ....The book was very much a product of its moment, both in the history of comics — which were scouting new horizons of complexity and thematic ambition — and in the wider world that “Watchmen” mirrored....Indeed, the ideal viewer — or reviewer, as the case may be — of the “Watchmen” movie would probably be a mid-’80s college sophomore with a smattering of Nietzsche, an extensive record collection and a comic-book nerd for a roommate. The film’s carefully preserved themes of apocalypse and decay might have proved powerfully unsettling to that anxious undergraduate sitting in his dorm room, listening to “99 Luftballons” and waiting for the world to end or the Berlin Wall to come down...But it’s possible to imagine that our imaginary student would at least have found some food for thought in Mr. Snyder’s grandiose, meticulously art-directed vision of blood, cruelty and metaphysical dread. As it is, the film is more curiosity than provocation, an artifact of a faded world brought to zombie half-life by the cinematic technology of the present....
But brutality is not merely part of Mr. Snyder’s repertory of effects; it is more like a cause, a principle, an ideology. And his commitment to violence brings into relief the shallow nihilism that has always lurked beneath the intellectual pretensions of “Watchmen.” The only action that makes sense in this world — the only sure basis for ethics or politics, the only expression of love or loyalty or conviction — is killing. And the dramatic conflict revealed, at long last, in the film’s climactic arguments is between a wholesale, idealistic approach to mass death and one that is more cynical and individualistic.This idea is sickening but also, finally, unpersuasive, because it is rooted in a view of human behavior that is fundamentally immature, self-pitying and sentimental."
played LASER TAG with kikibird and runstaverun and kingfox last night, and it was AWESOME as expected. kikibird won and blew us all away the most times. and there were a few little kids in there to shoot as well so that made it even more enjoyable.
today, beer is helping me to recover a good temperment, as my body is pissed that i was up for 24 hours and is making me anxious for the timechange this weekend...i'm beered up, but tired. tired of driving all over NJ, tired of school and all of its stuff, tired of lots of things. the collegelike return of a junkie's need for caffeine is not helping matters, and i can't seem to force myself into an exercise regimen, and get more depressed over the physical state of things. maybe i'll beer up, and then go stagger around hoboken and tell myself that it's exercise. beer and old movie popcorn for breakfast, breakfast of thirty year old champions.
