Saturday Night
Okay, so I’m posting an unprecedented two days in a row. On one hand, I know I need to be more spontaneous with my posts, because that’s the only way I’ll ever post anything. On the other, spontaneity interferes with any kind of organization to the posts. I don’t really want this blog to be about me. I do want it to be about my thoughts and opinions. In any case, this current post is about me, regardless.
I would say that I’m a socially inept loser, but that would sound like every other blog on the net, so I’ll try to avoid whining ad nauseum about my a various problems and failings, both real and imagined. That said, I’m in the apartment alone again tonight, and once again I’m struggling to find anything on the tube (see my previous post). Tonight I was lucky enough to stumble across “A Time to Kill”, which I’ve never seen all of. It took about 5 minutes for me notice that this movie has an unbelievable number of well-known actors. Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey, Samuel L. Jackson, Donald Sutherland, Keifer Sutherland, Ashley Judd, and Chris Cooper (who played the father in “October Sky”, among other things). I’m also pretty sure I spotted the annoying police officer from “Flightplan” and the woman who tried to get off the bus and got herself blown-up in “Speed”. (Incidently, John Grisham is a large part of why I decided not to try to become a lawyer. The other factors were the massive surplus of lawyers in this country and the fact that all lawyers are scumbags. They may not mean to be, or even be conscious of it. It’s just something about the whole process of law school and the Bar exam and the rest of it that reduces them to worms. But I digress…) I haven’t read A Time to Kill but I know Hollywood has a nasty habit of twisting Grisham’s books – Runaway Jury for example – so I’ll take the movie with a grain of salt.
Here I am, stuck eating hot dogs without buns and ramen. This is kinda sad. I need to study for the Chinese and CS tests I have Monday, but I guess I should be thankful I don’t have a Chinese CS test.
I guess I’m gonna sign off now. Nothing great to say.
Oh, just noticed that major jerk who plays Eddie Murphy’s annoying medical colleague from “Doctor Dolittle”. And wow, just realized that Ashley Judd uses this awesome, cold monotone for almost everything she says. It may not be good for acting purposes, but it’s very distinctive.
John Carpenter’s “Halloween”: As good as candy-corn at Christmas
Tonight was the first time I saw John Carpenter’s “Halloween”, yet another example of my haphazard efforts to watch horror movies just to prove to myself that I can. There was nothing else on the Tube, so I started watching the movie with my laptop on hand to provide a distraction if need be (I was also finishing Macroeconomics hw).
I’ll say right away that if I had anyone with me, that movie wouldn’t have been scary in the least, but I was in the apartment by myself and given my overactive imagination, I was a little creeped out. Emphasis on little
“Halloween” may have been terrifying back in the late 70’s, but given the special effects available today, there wasn’t much to it. It’s hard to be afraid when a first person camera view requires the cameraman to do the stabbing. The most effective element was undoubtedly the music, but as it was essentially the same theme throughout the film, it began to lose its ability to create suspense and uneasiness after awhile.
It was interesting to see a young Jamie Lee Curtis, who I think did a great job with the character she was given. (Incidentally, I barely recognised her at first, not because of how she looked compared to what I’m used to, but because the first 30 minutes of the movie used all these incredibly distant shots that made it difficult to see anything.) It’s easy to hold a poorly written character against the actor, rather than against the writer or director. Jamie’s Laurie Strode, while supposedly intelligent, was essentially an idiot. How many times can you turn your back on a monster/villain you think is dead, only to find out it’s not. OK, so that only happened twice, but that’s 2 times too many. Do you really need someone to tell you not to take your eyes of your attacker, especially when you know he’s a murderer?
I did like the movie’s fairly obvious moral stance, which Carpenter denies exists, according to Wikipedia.
In the end, the movie scared me enough that I waited until my roommate got in before going to bed, but I’ve been known to do that without having watched a horror picture.
Worth watching once, but hardly a favorite. I won’t be making a point to watch any of the sequels either, but if the opportunity arises out of convenience, I may sit one out. I’ll go middle of the road and give “Halloween” 5 out of 9 tails.
