where his civilizations, including our own

delphi asked for a post about Christmas movies. Can do.

If we're talking theatrical films, The Nightmare Before Christmas is my personal favorite. Looking at stop-motion that gorgeous makes me almost want to cry because today it wouldn't be done. They'd use computers. Also it's just a great movie and holds up really well even with kids who have no idea that it isn't done with computers.

My mom watched It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street every year, so I saw those before I was old enough to really get much out of them. My real nostalgia is for the TV specials: Charlie Brown, The Grinch, Rudolph, Garfield, The Christmas Toy (is it just me who remembers this one? I'm not sure it lasted past the 80s). But most of all, this one:



( The true meaning of Christmas = CLAY )

You can still give me questions/topics on LJ and DW.

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Finally got a chance to see the new Star Trek.

( spoiler warning for anyone even slower than me at seeing new movies )

This entry was originally posted at http://pauraque.dreamwidth.org/32167.html. Comment here or there.

We drove to Cambridge to see HP7 because it was the closest place we could find that had it playing with captioning. This should have taken 3 hours each way, but took 4.5 hours getting there because Google's directions failed, and so did the directions kindly but unhelpfully given by many Cambridge locals.

Obviously we missed the movie, so we decided to wait for the next captioned show, several hours later. At least it was in Harvard Square and there were places to do Christmas shopping and hang around. The theater manager was nice enough to exchange our tickets, so no harm done really.

So we saw the movie at 6:30pm instead of 1:00pm, and afterwards managed to get ourselves back on the freeway, unfortunately without having filled the gas tank. By the time we realized we didn't have enough gas to get back, we were already in Vermont, which apparently doesn't believe in 24-hour gas stations, so we decided to just drive until the engine died and then call Triple A.

Oddly enough, the car kept running all the way home, despite the needle being below E and the "fill my tank, bitch" light being on for about 40 miles. An appropriate Hanukkah miracle, perhaps...

( So after all that, was the movie good? )

I'm not a particular cult movie buff, but I've seen my share. These two were re-watches, and made an interesting comparison.

( Shock Treatment )


( Phantom of the Paradise )

Haha! You see, because I just went to the dentist for a toothache, so the joke is... moving on.

I did actually see the movie An Inconvenient Truth yesterday. (Yes, I'm a little behind.) I didn't dislike it exactly, but from the glowing reviews I expected more. Or maybe I just expected something different. I found myself wondering who the movie was for.

( yadda yadda )

So I guess if I had started out disbelieving in anthropogenic climate change, the movie might have given me food for thought, but probably wouldn't have convinced me. I would have thought there were holes in the argument and that they didn't have a counter-argument for the concern that changing emissions standards would hurt us economically. I think they could have done better.


eta: Oh, I forgot the best part. I listened to some of the director commentary, and at one point he said "I was thinking about how to make these charts more exciting and dynamic..." Exciting and Dynamic is the name of my WoW guild. I lol'd irl.

We just rewatched Chamber of Secrets, which I own for some reason. I hadn't seen it in a really long time, probably not since about the time I got into the fandom, which was around when it came out on DVD. My impressions were these:

- This movie is so long.
- Absolutely everything that happens is followed by four or five reaction shots. Sometimes the reaction shots are of characters who don't even have names or lines!
- Movies were better before CGI existed.
- This movie is all about hats. Arthur's pointy hat. Minerva's tartan hat. Lucius's furry hat. Harry pulls a deus ex machina literally out of a hat. Hats, man.
- Jason Isaacs and Kenneth Branagh totally saved everything.
- Snakes can't hear. Well, technically they have earlike structures that can detect vibrations. But they sure as hell can't hear you whispering, nor that pebble Harry threw. And they can certainly smell, so Harry should have gotten eaten either way.
- Hagrid's homecoming scene is SO OVERBLOWN that it gets into self-parody territory. Standing ovation WTF??
- Everybody in the world wants to get into Harry's pants.

- Saw the Tutankhamen exhibit at the deYoung. It was win.

- Went across the street to the Academy of Sciences which I hadn't been to since it was rebuilt. It's nice but the rainforest exhibit had too long of a line so we didn't go into it. Shortly after we went in, the fire alarm went off and the museum was evacuated! Then everyone stood around while the firepersons examined the premises and concluded everything was fine. They even let us back in.

- Saw HBP. I think it was an accurate rendering of a book that was extremely uneven. I really like the story of HBP, I like Slughorn, I like Snape and Draco's storyline, I like Tom Riddle. I really dislike the romantic subplots and thought they were handled horribly in the books. The movie reflected both those aspects accurately. I think Jim Broadbent was great. I was totally impressed by Tom Felton, who has these scenes without dialogue or anyone to play against that must be hard to pull off, but he did it.

- On one of our flights, as the plane was landing, the plane in front of us failed to take off. We had already touched down on the runway and the pilot had to make an emergency takeoff to avoid a collision, then go around the traffic pattern again and get directed to another runway. Wheeeeeee!

- On the west coast it's been quite mild all week. When we arrived in Vermont, we found out the Northeast has been having a record heat wave. I think it's like 90F. I lol'd.

- My computer isn't here yet. /nailbite

I sawed it!

( reaction )

As an aside, Sarek's scenes were bittersweet. I miss Mark Lenard.


After the movie we went to KFC, because it was the only place around still open. I officially gave up fast food like 10 years ago, but I'm not so anal about it that I'll refuse to eat if it's the only thing. That stuff sure tasted better when I was a little kid.

_hannelore and I saw the movie Man on Wire, a documentary about the guy who strung, and walked across, a highwire between the WTC towers in 1974. We both enjoyed it but I think I liked it more than she did.

Unsurprisingly the guy was pretty crazy, and probably the most interesting aspect was exploring how a charismatic madman got his friends to agree to be involved in something so ridiculously dangerous. The accomplices recall how they struggled with wondering how they could live with themselves if it went wrong and he was killed, and for some the emotions are as vivid today as they were 30 years ago.

The later destruction of the towers is never alluded to, and the director apparently said he left it out because it would ruin the beauty of the story. I agree that it was better not to directly mention it, but not for that reason... Everyone who sees the movie knows exactly what happened; it's a rich subtext that can't possibly be ignored. Directly stating it would have been like a beginning fanfic writer starting their story by ham-handedly informing you that Harry Potter is a teenaged wizard with glasses.