a politics-free entry.
The quote of the day:
"Michael, how are you doing?" -- Reporter
"I'm actually dead. I passed away this morning. How are you?" -- Michael J. Fox
Our verdict: pretty good. We both really liked the movie. The animation didn't rock our world, the way it was promised (the water is annoyingly bad; the computer animated crowd scenes are easy to pick out as computer animated). And something about the shape of the heads bothered me -- not enough forehead, methinks.
That aside, it's a good movie. You know the story: boy gets raised in royal household, boy discovers he's actually one of the slave people, boy tries to free his people. The actors are great, from Val Kilmer as Moses to Steve Martin and Martin Short as the two Court Magicians. The songs are okay -- nothing especially memorable.
And despite my complaints, the animation is great. One of the purposes of animation is to show you something that would be too hard or simply impossible to do in real life, and Prince of Egypt does that admirably: the chariot race between Rameses and Moses would be impossible to reproduce in live action (at least currently), and the parting of the Red Sea (how many whales are there in the Dead Sea, anybody know?) would look incredibly fake, even using the best CGI available.
I think this movie is okay for kids, by the way. The whole Angel of Death thing might be a little much for them, but if they can take it in Sunday School, it shouldn't be that hard to take. And they see worse in the 8pm hour these days.
I knew traffic to West Hollywood was terrible because I went to the Virgin Megastore/Laemmle 5 complex yesterday to meet Aaron, and instead of the 10-15 minutes it usually takes, it took 45.
Aaron and I met and discussed one another's pages. So far, we're the only two in our writing group who are actually writing. He had some very good comments about my stuff that I will keep in mind when I rewrite the first Act, and I think I went over his stuff in some detail, so I hope that was helpful to him.
We also discussed whether to invite other classmates to join us -- Justin will be joining us in January, and perhaps a friend of Aaron's, while Jody is dropping out. (Jody doesn't seem to be writing right now, so it's probably for the best.) Aaron and I agreed on the same name. Aaron also told me the skinny on some stories that had been going around and how they've gotten changed in the giant game of Telephone. I would have liked to find out more about certain topics, but I guess that's just gossip and schadenfreude and who needs it?
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com