Starship Troopers

I really liked Starship Troopers. I wasn't expecting to. All the previews I saw looked really dumb to me, although I was intrigued by the reunion of the director and writer of Robocop. How was Verhoeven going to make a war movie that was clearly aimed at 12-year-olds and somehow dealt with Heinlein's glorification of fascism?

The answer was simple, and it didn't dawn on me until about 40 minutes into the thing. Everybody knows about the satirical news snippets that Verhoeven used in Robocop and here again in ST. Well, he's gone one step further: the entire movie is a satire. None of it is meant to be taken seriously. The scenes with the plastic leads -- satire on every love story in wartime. The battle scenes? Satire of every "their forces outnumber our forces" war picture. The social satire.

There was one moment, towards the end, that caused an audible reaction in the moviehouse, like now they were getting it. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's the scene in which Neil Patrick Harris shows up again. It's like, Duh, do you get it yet?

Spoiler alert:

I said to Darin later on, "Isn't it weird how the archetype of the SS officer in the trenchcoat has been burned into our collective conscious?" Upon reading some of the reviews that came out, perhaps not everyone has picked up on this image however.

To Verhoeven's credit, he has also staged some exciting battle scenes, although the continual ripping of head from body or body from body got a little old. (You wouldn't think that would be possible, would you?) The special effects -- such as the rending of bodies -- are great. One of the special effects, involving a starship above the bug planet during the big battle scene, got an excited reaction from the audience, although it was clearly an inappropriate time to be cheering.

So, I enjoyed it.

I spent the morning at Babylonian again. I called and asked Jeffrey if it would be okay for me to take my friends who were coming into town onto the sets -- if he'd said no, I would have rescheduled my visit.

So I went and did more Babylonian stuff and Darin went to the airport to pick up Rob and Laura. Unfortunately, he went to Burbank and discovered that they were coming in at LAX. Oops. Turns out their flight came in late anyhow, so he managed to get there in a reasonable quantity of time.

They drove back to our house and dropped Nutmeg off before returning to Babylonian and finding me. I was amazed by Rob and Laura's transformation: wow, have they changed! I finished right before they got there, thank God. They arrived and I showed them the sets -- unfortunately, the cast had just broken for lunch, so they didn't see anything being filmed. They were amazed at what the station looks like in real life: "It's amazing what the camera doesn't pick up." That's why they call it magic, I guess.

We went for lunch at Cafe Nawlins in Burbank and then went to see Starship Troopers at the AMC 6 (the good theaters, over by Barnes and Noble).

After the movie we came home and played with Nutmeg, who's still quite as bouncy as ever. She didn't appreciate being cooped up all day. However, she had to get cooped up again when Fernando came over and 5 of us went to Lawry's Prime Rib for dinner.

I had asked Rob and Laura if they had any dietary restrictions, but they don't -- they practice portion control and write down everything they eat during the day. So we all ate prime rib and Yorkshire pudding and mashed potatoes. I wouldn't want to eat like that every day, but it's pretty darn tasty once in a while.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

3 miles.