antz, what dreams may come, and a preview; plus, we've got Scott and bronchitis.
The quote of the day:
Welcome to the Hellmouth Petting Zoo.
Running news:
3 miles Tuesday.
None Wednesday.
2.5 today.
Tuesday we went to see Antz. Our verdict was: the trailer for a A Bug's Life is very exciting and we can't wait to see it.
Antz wasn't bad--much of it was good. But the Woody Allen personality always grates on me after a while. Christopher Walken, as the 2nd-in-command soldier, was really good.
There was some stuff in there that is definitely not for little kids--violence and language (no sex...I don't even want to imagine Hollywood's version of ant sex, thankyouverymuch). I don't know if this pic is being marketed toward tots, but you might want to do some more reading up on it before deciding whether to take them.
On Monday I got a phone call from a movie previewing company asking if we wanted to go see a preview. I've never heard of the previewing company calling someone before--don't they get enough volunteers outside the theaters?
I think the reason they called us--and I could be wrong; I fully accept my possible wrongness--was to get a wider spread of opinions. To be completely honest, I think they wanted to hear what white people and somewhat older people had to say. The movie stars Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence and the audience was by far and away primarily 18-25 year old African-Americans.
I won't talk about the movie much, other than to say: it's not an urban comedy, as you might have expected, but rather a dramedy that goes from 1932 to 1997 and concerns two New York city slickers who get sent to prison for life in Mississippi. I didn't like it much--I thought it was silly (right, in 1932, a black guy from NYC doesn't know not to walk into a whites-only restaurant in Mississippi...uh huh), it dealt in stereotypes, and, worst of all, it didn't move me one bit.
However...as I walked out, I heard a black woman next to me say, "They shouldn't change anything. They should just leave it the way it is and people will come see it." By far and away the audience did enjoy the movie, so what do I know?
Today we took Scott to the Universal City Walk. We like taking out-of-towners there; we never go there ourselves unless it's to see a movie. The cost of parking has gone up to $7, and on weekends it's just way too crowded to even consider going there for anything. But it's still neat to see.
The Universal City Walk is an outdoor mall attached to the Universal Studios Theme Park that has an 18-theater cineplex and a ton of restaurants and record stores and clothing stores and even a bookstore (though not a good one). It's brightly lit, it's got a ton of security, and it's got a very strict Code of Conduct (no foul language, for instance). Lots of people like coming to the City Walk because it's like walking on a city street without the concomitant crime and "undesireable elements"--actually, no one's prohibited from going to the City Walk, but you can be booted for a number of infractions (they hand you a list at the door) and getting to the City Walk can be a pain in the first place, so you have to be motivated.
Welcome to the future.
We walked around the City Walk (it's not very long--about 3 city blocks long) and then went to see What Dreams May Come, the only movie at the theater we hadn't seen yet.
The capsule review: Oy.
Lizzie (of the late, lamented Dear Jackie Robinson) wrote me to say she'd overheard someone complaining about Robin Williams: "I wish he'd go back to cocaine. He's so much more annoying now that he's high on life."
Imagine two hours of wishing Robin Williams would rediscover cocaine.
Yes, some of the visuals are amazing. (Best Cinematography? I think not. Best Special Effects, perhaps.) But the story is a mess. Why? Because everything that's important to know happens in exposition. I kept thinking, "Oh crap, another scene where they're going to talk us to death." We never see anything happen; we just hear about it.
The climactic moment happens internally. And since we don't know the rules of the afterlife--they seem to change at will--the climactic moment doesn't happen for us. It's not cathartic, it doesn't move us. We have to be told (by Annabella Sciorra) what just happened.
The entire movie is so treacly that I felt my teeth starting to hurt. A big thumbs down.
(And here's a question: when Robin Williams recognizes his daughter, we see the daughter. When he recognizes his son...we see the same person we saw before. Why is this?)
Despite taking a regimen of amoxicillin in Austin, since returning to Los Angeles--does Los Angeles have a cute nickname like "Big Apple" I don't think it does?--I have developed a pretty annoying cough, though more tuberculosis-like symptoms haven't appeared yet. However, I'm totally drained when I go running--doing even 2.5 miles has been torture.
I don't know what I'm going to do about this half-marathon I've got coming up if I can't do even 5 miles.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com