hfs+, bram stoker's dracula, celebrity, and a sneak preview.
The quote of the day:
"Heh heh. He called her 'sir.'"
Running news:
5.3 miles.
Instead of writing--or, as I like to put it, "in preparation for eventual writing"--I sat on the bed in the guest room to watch my tape of Bram Stoker's Dracula and play Civilization II.
Civilization II crashed, which its wont to do periodically, and I rebooted Nero.
Only to be faced immediately with the error message
"" has had an error of type 3. Please save your work and restart.
I rebooted and got the error again. So I decided to do the only reasonable thing: I would wipe the hard disk, reinstall system software, and restore my files from the backup.
This is what we call "overreacting." But I went ahead and did it anyhow.
(As Darin said later, "I wish you'd told me more about the problem, because I've had that problem. Here's what you do: reboot once with extensions off, then reboot again with extensions on and the problem's gone." Oh.)
However, wiping my hard disk gave me an opportunity to install the new HFS+ file system, which calculates more accurate file sizes and leaves you with a lot more space on your disk.
So, while reinstalling the system software and setting up the restore from the tape backup, I watched Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I had seen when it originally came out. And I had much the same impression this time that I did then: while much of the movie is visually stunning--I love the shadow-play style opening with Dracula fighting the Turks, and the set design and wardrobe are amazing--and Coppola does some very interesting things dramatically, both staging several scenes as though they were a play rather than a movie and using camera tricks to remind us we're watching a movie, the movie is a total mess.
I think Winona Ryder is the biggest problem, and I don't mean just that horrifying accent--I don't think she can act. And she's the emotional center of the movie.
But you know, when you've got Gary Oldman doing anything--and I'll include "reading the phone book" to demonstrate the breadth of my belief in his powers--you've got a compelling movie. Hubba.
(Oh yeah--that Hopkins guy. Well, I don't know if his Van Helsing was his idea or Coppola's or what, but he's so over-the-top weird that I watched his scenes through my fingers.)
The movie, of course, deviates wildly from Stoker's book. When the movie starts in 12th Century Transylvania, we already know we're not dealing with the book. However, it does hew somewhat carefully to a lot of the relationships, which is more than most Dracula movies have done (cf. Frank Langella's very sexy, but very uncanon, Dracula).
The script does do one thing that I thought was great--it explains Renfield's madness by making him the first guy to go to Transylvania to deal with the Count. That simplifies so much right there. And Tom Waits is great as loony Renfield.
One weakness the script has, however, is the coincidence that British real estate agent Jonathan Harker's (Keanu Reeves) fiancee Mina (Winona Ryder) is a dead ringer for Dracula's dead love. Actually, I would totally buy this, if getting to Mina were then the impetus for Dracula then abandoning Transylvania and getting to England. The problem is, Dracula's already coming to England. He doesn't need added incentive--as it stands, it's just a big ol' coincidence that doesn't advance the plot one whit.
They could have come up with some other reason Harker visits the Count--to sell him insurance, or enroll him in the Columbia House CD program--and then have the Count discover Mina's picture and need to get to England. But they didn't.
Because of my various computer problems, Darin and I got a late start on the afternoon, and we headed out to lunch.
We had promised each other earlier in the week we would eat at Cafe N'awlins in Burbank, a great little joint. So we headed over there. I realized that this would make us late for our afternoon appointment, so I called and made sure everything was okay before we continued.
Lunch was as faboo as always, despite the fact that eating steaming hot and spicy hot food on a day when the temperatures were well into the 100s is not always considered "smart." (Here's one advantage Fahrenheit has over Celsius--we have the concept of temperatures being in "the 80" or "the 40s", which gives you a general idea of what the temperature was like, without having to be real specific.)
Darin got a little jambalaya on his shirt, so we walked over to Macy's to get him a new shirt, which he needs--we both need new clothes, we both hate shopping. It takes food stains for us to buy new clothing.
EXT. BURBANK - DAY
Heat waves emanate from the pavement.
As DARIN and DIANE cross the street, Diane looks down the
block to the front of the AMC Theaters. No one is out front.
She is clearly disappointed.
CLIPBOARD GUY (O.S.)
Want some passes to a screening?
It's The Guy With The Clipboard, next to them in the
intersection. Diane lights up.
Darin, Diane, and the Guy move to the nearest curb.
DIANE
What's the movie?
CLIPBOARD GUY
Soldier, with Kurt Russell. The show's
tonight.
Darin shrugs and looks at Diane.
DIANE
Sure!
CLIPBOARD GUY
Either of you in the industry? No?
Great. Here you go.
He hands them two passes and walks off.
DIANE
Isn't he supposed to take down a
whole bunch of information about us?
DARIN
It's too hot for information.
(wipes his forehead)
You realize this means we're going
to wait in line in the heat.
DIANE
Hey, if it's too hot, we bag the movie.
(pause)
Let's call Fernando! I bet he'll come with.
I'd read some information about this movie, mostly negative, on my various movie gossip pages, but I was interested nonetheless. I decided not to say anything to Darin about what I'd heard, so he wouldn't be biased.
I also thought it was funny that I was looking for The Guy With The Clipboard at the same time that he stopped us in the intersection. I decided that was karma. Of what sort, I couldn't say.
After we were done in Burbank, we headed over the hill to Hollywood. To the actual Hollywood. We went to the Roosevelt Hotel on Hollywood Blvd., across the street from Mann's Chinese Theatre, to visit with a regular reader of my journal who was in town from England and wanted to meet me and Darin. Mostly, I think, to see if Darin and I are real people.
There's currently a discussion on the diary-l list about how to handle people who read your page and how to interpret their interest in you. The relationship between writer and reader is strange: while you know plenty about me and may think that you know me, I can assure you of only two things:
- you don't know me.
- I definitely don't know you.
We do not have an equal relationship, you and I, even if you keep also keep a web journal. If you have a journal, I'm aware I'm getting the public side of you; perhaps I have a better sense of how much I don't know my fellow journalers. However, because nobody knows anything is a journal and I talk about things that interest me or things that I've done, you may feel you know me. You may even feel that I am a like-minded soul, or even a friend.
For the most part, this is a one-way feeling. I don't know you. I'm not being harsh about this--it's the truth. I might get a sense of what things interest you when you write me about something I've written, but that's not enough for me to call you a "friend." This is not to say I don't like you, I just don't know you. There's not the same sort of kinship.
So when David told me he was coming to town, I got a little weirded out, despite having corresponded with him for some time. Words on a screen are one thing. Meeting someone in person, particularly when he knows me in a way I do not know him, is quite another.
I mean, it's weird enough talking to Darin's family and realizing that I don't have to tell them a story because they've already read it in my journal. For one thing, it sure cuts down on my holding up my end of the conversation.
When David called me at my house, I had a long chat with myself about how comfortable I was with being out here, exposing myself the way I have. Now, this was the first time anyone who's read my journal has called me at home--evidently, this is incredibly common for some of my fellow journalers. But I asked myself whether being out here like this is such a good idea. It's scary having a complete stranger seek you out, no matter what his or her intention.
On the other hand, I like doing something that brings people to me. I like getting mail from people saying they like my page or encouraging me when I'm down or telling me about some article on the Web I might have missed. I like hearing that I've inspired someone to start writing every day or pointed them to a journal they enjoy reading or whatever.
So I haven't figured this out. There is no way to get only the attention I want and filter out the rest. Welcome to a very small slice of celebrity.
I first got a taste of this when I started dating Darin and a guy stopped him on the street to talk about computers. They chatted for a few minutes, then the guy left.
"Who was that?" I asked.
"I have no idea," Darin said. "Someone who saw me speak at a conference once, probably."
The guy had talked to Darin as though they were old friends.
It's made me wonder what someone like Leonardo Di Caprio must be going through right now.
(And if anybody would like to point out my patent hypocrisy by noting my current--and long-running, it would seem--obsession with Anthony Hopkins: I don't actually want to meet the man. And not only because I'm convinced that great actors have no personality whatsoever, but because I know from past experience that meeting someone you admire is always a big letdown. Always. Hmmm. I wonder what the lesson from that should be, for people you meet through the Web.)
Anyhow, regular reader David Frazer of Exeter University and his father Patrick appeared to be perfectly nice, normal people. (Thank goodness.) David even came bearing birthday gifts for me: a hardbound blank book (made in England) and a scarf.
And I need never worry about making conversation when I have Darin with me--I love Darin dearly, but he can talk the hind leg off an ass. He also cut me off several times, which annoyed me--it's not like I am so garrulous to begin with.
We went to a cafe near the Roosevelt--a cyber-cafe, as a matter of fact, which I found amusing "Found the need to come here?" I asked David. He said he'd surfed the web a bit on a WebTV at the Sony store in downtown Chicago. We sat down with drinks and chatted for a couple of hours--much longer than I'd expected, frankly.
As we drove out of there, I commented to Darin that the four of us had demonstrated the difference between Americans and Brits: Darin and I clearly projected our words (uh, had some volume to our voice), whereas David and Patrick were soft-spoken and, in the noise of the cafe, hard to hear.
We raced back to Burbank--in rush-hour traffic--to meet Fernando at the AMC Theater.
While we were in line, the munchkins who run the sneak previews asked us our ages. I lied. Darin said (after the age-asking munchkin left), "You are not!"
I said, "Get used to it, babe, it's the only age I'm going to admit to in public for the rest of my life." And if my skin holds up like my mother's, I'll be able to get away with it for the next 15 years.
I know, I'm not supposed to tell you anything about this movie, but I can't help it. And hey: this is hardly Ain't It Cool News; they'll never know. Soldier is the new sci-fi flick starring Kurt Russell. It's about a future where soldiers are selected at birth and given vicious training to teach them to show no mercy and expect no mercy. (The opening sequence is very good, as a matter of fact; both Darin and I agreed on that.) The best of these soldiers is Todd (Russell).
However, a new technique of growing superior soldiers has just made Todd & Co. obsolete: ubermenschen such as Caine (Jason Scott Lee) can kick the ass of several regular soldiers, including Todd, at one time, singlehandedly...and he does. Todd, believed dead, and the other soldiers Caine killed are dumped on a garbage planet.
Of course, Todd ain't dead--he's just resting. He finds people living on the garbage planet, who live by scrounging in the garbage. They take him in, but he will never be One Of Them. He's a professional soldier, after all.
Then, in a coincidence worthy of Dickens, the army shows up to run maneuvers on the garbage planet, and it just happens to be Jason Scott Lee's unit.
If you've seen the movie Shane--and give a hand to Darin, who called the similarity way early on--you know what's going to happen. There's even a little boy to watch everything Todd does. The main difference is the ending, because these are the family friendly 90s.
The entire movie takes 90 minutes, if that. There's nothing extraneous, such as characterization, plot development, dialogue, or humor. Kurt Russell has, I kid you not, 30 words of dialogue tops, despite being in almost every frame of the film. The movie does have a story, and I have to give them thumbs up for that. You could say that Todd's character has a significant arc, and that's supposed to be important to whether a movie works. And yet...
The violence in this movie was so extreme as to be horrifying. The reason the violence was horrifying was that I didn't care about any of the characters, and yet Todd beating the shit out of someone was supposed to make me cheer. Now, clearly I'm not the target audience: there were plenty of young men between 16 and 25 in the audience who yelled "Yeah!" every time some faceless soldier bought the farm in a spectacularly horrible way.
And the bad guys are terribly cliched--the overweening military officer who's nothing but a big coward in the face of danger, for example. There was something interesting to be found in the final confrontation between Todd and Caine--both soldiers who know this entire exercise is pointless--but the levels are never explored. Instead, we get a fight which is totally unbelievable, because we've already seen Caine kick Todd's ass when they were both in top physical form, and we have no reason to believe that Todd's suddenly become an ubermensch.
So I don't know what to say about it. The opening sequence: great. The scenes of life on the garbage planet: pretty good. The extreme violence: I don't need this.
(The quote of the day comes from a moron who noticed, well into the movie, that Kurt Russell called everyone sir, including women. After Russell had done it several times already.)
The reviews were, as follows:
- Darin said he'd probably recommend this to his friends (like Brent and Harry, who are really into military stuff).
- I said I wasn't sure.
- Fernando, under "What did you like?", put "Nothing", and under "What didn't you like?", put "Everything."
"Hey, Nando, don't hold back, tell them how you really feel."
One of the things often asked on these questionnaires is, "Which of these movies have you seen in the theater?" And they give you a list of about 40 movies. (Strangely, Darin and I had different lists, but there was a period where I went to the Oaks Theaters in Cupertino by myself during the day, and there are some movies I've sent him off to watch with his friends that I had no interest in.)
Fernando reads the list of movies. His eyes alight on
Blade Runner.
FERNANDO
How dare they associate Blade Runner
with this piece of crap?
Diane bites her lip, glances at Darin, then turns to
Fernando.
DIANE
Because Soldier is written by the
same guy who wrote Blade Runner. And
it takes place in the same universe.
FERNANDO
Philip K. Dick didn't write Soldier.
DARIN
Philip K. Dick didn't write Blade Runner
either. He wrote a short story this writer
turned into Blade Runner.
(The writer, by the way, is David Webb Peoples, who also gave us Twelve Monkeys and Unforgiven. The director, I see here, directed Event Horizon last year--a script written by a Stanford grad, I'd like to add...or maybe I shouldn't.)
We left discussing the movie further, which might be a good sign--there have been plenty of times where not a word about the film was said two seconds after we left the theater. (Of course, the words usually said at a moment like that are, "Where do you want to eat?")
But now having thought about it some more...I'm still not sure. I think the cliches and total sparseness of the film add up to more negatives, so I don't recommend it.
YMMV.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com