response 212 of 284:

Aug 9 14:09 UTC 2001

#209> Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land is a classic, though... I should try
finding that on tape/dvd.

response 214 of 284:

Aug 9 15:06 UTC 2001

resp:211 :: SONGCATCHER is set in the earliest 20th century.  Janet McTeer
quits her musicology teaching job after she's passed over for a 
promotion.  She goes to stay with her sister, who is a teacher in a 
one-room schoolhouse in Appalachia, and she discovers that the local 
people have a song tradition which has preserved a sizable number 
of old British Isles ballads.   Janet McTeer's character sets out to 
collect and publish the songs; she encounters a mixed reaction from
the community, and she also gets pulled into a number of local 
dramas involving love and business.

response 216 of 284:

Aug 10 15:28 UTC 2001

_Shrek_ was mostly reviewed in Spring 2001 agora, but I finally saw it
last night (I had been searching for Castaway, but it isn't being screened
locally). _Shrek_ is a computer animation tour-de-fore, but one gets used
to that pretty quickly. The story itself is totally conventional although
with some contemporary humor. What did disturb me, however, is the
stereotyping of beauty and ugliness, which confirms in young viewers minds
that anorexic hotties are "beautiful", and dumpy broads are "ugly". Of
course, it was nice that the dumpy broad could find true love...but don't
forget that even the ogre fell in love with the anorexic hottie. 

So, to amuse myself further, as well as to consider the implications of
the stereotyping, I reviewed the movie in my mind but with the interchange
of the anorexic hottie and dumpy broad. Would this have been convincing?
It would mean that the height-challenged king would have had to select the
dumpy broad over the two other anorexic hotties.  Of course, the ogre
would have more quickly appreciated the fine points of the dumpy broad -
clearly a member of his own genotype. He would probably have kissed her
sooner (with the fortunate consequence of shortening the movie), but could
he have then found happiness with a permanently anorexic hottie? I don't
think the audience would have approved. 

response 218 of 284:

Aug 10 17:43 UTC 2001

Leslie and I caught what was probably the last local screening of 
"Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" last night.   In general it was a disappointment, 
because the raw material was there for a movie at least as entertaining
as a middling quality James Bond movie.  Angelina Jolie makes a 
pretty good action hero, and a lot of the visuals are pretty good.
They did a halfway decent job with the moral ambiguity of Lara's 
opportunistic boyfriend Alex West, and we liked Lara's assistants,
the geeky technical expert and the butler.

But the movie needed better writing, and too much of it betrayed 
its videogame origins.  There was far too much of "Insert Tab A into 
Slot B"  ("The clock goes here!  No, it goes here!!") and too many
of the action scenes, instead of being exciting, went on at great
repetitive length.   

Another writing failure: the movie makes a point of delivering
the geeky tech guy to Venice, and then to the final confrontation 
in Iceland -- or Siberia, it's never really explained which -- 
but he has nothing to do at the end of the movie -- nothing 
really to do at all after the Illuminati stage the raid on 
Lara's mansion.

Top action scene was probably the attack of the Cambodian
stone temple guards, who of course come to life when the 
treasure they're guarding is stolen.

I'd love to see a sequel with these characters, written by real
screenwriters, with little to no input from the videogame people.

I should warn people that my reaction is more positive than 
Leslie's; she was really bored in the first half of the movie and 
thought about walking out.

response 220 of 284:

Aug 10 21:20 UTC 2001

re #217 and 219:  And you're both spelling it wrong.  "Schrecklich" or
"Schreck" are the correct spellings, respectively.
I too am less than enthused about seeing the movie because of the German
associations of the title (intentional or not).

response 222 of 284:

Aug 10 23:11 UTC 2001

Re #229: thanks for correction - I even looked it up myself last night,
but someone threw me off today by mispelling it....  8^}

response 224 of 284:

Aug 11 03:23 UTC 2001

Silvia and I went to see Planet of the Apes this evening. I was a bit 
hesitant because Mary Remmers so roundly panned it, but it was actually 
pretty good. The deus ex machina (chimp ex machina) was a bit hokey, 
but I liked the ending.

response 226 of 284:

Aug 11 13:09 UTC 2001

My guess is that the ending is something of a joke.

response 228 of 284:

Aug 11 22:42 UTC 2001

The "back on Earth" part.

response 230 of 284:

Aug 11 23:19 UTC 2001

I think that there must have been a discussion like this somewhere
during the production of "Planet of the Apes".

Director:  Hey, what's with this ending, dude?  Like how does it
           get tied to the rest of the plot?  Did he, like go back
           in time or way forward?  

Producer:  Right, the screenwriter is working on that one, right, dude?

Screenwriter:  Er, sure, but the movie is due in the theaters in about
               two weeks and we're done shooting and I can't seem to make
               any of what we've got bridge the plot to that ending.

Producer:  Yeah, but it's a great ending.  Maybe nobody will ask about it.
           I mean, we've given 'em great costumes and makeup, that should
           be plenty.  

Screenwriter:  Plenty.  Besides, it's a revisualization, right?  Doesn't
               that mean the plot isn't our problem?

Director:  Whatever.  When do I get paid?

response 232 of 284:

Aug 12 13:34 UTC 2001

I think the best comment I've seen is that the ending was a deliberate
attempt to screw up a sequel.

response 234 of 284:

Aug 12 22:25 UTC 2001

You obviously never read comic books, Mary. In the Superman comics, for 
example, they had a Bizarro universe that every once in a while the 
regular Superman would go and visit. It resembled our universe very 
closely, but with the Bizarro twist. It's in that light, that I 
interpreted the ending.