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It's Just Another Manic Monday...
May. 3rd, 2004 12:15 pmYes, folks - it's time for another bullet-pointed list of goodies on a Monday morning from everybody's favorite tall'n'skinny Midwestern-born male.
When I find out who that is, I'll direct you there. Until then, enjoy some of my notes...
* Work
Have been asked to extend my tempiness until at least the end of June. Yay for that. If I save the money properly, I may be able to try and strike a bargain on that - work until the last week in June, and then take a half-week to a week off between jobs so I can visit the in the Bay area.
* Novel
Wrote another 250-300 words. I have, for the moment, decided to skip the sex scene (more like glossing over it), as it's about the only thing that's keeping me stuck where I am (I'm having some difficulty not writing it like bad porn). I'd much rather move on to the interesting character development and all of that, as it does not make me look like a 12-year-old boy stealing his father's Playboys and giggling at the diagrams in sex ed.
* Scarface
Finally managed to finish it Thursday night. Meh. Interesting enough, but the cocaine excess just becomes really funny towards the end.
* Laws of Attraction
Jen and I went to see it this weekend, partially because it involved lawyers and partially because of themes that tended to coincide with other events in our lives. Mainly, we went to mock. And it was horrendous. This big, skulking piece of fluff that neither sizzled nor zinged across the screen. Julianne Moore, who I usually like, was flat and rather uninteresting. Pierce Brosnan is great, playing a character vastly different from Bond and pulling it off without a hitch. You never once wonder where the cigars and vodka martinis went. He's actually kind of a slob in this movie, and it's great. It's just a shame that the script is a bunch of hackneyed tropes trotted out as an actual plot, the direction is plodding and unimaginative, and the editing is... horrendous. I understand that sometimes scenes are shot and then later taken out before the film opens. But there should not be places where a filmgoer such as myself can go, "Gee, I wonder what they edited out there?" It's maddeningly obvious exactly where certain scenes were supposed to be and were not - and that's just poor craftsmanship.
* Kill Bill vol. 2
Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that I had a semi-sleeping girl in my arms the entire time, the film was more enjoyable on its second go-round, and I was able to pick up more little details. Tarantino should be proud of himself, and knowing him, he probably is. Bizarre to think he didn't even graduate from high school...
* Empire Records
Caught most of this because the girl insisted on it. Pretty cool movie, deeply quotable. I can see why people dig it a bunch. It's not much more than "damn the man" fluff ("We gotta save the store!" - plotline to about a million average budget films), but it's wildly energetic "damn the man" fluff, and it's about people who dig music, and you can so rarely go wrong with that, given the universal appeal of the rock'n'roll chord to today's disaffected youth.
* Dane Cook
A stand-up comic who is apparently the new obsession of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cyperian. Interesting. Funny. Laughed heartily, but I tend to laugh heartily at any comedian who says a lot of true stuff in different ways. He seems overly amused with himself, but a lot of comics are like that. Pretty good stuff, really.
When I find out who that is, I'll direct you there. Until then, enjoy some of my notes...
* Work
Have been asked to extend my tempiness until at least the end of June. Yay for that. If I save the money properly, I may be able to try and strike a bargain on that - work until the last week in June, and then take a half-week to a week off between jobs so I can visit the in the Bay area.
* Novel
Wrote another 250-300 words. I have, for the moment, decided to skip the sex scene (more like glossing over it), as it's about the only thing that's keeping me stuck where I am (I'm having some difficulty not writing it like bad porn). I'd much rather move on to the interesting character development and all of that, as it does not make me look like a 12-year-old boy stealing his father's Playboys and giggling at the diagrams in sex ed.
* Scarface
Finally managed to finish it Thursday night. Meh. Interesting enough, but the cocaine excess just becomes really funny towards the end.
* Laws of Attraction
Jen and I went to see it this weekend, partially because it involved lawyers and partially because of themes that tended to coincide with other events in our lives. Mainly, we went to mock. And it was horrendous. This big, skulking piece of fluff that neither sizzled nor zinged across the screen. Julianne Moore, who I usually like, was flat and rather uninteresting. Pierce Brosnan is great, playing a character vastly different from Bond and pulling it off without a hitch. You never once wonder where the cigars and vodka martinis went. He's actually kind of a slob in this movie, and it's great. It's just a shame that the script is a bunch of hackneyed tropes trotted out as an actual plot, the direction is plodding and unimaginative, and the editing is... horrendous. I understand that sometimes scenes are shot and then later taken out before the film opens. But there should not be places where a filmgoer such as myself can go, "Gee, I wonder what they edited out there?" It's maddeningly obvious exactly where certain scenes were supposed to be and were not - and that's just poor craftsmanship.
* Kill Bill vol. 2
Despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that I had a semi-sleeping girl in my arms the entire time, the film was more enjoyable on its second go-round, and I was able to pick up more little details. Tarantino should be proud of himself, and knowing him, he probably is. Bizarre to think he didn't even graduate from high school...
* Empire Records
Caught most of this because the girl insisted on it. Pretty cool movie, deeply quotable. I can see why people dig it a bunch. It's not much more than "damn the man" fluff ("We gotta save the store!" - plotline to about a million average budget films), but it's wildly energetic "damn the man" fluff, and it's about people who dig music, and you can so rarely go wrong with that, given the universal appeal of the rock'n'roll chord to today's disaffected youth.
* Dane Cook
A stand-up comic who is apparently the new obsession of
cyperian. Interesting. Funny. Laughed heartily, but I tend to laugh heartily at any comedian who says a lot of true stuff in different ways. He seems overly amused with himself, but a lot of comics are like that. Pretty good stuff, really.
