Double Feature

Well, I've just seen Hancock and Get Smart. Not in that order. It should have been that order, because Get Smart is the better movie and I would have liked to let it linger in my mind more than Hancock, but the whole double feature thing was rather impromptu, so I didn't really get a chance to plan things out.

See, that's one of the reasons why I like going to the movies by myself; I can make decisions like that without having to worry about someone else. Not that I don't like seeing movies with other people, despite the way I've gone on about solo-movie-watching on this blog. I especially like seeing movies that I've already seen, with other people, because I like sharing the experience, watching their reaction. And there was that one time that Mom and I saw some movie then noticed that something else we wanted to see was just starting in a theater we were passing on the way out, so we ducked in without even paying for tickets. We're such rebels.

Anyway, Hancock was very much as my sister described it to me: the first half is great but the second half falls completely apart and you are left with the feeling of "gosh, I really wanted that to be better. I really wanted to like it."

By the time we got to the huge emotional climax I said to myself, "Self, I wish I had goosebumps and crashing waves of emotion surging through me right now, 'cause I'd really like for this to be emotional and cathartic, but it just isn't. Something has gone wrong, and I've lost the shiny edge off my caring. I mean, I still sort of care about these characters and their predicament, but not enough."

spoiler alert--Also, I didn't believe for a second that they were really going to die.--spoiler alert

Get Smart was just plain fantastic. I laughed out loud which is difficult when you're alone and there are only about 6 other people in the audience. It's easier to laugh in a crowd. I wonder why that is? I thought Steve Carell was just plain brilliant. He made me believe he could actually be a secret agent in spite of his seeming incompetence. I'm not describing that well. He did have funny mishaps often of a physically comedic nature, but he still made the audience believe that he was quite capable of being a hero. Also, he displays real emotion. Real comedy has to come from a real place, or it's just not that funny, which is why comedians are often times the best actors. So why, you may ask, do comedic actors rarely get Oscars? There is no answer. Comedy is ten times harder than drama; every actor knows that. These days, a lot of comedians go for the flash without the substance. Jack Black is particularly guilty of this. He tends to wave his arms about and act like an idiot without offering anything of substance behind it. His comedy always seems rather empty to me.

I didn't mean to get onto this rant. It was just sitting there at the train station of my brain, and BOOM, I hopped right on. And I really shouldn't be so hard on Jack Black as I haven't seen any of his movies (with the exception of King Kong in which he was truly terrible. But then, he wasn't funny in that. On the contrary, he seemed to be trying desperately NOT to be funny, and therefore came off like a robot reading lines. And we're not talking Blade Runner robot, we're talking "danger Will Robinson, danger" kind of robot. It was as though he was afraid to move around or else he might accidentally be funny and therefore ruin his whole "I'm a serious actor" vibe.).

I have gone waaaaay off topic. Maybe I should do what Robin McKinley does and put my tangents in footnotes. Nah. Then my posts would be two sentences, and my footnotes would be 3 pages. I much prefer the non-linear way of blogging.

Hey, I saw a preview for Dark Knight.

And now this post has become incredibly long, so I will split it in two. I leave you with that tantalizing tease, which you can follow up on at 9:00AM on 7/11.

And now I must go to bed, because I just had to write half of this post AGAIN because my computer did something extremely strange and rather annoying when I tried to split the post into two posts. The other half is fine, sitting, waiting to be posted on Friday, but this one decided to get all weird and mostly deleted. Don't worry, I put everything back in, so you haven't missed anything. That's assuming I get through this without incident. Please don't let there be incident. I don't think I could handle rewriting it a third time.

I should go before anything else happens.

Later,
Jules