Last night around 8 pm, Chris and I decided that we should actually try and get out of the house for a change. So we set off for a late dinner and movie.
The time it took us to eat dinner would ultimately decide which movie we were going to see: Rango, Paul, or Limitless.
We asked for the check at 9:20 and Paul was supposed to start at 9:30. I was tempted to wait for Limitless at 9:50pm just because I was nervous about seeing Paul. If you haven't seen the previews, Paul is a Simon Pegg and Nick Frost film about two British sci-fi geeks touring America's alien hot spots who happen to come across an actual alien, Paul, who is quite culturally up-to-date and a "bit rude."
It is one of those films that could go either way: super funny or completely retarded.
(I suppose all films risk absurdity or greatness, but this one in particular did not seem to promise an in-between.)
While Chris waited for the check I skipped across the street to purchase tickets, while waiting in line I figured, why not? I'll give Paul a chance. I was more in the mood for comedy anyway.
Now come the surprising parts of the night.
1. Of the many previews before the film, they were all previews. Not one soda commercial.
2. Of those many previews, I was actually interested in seeing pretty much all of them. I'm not so sure about Thor, but perhaps it's just not my taste.
3. Paul turned out to be pretty damn good.
I actually left the theater with a regained respect for the film making industry.
This might sound like an overly exaggerated assessment of a movie about an alien, but it wasn't just Paul; it was the whole experience.
Not only was Paul a good comedy, nay, a good movie (though not perhaps "movie of the year" material, who cares?), with an original storyline and quirky characters who actually didn't go too over board (with the possible exception of Ruth, the overly religiously raised shut-in), but also the previews themselves each promised something well thought out and not simply remade (with the exception of perhaps Thor, and while we suspected Hannah was based on a book or something, it made no such claim). Even Scream 4, which I am totally seeing, promises a revival of the original cast, writer, and director. I mean you have to lend it to the Scream franchise for not letting multitudes of remakes be made over and over by consistently randomer and randomer people until 20 years later they just decide to remake the original and start completely over.
Could it be that they have finally figured it out? Could it be that they finally took the hint that the public truly isn't really interested in the same old storylines and jokes being regurgitated over and over with different actors and settings? Or is it just a sign of a new age, a new shift, a move into the original film again. Fashion has a Phoneix like sense about it: the budding of a new idea, the flaunting of its beauty and admiration, until it becomes unsightly, a disaster, laughable, forgotten, then reborn. (I do own the same pair of gloves as Dorian Gray's maid afterall, and where those short jean shorts and tights I saw prancing the sidewalks?)
Will movies do this as well? Or are they a still evolving? Motion films are just over a hundred years old and the "talkie" hasn't even reached that mark (It will in 2027). Movies as a rule have been born out of books and plays and operas, yet in the recent decade we have really begun to begrudge them this fact.
The Sixth Sense , while not the first movie by far to end on a twist, because of its popularity, seemed to foster in a whole decade of movies aimed to surprise. Then came the revolt against it. Movies that were quite consciously aware of themselves as viewed, critiqued, expectedly unexpected.
Original films, and by original here I also mean particularly unique, began to pop up here and there. Pans Labyrinth is one. It almost seemed in some cases though that the industry was fighting these films, despite their popularity. At best they tried to copy them, which ultimately barely worked. Even ones that were more mainstay, yet different, tried to get copied. Just like Twilight, which may have been an original book series and an ok set of films, was regurgitated not only by other "teen vamp" films, but by - and this was truly disappointing- by book publishers as well! It seemed the end all of end alls.
Books it seemed previously had at least prided themselves on being different, each unique. Even the commercial romances and horrors seemed to each promise, if not a different story arch, original and imaginative (if a little overdone) characters and situations.
Barnes & Noble, and perhaps Borders -though the evidence I have is all with B&N, is partly to blame for this. When I worked there, I wasn't allowed to order anything that didn't already have a successful sales history somewhere else. This truly begs the question of how ANYTHING new was to make it to the shelves.
Needless to say my love of literature and film was being tested. There were still good things out there, but they seemed far too few and I was bitter at those in control for elbowing out the new ideas -- for trying to stop literary evolution!
That is what they were essentially doing. It would be like if we shot any animal with a slightly different trait than its predecessor because it hadn't yet proved that trait would be successful. If that had been the case, countless of animals and possibly even humans would not exist today.
Picasso, Beethoven, Has Christen Anderson, Dickinson (Emily & Charles, why not), Tarantino - evolution of form and ideas!
Is one night truly enough to rebuild my faith in the over commercialized world of literature? (For movies are literature; they tell us a story just as masterfully as a book or play.)
Perhaps that is an overly optimistic idea. But there is hope.
Or more hope, for as long as writers continue to write and artists continue to create - whether they make it big, change the public's understanding of literature itself, or are never discovered- art will continue and it will evolve, and even if it is not publicized, it perhaps cannot truly ever be stopped.
The time it took us to eat dinner would ultimately decide which movie we were going to see: Rango, Paul, or Limitless.
We asked for the check at 9:20 and Paul was supposed to start at 9:30. I was tempted to wait for Limitless at 9:50pm just because I was nervous about seeing Paul. If you haven't seen the previews, Paul is a Simon Pegg and Nick Frost film about two British sci-fi geeks touring America's alien hot spots who happen to come across an actual alien, Paul, who is quite culturally up-to-date and a "bit rude."
It is one of those films that could go either way: super funny or completely retarded.
(I suppose all films risk absurdity or greatness, but this one in particular did not seem to promise an in-between.)
While Chris waited for the check I skipped across the street to purchase tickets, while waiting in line I figured, why not? I'll give Paul a chance. I was more in the mood for comedy anyway.
Now come the surprising parts of the night.
1. Of the many previews before the film, they were all previews. Not one soda commercial.
2. Of those many previews, I was actually interested in seeing pretty much all of them. I'm not so sure about Thor, but perhaps it's just not my taste.
3. Paul turned out to be pretty damn good.
I actually left the theater with a regained respect for the film making industry.
This might sound like an overly exaggerated assessment of a movie about an alien, but it wasn't just Paul; it was the whole experience.
Not only was Paul a good comedy, nay, a good movie (though not perhaps "movie of the year" material, who cares?), with an original storyline and quirky characters who actually didn't go too over board (with the possible exception of Ruth, the overly religiously raised shut-in), but also the previews themselves each promised something well thought out and not simply remade (with the exception of perhaps Thor, and while we suspected Hannah was based on a book or something, it made no such claim). Even Scream 4, which I am totally seeing, promises a revival of the original cast, writer, and director. I mean you have to lend it to the Scream franchise for not letting multitudes of remakes be made over and over by consistently randomer and randomer people until 20 years later they just decide to remake the original and start completely over.
Could it be that they have finally figured it out? Could it be that they finally took the hint that the public truly isn't really interested in the same old storylines and jokes being regurgitated over and over with different actors and settings? Or is it just a sign of a new age, a new shift, a move into the original film again. Fashion has a Phoneix like sense about it: the budding of a new idea, the flaunting of its beauty and admiration, until it becomes unsightly, a disaster, laughable, forgotten, then reborn. (I do own the same pair of gloves as Dorian Gray's maid afterall, and where those short jean shorts and tights I saw prancing the sidewalks?)
Will movies do this as well? Or are they a still evolving? Motion films are just over a hundred years old and the "talkie" hasn't even reached that mark (It will in 2027). Movies as a rule have been born out of books and plays and operas, yet in the recent decade we have really begun to begrudge them this fact.
The Sixth Sense , while not the first movie by far to end on a twist, because of its popularity, seemed to foster in a whole decade of movies aimed to surprise. Then came the revolt against it. Movies that were quite consciously aware of themselves as viewed, critiqued, expectedly unexpected.
Original films, and by original here I also mean particularly unique, began to pop up here and there. Pans Labyrinth is one. It almost seemed in some cases though that the industry was fighting these films, despite their popularity. At best they tried to copy them, which ultimately barely worked. Even ones that were more mainstay, yet different, tried to get copied. Just like Twilight, which may have been an original book series and an ok set of films, was regurgitated not only by other "teen vamp" films, but by - and this was truly disappointing- by book publishers as well! It seemed the end all of end alls.
Books it seemed previously had at least prided themselves on being different, each unique. Even the commercial romances and horrors seemed to each promise, if not a different story arch, original and imaginative (if a little overdone) characters and situations.
Barnes & Noble, and perhaps Borders -though the evidence I have is all with B&N, is partly to blame for this. When I worked there, I wasn't allowed to order anything that didn't already have a successful sales history somewhere else. This truly begs the question of how ANYTHING new was to make it to the shelves.
Needless to say my love of literature and film was being tested. There were still good things out there, but they seemed far too few and I was bitter at those in control for elbowing out the new ideas -- for trying to stop literary evolution!
That is what they were essentially doing. It would be like if we shot any animal with a slightly different trait than its predecessor because it hadn't yet proved that trait would be successful. If that had been the case, countless of animals and possibly even humans would not exist today.
Picasso, Beethoven, Has Christen Anderson, Dickinson (Emily & Charles, why not), Tarantino - evolution of form and ideas!
Is one night truly enough to rebuild my faith in the over commercialized world of literature? (For movies are literature; they tell us a story just as masterfully as a book or play.)
Perhaps that is an overly optimistic idea. But there is hope.
Or more hope, for as long as writers continue to write and artists continue to create - whether they make it big, change the public's understanding of literature itself, or are never discovered- art will continue and it will evolve, and even if it is not publicized, it perhaps cannot truly ever be stopped.
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