March 26th, 2009

Max Power

Where the Wild Things Are was the #1 children’s book in our house when Kate, Kevin, and I were growing up, so I am monitoring this trailer with intense scrutiny.

Some initial thoughts:

• I am worried. With the exception of the first two X-men, Spiderman, and Batman movies, every film based on a beloved element of my childhood has felt soulless and haphazard. (See The Grinch, The Polar Express, Alvin & the Chipmunks, Superman, that new Indiana Jones, the Star Wars prequels, Scooby Doo, and Charlie & The Chocolate Factory to name a few).
• Ok, this looks amazing. No traces of cheesy CGI to be found.
• I guess I’m seeing some evidence of the new subplot(s) that will be necessary to turn an 11-word-story into a full-length movie. I wonder what Dave Eggers cooked up.
• I also wonder if they worked in the classic lines from the book that kids love so much. (“Please don’t go, we’ll eat you up we love you so.”, “They gnashed their terrible teeth and showed their terrible claws,” etc.) Hard to say if those will work here or not.
• Great choice of song for the trailer. I was fearful that Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing” would kick off in the background, and I’d have to rip my computer off of my desk, hurl it across the room, and flee to a cave in the Appalachian Mountains where I would spend the rest of my life.
• Ok, this is just a knee-jerk reaction based on incomplete information, but these wild things might be a little too cute and friendly to be in keeping with the book. In the context of this movie, I suppose there could be a valid reasons this.
• Also, this kid might be a little too sweet. Max was an utter terror at the beginning of the book. Again, could be a valid reason for this.
• I hope this kid can act. Nothing ruins a film like a crappy child actor.
• Spike Jonze is the director and it seems he hasn’t made a bad feature yet. In fact he made Adaptation which is one of my favorite movies of all time.
• After much deliberation I have settled on my stance towards this movie and that stance is “cautiously optomistic.”

Tags: Family, Movies - No Comments »

February 10th, 2009

Get the Net!

Since they made it available for the Mac, I’ve become a big fan of Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature. I have heard the argument from many that 90% of the movies offered through this service are not, in conventional terms, “good.” I can’t say I disagree, but I’d wager that 50% of what you find there is “watchable,” and while it can be hard to tell the total garbage from the less offensive semi-garbage you feel compelled to take from your neighbor’s curb and drag into your house, as long as you have the $8.99/month unlimited-viewing plan, you can put that particle-board shelf or dingy recliner down anywhere you want, it will magically disappear (yet somehow be right where you left it if you decide you want it again later), and you can immediately go picking through more promising trash down the block. How can one complain?

Steph’s heard much talk of “Watch Instantly”, but until a few nights ago, she’d never even been to the Netflix site. She was fine naming off the features that she wanted to see and having me add them to the DVD queue. When she had some rather monotonous sewing to do this past weekend however, she logged in for the first time to find something to watch.

The result was a rare “someone you’ve known for 10 years completely flipping out over something you never expected them to care two cents about” type-event. It was a special moment.

You see, shortly after “Watch Instantly” started working on the Mac, the items in our DVD queue ran out, and, lacking the desire to search around and restock it and lacking any recent suggestions from Steph, I simply left it empty.

When those red-and-white packages arrived at our house, we seemed to just place them on top of the TV, where they sat, unopened for weeks, sometimes months, at a time.

This, to me, is the Achilles’ heel of Netflix’s movies-by-mail model. Once you decide you’d like to see a specific film, you can’t, within the hour, be watching that film in the comfort of your own home.

I realize this sounds incredibly flippant, but, keep in mind, this is a luxury we were introduced to way back in 1985, when VHS rental began its rise to power. And keep in mind that, in my opinion anyway, near-constant internet access is only increasing our fickleness lol check this out :)

I’m almost embarrassed to say it, but there were times when we’d finally put something we’d ordered on, find we weren’t in the mood for it a quarter of the way through, and, instead of having a little patience and seeing where it went, we’d banish it to the mailbox then and there.

Though I imagine there are others that don’t get much mileage out of their Netflix discs, I can see how Steph and I would be an unusual case.

For one thing, we don’t really watch our TV. I tell you this, of course, to let you know that we are better than you. But also to explain that we have an old, dilapidated TV that it’s pretty unpleasant to watch anything on.

In addition, when we spend a night in, we usually don’t have the time for a movie. Steph has a lot of homework these days. I have a lot of stuff to do around the house. We both have innumerable hobbies. And there’s always knockin’ boots! By which I mean standing on the porch and hitting our pairs of hiking shoes against each other to get the mud out of the treads. What did you think I was saying?

All of this, I tried to explain to Steph, is why a strict “Watch Instantly” diet is perfect for us. When movies are basically white noise in the background while we’re concentrating on two-to-four other activities, a hand-delivered pressing of The Seventh Seal doesn’t seem quite as appropriate as an abortable instance of Mama’s House II.

It didn’t stop her from manically adding to our cue. According to an email I just got, The Devil and Daniel Johnston arrives tomorrow.

Tags: Household, Movies - 3 Comments »