Miller's Tale
Because Iran is so yesterday's news.
It should be said that, while I like certain comic book franchises, I am not on the whole a comic book reader with limited exception (actually only one that I can think of--"Tank Girl"). I liked the Moore-ish League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V for Vendetta, though I don't think either were terribly good movies. Frank Miller, however, is really failing to impress me.
I rewatched Sin City hoping to gain a better understanding of it, but it still comes across as pretentious, a pastiche that requires you to buy into the silliness of it all (this coming from someone who enjoys Mickey Spillane) without ever really giving in to that silliness (I mean picture if all my writing was done in that ridiculous style. Here, have an mp3). Of course, Garrison Keillor has been employing the same technique for about fifty years now.
I've already covered my thoughts on 300, and I didn't care for the Robocops, so my question now is: am I missing something? Does Miller (unlike Moore, Miller is involved with these movies) not translate well from a graphic novel medium? Is he simply overrated? I'm so confused.
In other news, upon listening to it more closely, I'd like to strike one of the original songs from the Border Collie Film Association Top 20 Movie Soundtracks List and replace it with John Powell (the Bourne movies)'s theme to the Disney animated feature Bolt, which has over the last two weeks become just about my favourite movie of all time.
Like most such movies, Powell's score is fairly varied, between the light "The RV Park" and the almost Saving Private Ryan-esque, at times, "Where Were You On St. Rhino's Day". However, because the central device is an action television series, the soundtrack also fulfils my need for punchy, fast-moving action music, several times over. Seriously it's a great score--better by far, I am slightly saddened to say it, than my previous leader in the "animated non-musical" category, James Horner's score to Balto.
I don't care which movie you replace. Originally I was going to do the obvious thing and replace Hisaishi, but the more that I think about it the more I think that's not quite fair. My thinking now is to strike Finding Neverland, even though I like the piano music, but I could also see losing Zhivago. My top 5 stays pretty much intact, I think, because I would feel weird putting a John Travolta-Hannah Montana feature in with Howard Shore and Elmer Bernstein. But... maybe...
Um.
Anyway, peace out.
Wait. Wait. I mean.
The post was finished, I just couldn't bring myself to hit the "submit" button. I stared at the mouse for a good, long while.
Then it was over.
/a
I rewatched Sin City hoping to gain a better understanding of it, but it still comes across as pretentious, a pastiche that requires you to buy into the silliness of it all (this coming from someone who enjoys Mickey Spillane) without ever really giving in to that silliness (I mean picture if all my writing was done in that ridiculous style. Here, have an mp3). Of course, Garrison Keillor has been employing the same technique for about fifty years now.
I've already covered my thoughts on 300, and I didn't care for the Robocops, so my question now is: am I missing something? Does Miller (unlike Moore, Miller is involved with these movies) not translate well from a graphic novel medium? Is he simply overrated? I'm so confused.
In other news, upon listening to it more closely, I'd like to strike one of the original songs from the Border Collie Film Association Top 20 Movie Soundtracks List and replace it with John Powell (the Bourne movies)'s theme to the Disney animated feature Bolt, which has over the last two weeks become just about my favourite movie of all time.
Like most such movies, Powell's score is fairly varied, between the light "The RV Park" and the almost Saving Private Ryan-esque, at times, "Where Were You On St. Rhino's Day". However, because the central device is an action television series, the soundtrack also fulfils my need for punchy, fast-moving action music, several times over. Seriously it's a great score--better by far, I am slightly saddened to say it, than my previous leader in the "animated non-musical" category, James Horner's score to Balto.
I don't care which movie you replace. Originally I was going to do the obvious thing and replace Hisaishi, but the more that I think about it the more I think that's not quite fair. My thinking now is to strike Finding Neverland, even though I like the piano music, but I could also see losing Zhivago. My top 5 stays pretty much intact, I think, because I would feel weird putting a John Travolta-Hannah Montana feature in with Howard Shore and Elmer Bernstein. But... maybe...
Um.
Anyway, peace out.
Wait. Wait. I mean.
The post was finished, I just couldn't bring myself to hit the "submit" button. I stared at the mouse for a good, long while.
Then it was over.
/a
| Galluskek 24.06.2009 - 12h15 |
I'm surprised, Robocop was a Miller vehicle? Hmm.. I shouldn't be should I? One dimensional protagonist suffers horrible mutilation, and what's more, they rescue him so that he can suffer worse. That sounds about right. It is so easy to strip all that pesky humanity from a person who's already had it done for you. Checking the Wikipedia, it seems he started the comic afterward, so in this case he's just a lamprey... albeit one that wrote for the films after the first, but otherwise probably not the source material for the original. Unlike your other examples, I thought the first movie in this series was clever. As for the dark and moody pretentiousness in the rest, I cannot say that anyone other than Miller himself truly cares for it. The atmosphere of these films is difficult for me to take seriously, sometimes I think that Miller is doing a Miller parody. Other times, I think I might need to take up drinking just to get in the proper mindset to watch these films, seeing as it IS Miller time... Bah, it is far too late/early for me to be making commentary, hopefully this wasn't all gibberish. I'll go watch a Sci-Fi original movie or something, that always knocks me unconscious. Now Playing: Ice Spiders. Vanessa Williams, what new depths will you plumb? It is a terrible shame that Patrick Muldoon is irredeemable as an actor now, not that he has any talent to speak of. This is one actor that would probably be better off doing porn than continuing to whore himself out on Sci-Fi network. Like a powerful blow to the head, these movies rarely fail to knock me out. |
| Vulpecula 24.06.2009 - 3h50 |
Ice Spiders? >< I would cry if I had to see that movie again even if I wasn't mildly arachnophobic. |
| Galluskek 24.06.2009 - 5h05 |
Well, that was refreshing. Glad to see someone else has experienced the CGI HORROR that makes up most of that movie. They would probably have gotten a better effect if the manually layered stock footage onto the camera's output, or used After Effects to do it. Anything but the garbage first year design student job they did! It was arguably the least scary film I've seen in a while, beating out just barely: The Sound of Music. SPOILERS: I thought the nuns might have double-crossed the Von Trapps. Who could have believed that nuns would know to pry out the distributor cap on an automobile? I thought they were going to warn the bad guys. How do solve a problem like Maria? The Nazis may have a solution or two! — Movie Poster Our abbey isn't to be used as an escape! .. These walls were not built to shut out problems, they were built for MURDER! — Mother Abbess I'm afraid our car will do you no good now! — Mother Abbess and of course: The knowing glances between the nun and the soldiers!!! Hmm.. actually, that stupid idea might have made for a better movie than all the puppet shows and junk. And yes, I'm getting carried away, but the coffee's still brewing. Catch you guys later. |
| Vulpecula 24.06.2009 - 10h22 |
Yes. I had almost forgotten those scenes. But seriously, in fairness to Ice Spiders, the movie is horrible on so many levels beyond just the construction paper cutouts they taped to the negatives and claimed was CGI. I mean, not to give too much away, but could the plot of "secret government lab creates spiders that are huge, incredibly strong, and indestructible without any thought to what would happen if they got out... and then they get out" possibly be any more cliched? I'm not sure whether to hope the actors in the movie got paid very very well to suffer having to be associated with the movie, or if I hope they got paid very very little for the atrocious job they did. More to the topic of the actual original post, I will say that I was impressed how spot-on the impression of Garrison Keillor's style was (but not his distinctive voice). In Keillor's defense, however, I will note that he's out there doing it to have fun and make people chuckle. [i]Sin City[\i] certainly was taking itself far more seriously. I'll admit that it's been a while since I saw [i]Sin City[\i], and I was really only half paying attention to it when it was on. But I also don't recall it making me feel I wanted to pay all that much more attention either. So that that as you will. |
| Vulpecula 24.06.2009 - 10h24 |
*sighs* Typing \ instead of / in commands is what I get from too much LaTeX. And then my tags don't get processed. :( If only I could preview my post to catch those errors before it's too late. |
| Galluskek 24.06.2009 - 12h50 |
Oh yes, if only there was some sort of basic Editing/Previewing functionality... I suppose we'll just have to blame Alex whenever we make an error. YOU COULD HAVE SAVED HIM! Also, LaTeX? I'd search it, but I'm pretty certain 99.9% of the results are nsfw, and I can't have that right now. :P |
| Comrade Alex 24.06.2009 - 1h00 |
TeX/LaTeX is a typesetting system for people who are too cool for PDFs. It lets you do mathematical fomulae and... stuff. The language itself is a slash orgy, much like most fanfic websites, and apparently some people can't hack it. Perhaps I'll see what I can do. OR PERHAPS NOT. Anyway, I meant the later Robocop movies, primarily. I'm not the world's biggest fan of the Robocop, but it's a decent enough flick. +ca |
| Galluskek 24.06.2009 - 3h13 |
Meh, I'm told that it is a razor sharp parody of life in the '80s that caused a lot of deep introspection and single-handedly brought on the success of the internet. But maybe that is just because I hang out with a lot of those degree types that are super old. I'd rather catch a B-movie (not from sci-fi!) than that film. I guess I just need to get older so I can start talking about how Titanic single-handedly... did something. I'll know when I'm 30 or so. |