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September 21, 2006

someone apparently knows me

Posted by spoof747 at 04:52 AM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2006

Off the shelf: Bad Boys and The Rock

Flipping through cable last week, wide awake since i've been keeping a very nocturnal schedule recently, I came across Bad Boys. It had been a while since I had seen it, so I started watching it. I got frustrated with the various cuts to the cable version (swear words, graphic violence) so I decided to pop in the DVD - have to see a movie the way it was meant to be seen, after all. I guess I needed my Michael Bay fix, so after that was done, I watched The Rock.

It was funny to see how dated the first Bad Boys movie now seems. Maybe it was because Martin Lawrence and Will Smith both looked to be a few hamburgers lighter than they look these days. Poor Will Smith was trying to pull off the sexy leading man look, but he often came across like a skinny kid in oversize clothing. And the action scenes, on my umpteenth re-viewing, seem to be lifeless, despite the signature Michael Bay pyrotechnics. I really tried to like Bad Boys when it first came out. These were in the days when I had time to look up movie buzz and I had heard that Smith and Lawrence were doing a movie with their take on the cop buddy genre. The identity switch gag still is funny to me, but the constant conflict and arguing between the two gets tired very fast. They're practically forcing it for the whole movie. YOU YELL AT EACH OTHER BUT YOU REALLY LOVE EACH OTHER, WE GET IT.

As for the Rock, this movie was an instant hit when it first came out in theaters. Sean Connery as an invisible prisoner held by the US (of course, this was before the recent Global War on Terrorism, so it was actually shocking) who was a British Agent that had managed to escape multiple places, including Alcatraz. It was an obvious take on, "What if James Bond had existed, and ended up imprisoned for 30 years, and is now back in from the cold?" That they cast Sean Connery to fill the role was a masterstroke to drive home that point. However the story muddles his origin a bit. At one point, he says he was trained by "British intelligence". At another, he says he was originally SAS (the famous Special Air Service) which is technically a special forces outfit, not an intelligence one. This movie also has Ed Harris playing the role of an anguished US general who spends the whole movie giving the look of, "What have I done?" but his backstory is really compelling and really makes him sympathetic to viewers. To top it off, you get Nicolas Cage before his habit of adding tics and idiosyncracies to his characters got really annoying (it could be because this was his first major action movie role). The Hans Zimmer soundtrack was also really key to establishing the dramatic and heart-pounding atmosphere of this movie.

These two movies also bring back memories for me because when I watched the Rock in movie theaters, I got to the scene after Nicolas Cage had crashed his sports car chasing after Sean Connery. The camera suddenly starts to rotate around Nicolas as he slowly stands up, heroic music in the background. I started fidgeting and elbowing my friend -- I've seen this shot done before. Sure enough, Bay used this exact shot in Bad Boys, after Will Smith saves Martin Lawrence from being run over by a car. Nice style, but a bit overdone in telling the viewer, "Your hero may be down, but he's not out!" (and I *think* Bay may have used the same shot in Armageddon, but I haven't confirmed that yet)

I'd have to say that even though I had high expectations for the Bad Boys movie due to the actors involved, I ended up enjoying the Rock much more. Part of it was due to the story concept, part of it had to do with the better pacing of the Rock. It did drag on a bit (how many times did Nicolas Cage have to RE-convince Sean Connery to help him) but you were in suspense until the end of the movie. The cherry on top was a "post-story" glimpse of Cage's character, having just got married, getting the microfiche from the church where Connery had hidden it for the past 30 years. Ironically, after a second viewing, I realized that the backstory explaining this microfiche and the reason why Connery was in jail for so long was never explained to Cage, at least on screen. Wonder when he had time to hear that story? I always like movies that toss that bone to the viewer about what happens after the main story, it gives you the heads up, that hey, the character made out ok after all.

Posted by spoof747 at 04:46 AM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2006

anybody here?

i'm back.

you could say it has been a bit of a summer hiatus, but its not like things ceased to happen. work still gives me a migraine every day, and other things have happened as well. Peggy (my sister) got married, and we tried to enjoy the waning days of summer by killing ourselves going to as many places and events as possible, all the while dragging our darling daughter along. Hopefully I will be able to post about those, as long as you'll forgive the lack of timeliness in what I'm blogging about.

its also nice to see that the comment spammers have finally disappeared. Maybe they saw the lack of traffic coming here and decided it wasn't worth the effort.

Posted by spoof747 at 02:07 PM | Comments (1)