Intro
On 3/5/2011, you would think a guy of my ilk would be pretty excited about the fact that the NFL owners have not locked out the NFL players. Excited? No. Optimistic for the first time? Yes. Strangely enough, I am excited about the movies this morning. I was not excited about movies throughout the majority of 2010.
Folks, they never should have held the 83rd Academy Awards ceremony. They should have canceled the Chicky-Super Bowl this year. Hollywood did not deserve any gold statues for what happened during 2010. The fact that they held the ceremony was travesty and miscarriage of justice.
What we should have done is round-up all the heads of each major studio, and all the major Hollywood producers, taken them out behind the woodshed and kicked them in the nuts 20 or 30 times each. That is what they deserved for last year’s cinematic output. It was a fucking lousy year for the movies. The movies of 2010 stank, by and large.
Better still, let’s get Adam Vinattieri to kick them in the nuts 30 or 40 times each. I’m talking about a full soccer-style kick too. After that, we’ll get Deacon Jones to stuff them all into a burlap sack and beat the sack with a baseball bat. Or we could stuff them in a food processor and then an industrial microwave oven…
Now it’s 2011
As I surf to movies.Yahoo.com and look up my favorite local theater, I am absolutely astounded to find a fairly exciting list of choices here. Two movies just opened up yesterday that are on my must-see list: Rango and The Adjustment Bureau. There are several other reasonable choices also.
Rango looks like the first brilliant 3d movie since How to Train Your Dragon, and I think it’s going to be considerably better than that. The animation art looks truly awesome. I have high hopes. This is basically western with anthropomorphized animals, with a Looney Tunes style of humor. The preview looked good. I hope it does not disappoint.
The Adjustment Bureau looks like the bright star on the horizon. This movie has a chance to windup on my short list of all-time favorites, if everything works out as it should. I was intrigued by what I saw in the preview, but more so by the NPR interview I heard last night on the drive home.
The Adjustment Bureau is a heavy existentialist and mystical piece, wrapped up in the look and feel of a modern Sci-Fi movie. The question is deep: can a man control his own fate, or is your destiny controlled by something else? Is the leaver controlling your destiny in your own hands, or are their unseen--but keenly felt--beings or forces in an unseen realm, pulling strings and punching buttons, making things turn out the way they see fit? If there are such shadowy figures manipulating your outcomes, is it possible for you to resist them, and re-set your course as you prefer it to go? Is it is wise thing to resist them, just because you don’t like what they are doing?
At its core, this is actually a sweet romance about a man and woman who really love each other, and want to be together. She’s a ‘dancer’ and he’s a politician. It’s difficult to determine which profession is more slimy, but the politicos don’t want their bright star muddied-up with this greazie girl. Forces conspire to push them apart. They resist.
It’s a good thing that the casting directors chose a pretty Pisces girl (Emily Blunt) to play the love interest. That’s one way to catch my attention. Pisces is on my 7th House.
Folks, this is the kind of movie I really go for. Neptune is in Scorpio in my natal chart. I am part of a 14 year group of people who are attracted to and fascinated by strange, weird, unusual, mystical, macabre and bizarre subjects. The weirder and more paranormal it is, the more entertaining it is also. This is reflected in the music, art and fashion of our age cohort. We’re the guys who love Chariots of the Gods, UFO stuff, 2012 documentaries, the X-Files, Lost, and Unsolved Mysteries.
Uncle Broonmee
In spirit of the last paragraph, I should include the 3rd interesting release of the week. If it weren’t enough that they opened two must-see movies this week, there is a third option in very limited release. It’s called Uncle Broonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. That is quite a mouthful.
Evidently this is a Philippine movie about man who is dying. He has decided to spend his final days surrounded by his loved ones in the countryside, away from the public. He’s a good man, and better than Al Davis. Didn’t I mention this subject recently?
He has a number of very strange supernatural visitors. The closer he gets to death, the closer he gets to the other side. The more contact he makes with those on the other side, the more he learns about his past incarnations, and accumulates hints about his next incarnation.
Wow… sounds pretty damn weird, macabre, paranormal and entertaining. I want to see this one for sure. As Spock would say: “Facinating!”
But wait! There’s more!
As if it weren’t enough that there are three must-see movies opening this week, there is still more! I Am Number Four has been getting pretty good word of mouth inside my circle of friends and associates. Those who have seen it have praised it as a good adventure.
I’ve been building an interest in this movie all week long. It also helps that this movie features an absolutely ravishing (and I mean ravishing) Pisces female named Teresa Palma. You want to talk about a knock-out bombshell… Believe me, she puts about 850 foot-pounds of torque on my crankshaft. One of the interesting things about Teresa is that she was born on 2/26/1986; just 2 weeks, or 14 days, away from my theoretical max birthday of 3/12/1986. This is close enough to give Teresa a very impressive set of scores. Believe me, I’m feeling that synastry.
But wait! There’s more!
As you all know by now, Liam Neeson opened a new mystery/thriller a week or two ago called Unknown. We can describe it as a drama about identity theft on a whole different level. Of course, it helps that he has a stunning Cancer woman named Diane Kruger in that movie. I don’t mention it often, but Cancer and Virgo are very good together. We don’t have particularly good scores, but I admire her anyhow.
The general forecast for 2011
I spent a good part of last week hauling down some 63 movie previews from trailers.apple.com. If you own the pro copy of Quicktime, you can export these .Mov files as .Mp4 files. There is no transcoding, it’s just a different meta-wrapper. Once these files are in the .MP4 package, I like to drop them on a USB2 memory stick, formatted in Fat32, inside a directory called “VIDEO”. I can then plug that memory stick into my PS3, and watch all the previews I want on the big screen.
There are many other ways to do it, but this is how I like to do it. The speed of the flash memory means instant starts and instant stops. It’s very cool.
Looking at these 63 previews suggests that it is going to be a very interesting year indeed.
Surprisingly enough, it looks like they have done a re-origin and reboot on Marvel’s Thor, and it looks like it just might turn out to be entertaining after all. I sure hope so. The information about Captain America is currently too sketchy to determine whether this might be good or bad. It looks like they are playing it close to the comic book origin. No reboot here. That’s all I can tell you right now.
Kill the Irishman is actually based on a completely outrageous true-crime mobster story. I’ve seen several documentaries on this epoch of Cleveland history, and it’s truly a case where truth is stranger than fiction. If they do that story well, it could turn out to be one of the all-time mobster classics.
The Bleeding looks like the next hilarious grindhouse comedy. I am convinced that they didn’t have a serious bone in their bodies as they made this movie. This is camp stuff, and played for laughs. I loved Planet Terror, John Carpenter’s Vampires, and Black Dynamite. Machete disappointed me, but I hope this one won’t.
I am deeply worried that Green Lantern won’t turn out well, but still, I hold out some hope. It looks like they have spent quite a bit of money on special effects, and they won’t dumb down the Sci-Fi journey’s of the Green Lantern Corp. Still, I worry that this will be the next Fantastic Four. That one didn’t come together or work out well.
These are just a few of the movies that have caught my attention. There are many others.
