What the...?! (Part II)
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
So, today was my day off, but I had to go into work twice. Once for an inventory class and later tonight for the actual inventory (Yeah!). When I got into my car this afternoon to head to work there was an open parking space in front of me. I put my car into gear and started to pull out, but paused to let a car get by. Instead of going by, she instead stopped just in front of me on the street and preceded to parallel park in the space in front of me (which, by the way, was almost too small for her car). Now, keep in mind that I had already started to leave the space as she approached. For close to two minutes I waited for this girl to wiggle her car into the spot, while I kept my car in gear and even moved a bit to let her know I was trying to leave, all to no avail. When she finished, I then had to wiggle MY car out because she had moved into the space so tight to my front bumper I was virtually lodged in and she just sat in her car until I finally pulled off. I spent the entire drive to work stunned by what had just transpired.
On a totally unrelated subject, I have a question. I have been reading the Sin City graphic novels as of late, which I've previously mentioned . I'm getting to some of the books that have not been touched on in the film and with talk of a sequel based out of the remaining material, I'm a little hesitant about reading them right now. I know a lot of people prefer to read the books before seeing the movie. Some people insist on it. I personally prefer to NOT read the book until I've seen the film because I don't want to ruin anything. I know some people thinks that just crazy thinkin'. More times than not, people who are proficient in a particular body of literature are, in one way or another, left wanting at the end of a movie based on that same work. In the pro-'book before film' defense many people attest that the book is "so much better than the film" and therefore should be enjoyed without the taintings of another mediums interpretations. I understand where they're coming from, I guess I just don't see it that way. Maybe it's because I love movies so much (though I do love literature quite a bit). I look at the book as my own "Special Edition", if you will. You take from the book so much more than a movie could possibly give you: Internal monologues, deeper character development, stories that are more flushed out, cause-and-effects that may better explain certain plot developments, omitted characters. The list goes on. I want to react to a movie as if it were happening to me and if I know what's going to happen (if someone's going to die, if a character is secretly evil) it takes away from what the movie is trying to build up to and the events leading up to it seem unnecessary and overplayed. Even if you see a movie beforehand, you can't take away from what the book has to offer. Always save the best for last. I suppose that's the best way to explain it. I just want to know how other people feel on the subject out of curiosity. Which do you prefer and why? Get back to me on that...
Author: Billy... » Comments:
Monday, April 11, 2005
KUNG FU HUSTLE
(View trailer for Kung Fu Hustle)
So, I went to the Arclight Theater tonight to catch a limited run of Kung Fu Hustle. It gets released everywhere at the end of the month. It's a little hard to describe to the point where I don't even know how to rate it. It's a little bit of everything and nothing in particular at the same time. It's really funny, but has some pretty over-the-top cool fight scenes woven through it. I liked it, but I could see a few faces in the seats that had the occassional "What the hell?!" look to them. I would probably only recommend this movie to people who don't mind not taking a movie too seriously or those who spent a couple of hours every weekend when they were a kid watching 'Kung Fu Theater'. You know what? Screw it! Go see it. What else do you have to do?!
Author: Billy... » Comments:
"Another day, another..." -ahh, whatever...
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Work today seemed so freakin' long. I'm getting so tired...and I'm not just talking about work. I'm really starting to wonder why I'm out here anymore. Lately I've just lost my drive to do anything. I've got some really cool friends out here that are trying to help me work through it, but I just feel like I've hit a brick wall and everything's gone black (or at least a really dark grey). I'm going to give it some time to work itself out, but who knows...
We had a (I 'heart' Huckabees) party last night at the apartment, for some reason. It was actually started by two girls from work and our place just ended up being the forum where the magic would unfold. The party was cool, but why somebody would have a party based on a movie like that seemed a bit odd. I could see if it was 'Breakin' 2: Electic Boogaloo' or something like that. It was actually pretty fun, though. We didn't start the movie until around midnight, so that gave us a few hours to just hang out. We still have quite a bit of alcohol and food left over, so I guess we should have had another one tonight. Oh well.
It was actually a pretty laid back night. I got home around 10:30p.m. from work and just relaxed. After Mike and Amanda got home I decided to do a little reading. I pulled out Frank Miller's "The Hard Goodbye", the first chapter in the Sin City series. I believe it's one of the longer of the graphics novels from the series, hitting at 200 pages on the nose. If I'm not mistaken, I believe The Hard Goodbye is actually a compilation of 13 short serialized chapters that appeared in another book (Dark Horse Presents) instead of as a stand alone piece. That would have driven me crazy to have to wait for the rest of the story the way it's paced. This is basically Marv's story that appears in the movie, just in more detail. If you haven't seen the movie, Marv is one kiss-ass character. If you have seen the movie, then you know what I'm talking about. I had only planned on reading a short bit, to get a taste of how the graphic novel played out, but a couple of hours later and 200 pages behind me, I had read the whole darned thing! It just got away from me. Which is funny because that's what Frank Miller said about his originally 48 page planned story, it just kind of "ran away with itself." It's amazing how true to the book the movie was, and yet the book still had so much of a life of it's own. I can't wait to start on the next book...but I will. When something good has an eventual end you have to pace yourself, because once it's done and there's nothing left, it's s-s-so c-cold, so v-v-ery c-c-cold-d...(single tear drop)
***It's weird, but my heart symbol wouldn't show up in the movie title on the site page, just a "♥", but it shows up on my actual composition and it's still on my review for the Huckabees movie from November. (Huh...strange...)***
Author: Billy... » Comments:
What a "Sin"-full day!
Saturday, April 02, 2005
So, last night (Thursday night) I opted to work overnight to take care of some storage issues we were having at work and I came home nice and tired, but I slept on the couch because Mike was going to wake me in an hour and a half so that we could catch an early showing of Sin City. Well, he woke me up, but decided not to go. I wasn't going to let that stop me. Their car was in the shop, though, so I had to wait until they had to go to work @ 2:00, so they could drop me off at the theater and I could pick up my car at work afterwards. I went and saw the movie, which was excellent, and then walked to work. As I was crossing the street from the theater I ran into a few friends from work as they were dispersing from a small get together. I cut through the mall and ran into another co-worker who'd been on vacation all week and I talked to her for a bit. Eventually, I made it to the store and got my keys from Mike. I stopped by my side of the building because it was a friend of mine's last day and I wanted to catch her before she left. She asked if I wanted to go see a movie (guess which one...) and I told her that I had just seen it, but I'd love to see it again. While she finished her out-processing paperwork I grabbed some Panda Express at the mall, met up with her and then we caught the movie. Before the movie started a pretty big guy was trying to get some last minutes seats for himself and two friends a few seats down from us. It was Isaac Singleton Jr. from Pirates of the Caribbean. When it got out, it was too close to the time for Mike to get out of work, so I headed right back to the store. Mike decided to stay later, so I just waited around for an hour until they were both done. We got home and they started packing for a short bike trip they were making the next day. After a LOT of back-and-forth, we all decided to go down the Arclight to catch a late showing of (what else?) Sin City. Movies are always better at the Arclight. Well by this time I was just plum tuckered-out, but I had no problem watching the movie. It wasn't until after the movie got out that we realized that Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire were sitting there with us. As we walked out, Mike exclaimed, "Spider-Man is right behind us!" I turned around and sure enough, there was Tobey Maguire in a red cap and completely unshaven leaving behind us with some friends. He spent, like, two minutes burrowing though his duffel bag to try to find his parking stub for parking validation (The guy made 26 million on the Spider-Man movies alone and he's struggling to save $3.00?). Actually, I thought that was kind of cool. Once we were outside, Mike spotted Leo standing in the same small group. Apparently, they've been buds since they were young. It's funny - You see a person sitting next to you in a dark theater wearing a cap over his eyes and you never think, "I wonder if that's...", you just pay attention to the people your with and you watch the movie. As an added bonus, Patrick Renna (The Sandlot, Son in Law) was also there puffing on a cigarette with some friends out front. I found it kind of ironic that he was there, since Carla Gugino, who played his sister in Son in Law, was in the movie and spent most of her time pretty naked. It seems almost incestuous. He's actually the first "celebrity" that Mike and Amanda saw when they got to California and he went to high school with the girl that I had talked to earlier in the mall. Coincidence? Well, yeah probably, but whatever. And to top of the day, on the way out of downtown Hollywood we got to enjoy the spectacle of a poor, young blonde throwing her guts up out the passenger window of a white sports car all the way up until we hit the highway. What fun! From there, we went home and now I will basically be passed out for the night, but I did get a chance to catch Sin City.
Author: Billy... » Comments:
SIN CITY
(View trailer for Frank Miller's Sin City)
...I'll get to it...
Author: Billy... » Comments:
