Constantine

But maybe actually really about everything else...

First, the previews:

Sin City looks like the sexiest thing, ever. EVER. Hot damn.

Batman Begins looks darkity dark dark in all the right ways. Also, Christian Bale and Liam Neeson. I die now.

Kung Fu Hustle or whatever the hell it was called? Um...? Um.... it's like... the bastard love child of Quentin Taratino and Baz Luhrmann with a gene splice from Drunken Master. Then there was a Meatloaf song. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS THING?

Through a Scanner Darkly: Or, why I will never ever do acid.

Constantine:

For a not good movie, it sure was weirdly compelling. Almost weirdly compelling like King Arthur was weirdly compelling, in that you get the sense that every single interesting thing happening in the universe and time frame covered by the film was off screen, but you like, _really_ want to know.

Dude, the guy from Bush is in the Jude Law role. And who knew he looked like a cross between Jude Law and the young Sam Neill. Or was hot. Or creepy. Or... what the hell?

Tilda Swinton manages to channel David Bowie and a raver, sort of all at the same time. I'd write Gabriel/Balthazar slash, but I don't even know if that would be slash. Or something. I'm confused.

Keanu Reeves -- kinda almost acts. His voice makes me crazy though. he swallows his words and his voice has no reverb, and between that and THE WORST SOUND EDITING EVER, I couldn't make out half his lines (or a quarter of anyone else's either).

The parts of the script that concern the plot are terrible. There aren't just plotholes but weird dangling things that are supposed to be important that never get resolved. The parts of the script that are detail oriented and character focused though are just utterly brilliant. Ultimately, this is confusing.

Theologically it's compelling, again, not in the hokey plot stuff, but in the stuff you're left to deduce. Ultimately, a lot of the movie is about the nature of being alone, and of loss, which is my artistic bugaboo, and that stuff... just great. Gabriel is really fascinating, lost and vicious. It's like there's a little movie burried in the larger movie that's merely about the path certitude takes through the flesh to reform it. And that shit is utterly brilliant.

Also, kids everywhere are going to stick their shoed feet in pots of water and stare at their cats because of this thing.

I kinda want it to franchise and for them to pull their shit together on it.

Stupid things in this film: the symbol that never gets explained. Editing that makes the location of various events seem to jump randomly. Nazis. Always with the nazis. Also, badly animated dying cows.

Keanu in general:

At a later date, I need to write a long thing about how Keanu Reeves' flat affect, which makes me _insane_ but occassionally gets used to great effect, has become the thing that makes him the most interesting as a performer. No one has been in so many really challenging (or attempted challenging) pieces about identity. And it's not because he's a blank canvas so much as he never gets in the way of the world swirling around him. It works here. It worked in The Matrix. it worked in Devil's Advocate. It was devastating in My Own Private Idaho. And he's coming up in Through a Scanner Darkly. What a strange not quite anti-hero he's now typecast as. He is the apathy we all long for. A chosen one who has to do very little but hold on for the ride in the big bad world filled with forces we don't understand and no one who knows what it's like to be whatever it is we are. Which generally is just some Gen-x dipshit.

Life stuff:

So I've been seeing someone. And working hard to be all suave and adult and cool about it. Last night, I had a big ol' PMS thing because NOTHING WAS GOING RIGHT (having nothing to do with them, but with work theatre and the wonderful world of LJ), and I feel like a big loser about it, although it seems not to be a big deal. This too will pass, but I'm thinking it's not so cool as being a dork the way Nicole Kidman is when she snorts when she laughs. Mostly, I don't know how anyone does this and by this I mean "date" and by this I mean "be ambitious and actually interact with others and have it not seem fucked up because it's always wedged in between this and that." Mostly, I am posting about this only so I will stop having to cycle on my PMS moment.

I also almost jumped some random guy in McDonalds the other day. Because he was so hot. And looked like one of my really really really bad crush objects, other than being too tall, and he kept looking at me too... but that might have been the drool.

My plays are really stressing me out.

Yeah.