the hypercube of happydalek

You guys!  YOU GUYS.  Guess who got to act in a scene opposite Tom Hardy on Saturday?  THIS GAL. 

LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT SATURDAY.

So, on Saturday I went with a couple of friends to Pittsburgh, PA to be an unpaid extra in The Dark Knight Rises, the Batman sequel coming out next summer.  The filming was taking place at Heinz Field (where the Steelers play), and we were going to be spending the day in crowd scenes, cheering on Gotham City's football team, the Rogues.  We were given a detailed list of what to bring, what to wear (and what NOT to wear), and told to expect to film from our call time of 9:45 AM to about 7:00 PM that evening. 

( Getting to set. )

( Wardrobe and props. )

( The filming agenda: BOOM! )

( And this is what happened. )

I pulled out my Firefly boxset a few weeks ago to watch some of my favorite episodes, and left it lying in the living room next to the TV.  Last week, I noticed one of the discs was missing.  I asked about it, and my mom casually said, "Oh yeah, your dad saw them laying there and decided to take one to watch at work."  (My father frequently works evening and night shifts where his main responsibility is to Stay Awake, so he often takes dvds with him for this purpose.)  I raised an eyebrow at this, since my father is notably Not Interested in the science fiction-y geek stuff that my brother and I are so keen on.  But I didn't want to embarrass my dad by asking about it, so I just let it drop.  A couple days later, my dad and I were making lunch when, out of the blue, he said: "Oh, I've been watching episodes of that Firefly show at work.  I'm not sure I get it."

"What do you mean?" I asked, playing it cool.

"Well, the episodes are spread out weird on the discs  I was trying to watch them in order and it seems like--"

"Wait a minute," I cut in.  "When you say 'in order,' do you mean broadcast order?"

"Yeah," he answered.

So I proceeded to explain to him how Fox screwed up the production of the show and how the discs are organized in original production order, not broadcast order.  My dad took it all in and agreed to try it the other way.

A few days later, my dad remarked, "So I watched the original 2 hour pilot, and you're right, that makes things a lot clearer."  He then proceeded to astonish me by saying that he'd done some research on the show and on Joss Whedon, and was quite impressed that someone like Whedon would write a character like Shepherd Book and do it so respectfully.  That lead to a whole discussion of Book's character, and what his background actually was, and my dad found it amusing that no clarification on the point had ever been given. 

Over the next several days, my dad kept giving me these little viewing updates, telling me which episodes he'd seen and what he liked and didn't like (in "Heart of Gold," for example, he thought it was ridiculous that a horse could keep up with a state-of-the-art hovercraft), and also what new factoids he'd discovered on the internet.  ("Did you know Joss Whedon had planned on Firefly running for seven years?"  Actually...I didn't.)

He finished watching all the episodes earlier this week, and wants to see the movie now. (!!) That would be truly awesome...except that my copy of Serenity is missing.  I have the box, but the disc is nowhere to be found.  I have never lost a movie before, and I have turned the house upsidedown looking for it, with no luck.  In the meantime, my dad decided he was going to listen to some of the episode commentary tracks (apparently he's as much a trivia buff as I am about some things).  And I, desperate to keep feeding this surprising new bit of geekery, have gone to Amazon dot com and purchased another copy of Serenity, my first online movie purchase in over a year and a half.  I hate spending money redundantly, so I'm getting the collector's edition this time.

All the years I've spent trying to convince people that Doctor Who is cool (and largely failing) and I end up making my dad into a Browncoat just by not putting my DVDs away.  *eye roll* 

I do!!  Er, rather, I DID!  Last night!  Exclamation point!  Going into the theatre, there was a guy dressed in an awesome Rorschach costume, and after it was over, it turned out he had a couple friends with him going as the Comedian, and Mr. Manhattan (with clothes on, fortunately!).  I didn't get any pictures, sadly.  But it was pretty neat.  The theatre was packed, too, and when it was over there was applause.  Haven't been to too many movies that got applause. 

Disclaimer: I read and really enjoyed The Watchmen graphic novel, so this review is biased in that direction.  Can't help it, sorry.

So, what did I think of it?  Well, in a nutshell, it proves that an excellent comic book does not an excellent movie make.  Watchmen isn't a bad movie, merely a pretty good one.  It's two hour and 40 minute running time flew by and the narrative was engaging.  But this was a 12-issue series they made into a single show.  The Watchmen was a story crafted to take advantage of the comic medium, not the film medium, and there was simply no way to adapt it without losing some of the depth and complexity that made it such a compelling story.

( Click for a more detailed, but SPOILER FREE review. )

Went with a friend to see this sure-to-be-awful remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still last night, and guess what?  It was pretty awful.  Reading reviews for this flick, it seems the critical reception has been surprisingly uniform, and pretty on the mark.  Basically, the only thing this movie did right was cast Keanu Reeves as the alien.  Everything else about it (including the very fact of its existence) is just wrong.  The very message of the original film was changed and distorted. 

In the original, Klaatu was an utter pacifist.  True, he had Gort, his mighty robot, but even Gort was mostly authorized only to eliminate weapons, not hurt people.  Klaatu was a nice guy, even.  Warm and friendly, in his reserved way.  Keanu's Klaatu (I should start a poll on which name is the more strange, hehe) is cold and strange and vaguely untrustworthy (which actually is a better change, in my view.  One of the things that always bugged me about the original was what a normal human Klaatu seemed to be.  At least Keanu brings some genuine alienness to the part).  And he's a murderer.  The original Klaatu put the fear of god in people without harming a hair on anyone's head.  This one triggers the friggin' apocalypse.  From this perspective, I wish the movie had been billed as a sequel instead of a remake.  It wouldn't have made it any less ridiculous to sit through, but at least it would have made a bit more sense.  

I feel like I have none, after watching the first two movies of the Return of the Living Dead franchise.  I'm a major Romero devotee, but I felt I should at least get familiar with the "other" zombie series, produced by a fellow named Russo as an alternate sequel to Night of the Living Dead. 

I'll just say, beyond the ludicrously stupid skience, in both movies the acting was really, surprisingly good.  But the over-the-top direction undermined it pretty badly, especially in the first Living Dead, which was uneven, creepy and made me laugh mostly because it was just so preposterous.  ("The movie said to get 'em in the head!"  "Yeah, well it ain't working!"  "You mean the movie LIED??")  The second one, however, was actually pretty good.  It was obviously played for laughs, and most of the humor worked really well.  Juvenile, but harmless.  Two of the actors from the first movie returned in this sequel, playing similar, but different characters, and there's one scene where one of them comments on a sense of deja-vu about the situation.  Hehe.  Funny! 

Tomorrow I'll tackle Return of the Living Dead III, which I hear is actually supposed to be a serious horror movie.  Sounds dubious, but whee!!  Zombiez!!!  Now I finally get where the whole brain-eating fixation came from.  And, to all those out there who thought the running zombies in 2004's Dawn of the Dead were a nifty innovation, I gotta tell ya, sorry, Russo did it first, in 1985!