Canaries

Saturday night. Called Mikethe up somehow decided that Mission Impossible III was the movie we had to go see. I knew going into this that MI III would be ridiculous and cheesy and make me antsy because I don't like it when people die. But I saw it anyway. As Coach Rudd would say, I contributed to the destructive power of the masses.

Ever walk into a semi-crowded theatre, and it's like no one wants to sit next to anyone else, so they leave one or two seats inbetween themselves and the next person? and pretty soon only half the seats are used, but there are no more available seats because they are being used as buffer zones. Then you are forced to sit like all the way to the front [so that you don't trespass on someone else's buffer zone] where you can't actually see the movie and the speakers blow the popcorn out of your bag.

And then this punk guy walks in wearing one of those ravemotionpictures visors and collared shirts and gives us a speech about enjoying the movie and turning cell phones off, and is the temperature okay? no talking, don't put your feet on the chairs, enjoy your movie!

wait. back up a minute. 'don't put your feet on the chairs? ' that's like an understood right that you have when you pay 7.50 (it used to be seven bucks, but they decided to squeeze us for that extra half dollar- ef why I) for a movie. I was outraged at this careless evisceration of my rights as a moviegoer.

In the end it proved to be a moot point because someone sat in the seat in front of me.

The movie seemed to be really really really loud for some reason. Maybe it was because we were so close to the speakers. But the gunshots and airplanes seemed especially screechy and sharp. Maybe they felt as though they needed to wake people up after the unneccessary dialogue where they talk about that 'plot' thing the writer said had to be included in the movie.

Speaking of plots, I saw the Godfather(1972) the other day and it was beautiful. - The characters were so well developed and it was like you couldn't help but love the good ones and hate the bad ones. It was pretty long, too. Somewhere around three hours.

My favorite characted was probably Tom Hagen - an adopted son of Don Vito Corleone. The Don tells him to convince this famous director to star Johnny Fontane [the equivalent of Frank Sinatra] in a new movie. The director doesn't take too kindly to Tom's request and starts shouting and threatening Tom. Tom keeps his cool like a cat in an icebox. While the director is shouting and spitting, Everything Tom says has the emotional involvement of reciting a grocery list. And then the famous director gets a horse's head in his bed. haha.

I've got to write a paper on The Godfather and its theme. Does MI III have a theme? leave me a comment if you can think of one.

One thing I noticed - the car chases [for MI] were bit overly dramatic. You hear the sexiness of a roaring V12 as tires squeel and maybe see the expression of the driver as he does ?you don't know what he's doing because the camera is shaking, but then the bad guy's car blows up and the music isn't so dramatic anymore. The girl sitting next to mikethe almost threw up because she got nauseous. Probably the car chase.

In one scene, they had to distract these roof guards so tommy boy could tarzan his way onto a building via a swinging rope. So they magically find a baseball automatic pitcher thing over the course of two hours (in shanghai?) and they decide to launch baseballs from the top of one building to the other. They launch the first few and one of the operatives looks through the binoculars at the guards and says in the mic:

"yeah, they're really freakin' out. . .keep 'em coming" - sounds really high-tech-secret-agent-like, right?

i bet that was jackass-inspired.

Aside from that oddball scene, i think they compiled this entire movie out of actionflix cliches. Seriously. Every scene in MI has been a part of another movie at some point or another.

Random: Woody Allen should construct his own action movie out of clips of other already existing movies. He already did it with a chinese spy movie that he remade as a quest for a top secret egg salad sandwich recipe.

I learned something in exchange for my $7.50 and 2 hours [mikethe revealed it to me]. That is, Tom Cruise does not honestly act. Throughout the movie I expected him to turn around and start talking about how Brooke Shields is a loony or about how much he LOVES Katie Holmes. And then he faces off with that "jerk", Matt Lauer, for the final scene in a gunfight with motorcycles and explosions and he saves the world while a dramatic orchestra plays in the background! or maybe i just got a little confused. . .

Normally I would say that he is a terrible actor, but that's not true. He is always playing Tom Cruise. Since he doesn't act, he can't be criticized as an actor. He's actually pretty good at playing Tom Cruise. So really it all depends on if you like the guy or not. (not)

I reccommend the movie on two conditions: (1)You don't like plot (2) You like Tom Cruise

The Godfather and Mission Impossible III. Movies in 1972 and movies in 2006 are two very different creatures. Is there a reason why movies today have such a different presentation and reflect different values? I think it was Kurt Vonnegut that said, 'artists are equivalent of canaries in society.'