Getting Lazy With Watching Movies

You may have noticed the lack of movie circulation in my Netflix list. This will change next week as I will mail off all three movies Monday. They will get to the distribution center Tuesday, and on Wednesday I will have three more movies. The next three on the list are from Korean director Chan Wook Park. Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance. These movies are known as his "revenge trilogy". Each movie features.....well....revenge. I do not think the movies are like Kill Bill V. 1 and 2, they are each separate movies. But I shall see. A lot of people rate the three movies very highly.

So now for some MOVIE REVIEWS!

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy (BBC TV series). Excellent. I never read the book, but I meant to. I just never got around to it. The series is broken down into 6 episodes of about 30 minutes each. The series is adapted from a BBC radio play, and of course as is typical of BBC productions the budget was low. Now this is a GOOD thing. See, the story line and dialog becomes more important than the special effects. So the result was a very funny series. Totally great. 5 tail whips for the series. If you read the book, then you will love the BBC series. And if you did not read the book, but enjoy the kind of humor presented by the book - then you will like the series. So rent it. Trust me here. By the way, the radio play predates the books. That is right, the books are based on the radio series. And the TV series follows the radio play. So in effect, the TV series is the original story. I think the infinite improbability drive had something to do with this because usually stuff is based on the book - not the other way around.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy (the movie made with a higher budget). Not so great. They cut parts that were in the series out - like The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. How can you leave that out? They mention it, but never end up there. And the story line is changed. The Vogons are chasing the characters for the whole movie, because in the movie version Zaphoid is the Galactic President (the people thought they were voting for "worst dressed being") and the Vogons think he was kidnapped. Totally not in the original series. And Marvin The Paranoid Android is not nearly as depressed nor nearly as funny. And so on. And did we really need a "so long and thanks for all the fish" song? NO! The original bit was much funnier. The think about God vanishing in a giant poof of logic because the Babelfish proves his existence and therefore there is no point in having faith and without faith God is nothing was also removed from the movie. And much more. Skip the movie and just watch the TV series. 0 tail whips for pissing me off by taking what was a perfectly good story and plot and screwing it up by trying to change it so you could have more special effect shots.

Wag The Dog - BORING! What a turd this movie is. I am watching it now. Here is the general plot as I understand it. There is an election about to take place. Two weeks or so before the election there is some kind of scandal involving the sitting President and some girl. And of course the person running against the President makes a big stink about it. Public opinion is going against the President - who is in China when all this breaks.

So the staffers invent a war. Not the "find a fake reason to go to war with some other nation then invade" - they invent a totally fake way. In a studio. With actors. And digital enhancement to turn a bag of chips into a kitten. And stuff.

Of course the real nation is a little concerned when US news is showing a war where there is none. And for some reason, nobody in the USA is watching the BBC which in real life would be reporting from Albania showing no war. But whatever. The CIA "ends" the fake war so some other story is made up about someone stuck behind what was once enemy lines and they run with that. And it just goes on and on.

The movie is a "comedy". And I suppose it is a comedy, in the way that it is totally absurd.
The events are pretty out there. But it works. The news is manipulated, public opinion is changed, and so on. So I guess there is a message there too. If it is on TV, it is real. And it is easy to get people to buy almost anything.

But the pace is slow, and the comedy is dry. 2 tail whips. Not a very good movie.

More stuff about Skipper and Korats on Monday. Maybe. If I remember.