January 2006 Archives

I really, really liked King Kong. I’ll call it my favorite movie of 2005. Everyone else I know that has seen it says it was too long. Not me, it might have been long, but I was never bored. Everyone says it takes too long for the boat to get to the island. Not me, I was interested in the characters. Everyone says it had way too many repetitive action sequences. Not me, I thought they were exciting and fun. Everyone is dumb. Not me, I’m not dumb.

King Kong is an exhilarating action movie that takes its time. The setup time on the boat struck me as just right. Establish the characters, set a mood of desperation and mystery, put Adrien Brody in a cage.

Then the adventures on Skull Island were fantastic! A complete sense of wonderment with that "I have absolutely no idea what we’ll find next, but it’s sure to be incredible" feeling. This goes down as one of the top three adventure stories I’ve ever read/seen. It’s right up there with the 1959 movie, Journey to the Center of the Earth and the H. Rider Haggard novel, King Solomon’s Mines. Both of these were experienced when I was much younger, so for something today to reach that level of excitement and adventure is really saying something!

I should also say that Kong’s facial animation was stupendous. I had that “Wait, that’s not real?!” thought come to me multiple times throughout the movie. Very impressive work by Andy Serkis and Weta Digital.

So, basically King Kong was awesome. And if anyone says differently, they’re dumb. And if you think differently, you’re dumb too.

I was walking downtown today to pick up some lunch. As I passed the liquor store, I noticed the following words written on their whiteboard sign:

POWERBALL
$65 Million!
Play one dollar...
Win millions...
No brainer.

I commend them on their effective use of ellipses.

Today is my last day working in downtown Portland. My office is moving to Milwaukie on Saturday and I’ve got mixed feelings about it. I mean, it’ll definitely be nice to have only a 15 minute drive to work instead of the current 1 hour bus ride! I’ll have to figure out what to do with the extra 1.5 hours of free time that I’ll get each day.

But, I’m going to miss being downtown. It’s very nice to be able to walk to a variety of places on a whim. Want snacks? Walk to Rite Aid. Want coffee? Walk to Coffee People. Want stamps? Walk to the post office (I did that yesterday). But that’ll no longer be an option after tomorrow. Plus, it feels like I’m leaving a neighborhood. There are many people down here that I see on a daily basis, that I will never see again after today.

There’s the short round coffee girl that starts pouring my large decaf as soon as she sees me. There’s the florist that looks just like the Comic Book Guy. There’s the Fed Ex lady that inexplicably wears shorts every day, regardless of the weather. There’s the old lady that sits on the bench with her gold cup and asks for change as I pass. There’s Tom, the guy that owns the café across the street. There’s the old man with perfectly groomed hair that works at Rite Aid. Farewell all you barely acquaintances, I’ll kind of miss you in a weird sort of way.

I saw Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou over the weekend and it was great. It’s pretty silly and it’s got a strange sense of humor, but I really enjoyed the message I took away from it.

Bill Murray plays Steve Zissou, a once renowned aquatic adventurer/filmographer, now a middle-aged has-been laughing-stock. The movie starts with a viewing of Part 1 of the title film in which Steve’s best friend is eaten by an undocumented type of shark (all off camera). The audience is skeptical, they ask “Why didn’t you film the shark?” and “Who are you going to kill off in part 2?” They suspect that his films are fake because they are so unbelievable. And frankly, so do we.

The world’s response to his recent work weighs on him and his men. Steve wonders aloud, “What happened to me? Did I lose my talent?” His crew watches an old film of theirs and remarks “That’s how good it USED to be.”

But as the movie develops, we discover that his films actually are real. He’s not faking this stuff, it’s just that the stuff he films looks fake. The undersea world is so bizarre to us that it seems far-fetched. I don’t think Steve’s waning popularity had anything to do with a diminishing quality of his work (the old film his crew watched was just as cheesy and unrealistic as his newer films). His downturn in popularity was thanks to the world’s ever increasing skeptical nature. No one believes in magic anymore. Everyone is afraid of being hoodwinked, so we reject anything that can’t be objectively nailed down with science.

Maybe that’s the way we have to be now, but it seems like the world would be a much more exciting and mysterious place if we weren’t so skeptical. At least Steve Zissou seemed to be enjoying himself...

I've got an Xbox 360, and you* don't! YAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!

* Some exclusions apply (Brett and Chris).