M. Giant's
Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks


Sunday, December 30, 2007  

My Year in Movies (2007)

Time now for my second annual rundown of all the movies I've seen so far this year. Again, I'm only counting movies I saw in the theater. Not that I watched many non-toddler movies at home either, mind you. It's just that after finally seeing the DVD of 2005's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy last week, I'm still coming to terms with the fact that Arthur Dent is now younger than I am.

Children of Men
A 2006 release, but I went into this on the first Sunday of 2007 having made up my mind to be blown away. And indeed, that is what happened. At one point I fully expected that I would just sit in my car and lose it in the parking lot afterward, but that didn't happen. The only distracting thing was that I hadn't seen Clive Owen in anything since Gosford Park, so I had forgotten how high his speaking voice is. I kept seeing photos of the guy in magazines the last few years and expected this Daniel Craig rumble to be coming out of him. Not so much.

28 Weeks Later
I don't have it in for London, I swear to God. Not that you'd know it by my apparent penchant for semi-apocalyptic epics set there in the first half of my moviegoing year. I love London. It's one of my favorite cities in the world. I hope to go back one day, and stay a lot longer. Trash is the one who hates London.

Ratatouille
It took me about four months to watch this movie. You may suggest that in that case, I was probably doing it wrong. I freely admit this. It was the first movie I took M. Small to in the theater, and he had enough at what I thought was the halfway point. Then it came out on DVD and we watched it together, this time skipping the parts with all the shooting and gassing and near-drowning. It had your standard bittersweet Pixar ending, in which the unlikely hero manages to achieve his goal and/or some high level of self-actualization in some unexpected way despite obstacles like belonging to a demographic which typically can't even talk. I loved it, but I had some questions at the end: is it really possible to control a human's movements by tugging on his forelock? Does the fact that I like a Big Mac now and then really make me some kind of philistine? And finally, when did M. Small leave the room and what is he doing now? At least I got out of London and into Paris. But then, so did the rage zombies at the end of 28 Weeks Later. With that in mind, the end of Ratatouille really could have taken quite a different direction.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Hey, looky here, we're back to fucking shit up in London. I nearly missed this one in the first-run theaters because my manuscript was due at the end of August, but I squeezed it in. What else can I say about Harry Potter that hasn't already been said this year a hundred times, including by me? I have noticed that the actress playing Ginny Weasley is growing up to look a lot like Laura Linney, which makes me hope that one day a grown-up Harry will be played by Jim Carrey.

And that's it for 2007. See you this time next year, when I hope to, among other things, give you a rundown of the first hour or so of Wall-E.

posted by M. Giant 9:15 PM 1 comments

1 Comments:

...is it really possible to control a human's movements by tugging on his forelock?

Yes, my 5' mother used this technique many times to convince my 5'9" teenage brothers to do as they were told back in the 70s when things like that were legal.

By Anonymous Anonymous, at January 2, 2008 at 11:10 AM  

Post a Comment


Listed on BlogShares www.blogwise.com
ads!
buy my books!
professional representation
Follow me on Twitter
donate!
ads
Pictures
notify
links
loot
mobile
other stuff i
wrote
about
archives