Elisa’s Day

how about a post that isn’t about who’s sick this week ( though for the record it’s no one….yay )

over the holidays i watched die hard, in fragments. it seemed like every time i turned the tv on ( and that’s a lot when i’m nursing, i just prefer to have a quiet moment in front of the tv then to try and nurse amongst the chaos of my other children and the baby is getting to old to juggle a book over because she’s all, hey milk lady, what is that thing? let me take a look while you spray milk ALL OVER THE PLACE and then let me wrench myself off your nipple every 3 seconds to check back and see if that thing is still there…… because that isn’t annoying at all…….) die hard was playing on one channel or another. so i watched it, probably in it’s entirety, but in random bits and pieces.

anyway……it got me thinking about movies, i love movies of pretty much any kind. it was just recently that i finally admitted to myself though, if i had to pick an overall favorite genre, it’s the good ol’ action movie. i love a good old fashioned, blockbuster, action movie. action/sci-fi….even better. i mean, i love a good documentary and critically acclaimed movies….sure, but it’s action movies that are my true favorite.

and i started thinking about the small group of movies that i will watch anytime they are on tv. for whatever reason, even though i have seen them all countless times, i’ll watch them again. i mean, sure, your choices can be limited when your up at 4 am looking for something to watch with baby…….but that isn’t even it, i will just watch them again, and again. they aren’t even necessarily my favorite movies, if i had to make a list of favorites it would be different ( though some would over lap ) but i guess just because it’s a favorite movie doesn’t mean i’d watch it time and time again like these ones.

any of the die hard movies. i heart jon maclean (and bruce willis for that matter)

any of the star trek tng movies, including the first, made for tv, one with kirk in it

independence day.  i also heart will smith

the day after tomorrow

the matrix ( i don’t need to clarify which one, because anyone with half a brain knows there was only ONE matrix movie and any thing coming after, that may have almost ruined it completely with it’s unbelievable terribleness, well it just doesn’t even exist now does it )

any of the xmen movies

there are undoubtedly others that would make the list given the opportunity, but these are the ones that seem to play almost constantly on tv for whatever reasons and so i know for sure i will literally watch them over and over.

well, like i said in the comment forum below, the last movie i saw in the theaters was Cars, before that, probably the last movie in the new star wars trilogy. i don’t get out to the movies too often. it’s probably good that the theater here in town sucks, because if we had a decent theater in town i probably would be tempted to go more often, i do really like movies. as it was, twilight wasn’t still playing here, only 3 screens means pretty quick turnover, so we headed off to peterborough, where they do have a nice theater and sat in comfy, stadium style seats, to enjoy our mediocre movies.

it actually wasn’t so bad ( it wasn’t so great either ) it was probably about exactly as disappointing as i expected it to be, but oddly, for completely different reasons. somehow, they managed to really mess around with the events and time lines really a lot, but still give you the feeling they stayed true to the book, which is odd. maybe because they stuck to a lot of the original dialogue ( which can come off pretty cheesey btw, for some reason less cheesey to read then to hear out loud ) just put it in different places, no doubt to move the story along quicker. i thought the actors did a decent job of conveying the internal dialogue we all knew was there ( did anyone go see it who hadn’t read the book? ) which isn’t easy considering how much internal dialogue there is. i found the lead actor odd, sometimes quite attractive, sometimes just odd looking……..huh.

but the most dissappointing part was actually the effects, use of and lack there of. i guess it’s a hard thing to put on screen. and i’m guessing twilight, not working with a huge, blockbuster style budget or resources. but it seems like the effects that were there, could have probably been skipped all together, really, speeding up the film to make it look like he walked around the car really fast, did we have to see that?  there must have been a better way to convey that, and the tree climbing…..yeah…..wow, so bad……. and most dissappointing was the vampires themselves, sometimes very pale, sometimes more average, sometimes looking like people wearing way to much pancake ( hey, i hung out in  a lot of goth bars in the day, there is nothing worse then someone  in too much pancake ) and i know there is post production ways to make people look…….more………like they should have looked, they should have looked like the elves in lord of the rings, no pancake, no stubble……just ethereal. but hey, i’m sure lord of the rings, whole different budget and resources.

but, even though i’ve written about them in boring detail, they were pretty minor annoyances in a pretty entertaining movie, what the hell, i’ll watch it again, when it comes out on video, so it couldn’t have been that bad.