Caring is creepy

Looks like Rose beat me to the punch on the fantasy-blockbuster-showdown post. Oh well. Some points I'd like to add, though. Narnia was weirdly unfamiliar to me. Despite reading the entire set of books when I was young, my only lingering memories of them are (a) that they got more and more stupid with each volume, (b) turkish delight and snow, and (c) Vivian out of the Young Ones. We were heavily stoned when we saw it, and I kept getting hung up on technicalities like "all the animals are like people, so what did they eat?", and how terribly CGI the lion looked. Oh, and I decided part way through the battle scene that I never ever in my entire life want to watch another movie in which there is a huge battle between an army of 'good' and one of 'evil', where optionally the good is heavily outnumbered, but prevails anyway.

Thanks mostly to the trailer that screened before Narnia, we decided the next night to get heavily stoned and go see King Kong. I enjoyed this a little more, but I still kept getting hung up on details. I mean, exactly how, with most of his crew dead, and especially (presumably) towing a colossal monkey (how the fuck else are they meant to have transported it), did the ship's captain manage to get the ship back out through the treacherous rocks surrounding the island, and back to civilisation. And that diplodocus-stampede. Yeah right. They were all toast. Every single one of them. No question. I was thoroughly exhausted by about half-way through, and could happily have stopped the film, had a nap, and resumed watching later on.

In summary: don't go to see Narnia unless you are 10 years old, or wasted. And, don't go and see Kong unless you are wasted.

Thank you.

In other news, a really, really great little film I saw recently was called Ivan's xtc. Based on Tolstoy's novella "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", but set in contemporary Hollywood, it's a candid treatise on the sordid underside of the film business, supposedly with references to real-life events. It's shot in digital - but with nary a computer-animated monster in sight - and although it's about five years old now, it's only just shown up at Aro Street. It was unexpectedly moving, and fully I recommend it. (another review here).