The Rabbit Hole

So this post has to be about something frivolous. Let's talk TV!

For the record, I feel like I've been defeated by the movie/show if I can't get through it. I can count on my one hand the number of movies/shows I've given up on entirely. Skipped some episodes (Smallville season four, ::shudder::), haven't finished the series (Farscape!), watched it in bits and pieces and probably have seen the whole thing but haven't seen it start-to-finish (Silence of the Lambs, and, bizarrely, Casablanca). But I usually finish the damned thing. There are three exceptions I've made on Netflix that I can think of off the top of my head: one was a truly D-level "comedy" that wanted to be American Pie (I got it because the premise and the cast--Heather Matarazzo--inferred it was of higher quality); another was A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, which, Robert Downey Jr. or no RDJ, I couldn't be arsed to get on with, especially not when Channing Tatum showed up.

The last was the UK version of The Office. ( I finished it, finally, but it took some doing. (No spoilers!) )

Whew. I had far too much to say there. I suspect this is going to be one of those posts only I read ever. :)

It's not that The NeverEnding Story was a perfect movie. Far from it. It's not that nostalgia should prevent anyone from remaking a movie that was good and making it great.

It's just that remakes, generally, aren't good. There are exceptions to every rule, but on the whole, they're just not. It gets worse and worse when people try to remake movies that were iconic for their time period. Like the resurgence of the 1980s in remakes announced lately. Take, for example, Robocop. That is not a great movie. Just to be clear, I freakin' love that movie. But it is not a great movie. It was an attempt to capitalize on the success of Terminator (they even wanted Arnie as Robo but couldn't possibly afford him). It happens to have been incredibly prescient about advertising culture, and successful to boot. But it's still very much an 80s movie to me, not just for look but in terms of outlook.

I have a similar impression of The NeverEnding Story but from a different view. That film, for me, was in good company with the other fantasy movies of that period. There were halflings and crones and crazy ears on the whole lot of them, and that's just how it was. Updating is certainly possible, it just seems kind of pointless since this film will be taken away from that period and left to stand on its own in a current timeline that is, Lord of the Rings notwithstanding, not very friendly to that sort of fantasy. Maybe they'll pull a LOTR on it and more power to them if they do, but LOTR seems to be one of those exceptions, not the standards. The failure of a His Dark Materials cinematic trilogy--based on a series with more cultural penetrance (nowadays) than The NeverEnding Story--should be evidence enough about how hesitant studios are with this matieral. And for it to really succeed, you can't be hesitant.

So I smell failure all over this. Which is a shame because, as I got into in that Tor.com post linked above, I loved the use of muppets in the original. For all that we're inching slowly towards realism in our special effects, physical props are still superior. They have a presence, a physicality to them. I would argue that the impressive T-Rex in Jurassic Park was as much because they actually built a goddamned robot dinosaur as it was because they invented a new special effects technique to reduce the problem of computers providing too much detail. That could have been all CGI. It wasn't, and I think those few scenes with the animatronic creation help sell the other scenes with the CGI dinos. (It helps that dinosaurs, being scaly, are easier to render than fleshy or hairy creatures: please take note, George Lucas.)

I miss muppets. This is making me want to rewatch Farscape again. I tried rewatching with a group, and it was funny to see them not be used to Rygel. I'm so used to assuming he's a character, I don't even half see the muppet. He's Rygel. Muppets offer a range of possible, believable body types--versus the "guy in a suit" sort of aliens common to most sci-fi series. It makes the whole world that much more believable because it's entirely likely that intelligent species would evolve without bipedal symmetry.

This DVD-buying season of discounts has taken a real bite out of the old wallet. And this is not good right before summer when I needs to be going out to the movies for stuff. Is that irony? That my love of movies and purchases of the same might curtail my ability to go out and enjoy them more? I think that's irony, but I can't ever tell. I blame Alanis.

Last night, I recounted with darkling1 and feiran how many DVDs I'd bought. Counting seasons of TV as one movie's worth, I think I came up with nineteen. In the past month, I have bought nineteen DVDs/sets. Man, am I reallyglad that moonlightalice talked me out of buying Prison Break because then it would be twenty and that seems just that more gratuitous.

Oh. Wait. Shit. I bought DVDs upstate over Memorial Day weekend in addition to the Deep Discount sale and the Best Buy one. Fuck it all. Okay, then, what's the actual total?

( Counting off... )

Ouch. Twenty-four DVDs. And that number is low-balled by not counting the three-four-five dvds/sets I bought as gifts and by counting TV shows as only onepurchase per season. Ouch ouch ouch. My wallet hurts. Clearly, the solution is to go drinking tonight. And, wouldn't you know it? That's exactly what I'm going to do! Woo!

"Feed your head...feed your head"

How did the creators of Doctor Who come up with the sound of the TARDIS' engines? 'Cause they're drilling and excavating at the proper hospital across the street, and on my way to work, I had to keep from flipping out because it sounded so very similar (point of fact? If no one sees me again for a while after today, don't worry much ^.^). Just curious.

Speaking of Doctor Who, I finished the second series this weekend. And there's still kind of a lot that needs to settle in my brain about it, especially given as I finished it in a whirlwind marathon of doing nothing else execept watching the series. I haven't sat and done nothing else while watching a marathon in forever. I'm too used to typing on the computer or doing my craft-y stuff. It's really hard to measure time going by without those distractions.

So, first thing I did when I had a mo' after finishing the series was to go read up about it on Wikipedia. It seemed like a good enough spot for jumping into explanations about the history of the series without getting into all the continuity problems upfront or the fan wars about the same. This was extremely helpful and a lot less spoiler-ridden than I was expecting. Probably could have done me some good to read it ahead of watching the whole series, actually. None of it needs to be related here--no one who'd be reading this would know less than I do about it. Just generally helpful stuff, like I usually find on Wikipedia. I was actually surprised the entries were so short for the most part. I've read the stuff you'd find in medical journals on Wikipedia and gotten more to read. Then again, maybe the Wikipedia folk had to freeze the articles to keep the fan wars off their website and over on the many, many fansites where they belong.

Anyway, some impressions:
( A few early thoughts while I continue to make sense of what I've seen and what I've read. )

Another bit of TV-related news: I tried to watch Deadwood, and I couldn't get into it. I'm sure there's something amazing about the adventures of Old Timey Timothy Olyphant (aside from the obvious reason: he's sexy) and the cursing, ugly cur of the whorehouse owner, but I'm not going to discover it. It's too hard to tell characters apart as is with all the facial hair, and it's not made better by people double-crossing, lying, playing roles etc. Sorry, it's just not happening.

It probably doesn't help that I spent all that day on Doctor Who and then went to see The Nightmare Before Christmas 3D immediately after. Nightmare was great, by the by. I never got to see it on the big screen, so that was a treat. And the 3D effects weren't the popping-out-of-the-screen dizzying stuff you get in the standard made-for-3D fare. More, it was like they added more depth to the picture, so the 3D went backwards more than forwards, and it made it so much more beautiful. I spent the entire time smiling so hard that my mouth ached afterwards. I mean, how could I not? The second the main title started in ("Boys and girls of every age/ wouldn't you like to see something strange?"), I was totally into it. It only got better. Loved it!