The Lion, the Witch, and the Gay Cowboys
Dec. 19th, 2005 05:49 pmThe weekend Tiki got food poisoning and saw some movies. Random impressions follow, under the cut.
Chronicles of Narnia: We were oddly "eh" about this whole enterprise, just as we've been "eh" about the books all our lives. This impression might have been affected by the fact that for literally the first time in our lives, we had to leave the theater before a movie ended due to illness. However, Mr. Tikistitch (who posited that our circumstances were due not to bad shellfish but rather a violent reaction to Christian allegories), who remains a paragon of health, shared our tepid enthusiasm. We thought it was interesting that a lot of the "exciting" visual business was NOT in the original book. Also, did anyone else thing the older girl looked like she'd had collagen treatments?
Brokeback Mountain: We've never read the book, in fact, we've never read ANYTHING by Annie Proulx, and didn't even know how to correctly spell "PROULX" before this weekend. However, our family in fact comes from Western Montana, a part of the country quite visually and culturally similar to the Wyoming setting of this movie. The recreation of the time and the place and the people was, to us, absolutely note perfect. It's the most beautiful space in the world, god's own country, exclusively populated by a tribe of hard-bitten, chain-smoking alcoholics. I'm not surprised, after the desert scenery of Crouching Tiger, that Ang Lee was drunk on the glorious scenery, but I'm stunned that he's captured the people so exquisitely.
Chronicles of Narnia: We were oddly "eh" about this whole enterprise, just as we've been "eh" about the books all our lives. This impression might have been affected by the fact that for literally the first time in our lives, we had to leave the theater before a movie ended due to illness. However, Mr. Tikistitch (who posited that our circumstances were due not to bad shellfish but rather a violent reaction to Christian allegories), who remains a paragon of health, shared our tepid enthusiasm. We thought it was interesting that a lot of the "exciting" visual business was NOT in the original book. Also, did anyone else thing the older girl looked like she'd had collagen treatments?
Brokeback Mountain: We've never read the book, in fact, we've never read ANYTHING by Annie Proulx, and didn't even know how to correctly spell "PROULX" before this weekend. However, our family in fact comes from Western Montana, a part of the country quite visually and culturally similar to the Wyoming setting of this movie. The recreation of the time and the place and the people was, to us, absolutely note perfect. It's the most beautiful space in the world, god's own country, exclusively populated by a tribe of hard-bitten, chain-smoking alcoholics. I'm not surprised, after the desert scenery of Crouching Tiger, that Ang Lee was drunk on the glorious scenery, but I'm stunned that he's captured the people so exquisitely.