aelfgyfu_mead (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aelfgyfu_mead) wrote2008-06-07 10:35 am
aelfgyfu_mead) wrote2008-06-07 10:35 am
Entry tags:
Movies
I feel a posting binge coming on--I've realized that aside from my post on The Fall and a brief one on Iron Man, I haven't written about movies or tv since April 22. I knew there was something missing from my life.
Of course, I've only been to two movies in the theater this year, so I've got one movie we saw from TiVo, and one from Netflix. My reviews are already horribly out of date, and not because I took so long to post.
An Inconvenient Truth Yeah, I know: the spoilers are a real bummer. Please forgive me. :-)
We briefly got premium cable to try to get us addicted so that we would pay for the pay channels. Not only didn't it work, I think the main thing we got out of our brush with the Good Life was An Inconvenient Truth, which did not exactly make me want to shell out to keep getting Showtime.
It's not that there's anything wrong with An Inconvenient Truth. I found Al Gore's voice surprisingly pleasant. I know he oversimplified some issues, ascribing everything to global warming when sometimes problems are a bit more complicated (for instance, ascribing the spread of avian flu to global warming). For the most part, however, I am convinced. Of course, I was convinced going in, so the movie mostly served to depress me, except that I discovered Gore has a really good narrator voice. Watching bits of the polar ice caps melt and fall, and bits of Greenland going into the sea, hurts.
What I wanted more of was at the end, where he said, in just a few minutes, we can fix it. He put up his slides of what we managed to do with CFCs, and he argued that we can cut our energy usage and our pollution enough to make a difference, a significant difference. I'd have liked to hear more about what we can and should do.
Verdict: best PowerPoint presentation ever. Quite possibly the strangest use of a hydraulic lift ever, as well. It probably won't change your mind about anything, but it gives some startling visuals and a lot of statistics.
The Triplets of Belleville: I don't know how to write this review, which is part of why I've put it off so long. The movie runs one hour, twenty minutes. It took me forty to fifty minutes to get it, and then it was very much a gut sense of getting it, not something I can explain. It finally came together for me. The first forty minutes dragged because I felt like I couldn't get my head around the film; I wasn't engaged. I'm not sure whether I'm recommending it or not, so this review is probably not very helpful.
An overview of the plot would be either hopelessly vague and nonsensical or a complete spoiler; I'll go with the former. We start with a song by the Triplets, three young women singing together; then we pan back to see a small boy who lives with his grandmother. I spent much of the movie trying to work out whether these scenes are related, because we follow the boy (with a sudden jump forward to his young adulthood), not the Triplets.
I can't say much more without getting into plot, and let's face it: I want all of you to be as bewildered as I was. It's only fair to experience the movie that way, if you choose to experience it at all. Hey: it's French. I can, however, offer a few notes not about the plot:
• The animation is very creative. A number of different techniques are used, and some effects really surprised me. It's not Disney, and it's not Pixar. It's something entirely different, and I enjoyed that, even when I wished I knew what the frell was going on.
• The DVD offered us a choice of English or Spanish. I got really annoyed at Brilliant Husband briefly, thinking he must have chosen some incorrect option from Netflix, because the movie is French and there was no option for French, or French with subtitles. I was wrong to blame him (sorry, dear!). Language turns out not to be an issue. We picked "English"; if we'd had time, we'd have rerun part on "Spanish" to see if it was any different, because I think the movie would make the same sense if you understood no Spanish, French, or English, basically, and I wonder if they even bothered to redub anything into Spanish. The English that was in the movie ought to have been in English, and there was definitely French. There are a few words you might catch, but there's very little dialogue. Most of the spoken words are hard to catch, and it's not clear you're supposed to catch them. Some are in French, some in English, and a lot seem to be gibberish--of the small amount of speaking there is. Sound, however, is very important.
• When the movie finally got me, it had me. I was glad I'd watched it. I can't exactly explain why. The last twenty minutes are worth the price of admission.
Of course, I've only been to two movies in the theater this year, so I've got one movie we saw from TiVo, and one from Netflix. My reviews are already horribly out of date, and not because I took so long to post.
An Inconvenient Truth Yeah, I know: the spoilers are a real bummer. Please forgive me. :-)
We briefly got premium cable to try to get us addicted so that we would pay for the pay channels. Not only didn't it work, I think the main thing we got out of our brush with the Good Life was An Inconvenient Truth, which did not exactly make me want to shell out to keep getting Showtime.
It's not that there's anything wrong with An Inconvenient Truth. I found Al Gore's voice surprisingly pleasant. I know he oversimplified some issues, ascribing everything to global warming when sometimes problems are a bit more complicated (for instance, ascribing the spread of avian flu to global warming). For the most part, however, I am convinced. Of course, I was convinced going in, so the movie mostly served to depress me, except that I discovered Gore has a really good narrator voice. Watching bits of the polar ice caps melt and fall, and bits of Greenland going into the sea, hurts.
What I wanted more of was at the end, where he said, in just a few minutes, we can fix it. He put up his slides of what we managed to do with CFCs, and he argued that we can cut our energy usage and our pollution enough to make a difference, a significant difference. I'd have liked to hear more about what we can and should do.
Verdict: best PowerPoint presentation ever. Quite possibly the strangest use of a hydraulic lift ever, as well. It probably won't change your mind about anything, but it gives some startling visuals and a lot of statistics.
The Triplets of Belleville: I don't know how to write this review, which is part of why I've put it off so long. The movie runs one hour, twenty minutes. It took me forty to fifty minutes to get it, and then it was very much a gut sense of getting it, not something I can explain. It finally came together for me. The first forty minutes dragged because I felt like I couldn't get my head around the film; I wasn't engaged. I'm not sure whether I'm recommending it or not, so this review is probably not very helpful.
An overview of the plot would be either hopelessly vague and nonsensical or a complete spoiler; I'll go with the former. We start with a song by the Triplets, three young women singing together; then we pan back to see a small boy who lives with his grandmother. I spent much of the movie trying to work out whether these scenes are related, because we follow the boy (with a sudden jump forward to his young adulthood), not the Triplets.
I can't say much more without getting into plot, and let's face it: I want all of you to be as bewildered as I was. It's only fair to experience the movie that way, if you choose to experience it at all. Hey: it's French. I can, however, offer a few notes not about the plot:
• The animation is very creative. A number of different techniques are used, and some effects really surprised me. It's not Disney, and it's not Pixar. It's something entirely different, and I enjoyed that, even when I wished I knew what the frell was going on.
• The DVD offered us a choice of English or Spanish. I got really annoyed at Brilliant Husband briefly, thinking he must have chosen some incorrect option from Netflix, because the movie is French and there was no option for French, or French with subtitles. I was wrong to blame him (sorry, dear!). Language turns out not to be an issue. We picked "English"; if we'd had time, we'd have rerun part on "Spanish" to see if it was any different, because I think the movie would make the same sense if you understood no Spanish, French, or English, basically, and I wonder if they even bothered to redub anything into Spanish. The English that was in the movie ought to have been in English, and there was definitely French. There are a few words you might catch, but there's very little dialogue. Most of the spoken words are hard to catch, and it's not clear you're supposed to catch them. Some are in French, some in English, and a lot seem to be gibberish--of the small amount of speaking there is. Sound, however, is very important.
• When the movie finally got me, it had me. I was glad I'd watched it. I can't exactly explain why. The last twenty minutes are worth the price of admission.
no subject
Better info about little things you can do is up on Gore's site for this -- http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/
I've heard, too, that Leonardo DeCaprio is talking about a sequal that's more about action. Hard to make folks move if they don't feel you need to move, so the Inconvenient part is about spreading awareness (and I still know a few people who want to put their heads down and not at least discuss this).
no subject
I guess we weren't so much the target audience for the movie, because we've been concerned for a long time and have taken some steps. It's mostly little things, but we've bought the reusable bags for grocery shopping and try to accept very few plastic bags from anywhere. Driving the ten-year-old Saturn well (shifting well, accelerating and decelerating smoothly) gets us 33-35 mph without AC, 30-32 with; I've heard of people with hybrids not doing as well. (We do a lot of city driving. I don't think our Saturn is supposed to get mileage that good.) We keep the AC at 79 during the day and 77 at night (any higher and i can't sleep, seriously). We got as many of the new bulbs as we can fit into our weird mix of light fixtures. And so on--but we're always on the lookout for more ideas. That website has a couple we aren't doing yet.
Tampa Parks and Recreation very recently put in recycling bins everywhere for paper and bottles and cans; I was surprised they waited so long, considering how much paper they produce (flyers for everything) and the number of bottles and cans of drink people consume at the rec center. I think we're seeing some effects. I want to see more!
no subject
For better ideas, try treehugger.com -- they link out to lots of good sites with news. There's also carbon.net that lets you calculate you're local carbon footprint. Most of the stuff I do is just sensible things -- buy local produce (Farmer's Market), keep lights off, we thankfully don't really need air conditioning, and we're lucky enough to be able to buy green energy (most of it's wind, some solar).
And if you ever need to recycle anything-- computers, cell phones, electronics-- you can generally Google and find something that'll let you mail it in.
I also belong to a local online Freecycle -- you post what you want to give away, someone who can use it, comes to get it. And if you want something, instead of buying, you post your want. And it generally shows up. It's great. Saves money too. Just search for Freecycle and your areas. They're springing up everywhere.
no subject
I agree with the poster above that small things have started to happen, I just wish they were larger. I like the idea of grocery stores phasing out plastic bags. The store I go to still uses them, but they provide a very large canister in front to deposit empty plastic bags for recycling. They also offer reusable fabric bags, which I think is the way we should be going.
The bigger problems have yet to be tackled, I fear. Energy consumption, and imho the type of energy we consume, is a major factor. It seems the United States is one of the biggest offenders, and that is mostly because of corporations buying out politicians. But that gets into politics and I'm not going there at the moment.
I had never heard of The Triplets of Belleville, so I Googled it. Their official site at Sony Classics offers a movie trailer at two options: Small and Large. The large takes you to the Apple trailers site, where they no longer offer the trailer. The small plays in the same window at the size of a quarter. Made for very difficult watching. But it did look interesting. I may need to find a copy. Thanks for the heads-up!
no subject