A Few Movies I Done Saw

So, mostly, I just wanted to talk about a few movies I'd seen as of late in lieu of real substantial material, of which I've the substantialest of materials planned. But not yet. First...

Oh. And as always, when I talk about movies, I'll assume you've seen it, so there may be spoilers. Sounds like a personal problem.

Charlotte's Web – The live action one. First, let me state that I've never read the book. I've had it read to me, but probably not for 13 years or more. Every year, the teacher would cry when Charlotte died, which left me thinking, “didn't you see this one coming? I did.” I watched the cartoon like a fiend when I was a kid, but I've not been exposed to others in some time. Having said that, the live action one wasn't too bad. Really, my complaints with it are few.

First, I thought they would try to make it all relevant, which blows. Relevant things suck ass. When you take something that's timeless and classic and memorable (Wizard of Oz, Chicken Little, all the Dr. Seuss books) and make them hip and relevant (The Tin Man, Chicken Little, all the Dr. Seuss abominations), you completely sterilize the source material making it lose not only its original charm, but making it uninteresting in general. That's what I thought would happen, through and through, but it only happened in small amounts. Too much focus on Templeton's antics (which were a very small part of the book and the cartoon) and his wisecracking responses. The geese are now wisecracking black stereotypes, and the sheep are now self aware of what a sheep is, and concepts of following, instead of just being a cranky old sheep like in the book. I don't understand why they put self aware self expounding characters in stuff that's targeted for kids. Kids certainly miss it, and adults might only enjoy it as a novelty.

Second, because it's so incredibly not cartoony (which is such a detriment to cartoons), Charlotte is actually a little bit scary in her bulbous eight legged glory. She's gross. Doesn't at all look whimsical like cartoon Charlotte. She was cute. I would like to have her back, k? Thx, bai.

I understand that it's a children's book and such, and a pig makes a much more attractive protagonist than some stupid fly, but the flagrant double standard has always always bugged me.

The last thing is really more a criticism of book, cartoon, and movie. It's something I've never liked and always kind of balked at (yes, even as a small tater Cuyler), and that's the fact that Fern, who is very much the initiating protagonist (she might not be the ultimate protagonist or the heroine, but she gets the whole ball rolling) protests the killing of Wilbur because it's wrong. It's wrong to kill him just because he's small. Then later, it's wrong to kill him and eat him for all of his sweet pork meats (pork is gross. No me gusta), but then later, when Wilbur freaks out because Charlotte eats the fly, he gets scolded saying, “That's just the way things are. You live, and then you die.” The double standard in the book's philosophy has always bugged me. In farm life, the farmer would have been doing the runt pig a mercy. Sure, it's not pretty, and it's not nice, but it's better than letting him slowly starve to death, and then later, of course the farmer will want to kill the pig. That's the whole purpose for having pigs: food. But it's wrong for Wilbur to die because, well, Fern likes him. But flies? Fuck flies. No one cares about them. Also, no one gives a damn about all the other pigs that we can assume got slaughtered, or sold and then slaughtered.

I Am Legend – I've never read the book. My lovely fiancé has, and from what I've heard, it sounds a. gay, b. ridiculous, and c. like they performed a better adaptation of the idea in the movie... mostly.

Let me start off by saying that I Am Legend was a good time. I feel like I got what I paid for. I feel like I saw what I was expecting to see.

Next, let me say that CG “vampires” (really, these things were much more like zombies) look dumb. Why do studios insist on using CG when it looks fake and cartoon like in comparison to real life, when makeup is so much cheaper, convincing, and unsettling to look at. The movie was genuinely scary when I just saw small snippets and hints of zombies. When the random zombie through itself at a speeding car, or you knew they were there because you could hear their breathing. As soon as I saw the actual zombies, the movie just quit being scary.

Second, I hate when people take mysterious things and try to completely explain them scientifically. It goes a long way in cutting short the fantastic, whether that fantastic be wonderful or terrifying. In this movie, the “vampires” (again, wouldn't have guessed they were vampires if someone hadn't told me. I would have said “zombies”) are the product of a cancer cure gone wrong, and they end up developing rabies gone wrong symptoms: fear of water, deadly reaction to sunlight, and of course, they want brains. Er, blood. I meant blood (brains). They are complete animals, just running around snorting, snarling, scratching, biting, want food eat now fire bad. This guy has completely killed all the wonder of vampires by making them this thing. Gone are the legends about virgins, and allowed entry, and garlic, and mirrors. No. They're just animals. Somehow this virus abrogates reason completely, and they just run around like naked wild children.

So, the movie opens up with Will Smith having lived in this dilly of a pickle for three years, which raises a lot of questions in my mind. Since these zombies are essentially just feral people, they show absolutely no recognition of things like conservation of food or storing or agriculture. They just hide during the day, and then eat during the night. They wouldn't last three years. They would have eaten all the brains that were available, human and otherwise, and then been left with the option of eat each other or just die. That doesn't happen. I suppose I should mention that when you become a zombie, you become the owner of superior strength, agility, and speed, despite the fact that you are undoubtedly under nourished.

Another thing is that they're metabolism runs at speeds that shoot through the roof. All the time. Will Smith heavily heavily heavily sedates one of the zombies, and she still breathes as if she just ran a 100 yard dash. If the body is essentially human, just modified by a crazy virus, they wouldn't be able to live like that. Their bodies would have crapped out either from stroke or heart attack, and the zombie problem would be gone.

I guess I just hate how we innately know, whether we believe in such things or not, that things like vampires are supposed to be these supernatural entities, and then when someone tries to curtail it like this author has, it bugs me. It bugs me even more when he doesn't complete the curtailing and take into account common sense things like food and over exertion.

Apparently, in the book, the virus evolves and the “vampires” become intelligent and try to strategically take down Willy. Well, rather, they send one girl to do it. That strikes me as gay on ice. The book sounds so stupid.

So that's pretty much it. I didn't care for the part when the girl showed up, because it became an entirely different movie. Instead of “ol' Willy tries to save humans from vampires,” it becomes (out of left field), “ol' Willy has to rediscover his faith in God, and then things will fix themselves.” Really jarring. Just as jarring as seeing cartoon zombies.

I read somewhere that in one of the initial drafts, Willy comes to the realization that the antidote he's looking for can only come from himself. Some homogenization of vampire blood and regular dude blood. But, he must inject himself with the cure and then allow himself to be ingested by the zombie folk, and then the anti virus spreads in reverse fashion of the initial virus. That sounds bitchin. That's creepy, visceral, and gross. The kind of stuff I would pay to see in a horror/thriller movie. But, wait, it's PG13. Weak.

So, before I move on to the substantialest material, I wanted to talk about The Transformers, finally (despite being 6 months late) and Sweeny Todd. But I'll do that next time. I need to do productive things now.