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Sunday, September 15th, 2002 01:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flwydI sold my student ticket to the CU-USC game a couple days ago for $10. (Season tickets cost me a bit over $30.) And then the Buffs go and lose 40-3. Not a bad sale.
In lieu, Aria and I went to the lovely home of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
manea to plan the ritual for the upcoming Witches' Ball. This is going to be a lot of fun, and we'll get to spread some improv energy. I also took in a showing of Home Movie at the IFS. Good stuff. Directed by Chris Smith, who also directed American Movie, the funniest documentary ever. Home Movie examines the lives of five home-owners -- a guy who lives in a house boat on the bayou and works with aligators, a guy in Illinois with a house full of electronic and mechanical additions, a couple in Kansas who live in an old missle silo, a couple in California who will do anything to their house to accomodate their cats, and an old woman in Hawaii who lives in a tree house. It was followed by Heavy Metal Parking Lot, which was also pretty funny.
Stepping mback, I watched this year's version of The Count of Monte Cristo, having read the book this summer. They obviously had to leave a lot of the 1100 pages out, and they managed to do so without sacrificing movie quality. There were lots of changes from things which made great literature -- character traits that we learn through repetition, for instance -- that were dropped in favor of things which fit the silver screen well. We had little feel for the Count's calculated opulence, his disguise acumen, his fatherliness, etc. Several interesting characters were removed because developing all of them would have doubled the movie's length. Some of the small details that could have been left were changed anyway, such as old Dantes hanging himself instead of dying of starvation because nobody would help him. But that's a small quip. The ending turned all Hollywood, rather than the bittersweet relationship between the Count and Mercedes in the book. Of course, three of the four characters essential at the book's happy ending weren't even in the movie, so what can you do? And I will note that the only duel in the book gets called off -- the Count does train martially, but he does all damage socially and psychologically. But the point is that, assuming one hasn't read the book, the movie is a pretty good period action/adventure. And if you have read the book, the movie's a much better adaptation than the 1970s Richard Chamberlain version, which stayed almost entirely with the book, with the exception of removing 85% of it. So see Monte Cristo if you're into period adventure. Read it if you have too much time on your hands, but want a good story and great characters.
And to round off my movie watching weekend, I saw The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys on Thursday night. Pretty funny, and had characters drop into action comic land to reveal their inner thoughts. A wonderful cinematic device, also used to an extent in Amélie, Dancer in the Dark, and some cool film I've seen about a kid, but which I can't remember. It's a great way to do kids in film.
I also installed Jaguar (OS 10.2) yesterday. I'm psyched about Terminal's new abilities (like drag and drop), I'm digging several of the new System Preferences options. I will note, however, that installing Developer Tools while simultaneously running out of hard drive space and trying to do other file manipulations is a bad idea. It somehow randomly deleted a subset of my unrelated preferences. But I think I'm all good now.
In lieu, Aria and I went to the lovely home of
manea to plan the ritual for the upcoming Witches' Ball. This is going to be a lot of fun, and we'll get to spread some improv energy. I also took in a showing of Home Movie at the IFS. Good stuff. Directed by Chris Smith, who also directed American Movie, the funniest documentary ever. Home Movie examines the lives of five home-owners -- a guy who lives in a house boat on the bayou and works with aligators, a guy in Illinois with a house full of electronic and mechanical additions, a couple in Kansas who live in an old missle silo, a couple in California who will do anything to their house to accomodate their cats, and an old woman in Hawaii who lives in a tree house. It was followed by Heavy Metal Parking Lot, which was also pretty funny.Stepping mback, I watched this year's version of The Count of Monte Cristo, having read the book this summer. They obviously had to leave a lot of the 1100 pages out, and they managed to do so without sacrificing movie quality. There were lots of changes from things which made great literature -- character traits that we learn through repetition, for instance -- that were dropped in favor of things which fit the silver screen well. We had little feel for the Count's calculated opulence, his disguise acumen, his fatherliness, etc. Several interesting characters were removed because developing all of them would have doubled the movie's length. Some of the small details that could have been left were changed anyway, such as old Dantes hanging himself instead of dying of starvation because nobody would help him. But that's a small quip. The ending turned all Hollywood, rather than the bittersweet relationship between the Count and Mercedes in the book. Of course, three of the four characters essential at the book's happy ending weren't even in the movie, so what can you do? And I will note that the only duel in the book gets called off -- the Count does train martially, but he does all damage socially and psychologically. But the point is that, assuming one hasn't read the book, the movie is a pretty good period action/adventure. And if you have read the book, the movie's a much better adaptation than the 1970s Richard Chamberlain version, which stayed almost entirely with the book, with the exception of removing 85% of it. So see Monte Cristo if you're into period adventure. Read it if you have too much time on your hands, but want a good story and great characters.
And to round off my movie watching weekend, I saw The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys on Thursday night. Pretty funny, and had characters drop into action comic land to reveal their inner thoughts. A wonderful cinematic device, also used to an extent in Amélie, Dancer in the Dark, and some cool film I've seen about a kid, but which I can't remember. It's a great way to do kids in film.
I also installed Jaguar (OS 10.2) yesterday. I'm psyched about Terminal's new abilities (like drag and drop), I'm digging several of the new System Preferences options. I will note, however, that installing Developer Tools while simultaneously running out of hard drive space and trying to do other file manipulations is a bad idea. It somehow randomly deleted a subset of my unrelated preferences. But I think I'm all good now.
