I saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory yesterday. I liked it quite a bit. I think it was a pretty good adaptation of the book, although it missed some things I thought were important to the story, and added some weirdness. Christopher Lee as Willy Wonka’s dad was creepy and brilliant, however.
Anyway, I am not really reviewing this movie, I am pointing out something HILARIOUS. Deep Roy, the guy who played all the Oompa Loompas guest stared in a couple of episodes of Dr. Who, among them “The Talons of Weng-Chiang”, where he played the living puppet Mr. Sin. Creepy!
Ok, as promised/alluded to, here is my report on the show “No Reservations” hosted by Anthony Bourdain on the Travel Network.
This is basically the same show as “A Cook’s Tour” except it is an hour long, and it seems like he isn’t forced to do things he doesn’t want to. What I mean is he goes someplace and explores it’s culinary tradition. Or so it seems from the premier episode. In it he tried to show how France Does Not Suck, since France Sucking has become a popular Meme in the USA as of late. I am actually not sure how effective this was in that regards, but I have to say it was a bit more interesting that the Cook’s Tour trip to France with his brother.
The negatives were a bit too much cheesality, but I suppose I should expect that from him by now. The positives were that it seemed he was really into what he was doing in the episode, and he tried to show a side of France and French food that we don’t normally think about.
I’d probably watch it again, and I am reserving final judgement.
I was going to write about the new Anthony Bourdain show this morning. I’ve been a bit busy. Consider this a placeholder, if you care…
architoothy: haha
architoothy: or we can just put stephenson and mieville out of their misery
architoothy: BOOM BOOM
nvrlnd555: yes
nvrlnd555: although to do so
nvrlnd555: we would have to of course explain the 600-year history of the gun
architoothy: hahahahahaha
nvrlnd555: not to mention the evil family relations of the families Colt, Smith, and Wesson
architoothy: ok
architoothy: can i post this conversation?
nvrlnd555: yes, feel free
architoothy: because you just killed me
talked about Neal Stephenson today. Which reminded me I wanted to post about the Baroque Cycle, which I just finished over the weekend. Here is my one word assessment of it, which is mostly influenced by The System of the World: feh. However, that’s being quite harsh, so I think I should expand a bit.
First of all, Stephenson has really and truly shown that he’s the master of crappy endings, and the entire third book is the crappy ending in this case. I enjoyed the first two books quite a bit, but the third was just an and arduous endeavor that I only finished to be a completist. Almost nothing happened in this book, and what did happened took way too many pages to describe. I honestly think this could have been a 100 page appendix at the end of The Confusion and have been less of a pain to read, and have been just as pathetic of an ending.
That being said, I will add that when I step back and thing of the series as a whole, I find it more enjoyable, and not quite as worthy of the feh assignment. And I also realize the crucial distinction between the third book and the previous two – the fact that Daniel Waterhouse was the main character for the entire book. Nothing against him, he’s a fairly interesting character, but by his very nature he lacks the excitement that Jack Shaftoe brought to the previous two volumes. In fact, one of the most interesting parts of the third book (to me) was the short bit in the middle where Jack was the temporary main character.
Anyway, I really can’t recommend this series. The concept behind it is interesting, I have to admit, but in the end the execution just fails. Maybe as time goes by the bad taste the third book left in my mouth will mellow and I will think of the series a bit more warmly, but currently I am quite disappointed.
Two movies to discuss:
1) Batman Begins – I took my mom to see this over the weekend. She had already seen it, but was willing to see it again. So I took her up on it. You’ve probably heard enough about it before, and probably even seen it. I think it was very well done, and a good movie. Not perfect, of course, but a great Batman movie, and a good movie to boot. 7.6 out of 9 rabbit turds.
2) Corn – Ok, this is a movie that I am really not sure how I heard about, or how it got in my Netflix queue. Jena Malone stars as a pregnant young woman who has just returned to her family’s sheep ranch. The farmer nearby is growing some GMO corn that seems to have the undesirable side effect of causing a strange weed to grow. The sheep are infatuated with the weed, and it makes them oddly violent. Jena gets a job as a supermarket cashier and investigates the weird corn. Bad things happen to some people. In the end it makes a tiny bit of sense.
And yes, unlike the other movie you haven’t heard of this one. Well, I think there is good reason for that. This movie is pretty crappy. 2.71 out of 8.23 rabbit turds is what it deserves.