L'Homme Invisible
Feb. 7th, 2005 11:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alfvaenWe've actually managed to rent and watch a few movies over the past couple of weeks. How did we do it? Well, dropping "Medium" and "House" off of our weekly viewing list(and officially giving up on "Desperate Housewives")has made our TV load much more reasonable...especially now that we're caught up on all those double episodes of "24". (Which we are watching quite contentedly on RDTV, thank you ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
iamo.)
"Men With Brooms"...well, we'd been meaning to see it for a while, and of course we missed it in theatres, and had trouble finding it at the video stores. Sometimes they file Canadian movies under "Foreign Films"--sad but true--but there's actually a Canadian section, which I suppose is progress. It's a curling movie, which is to say pretty much a sports movie, but a Canadian sports movie. (Curling is, for the uninformed, a Canadian sport played by sliding heavy rocks down a sheet of ice, and fills the same cultural spot as, say, cricket does in Australia.) It features Leslie Nielsen in what must be his most serious role in years...which is of course not saying much. It contains about two too many shattering curling rocks for my taste, but apart from that is not too bad. It's a sports movie, leave it at that.
"The Village" we also missed in theatres, yadda yadda yadda. I confess that I more or less guessed at least one of the two major plot twists before the end, but then I tend to make lots of loony guesses at plot twists when I watch things like that. Very atmospheric movie, and Joaquin Phoenix doesn't talk a whole lot. Bryce Dallas Howard was extremely good. Sigourney Weaver's role was surprisingly small. Altogether I'd say that out of Shyamalan's movies, I'd still take "Unbreakable" and "The Sixth Sense" over his last two.
"Collateral" was really quite good. Tom Cruise wasn't too Cruise-y, playing a somewhat offbeat hitman, and Jamie Foxx's character was good too, making a believable progression throughout the movie. Though how the Oscar people can call that a "Supporting" role, I don't know. The DVD kept freezing on us, but our cheap player just does that sometimes. I swear we could probably already buy a better quality one than that for not much more.
Oh, and we got a "Blue's Clues" DVD for Simon and Luke. They seem to like it, anyway, and a few times we've played the game where somebody puts down three pawprints and then the others have to guess what the clues are for. We've had one for a few months now--I think Simon got it for his birthday or something--but I hadn't actually watched any of it until now. It's actually not that bad, and mostly because of the human character, Steve. I get a kick out of him, and it's hard to describe. There's a line in Meryn Cadell's "The Sweater", something about "the blank look that passes for intelligence, or at least the notion that someone's home". That's what Steve's got. He is often pretending to be listening to what the kids watching the show are saying, which is part of it, but he's just very earnest about the whole thing. He's fun to watch. And then he does these stupid little two-line songs, with a little dace that Joey Tribbiani could have choreographed...funny. They might pall after a while, of course, but for now I'd much, much, much rather watch "Blue's Clues" than "Barney". Tough call, that.
iamo.)"Men With Brooms"...well, we'd been meaning to see it for a while, and of course we missed it in theatres, and had trouble finding it at the video stores. Sometimes they file Canadian movies under "Foreign Films"--sad but true--but there's actually a Canadian section, which I suppose is progress. It's a curling movie, which is to say pretty much a sports movie, but a Canadian sports movie. (Curling is, for the uninformed, a Canadian sport played by sliding heavy rocks down a sheet of ice, and fills the same cultural spot as, say, cricket does in Australia.) It features Leslie Nielsen in what must be his most serious role in years...which is of course not saying much. It contains about two too many shattering curling rocks for my taste, but apart from that is not too bad. It's a sports movie, leave it at that.
"The Village" we also missed in theatres, yadda yadda yadda. I confess that I more or less guessed at least one of the two major plot twists before the end, but then I tend to make lots of loony guesses at plot twists when I watch things like that. Very atmospheric movie, and Joaquin Phoenix doesn't talk a whole lot. Bryce Dallas Howard was extremely good. Sigourney Weaver's role was surprisingly small. Altogether I'd say that out of Shyamalan's movies, I'd still take "Unbreakable" and "The Sixth Sense" over his last two.
"Collateral" was really quite good. Tom Cruise wasn't too Cruise-y, playing a somewhat offbeat hitman, and Jamie Foxx's character was good too, making a believable progression throughout the movie. Though how the Oscar people can call that a "Supporting" role, I don't know. The DVD kept freezing on us, but our cheap player just does that sometimes. I swear we could probably already buy a better quality one than that for not much more.
Oh, and we got a "Blue's Clues" DVD for Simon and Luke. They seem to like it, anyway, and a few times we've played the game where somebody puts down three pawprints and then the others have to guess what the clues are for. We've had one for a few months now--I think Simon got it for his birthday or something--but I hadn't actually watched any of it until now. It's actually not that bad, and mostly because of the human character, Steve. I get a kick out of him, and it's hard to describe. There's a line in Meryn Cadell's "The Sweater", something about "the blank look that passes for intelligence, or at least the notion that someone's home". That's what Steve's got. He is often pretending to be listening to what the kids watching the show are saying, which is part of it, but he's just very earnest about the whole thing. He's fun to watch. And then he does these stupid little two-line songs, with a little dace that Joey Tribbiani could have choreographed...funny. They might pall after a while, of course, but for now I'd much, much, much rather watch "Blue's Clues" than "Barney". Tough call, that.
