Wednesday, Debtember 19, 2001
Lord of the Movies
Spring and I were invited to the opening of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (and this has the highest rating of a film I've ever seen over at the IMDB) at a relatively obscure theater just past noon on opening day by a friend of Spring's, Russ.
The movie is incredible. The special effects were incredible and the computer generated effects were not at all annoying (except for the few shots of Gollum). They did an incredible job of resizing the actors (John Rhys-Davies is not a small man yet plays Gimli the Dwarf). The landscapes were more impressive and beautiful than those in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (the landscapes where one of three things that kept me watching that movie—the other two being Natalie Portman and the third being the fight sequence between Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon and Darth Maul). It was a beautiful movie.
I could however, do without the introduction at the beginning of the movie since the material there is covered several times through the rest of the film, but that's me. Otherwise, I have no complaints about the film other than I have to wait another year for the next installment.
Notes on a Conversation about Billy Elliot
Spring has been trying to get me to watch Billy Elliot since we rented several days ago. My relunctance to watch it has a bit to do with my relunctance to see many movies (I do have to be forced to watch certain types of films and often times I end up liking the film but I digress) but it has more to do with the subject matter—someone who is hiding what they are doing from other people and the inevitable Embarrasing Scenes that I find way to painful to watch.
“But it's got a riot in it,” said Spring.
“Yea … ”
“It's got kicking down of door,” she replied.
“It's got judicious use of sledgehammers in it,” said Spring.
“Are you guys talking about Office Space?” asked Rob.
An embarrassing richness of embarrassment
So I finally broke down and watched Billy Elliot with Spring. And while there were some very funny and surreal bits in the movie (such as Billy and Debbie are talking as they walk and Debbie is drawing a stick across the bricks in a building, then along a line of riot police, like there is nothing at all wrong about running a stick along a line of riot police, then along another wall and the bit where Billy's brother is running away from the riot police and is taking a most torturous route through homes) but it was, as I was afraid of, an embarrassing number of Embarrassment Scenes that our hero has to endure.
And I for one, cannot endure Embarrassment Scenes at all so that made the movie quite painful for me to watch (and yes, at one point, Spring covered my eyes so I didn't have to watch one quite painful Embarrassment Scene).
Overall I found the movie okay if a bit uneven in the handling of comedy and drama.
