Praying for a Cinematic Christmas
Praying for a Cinematic Christmas
entry, November 6th, 2005
I really, really hope that this year's holiday season has better cinema offerings than we got this summer. It's only a little bit of a stretch to say that I'm PRAYING for that, but you should know that I save my most heartfelt prayers for more important things, like "please can I be a Cartoonist for another year?"
Anyway, movies. I was at Blockbuster last night, and the guy at the counter was whining to a customer who was in turn whining about how there were no copies of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith on the shelves. The employee said "Yeah, this was like the best movie of the summer, and we only got thirty-six copies of it. THIRTY-SIX! Can you believe that?"
Well, yeah, I CAN. It wasn't the best movie of the summer by any stretch of the imagination, but enough people plan to fill out their collection of Lucas Travesties with the DVD that rental demand will be low. And hey, look at that. You're out of rental copies, but you've got several copies there you're willing to SELL us. Who do you think you're fooling?
The long and short of it was that this summer was pretty lame, movie-wise, and I'm hoping for some serious escapism in the next two months to make up for it. I recently saw Corpse Bride if it's an apt harbinger of the holiday movie season, we'll do okay. I giggled gleefully throughout, and I bought Mr. Bonejangles' musical number "Remains of the Day" at the iTunes music store almost as soon as I got home (current play-count: 42).
I've been watching the King Kong trailers with great interest. This is a movie that is going to thrill me, and I'm sure I'll cry like a baby at the end of it. I mean, All Dogs may Go To Heaven, but I'm not sure about giant apes. After watching the latest trailer (the one where we see Kong squaring off against a T-Rex) I went out to buy fruit snacks for our Idaho road trip. I came home with "Curious George" and "Dinosaur" themed snacks. You'd think I had monkeys and dinos on the brain or something.
Zathura doesn't interest me that much -- I feel kind of like we already DID that with Jumanji a decade ago, and at least THAT movie had monkeys in it. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire looks promising, but I don't want to see it just because I've seen the previous three. I want that movie to reach out and grab me by the collar, and drag me into the theater on its own strengths. (Hey, George Lucas... are you listening?)
What else is coming out? (I mean, besides Aeon Flux, which had better not be as preachy or cautionary as the previews make it look. That movie is supposed to be about a Lady Who Kills People While Wearing Almost Nothing. Casting an Acadamy-Award winning actress in the title role is a not a good sign... )
This paragraph is here because I've been told that it's bad form to end an essay in parentheses (even if all you're doing is ranting about movies.) Ooops! That was close.