Goodbye 2014

This year was a crappy year for me personally but it was a great year to go to the movie theatre.  The new Godzilla movie was great, Guardians Of The Galaxy was good, and a few others were fine too (but not Into The Woods as I mentioned a couple of posts ago).  People who believe that films today are all garbage compared to "the old days" need to get their heads reexamined.  Mindless drivel has existed since the birth of film.  The only really awful part of movie-going today is all the ads.

Well, here's to a happy new year... happy as it can be anyway.

Woot.

Ch Ch Ch Ch Ch Changes?

I got a Blu-Ray player for Christmas a few days ago.  I had wanted one for a while but couldn't justify the expenditure.  Well, now that I have one I guess I can pick up some Blu-Rays, if the price is right.  To be honest though I haven't had much time to watch many movies, imaginary reader.  I am currently trying (once again) to get out of my shitastic retail job, so there's not much time to be reviewing movies and stuff.  Besides, I'm less satisfied with simply offering my opinions on other people's stuff, especially when they aren't even intelligent opinions.  Maybe I'll wind down this blog like I've thought of doing before.

Or maybe I'll just put it on hold for a while.

Or maybe I'll just keep banging out mediocre shit endlessly until the sun explodes.

Who knows?

Musical Mediocrity

A friend of mine wanted to see Into The Woods, so I went and saw it with them today.  It was weird - the story and characters weren't bad but overall the whole thing was... mediocre, uninspired.  It was about an hour too long.  And being a musical, the music sucked... not in a horrible, painful sense but in a "This is boring and I can't remember a single song walking out of the theatre" sense.  Musical theatre has its roots in opera, especially German singspiel opera which has spoken words coupled with arias as opposed to the normal recitative/aria format.  Into The Woods was like watching spoken word combined with recitative with no arias.  What made this baffling was that it was written by Stephen Sondheim, who also did what is possibly my favorite musical of all time, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.  I guess he lost any talent for melody between the two.  Look, I don't need hooks and melodies to enjoy music, or even musical theatre.  Tristan und Isolde has almost no catchy tunes and its over three hours long but the difference is that Richard Wagner was a musical genius and the music in Tristan is on a whole different level - yes, there are no hummable melodies, but the chords and harmonies are brilliant and the whole... tone of the opera is so emotionally resonant that you are affected inside and you remember *that* after the thing has ended and you look forward to the day when it can do it to you again.

I know I normally don't do reviews on this blog for movies that are currently in theatres (I should, I guess... but I suppose I don't because it's expensive to go to the movies... or maybe it's because I can't add any pretty pictures).  I just wanted to express my disappointment in this movie and in the state of music in film in general (I know I did a while ago with my film score post) and musicals in particular.  The same friend and I saw Frozen last year and that was mediocre too, with only one memorable song (and we all know what it is....).  It makes me wonder what the point of making these things musicals is when the music is so uninspired and unmemorable... why not have it be a straight up play or movie?

I don't go to live shows so I don't know what the absolute latest things playing are (I'm only so interested in musicals, they aren't my favorites) but if Into The Woods is any indication (and checking online I see that it originally played in 1987) I don't really have much hope.  I guess I should be somewhat hopeful... another one of my favorites, Little Shop Of Horrors debuted at about the time (1982) so maybe one day I'll give another musical a chance.

Ooh, that got me thinking... maybe I should go re-watch Little Shop Of Horrors.

Still Better Than 99% Of All Christmas Movies

Hey, I know what you want for Christmas!  A really short picture review of a weird-ass modern Hungarian psycho-opera!  YEAH!

1981

Director: Miklós Szinetár

"Some drapes here, a table there...."

Pfft.  My torture chamber looks waaaay cooler than that.

What gets me are the flamethrowers on the wall.
I want.

So... Blubeard has his own  tacky disco?

The plants appreciate it, Judith.

Blubeard Presents

"Okay, now you're not even trying."

Wait, maybe this was really directed by Terry Gilliam....

...

Well, I hope you enjoyed my attempt to illustrate the awesomeness of a musical genre of film using only pictures.

Merry Christmas!