(no subject)
Sep. 1st, 2007 01:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
molly_oi hate when I procrastinate about posting so long that the number of things I want to post about becomes an impediment to posting. We were in Vegas last weekend, and the internet access was spotty, and then I came back and was swamped at work, and I am only now, finally, getting around to my LJ.
Here we go, in reverse chron order (i.e. we saw Death Sentence last night and The Last Legion on the 19th):
Movie seen: Death Sentence
Everyone in this movie acted the heck out of it, but their performances can't completely overcome a clichéd script. The villains, in particular, come straight out of the hack's guide to bad guys: They are covered in tribal tattoos and hang out in the back of a dive bar (when they aren't in the spooky abandoned building with dramatic stained glass windows and a strangely non-combustible meth lab) and drive scary cars with bad mufflers. Still, I thought it did a pretty good job of showing Kevin Bacon's metamorphosis from a buttoned-up insurance guy to a scary killer. And I really, really liked the way the blocking conveyed the younger son's role in the family.
Book read: Martin Millar, Good Fairies of New York
This has an introduction by Neil Gaiman and he says it's wonderful; I didn't like it that much. It didn't suck, it just wasn't engaging. (To me; of course, YMMV.)
Fight attended: UFC 74: Respect
This fight night had an amazing card; even the preliminary bouts featured fighters RM & I have seen before. (You can read a complete recap that manages to be both funny and accurate here.) We inadvertently wound up with better seats than usual, so we were surrounded by trainers and family members. Most notably, we sat about 20 feet from Clay Guida's mom. She spent his entire fight yelling at the top of her lungs, and the consensus among bystanders was that we'd rather spend three rounds in the ring with Clay than three minutes being yelled at by his mom.
The two main fights of the evening were George St. Pierre vs. Josh Koschek and Randy Couture (heavyweight belt holder) vs. Gabriel Gonzaga. Koschek is So. Very. Annoying, and GSP seems like a super nice guy, so it was a real pleasure to see the "oh shit" look on Koschek's face when GSP took him down.
RM was very smart and placed a bet on Gonzaga to win the Couture-Gonzaga fight. Here's the thing: Randy Couture is the nicest guy, and we both really wanted him to win -- the last time we watched him lose a fight in Vegas, RM almost cried. (Don't tell him I told you that.) Betting on Gonzaga meant that if Randy lost, RM would at least have the consolation of winning the bet -- and if Randy won (which he did, yay!), RM would be happy to lose the bet (which he was).
Movie seen: War
I love Jet Li and I love Jason Statham, and I really wanted this to be good -- and it was disappointing. I was frustrated that two guys I really like played adversaries. Jason Statham doesn't have huge amounts of range, but the script didn't give him room to show any of it. I did like the way they portrayed the relationship between him and his ex-wife, and I also liked the way the subtitles appeared in characters before they appeared in English. Oh, and it was kinda fun (in a sick way) to watch Devon Aoki open The Box.
Machine gun fired: AK-47
According to Wikipedia, the Automat Kalashnikova 1947, colloquially known as the AK-47, was one of the first true assault rifles and is one of the most widely used assault rifles. And I fired one!!
I am not particularly into guns. Though RM carries one at work, he doesn't bring it home, and I am really very happy with that arrangement. That said, if the zombies come -- or if my plane is hijacked or my bank held up -- I don't want to be the ditz who tries to fire a gun and falls on her ass because she never heard of recoil. So when I realized there are gun ranges in Vegas where you can fire fully automatic machine guns, RM and I headed on over.
I fired a 12-gauge shotgun twice several years ago, but that's the only other time I've ever touched a firearm. I was a little nervous, but the AK-47's kick was actually less than I expected, and from the looks of the target all my shots hit in the head or chest. I spent the rest of the day quoting Ray Kowalski ("I was on the range this morning, I'm covered in blowback") at random, not-particularly-opportune moments.
Book read: Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Argh. It's very well-written, and I loved the little boy and his gradual understanding of his father's feet of clay -- and it's not at all what I'm looking for in a post-apocalyptic novel. It felt dated to me -- I kept thinking of Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains." I think I need to stop reading SF novels by authors who don't usually write in the genre; their expectations and mine are just not well-matched.
Book read: Jenny Crusie & Bob Mayer, Agnes and the Hitman
I'll be honest, Jenny & Bob's first collaboration (Don't Look Down) was good, but somehow not quite what i wanted it to be. But they seem to have worked out the kinks, and I LOVED Agnes and the Hitman. I loved it so much that when I finished it, I actually re-read the entire book (which I don't think I've ever done before), because I just wasn't ready to leave those characters and their world. Shane was bizarrely slow to figure out Casey Dean, but I like a universe in which sexist assumptions bear logical consequences.
Movie seen: The Last Legion
I wasn't sure about this one -- mainly, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about Colin Firth in an action-y role, having most recently seen him in "Love, Actually" -- but I quite liked it. The acting was solid and the action scenes were fun and the villains were scary and the cavalry's arrival was appropriately stirring. Aishwarya Rai's character is satisfying (if not entirely plausible). The movie does have a persistent cheesiness -- particularly noticeable in the soundtrack, but also in how certain scenes are shot -- which puzzled me until I realized it's a Dino de Laurentiis movie, and then it all made perfect sense.
Here we go, in reverse chron order (i.e. we saw Death Sentence last night and The Last Legion on the 19th):
Movie seen: Death Sentence
Everyone in this movie acted the heck out of it, but their performances can't completely overcome a clichéd script. The villains, in particular, come straight out of the hack's guide to bad guys: They are covered in tribal tattoos and hang out in the back of a dive bar (when they aren't in the spooky abandoned building with dramatic stained glass windows and a strangely non-combustible meth lab) and drive scary cars with bad mufflers. Still, I thought it did a pretty good job of showing Kevin Bacon's metamorphosis from a buttoned-up insurance guy to a scary killer. And I really, really liked the way the blocking conveyed the younger son's role in the family.
Book read: Martin Millar, Good Fairies of New York
This has an introduction by Neil Gaiman and he says it's wonderful; I didn't like it that much. It didn't suck, it just wasn't engaging. (To me; of course, YMMV.)
Fight attended: UFC 74: Respect
This fight night had an amazing card; even the preliminary bouts featured fighters RM & I have seen before. (You can read a complete recap that manages to be both funny and accurate here.) We inadvertently wound up with better seats than usual, so we were surrounded by trainers and family members. Most notably, we sat about 20 feet from Clay Guida's mom. She spent his entire fight yelling at the top of her lungs, and the consensus among bystanders was that we'd rather spend three rounds in the ring with Clay than three minutes being yelled at by his mom.
The two main fights of the evening were George St. Pierre vs. Josh Koschek and Randy Couture (heavyweight belt holder) vs. Gabriel Gonzaga. Koschek is So. Very. Annoying, and GSP seems like a super nice guy, so it was a real pleasure to see the "oh shit" look on Koschek's face when GSP took him down.
RM was very smart and placed a bet on Gonzaga to win the Couture-Gonzaga fight. Here's the thing: Randy Couture is the nicest guy, and we both really wanted him to win -- the last time we watched him lose a fight in Vegas, RM almost cried. (Don't tell him I told you that.) Betting on Gonzaga meant that if Randy lost, RM would at least have the consolation of winning the bet -- and if Randy won (which he did, yay!), RM would be happy to lose the bet (which he was).
Movie seen: War
I love Jet Li and I love Jason Statham, and I really wanted this to be good -- and it was disappointing. I was frustrated that two guys I really like played adversaries. Jason Statham doesn't have huge amounts of range, but the script didn't give him room to show any of it. I did like the way they portrayed the relationship between him and his ex-wife, and I also liked the way the subtitles appeared in characters before they appeared in English. Oh, and it was kinda fun (in a sick way) to watch Devon Aoki open The Box.
Machine gun fired: AK-47
According to Wikipedia, the Automat Kalashnikova 1947, colloquially known as the AK-47, was one of the first true assault rifles and is one of the most widely used assault rifles. And I fired one!!
I am not particularly into guns. Though RM carries one at work, he doesn't bring it home, and I am really very happy with that arrangement. That said, if the zombies come -- or if my plane is hijacked or my bank held up -- I don't want to be the ditz who tries to fire a gun and falls on her ass because she never heard of recoil. So when I realized there are gun ranges in Vegas where you can fire fully automatic machine guns, RM and I headed on over.
I fired a 12-gauge shotgun twice several years ago, but that's the only other time I've ever touched a firearm. I was a little nervous, but the AK-47's kick was actually less than I expected, and from the looks of the target all my shots hit in the head or chest. I spent the rest of the day quoting Ray Kowalski ("I was on the range this morning, I'm covered in blowback") at random, not-particularly-opportune moments.
Book read: Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Argh. It's very well-written, and I loved the little boy and his gradual understanding of his father's feet of clay -- and it's not at all what I'm looking for in a post-apocalyptic novel. It felt dated to me -- I kept thinking of Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains." I think I need to stop reading SF novels by authors who don't usually write in the genre; their expectations and mine are just not well-matched.
Book read: Jenny Crusie & Bob Mayer, Agnes and the Hitman
I'll be honest, Jenny & Bob's first collaboration (Don't Look Down) was good, but somehow not quite what i wanted it to be. But they seem to have worked out the kinks, and I LOVED Agnes and the Hitman. I loved it so much that when I finished it, I actually re-read the entire book (which I don't think I've ever done before), because I just wasn't ready to leave those characters and their world. Shane was bizarrely slow to figure out Casey Dean, but I like a universe in which sexist assumptions bear logical consequences.
Movie seen: The Last Legion
I wasn't sure about this one -- mainly, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about Colin Firth in an action-y role, having most recently seen him in "Love, Actually" -- but I quite liked it. The acting was solid and the action scenes were fun and the villains were scary and the cavalry's arrival was appropriately stirring. Aishwarya Rai's character is satisfying (if not entirely plausible). The movie does have a persistent cheesiness -- particularly noticeable in the soundtrack, but also in how certain scenes are shot -- which puzzled me until I realized it's a Dino de Laurentiis movie, and then it all made perfect sense.