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Jul. 5th, 2004 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
d_aulnoyIn sheer desperation at the humidity, I put my hair up in a twist half-wet, using the first thing that came to hand. It looks quite fetching, and I'm averse to taking it down. Now I'm trying to figure out if I'll get in trouble with law enforcement authorities if I wear a silver knife (letter opener, anyway) in my hair - it's less than six inches, it should be fine.
On Spiderman II: HATED it. Normally, I'm first on the line of dorktastic cheerleaders singing the praises of comic book movies, just 'cause I want them to make more, but ... ugh. Not quite as bad as the last two Batman movies, but close, and not because of any of the normal issues, either; not because of the kind of a budget that almost guarantees a B-movie result, not because the director had an overblown (and much misunderstood) sense of the comic genre based more in old t.v. show parodies then in the actual written material, not even because of bad actors trying to cash in on a frahcnise. No, it was a matter of, A), bad writing (there was a prepondrence of lines like the dramatic "You're nothing but an empty seat to me!"), and, even worse then that, a complete misunderstanding of the characterization used in the canon. Peter Parker is, first and foremost, a smart-ass. He is not a stereotypical hero by any stretch of the imagination - no iron-jawed, honor-before intelligence here (I've always read him as a trickster figure) - but that doesn't make him into a loser of the nice-guys-finish-last school, and that's exactly what was portrayed. Not one joke! Far too much quivering of the lower lip! Wretched. And as for MJ, who was one of my favorite heroines as a kid - a wisecracking girl from Queens? Excellent. Kirsten Dunst played her as a self-righteous sap, and delivered the trademark "Go get 'em, Tiger!" with all of the enthusiasm of a woman encouraging a neutered housecat into the bushes to do his business. Yech. The one high point was Alfred Molina, who was lovely, as were the action scenes, but the tin-eared dialogue needs to go before the next movie, for the love of Stan Lee.
Other than that? Spent the 4th on the top of a 50 ft. skyscraper, watching the fireworks. This had the potential to be very cool ... but one of the other guests brought her children along (and, don't get me wrong here, they're lovely kids), and, at this age, I'm not really much of a "Hangman" player. Hell, at *any* age, I was never a "Hangman" player. So I bounced - I'm an awful person, and to my list of allergies (consisting of all of the Good Things in Life, including milk, puppy dogs, and sunlight - these are documented - and probably soon to be expanded to include True Love and Mom's Apple Pie), we can add children. I suck.
Sigh ... back to work.
On Spiderman II: HATED it. Normally, I'm first on the line of dorktastic cheerleaders singing the praises of comic book movies, just 'cause I want them to make more, but ... ugh. Not quite as bad as the last two Batman movies, but close, and not because of any of the normal issues, either; not because of the kind of a budget that almost guarantees a B-movie result, not because the director had an overblown (and much misunderstood) sense of the comic genre based more in old t.v. show parodies then in the actual written material, not even because of bad actors trying to cash in on a frahcnise. No, it was a matter of, A), bad writing (there was a prepondrence of lines like the dramatic "You're nothing but an empty seat to me!"), and, even worse then that, a complete misunderstanding of the characterization used in the canon. Peter Parker is, first and foremost, a smart-ass. He is not a stereotypical hero by any stretch of the imagination - no iron-jawed, honor-before intelligence here (I've always read him as a trickster figure) - but that doesn't make him into a loser of the nice-guys-finish-last school, and that's exactly what was portrayed. Not one joke! Far too much quivering of the lower lip! Wretched. And as for MJ, who was one of my favorite heroines as a kid - a wisecracking girl from Queens? Excellent. Kirsten Dunst played her as a self-righteous sap, and delivered the trademark "Go get 'em, Tiger!" with all of the enthusiasm of a woman encouraging a neutered housecat into the bushes to do his business. Yech. The one high point was Alfred Molina, who was lovely, as were the action scenes, but the tin-eared dialogue needs to go before the next movie, for the love of Stan Lee.
Other than that? Spent the 4th on the top of a 50 ft. skyscraper, watching the fireworks. This had the potential to be very cool ... but one of the other guests brought her children along (and, don't get me wrong here, they're lovely kids), and, at this age, I'm not really much of a "Hangman" player. Hell, at *any* age, I was never a "Hangman" player. So I bounced - I'm an awful person, and to my list of allergies (consisting of all of the Good Things in Life, including milk, puppy dogs, and sunlight - these are documented - and probably soon to be expanded to include True Love and Mom's Apple Pie), we can add children. I suck.
Sigh ... back to work.