There is a pretty great “Seinfeld” quote which I reference perhaps more than any other quote from that show (yes, even more than anything involving Festivus) which goes, “I never get enough sleep. I stay up late at night, cause I’m Night Guy. Night Guy wants to stay up late. ‘What about getting up after five hours sleep?’, oh that’s Morning Guy’s problem. That’s not my problem, I’m Night Guy. I stay up as late as I want. So you get up in the morning, you’re exhausted, groggy… ooh I hate that Night Guy!” This has, without any singular omission, described my life for the past decade or two. It is also, without any question, why tonight I am posting my Wednesday blog a few hours early. Should I have chosen to wait until I had woken up to post a blog, it would be an incoherent, sprawling block of drivel, the likes of which could only be compared to a very select few of my most recent posts. I am, for once in my life, doing Morning Guy a favor. He’ll thank me later.
It is also another way of saying that I don’t have a new movie review for today’s Wednesday post. I briefly touched upon “The Godfather” for Monday’s blog, and it seems that I am still suffering from an overdose of what Entertainment Weekly describes as the “Gangster Movie” genre, so I haven’t taken time for anything since.
Well, that’s not exactly true. I did watch Polanski’s “The Ninth Gate”, which I suppose in retrospect was a rather poor way to introduce myself to Polanski films. It was pretty mediocre by my standards, but most reviews I’ve read have concurred that it’s one of the weakest Polanski films to date, and that I should probably watch “Rosemary’s Baby”. If you haven’t seen “The Ninth Gate”, by the way, it is a suspense thriller in which Johnny Depp plays an expert on rare books, tasked with discovering the secret behind an ancient tome said to be written by the devil himself. It actually isn’t too bad a premise for a film, and the storyline holds up rather well for about half of the movie. But the actors’ lack of enthusiasm for the script is pretty blatant, and the patchwork ending only adds to the bitter taste this movie ultimately leaves in your mouth. The directing is still pretty solid, though, and I can’t bring myself to give it anything lower than a “C” or “C-“. Polanski went on to win an Oscar for “The Pianist”, and Johnny Depp will soon be in “Pirates of the Caribbean 4”. All’s well that ends well.
He is also to star in a theatrical remake of "Happy Days". Seriously.
For the hell of it, I decided to check what was just released on DVD this week, and it turns out that this would’ve been one of those weeks I’d be happy to do the wall (sorry for any of you that get that… I mean, really), in that really nothing is out on DVD this week. “Killshot” is pretty much the big movie this week, directed by John Madden (of “Shakespeare in Love” fame), and starring both Mickey Rourke and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and is actually written by the guy who worked on the screenplay to Jackie Brown. It’s roughly about a family in the witness protection program that is suddenly targeted by a ragtag team of psychopathic killers, and edge-of-your-seat type drama is naturally expected. From what I hear, though, it doesn’t all pan out and is about as worth it as one would gather glancing at the standard straight-to-dvd boxart. Of course this is sadly not straight-to-dvd, and did in fact make it to theaters for a couple weeks. Sounds interesting though, doesn’t it? Maybe I should make this weekly “new to DVD” thing a regular thing in the blog. Anything’s possible, I suppose.
And finally, since I’ve already established that I have virtually nothing to talk about, did you guys hear that they are doing a remake of “Flight of the Navigator”? Sometimes I’m very happy that I didn’t grow up watching a lot of “classic” 80’s movies (“The Goonies”, “Lost Boys”, and “Labyrinth” are just a few that come to mind) because had I, this would seem like just the thing to piss me off. Naturally I’ve been pissed off enough from the few 80’s shows they’ve already decided to reboot into new film franchises (“Transformers”, “G.I. Joe”, “Batman”… well, okay, the new Batman is actually pretty good), but I’m still hoping that once we hit a new decade with 2010, Hollywood will start rebooting all of the garbage material from the 90’s. Between “Martin”, “Animorphs”, “Step By Step” and of course the “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”, it seems like the next 10 years will truly be the golden age of film.
Already referenced by both Family Guy and South Park.
See you guys Friday with box office predictions. Will Pixar release something that won’t get nominated for an Academy Award? Only time will tell.
The Glass City 