I was surprised that the movie was projected digitally, which is the first time I had seen such a thing at this theater. It looked really good, though some of the colors looked too bright and artificial to me, especially the yellows and oranges. But again, cinematography-wise, it mostly looked like an episode of Alias on the big screen. Philip Seymour Hoffman was a high point as one of the villains, though he didn’t have enough screen time. Another thing I liked was that there was an actual team in this one, like in the old TV show, and Cruise’s character didn’t do everything himself. I seem to remember that the first two movies were mostly the Ethan Hunt Show. There was also some actual emotional involvement in this one, most of which was telegraphed in the very beginning, and that was a good thing. Hey, and it’s got Denver’s own Keri Russell, aka TV’s Felicity (another Abrams-created show), going all kickass with a gun.

As Sue points out, the box office take on opening weekend was lower than expected for this flick. We went to an early Sunday afternoon showing at a big screen theater in a megaplex, and it was practically empty. I thought this was prime movie going season? It wasn’t like the weather was real conducive to outdoor activities: cloudy and kinda rainy. So where were all the people? Watching their kids’ baseball/soccer/basketball games, I guess (which is what Bryce was doing before and after the movie). I’m assuming this doesn’t bode well for the rest of the summer blockbuster season, though I suspect Poseidon and The DaVinci Code, and perhaps Superman Returns, will do better than this movie. Like everyone else, I’m withholding judgement on X-Men 3, and its success will depend on initial word of mouth. If the omnipresent marketing hype is any indication, things are not looking good. I always worry when a studio hypes a movie too much. Although DaVinci Code has been getting that treatment as well. You can’t turn on a TV these days without seeing a commercial for one or the other.

Latre.

Getting my fix requires a 12-step process:
1) Put dollar bill in bill reader (a can costs sixty cents, but I rarely have change).
2) Wait for sniffing mechanism inside machine to decide that bill is legal tender and the correct denomination.
3) Insert bill again, hoping for a different outcome.
4) Machine finally decides dollar bill is not Nigerian.
5) Push button for Diet Pepsi.
6) Push other button for Diet Pepsi because display panel flashes “Sold Out” after first button is pushed.
7) Wait for machine to decide that yes, I really do want a Diet Pepsi and yes, that can be provided if the planets are correctly aligned.
8 ) Bend over and retrieve can from vending slot that is so low to the ground it is a miracle that gravity and the fall from above have not caused the can to burst on impact.
9) Leave breakroom.
10) Go back into breakroom as realization sinks in that I have not retrieved the change from my dollar.
11) Search floor in front of machine for change, which machine has ejected from its coin return slot with the force of a Republican Talking Point being ejected from the mouth of a White House Press Secretary.
12) Finally locate change and feel relief that I was not in front of the machine when the hot metal was fired from it.

This is my twice-daily (more or less) ritual. I swear I have never before seen a machine that takes so long to give change, and then spews it all over the floor when it finally does.

Strangely, for all its faults, this machine works better than the one it replaced. That one constantly swallowed my money and gave nothing in return, like some kind of housewife from a 50s sitcom. It’s like its primary goal was to hoard change so that eventually it could pool its ill-gotten gains with other machines of its ilk, use it to buy weapons, and start a rebellion for the rights of all wonky machines everywhere in servitude to humans with a primal need for unhealthy refreshment.

I have noticed that the ice machine that sits between the pop machine and the candy machine (which has its own plan for world domination by making packs of artery-clogging, sugary mini-donuts irresistible to weak-willed office workers) has been squeezed into a non-working state, possibly because it refuses to join the cause and does not charge for its frozen watery treats. So it cannot do things like hoard money or make the comical-looking humans chase rolling coins across the length of the breakroom. Therefore, in the minds of the mechanical monsters, it had to Die. Which frankly, I don’t understand, since it did a pretty good job of leaking water all over the place and causing people to step gingerly in the area or face slippery death. You’d think that would earn it a place in the Revolution, but no.

Don’t even get me started on the plumbing problems in the men’s restroom. Why do the women get a couch in their bathroom (or so I hear), and all we get are urinals that overflow?

Latre.

Today’s “What Planet Are They On?” TV Cliché: The End Of The Drive Car Conversation.

How come whenever two people are in a car and have something really important to discuss, they always wait until the drive ends and have the conversation inside the car while it is parked at its destination?

The most recent occurrence of this that I witnessed is in the pilot episode of the new Night Stalker, which I finally got around to watching last night (not recommended, BTW – nothing we haven’t seen before, dull, too fake-stylish/serious, and pretty much nonsensical – no humor like in the old show). In that scene, hero Kolchak is with heroine/sidekick Perri-with-an-I, played by Gabrielle Union, whom I’m sure looks much better and is more fashionable than most crime beat journalists at metropolitan newspapers. She had just inadvertently betrayed him to the FBI. He stopped the car and she suddenly started the conversation with “Sorry about that whole FBI thing, that wasn’t what I meant to do…” and then they have an intense discussion about their lives blah blah blah. So what the heck were they talking about for the rest of the drive? The price of gas? The latest Dodgers game?

I guess we’re expected to think that they both sat in smoldering silence for the entire drive, and it took the end of the drive for one of them to finally break the ice. And I can see that happening occasionally in real life, but it seems to happen far more often on TV. One reason is perhaps that they don’t want to spring for the extra bucks for a fake driving/conversation scene (those rolling backgrounds projected on a green screen sure must be expensive). But the real reason is probably because of that other famously maddening TV driving cliché: Whenever people are shown actually driving, there will be an accident. (Or a monster will reach into the car and pull someone out.) That one is especially true on soap operas.

Anyway… keep a watch out for this one. Once you know about it, you see it everywhere.

On another matter, I’ll be real interested to see if Katie Holmes suffers from postpartum depression after the eventual birth of her sure-to-be Vole-ish offspring, and what she does about it. Hopefully it will involve a frying pan aimed at her future husband.

Latre. My 108 minutes is about up, so I gotta go hit that button.

Latre.

Last week was “Re-Experience in a New Format Week” at the movies. My friend Bryce’s wife and kids were out of town, so he had a lot of free time to do geek stuff. First, we saw the digitally-projected version of Revenge of the Sith. It was nice – the eye candy was even more eye-candyish, though the improvement over the film version was not as drastic as it was for Attack of the Clones. You could definitely see more details. We both swore that Padme had some disappearing/reappearing pants in her scenes on the volcano planet. Unfortunately, the enhanced viewing did not make the story any clearer or more interesting. Repeated viewing definitely doesn’t help this flick, as story/logic flaws become even more evident, and the bad dialog/acting sticks more pronounced. But that eye candy…

The other re-formatted movie we saw was the Imax version of Batman Begins. I thought it was pretty cool, but I’m not sure Bryce got as much out of it. The sound design was excellent. I did notice that I tended to focus on facial blemishes – easy to do when a single mole is like a foot tall. Poor Morgan Freeman. Michael Caine really needs some work done around his eyes. Christian Bale has some kind of growth on the right side of his nose near the top, which I hadn’t noticed at all the first time, but which really stood out for me this time. Even Katie Holmes did not escape my enforced scrutiny – she had something on her forehead that creeped me out. It will probably be the excuse that Tom Cruise eventually uses to dump her, hopefully before she’s totally ensnared in His Vole-ish Life.

Both Bryce and I thought there were also some minor edits in the Imax version, especially around the Scarecrow and the use of his mask. But we both could’ve been just misremembering the original, as those parts were pretty quick and intense. Or maybe they really did dial it down just a little bit for this version. I may have to research that on this thing called the Internet.

Latre.

Despite Tom Cruise’s vole-like appearance, two-note acting (scared & peeved), and the fact that’s he’s portraying a man who’s not particularly nice, I thought he did okay. I was generally frightened/in suspense sometimes, so kudos to Spielberg – he’s still got it in him to provide the jolts. You really have to admire little Dakota Fanning, as it appears she got put through the wringer for this and I’m sure she had some nightmares. Luckily the movie didn’t pause for character moments too often, because those ended up seeming forced and awkward, and they do slow the movie down. Usually I like a lot of character moments, but in a movie like this, they end up being too pat and predictable. Might as well just go along for the ride. The effects were well done and appropriately conveyed the sense of unrelenting menace. Although there was bit too much of the “fuzzy blue” texture to a lot of it (especially in action scenes), something that I also got tired of in Minority Report.

There were the usual gaps in logic and story. The finding of the one vehicle that still works was a little pat and not very well explained. It sure seems like there should’ve been other working cars as well – where were they? The tanks worked. Also, there are scenes of incredible destruction going on at one point, and yet people not too far away (within walking/running distance) are going about their usual business anyway with apparently no hint anything is wrong until *zap* it’s right on top of them. New Jersey isn’t Tokyo, where Godzilla or some other monster comes stomping through every other day and people are used to fleeing for their lives.

A little more explanation about the aliens would’ve been nice. Since the decision was made to tell the whole story from the point of view of one family, scenes of necessary exposition were incredibly awkward (the TV news van scene, for example). Okay, I can understand not wanting to show scenes of the president mobilizing the armed forces or whatever, but sheesh, why didn’t Tom even try to turn on a TV when he was at his ex-wife’s house? I guess that’s not too surprising, since he didn’t even bother to look for food in the refrigerator.

And what were the aliens’ motives? Did they want to wipe humans off the planet with their rayguns, or collect them for later and suck their blood? Did they want the planet for some reason (colonization?), or did they just want to round-up/kill humans? I guess it don’t really matter.

And of course there’s the old same Signs complaint that these aliens are so sophisticated and have this really advanced technology and everything, and yet are felled because they failed to properly research the planet they wanted to invade. What, no one has a tricorder to test the atmosphere and see if it’s teeming with deadly micro-organisms or not? I realize that all comes from the original Wells book, written in the 19th century, but they still could’ve come up with a better way to explain it for today’s audiences. I like that the alien invasion came from below (more or less), but I still wanted to know why those machines were there and why it took them so long to use them. Also, the aliens could’ve done with some better sensing equipment in general – even their probes seemed to react solely to visuals and sound. Oh well, maybe their not-buried-for-a-million-years technology is better, but they weren’t able to mobilize it for some reason. Plus, the buried machines suggest they do this kind of thing a lot, and you’d think they’d have run up against the biological problems in the past on other planets. And if they are so susceptible to our diseases, what about the alien diseases they no doubt brought with them – wouldn’t those be killing all the humans off? Maybe that happens five minutes after the end of the movie.

Speaking of the end of the movie – again, too pat. Hey, the whole family’s okay! How about that! For awhile there, I was liking this new alien-hating, darker Spielberg, but then he had to go ruin it with a typical Hollywood ending. At least it was kind of interesting that the aliens themselves didn’t look all that menacing to me, which may be some kind of E.T./Close Encounters in-joke.

But other than that (it’s always easier to focus on the negatives than the positives), it was an engrossing movie. It’s not like I spent a lot of time focusing on the flaws while watching it. It’s pretty easy to get caught up in it.

For reasons I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’m going to ditch the useless Nod-O-Meter rating system and go to something more standard – a five level rating system:

Again! – I want to see it again right away and I will definitely buy the DVD
Entertaining – Worth seeing at a theater; I might buy the DVD
Wait – Wait for rental; recommended, but has major flaws
Freeload – Worth seeing in theater or on DVD only if not paying
Avoid – Never see this movie (or stars Tara Reid* as a scientist)

On that scale, War of the Worlds gets a rating of Entertaining. I probably will buy the DVD because it will make a terrific references disk for the Home Theater system. Really good sound design!

Latre.

* I just recently re-watched The Big Lebowski on DVD – still hilarious, maybe even more so, after all these years. I had no idea that Tara Reid played Bunny Lebowski.