Happy Thursday! I had a pretty cool week, over all. There was a lot of hanging out and for a while it was actually summer. Now it's like fake fall time. Not really what I had in mind.
Eventually on Friday Beth came over! We had so many plans but we didn't really do much. I took her on a countryside tour out to Santa Paula and back. Oh before that we went to the mall, today! But pretty much any store I'm interested in shopping at is closed now. All there is is punk shoes and tween girl clothes. And jewelry shops.
And then we picked up some potato salads and headed to Carolyn's house. There was a kid named John there, and he was pretty cool. Steven grilled, and we ate so much. Beth finally saw the first episode of DUE SOUTH and I'm sure she liked it. SURE. Eventually we played Rock Band and then everyone went home.
I have no memory of the weekend. Somewhere in there I watched the highly disappointing BUTTERFLY EFFECT.
I think I really need to start keeping a calendar again. I used to write down the interesting things I did, like what movie I saw or where I went with who. Now I just can't keep track of anything!
Monday, it must have been, I trucked out to Azusa to finish INK-MAN 2. Yeah. It's done. What I really did was spend the day eating with the old roomies, and then exported the movie super late at night. Just like old times! And, on the way there, I actually saw a truck that was on fire.
Tuesday Wednesday was bite-sized works. Business was real slow. But yesterday after TWILIGHT played out, my manager put in SPEED RACER. You know, that little movie that makes blu-ray worth your while? So I caught bits of it for the rest of the day, and by the time I left I had already decided to watch it when I got home. But since no one had bought anything all day, I caved and grabbed the used blu-ray copy we had for sale and brought that along home with me. $13.50 with the discount! And since it got put out for sale pretty soon after we started stocking blu-rays, it's a perfect disc. A grand deal, I think.
So I watched that with my mom and a box of curry. It was a comfort movie/food sort of day. My mom had actually already seen it, when I got the DVD, but she forgot. Speaking of, this is the first thing I've owned in both formats, so of course I popped them both in and cued them up to the same frame. Flipping back and forth I noticed that the blu-ray had about a 3% increase in sharpness. My conclusion: we need an HDTV.
Now I'm sure you guys have noticed by now that my cinematic tastes fall all across the board. SPEED RACER, as it turns out, is definitely one of my favorite movies of all time. There's nothing wrong with it. I say that, but you know I wish there wasn't a monkey in it. But even with a monkey, the rest of it is so...fitting with my sensabilities that I can easily overlook the monkey.
It makes me think again about the way people rate, recommend, or talk about movies. This particularl movie was a box office failure, which usually is a sign that the audience didn't find it appealing. A lot of people hate this movie. A lot of people think it's a bad movie. Cale, for one. But I think that the way we judge movies should be a lot more complicated than that. I love this movie, and I think it's a good movie, and for the same reasons that others reject it. I think that when people judge a movie, I think the most important thing to figure out is whether or not the movie was for you. Or, if you are included in the intended audience.
It's like saying that all kids movies are dumb. Well, maybe to adults a kid's movie is dumb. But an adult isn't that movie's audience. Ask a kid. The kid thinks it's great. So to me, that means that movie is a success. Or a horror movie. A lot of people don't think horror movies are any good, and wonder why people go to see them at all. But there is an audience for those films, and if a horror movie is judged by a horror fan to be good, to be everything that person is looking for in that horror movie, then that's a success. To be a cheesy teen romancedrama, if a thousand teen girls all go see TWILIGHT and love it for its cheesy teen romance, then it's a success.
And clearly it is.
So. I think it's okay to not like a movie, or to find a movie to be bad. But I think you need to realize that maybe that movie wasn't for you. Maybe that genre isn't for you. If you know you don't like raunchy humor, don't go see a Judd Apatow movie. But don't immediately assume it's going to be a bad movie. Someone out there finds meaning in it (the creators, for example), and they don't need you skewing the test results.
In conclusion, feel free to think that SPEED RACER is a stupid, drug-induced, childish movie. It's a perfect movie for me.
It's also like how there may be someone in the world that you can't stand, but somehow that person is married. Clearly, you're not that person's audience, but that doesn't mean no one is!
Oh gosh, what am I talking about anymore? Unicorns.
Last night I said to Beth, "I want to write something that someone wants to read. What do you want to read?"
[A good key to success is to find the audience first.]
And she said, "You should write about unicorns."
I said, "I already have."
She lol'd and then told me to write a story about a unicorn who goes on crazy adventures and then you find out it never was a unicorn but a guy on an acid trip. I said I would call it "My Name is GloBrite," and then I wrote it.
Another unicorn named Pancakes is mentioned in that story, and when I was done, I exclaimed, "I want to write a story about Pancakes!" So I did. I'm about halfway done, and it's like five pages. It's called "Pancakes and the Three Wishes." I don't want to give too much away, but right now they're meeting the Chupacabra.
It's going to be an awesome kid's book. Should test it out on my nieces. Watch out, kids!
In other news, I'm going to miss Michael Scott Paper Company. These most recent episodes have felt really fresh and fun, and that's exactly what that show needed. Can't wait to see where they go next.
HEROES! Finally some real action. This last episode was full of excitement and wtfery. Sylar's sort of crazy now. I don't imagine Nathan is going to survive the season finale next week. For real this time.
CHUCK, on the whole, may not be surviving? They seemed to wrap up everything very nicely this week, and with one more episode in the season, it sort of feels like that's going to be it. But I have no real news either way. I hope it goes on. Maybe they'll do something fresh and fun, too.
I hadn't seen the last two episodes of LOST, so I caught those back to back on Tuesday or so. It was like a phenomenal LOST banquet. No two episodes in a row have been so good as those two. So many surprises and answers and more questions!! One of them being a Ben episode and the other being Miles...that may have factored into my overall liking, but still. And then yesterday rolls around and I hoped that that episode would maintain the high caliber I'd come to expect from it......and it's just this lame recap episode. Waste of my time, so I went away in disgust.
Well, I guess I had better get back to my Pancakes. I'll let you know how it turns out.
-Stephanie
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