FreePress Blog

If you haven’t seen the documentary God Grew Tired of Us, I strongly recommend it. We just finished watching it; I’d seen excerpts before, but the whole thing is so worth watching.

It’s an amazing story, seeing boys who grew up and escaped from Sudan into refugee camps, and then eventually to America, watching them experience western culture for the first time. Their insights on our society are priceless.

The one about Christmas and how we celebrate it really struck me, in this season. If I can’t find a video clip of it to link to, I’ll make one and post on it here shortly.

Please don’t sell tickets for 12:01 AM on a listed date that are actually for 12:01 on the next day.

Thursday, June 14th, 2007 12:01am is not, in fact, “late Thu. night”, it’s early Thursday morning, directly following the late hours of Wednesday night.

Luckily, I caught that when I went to review the ticket just to double check. Going back and looking at it, it does give you a little warning before you make the purchase that says that they actually mean 12:01am on Friday, but it’s basically an all around stupid thing to do.

I can only imagine that they do it because apparently they think most of their customers are too dumb to realize what day 12:01am falls on, but rather than complicate matters by listing it as a different day than it actually is, why not put in big red letters “in case you don’t know how to tell time…”

Just got back from seeing Shrek 3 with the kids and the Camerons; it was pretty good. Nothing spectacular, but it was entertaining; not much else to say about it.

Avery was there too and she did really good; at least I didn’t hear her for the whole time. Although, that reminded me of something I forgot to share about when I took the kids to see Spider-man a couple weeks ago.

There was this one couple sitting in front of us that had their very young kid (probably one year old, maybe two), and it was a huge distraction. Of course, the kid wanted to get up and play the whole time, which is fine because there was plenty of room. The problem came when she (the mom) would try to reign the kid in, he/she would let out a scream.

The parents would quiet the kid down pretty quickly, but it was a never ending recurring pattern, and it really got irritating after a while. The mom ended up taking the kid down to the front row and doing the same thing, for some reason thinking it was better because they were farther away from other people; it wasn’t.

The thing about it is when you’re watching a movie in the theater it’s supposed to be an immersing experience, and having a kid scream out, however short it lasts, really takes you out of the moment of focusing on and enjoying the film. Moving to a different part of the theater doesn’t help because everyone is still distracted when the kid yells out. Tip for parents in that situation: take the kid out of the theater completely and try again when they’re older.

I should probably take a few minutes to cool off after just getting out of the theater to post this, but I don’t feel like it right now.

Let me start by saying that the action scenes were great, for the most part. The effects during the actual fight scenes were absolutely top notch; no question about it - probably the best fight scenes in a Spider-man movie so far.

Unfortunately, that one good point is like a piece of a tortilla chip drowning in an order of nachos, with extra, extra, WAY TOO MUCH cheese.

Where do I begin to describe what went wrong in this movie? I won’t ruin it for anyone, but when you first see Peter “under the influence”, me (and several other people in the theater) let out an audible laugh. Oh, if only that was the low point of the cheese factor, but unfortunately it was just the peak of a very steep downward slope. It got to the point where it was quite obvious that they meant to go overboard with it, but (to whoever’s idea that was) sorry, it didn’t work out for you (or at least for me). Some of the cheese even seeped into the fight scenes, when you see Spidey fly (and pose) in front of a US flag that just happens to be flying at the battle scene.

The Eddie Brock character was actually fairly well done, at least until he turned into “you know who”. The post-transformation character was not as impressive as I think it should have been. I admit I did have my doubts about whether they could do Venom well in a movie, and I think they fell a bit short in that area as well. That’s a minor complaint, though, relative to other parts of the movie. If you see it, you will know exactly what I’m talking about.

I’ve heard rumors that several of the main actors in this series don’t want to do another sequel. Initially, when I heard that, I thought it was bad news, since I really can’t see anyone else playing Peter and Mary Jane at this point; I thought they were very well cast. Now, however, I don’t blame those actors in the slightest. If another Spider-man film is made (or I should say when, because it’s still probably guaranteed box office cash no matter what), it is going to have an uphill battle recruiting serious actors to play in it, and maybe even with getting serious fans to watch it as well.

In summary, I’m truly sad to say that (in my opinion) most of that movie really sucked. The worst part about it is that I deliberately did not set my expectations too high. I really did appreciate the first two Spider-man movies, and if this one would have been half as good as either of those I would have been very pleased. When I say that I’m sorry it wasn’t, I really do mean it. I grew up reading comic books, and I generally still really enjoy the movies they make based on them. I appreciate them for what they are, even when they dumb things down substantially to appeal to larger audiences. Heck, I even was borderline OK with the first Fantastic Four movie, and that is a bug stretch. This one went beyond the bounds, though, as far as I’m concerned.