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Friday, April 23, 2004

Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Warning: The following post contains spoilers about the 2004 film The Alamo. Please stop reading now if you haven't seen it.

So I was reading the letters section of the Dallas Observer, and I came across this gem:
Please fire Mr. Wilonsky. It seems that he almost cannot write a review of a movie without giving away the ending.
I was intrigued. How does one go about spoiling the end of a historical drama? So I went to look at the review:
But most galling is how Hancock has given The Alamo the Pearl Harbor treatment; he may be the anti-Michael Bay in that he refuses to fetishize the violence or cower before the gods of computer animation, as director Bay did fighting the Japanese, but Hancock has learned how to turn an inspirational tragedy into a real crowd-pleaser, yee-haw. Every film made about the fall of the Alamo ends with the slaughter--the teary finale, followed by the solemn coda during which the audience is asked to mourn in silence as they head for the exits. Not this time. Here, Hancock is in full Michael Bay mode, tacking onto his story of sacrifice a final tale of heroism and victory: Houston's defeat of Santa Anna and his forces in the field at San Jacinto, which led to Santa Anna's surrendering of Texas. An Alamo with a happy ending--now, that is revolutionary.
So there you go - the big spoiler is: Texas is not part of Mexico anymore. Please note that the reviewer, the newspaper, and the letter-writer are all natives of Texas.

Friday, April 09, 2004

One of my fellow 1Ls talks about good interviewing skills:
I met with a judge last week in Alabama to talk about a summer clerking position and when he left the room for a minute I was compelled to be as nosy as I could be, so I began to peek at all the briefs he had piled on his desk.
So I'm curious, because my copy of "Emily Post's Guide to Polite Interviewing" is still in storage: Is it acceptable behavior to leaf through papers on someone's desk when you're interviewing for a position with them? Am I just a stick-in-the-mud for thinking it's kind of rude?

Wednesday, April 07, 2004

So apparently (and this is likely old news to everyone but me), I, Robot has nothing at all to do with I, Robot. They just welded the name (and the three laws) onto an unrelated screenplay once they acquired the rights. So, yeah.

But seeing that the title of the screenplay was originally "Hardwired" reminds me to mention how disappointed I was to learn that the film Hard Boiled was not based on Hard Boiled.

Although I'm happy to see live action adaptations of comics, most of my favorite comics are ones that I really don't want to see adapted to the screen. Some of them (Ronin, Night Force), it's because I don't trust anyone to do a good job, in part because I'm pretty sure doing a good job would necessarily mean creating a box-office flop. (I would dearly love for someone to prove me wrong, though.) Others, though, I just don't think belong on film - it's impossible for me to imagine enjoying a Dr. Strange film, or a Thor film, or a Cerebus film. (Did I just admit to really liking Dr. Strange, Thor and Cerebus? Oops.*) I've been wracking my brain since Spider-Man came out, trying to think of a property that I'm just dying to see on film; something that's actually plausible, if not likely. I think I've settled on Hard Boiled, now that I've been reminded. Sure, the plot isn't what's awesome about Hard Boiled; the movie would be totally different from the comic. But I think a successful Hollywood movie could be made that would still be recognizably Hard Boiled. And man, wouldn't that be awesome?

* - I also really dug ROM and Dial H for Hero, but I've outgrown those.
copyright 2003

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