Posts by Josh Addison
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Lynfield College, early 90s - wagging. Never did it.
Well, sort of - in 7th form, the German class was small enough that we did it via correspondence. The 6th and 7th form classes were combined and the German teacher basically just supervised us while we worked through the material. In the winter months, I would occasionally stay in the warmth and comfort of the Common Room instead of running through the rain to the classroom. I'd tell myself that it didn't matter where I did the work -- of course, if I stayed in the Common Room, I wouldn't actually do it....
Come summertime, it had become a bit of a bad habit. Near the end of the year, I was in the Common Room, using the fact that I was working on the school magazine to justify not going to class, when the German teacher walked in, wordlessly dropped my correspondence course results in front of me and walked out again. I never got in trouble, but I sure felt guilty.
I got a lousy mark for German in Bursary, too, so I guess it served me right.
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See, I was very pleasantly surprised by The Dark Knight (possibly because I hated Batman Begins, but still). It was the first time in any incarnation that I've found the character of the Joker at all threatening - usually you have Batman, with his brilliant mind, unbeatable martial arts abilities and near unlimited resources against the Joker, who... is crazy. Maybe it was the writing more than Ledger's acting, I dunno.
And the "hostages on the boats" thing was the whole point - that was the real conflict of the film, and it's where the Joker lost. Getting beaten up by Batman was pratically incidental. The screenwriters had definitely read Alan Moore's excellent "The Killing Joke". Christian Bale is still a terrible Batman, though.
As far as shakey-cam goes, I agree with seems to be the consensus here - a good technique when used right; often used wrong. I thought the first brief fight scene in the hotel room was excellent - guy jumps Bond; violence happens; guy is dead. That actually told you something about the character of Bond and what happens when you mess with him. On the other hand, I had no idea what the hell was going on during the car chase at the start, when I felt that I should have. And The Bourne Ultimatium seemed to be the result of some sort of fetish - the damn camera never stopped moving, even when it was just a shot of two people sitting down and talking...
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I should say that, in my case, the reason why my travelling companion and I got our luggage rummaged through was that a couple of nice Customs men came up to us while we were waiting at the luggage carousel and started asking questions along the lines of "London, eh? Take any drugs there? Apparently they're really cheap over there." That last sentence isn't a joke, by the way. After a bit of a chat, they made some cryptic marks on our entry cards, which saw us shunted into the time-wasting, baggage-scrutinising queue. The only thing I can think of that would have attracted their attention is the fact that the guy I was with has a bunch of tattoos down each arm - he always wears something long sleeved when travelling internationally these days...
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Coming into Auckland is the only time I've had trouble at an airport, and even then no-one was particularly unpleasant; we just wasted an hour having our luggage pored through by a fairly apologetic customs agent.
I had no problems entering and leaving Heathrow a couple of weeks after the scare that resulted in the "no liquids on planes" rule, which was worrying in itself - as we wandered unimpeded out of the airport, we kept expecting to look back and see men with guns rushing to stop us...
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I, Robot is, as one of my friends put it, the best movie ever based on the title of an Asimov book. Frankly, we were all pleasantly surprised -- the trailers suggested the film was going to consist entirely of Will Smith punching robots while looking into the camera and saying "aw, hell no!" That it turned out to display even some amount of respect for (if not actual faithfulness to) the source material was nice to see.
And we were all gothy, The Crow/__Dark City__-watching Alex Proyas fans, too, which didn't hurt.
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has anyone ever seen a deleted scene or "extended cut" that actually enhanced the reputation of a film?
Robocop, for a given value of "reputation" (in that it includes all the extra gore they had to cut out for the theatrical release).
I find it interesting to watch deleted scenes with commentary, if only to see why the scenes were pulled, or the different directions they thought about going in.
The only things I bother with commentary on are the collected Whedonverse.
He does talk a good episode, our Joss. I liked the fact that he was talking all through most of the Buffy episode where Joyce dies, but shut right the hell up when Anya gave her speech. I know the feeling... </fanwank>
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The only DVD commentaries I've found to be worth a damn are the ones that talk about the actual film-making process. Robert Rodriguez takes the cake for his commentary to Desperado (and he's prepared -- you can hear him rustling his notes as he talks about how the film was made). John McTiernan's commentary of Die Hard is a bit technical, but good if you're intersted in that sort of thing.
Most of the time, though, you just get people with nothing to say chucked in a recording booth and shown the film. Any commentary with Arnie is something to behold -- he has a prodigious gift for stating the bleeding obvious ("Ow! Dat vould haf huurt!" as his character gets punched, etc). His duo with Paul Verhoeven on the Total Recall commentary is fun for the combo of Dutch vs Austrian accents, and I'm told good things about his joint commentary on Conan the Barbarian.
The only other exceptions I can think of are when the commentors are genuinely fun to listen in their own right. The commentaries on Black Books are as funny as the episodes they're commenting on, for instance...
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No eating babies, yet? :)
Quite the contrary.
What, the babies were eating her? That's just weird.
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I'm reading the list of ministers and mentally adding "Garthim Master" to the list of portfolios.
If it meant that their leaderhsip was determined via Trial by Stone, I'd call that a good thing.
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you can't legally refer to your CUPcake as your "wife" or "husband", because that's only for civil marriage.
Really? Legally? Bugger, I'm a hard core repeat offender -- and all because I was too lazy to come up with some new vocabulary. (The people I really pity are the guests who had to find a suitable card for the occasion. There's money to be made there...)