2002-10-16 - 11:03 a.m.

Movie review, movie trailers, feeling like a bully

Soylent Green is people! It's people, I tell you!

Where oh where have all the Chuckie's gone? Why don't we have any more of those terrible actors that everyone adores anyway, like old Chuckie Heston? Oh, wait, that's right. I'd forgotten all about Keanu. (Partly because I spent days in self-hypnosis designed to forget his existence and ignore every reference to him.)

Last night I saw The Transporter. One of the reviews of Yahoo said it was like the worst Jean-Claude Van Damme movie ever made. Dude hasn't plumbed the depths of Van Damage, because The Transporter was probably twenty times better than Lionheart, and easily ten times better than Legionnaire. Actually, I enjoyed Transporter quite a bit. Sure, it was a crappy movie, but I *knew* it was a crappy movie going in. I wanted to just shut off my brain (particularly that part of my brain that's a movie snob) and just enjoy. Which I did. Sure, I laughed out loud at a couple of stunts because they were so ridiculous. (Like the two cars that hit each other and both immediately explode. Only in Hollywood do they make cars out of nitroglycerin.)

I do have one small rant. It has little to do with the movie, and more to do with the trailer. One of my pet peeves is when footage appears in the trailer that does not appear in the movie. For some perverse reason, I look for all the trailer footage while I'm watching the movie. I get some weird little kick out of saying to myself "There's that cool scene from the trailer". Like the part where the guy looks through the peep hole in the door, and sees Jason Stathan's size twelve rapidly approaching the door. That's cool. But they didn't have the part where he deflects a rocket with a serving tray. They cut that out. I was prepared to laugh at the improbability of that maneuver.

I think I just dislike it when the trailer doesn't accurately reflect the movie. I spent all of Twister wondering when the cool shot of the tractor tire coming through the windshield at you would happen. It never did. It's a small thing but it bugs me.

I remember being very disappointed in Arachnaphobia, because the trailer made it out to be a comedy with some horror elements. It was actually a horror movie, and every single moment of comedy was blown by the trailer. That to me is misleading.

Some of you might wonder what I thought about Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The most often seen trailer was made entirely of footage that was not included in the film. I actually liked that one, and here's why. It was obvious that the trailer wasn't in the movie. I knew that before I saw the movie. But the trailer was completely true to the characters and the feel of the movie. It did not misrepresent in any way.

This is probably a really boring rant for you. Sorry, I'm putting off real issues here.

See, I'm in this improvisation class. We meet on Wednesdays. It's a fairly involved process, as we're in Level 3 of 5, and each level takes eight weeks. So everyone in the class has bonded to an extent, and we've all started to like and trust each other. But starting a couple of months ago, we had an interloper. Someone who came in and joined our class (we now find out she did because she liked us). She was not fun to work with. She killed scenes with what I would deem to be stupid choices. Nobody really liked her, or liked working with her. My own biggest issue is that when she didn't know what else to do, she would insult people. Sure, it's a character insulting a character, but it happened all the time, and it was rude and uncalled-for. When it's not justified by the scene, throwing in "That long-haired guy looks like a woman" felt to me like a personal attack, especially because it was about me.

Anyway, we complained to the instructor. Then there was this period of emails back and forth and really angry statements, and tons of miscommunication. The net result is that she's been kicked out of class. Which is what at least a couple of people wanted. But now we're all feeling guilty. I myself feel like a bully.

True, I think she disrupted class, and I know that people didn't like working with her. But in the end, we're just a bunch of bullies. And I don't feel very good about it.

Add to this the email exchange with Otter and the fact that I'm effectively refusing her efforts to be my friend.

I'm kinda feeling like a heel right now.