Today I feel depressed.
I shall get drunk.
I’m watching Solaris (the original 1972 Russian version) which is kinda weird and surreal. I just spent 5 minutes watching traffic. 40 minutes in and we’re only just getting to space.
Still they say it’s good.
More later perhaps.
Title says it all. Why are there so many movies based around monkeys that play ice hockey or whatever. It’s an entire sub-genre. (The parent genre being unfunny comedies)
My friend Iain and I used to play this game where we’d identify movies using the formula X is Y in space. As in “Outland is High Noon in space”, “Alien is Jaws in space” and so on. (You can extend this formula too. “Brotherhood of the Wolf is Jaws meets the Matrix in 16th Century France (honest guv!))
So in that fine tradition (and because every other review I’d read/heard/seen of this movie says it) I give you:
2. Zathura – Jumanji in Space
Well, ok that’s the cliche – But it really REALLY IS! See this movie is based on a book which was written by the same guy who wrote the book Jumanji is based on. And it’s pretty much the same story. In Jumanji a mysterious jungle-themed board game causes wackiness as things from the game come to life and the only way out from the various dangers this causes is to finish the game. In Zathura a mysterious space-themed games causes… well you get the idea.
So same basic idea, but there are differences. Jumanji relies heavily on CGI, which at the time it was made was pretty good, but it looks like CGI. Zathura does a lot more physical effects. It’s baddies – alien lizards called Zorgons – are guys in lizard suits rather than CGI. This seems to work well and it’s less distracting than CGI.
Where Jumanji works a bit better is that the story has a romantic subplot with Robin WIlliams and Bonnie Hunt. In Zathura the central relationship is of brothers who don’t get on initially learning to respect each other. For me at least seeing the couple get together is always going to be more of a draw than that. Having said that, both films manage to deal with these emotional themes without resorting to sentimentality.
Finally I think Jumanji scores in having someone like Williams as a star. Not just in marketability, but his charisma and performance do lift the film.
Overall Zathura is good, not quite in Jumanji’s lead but very enjoyable nonetheless.
Yeah yeah so I didn’t get to those reviews. I had other stuff to do. Mostly cleaning (and believe me the rich vein of metaphor on that one is nowhere near tapped out) but other stuff too. Life is kinda happening and I am in an interesting place – but that’s a whole other post.
So how about those reviews.
1. Why Just Like Heaven is better than Ghost
I guess “because it is” is not really rising to the challenge of movie reviewing now is it? 😉 Still this will be brief (ish).
Firstly there is such a thing as too much Whoopi Goldberg. She’s good in Ghost, she’s funny. But it’s not a subtle performance and it can grate at times.
Secondly the whole tone is more maudlin. In Ghost Demi Moore is grieving the loss of her lover Patrick Swayzee. The film is about having time to say goodbye and let go – with the subplot of who murdered Swayzee. So even in the upbeat parts of the portrayal of the relationship are undercut by a sense of sadness and loss. Which is fine, but for a comedy it’s a bit downbeat. It also goes overboard on sentimentality for my tastes.
In Just Like Heaven by comparison, although Reese Witherspoon is a ‘ghost’ she’s not actually dead just in a coma. So the final act of the movie is about whether or not she can be resuscitated. Not to spoil you but it’s a happy ending. Also whilst Ghost has the letting go of a relationship this is about the forming of one. So we get to see Witherspoon and Ruffalo fall for each other, and whilst there’s nothing particularly innovative about they way they do it, the leads are winning enough for it to be enjoyable.
Finally, there’s that scene You know the one. Unchained Melody. Potter’s Wheel. The only reason we’re not drowning in sentimentality is because it’s overpowered by the bluntness of the sex symbolism. I imagine Ghost’s target audience are wont to shed a tear during that scene and see it as a beautiful representation of Truw Wuv. The rest of us rolled our eyes and said “oh come on!”
Now JLH has a scene which serves a similar purpose. Witherspoon and Ruffalo are sharing their last night together. It’s established they care for each other. Even though she’s a ghost she can sort of feel him, and only him. He asks her what she wants to do with their (potentially) final night and she leads him to the bed where they lay down together and touch their hands together, palm to palm. It’s a sort-of, kind-of stand-in sex scene as it’s an attempt at an of expression of physical intimacy even though they really lack the means. (thereby demonstrating of course that their relationship has reached a level of emotional intimacy).
Now I’m not suggesting that this scene is wonderful or even one of the better scenes in this movie, but it does seem that they went to the brink of something like the Potter’s Wheel scene from Ghost and showed great restraint in going for something briefer and infinitely more subtle. (Perhaps also, I can enjoy this scene because I have experienced non-physical expressions of physical intimacy. I’m thinking of the time I met a close online friend in a 3D environment and felt a sudden surge of emotion as our 3D avatars sat together on a virtual couch.)
Hmm I guess that wasn’t really brief. I’ll do the next movie soon (tomorrow?)
P.S. the thing about the music was that I was listening to a CD I made for M. and so the songs in successive posts reflected that order. I didn’t want to point this out because at that point M. didn’t have the CD.
Just realised something cool about the music. About which I can’t speak until tomorrow.
Just to add to that last post that I know prayer is about more than asking for stuff, but at the moment that’s mostly what it is for me. (except maybe the tongues, but as I said that’s a whole other post, and a big one)
Thought I’d get this down whilst it’s still fresh in my mind. A thought I shared with M. last night.
Having written down my Big List of Stuff I Still Believe (which actually isn’t all that big but hey.. big in importance) the obvious next question is “so what? what am I going to do about it?” (M. suggested I look into Quakerism and though it’s one the back burner it’s an idea that appeals)
See one of the things about the List is realising I no longer believe a lot of stuff that I did before. Yet there are some things about that old faith that I miss. Not just the certainty of it and the all-inclusive nature of its explanations. It did somehow seem to provide me with a sense of inner strength to draw on. A lot of the things I find difficult in day-to-day life aren’t that big a deal really. And yet, for one reason or another I am a person who finds himself intimidated by some fairly everyday tasks. In the past I was much better at dealing with this I think. Some of that was having friends to turn to, both to talk to and give practical help. But part of it was that I used to pray about whatever was bothering me.
But since I stopped going to church I also stopped praying. It’s seemed wrong somehow, inconsistent. I was railing against God and telling myself I no longer believed in him. To interrupt that to ask for help cos I was nervous about a dentist’s appointment seemed daft and a bit disrespectful. Now however, I’ve come to a point of writing the List which is also a way of saying that I do still believe stuff even if it isn’t all neatly worked out and isn’t the same as what I had before. So now it’s not so out of the question to pray, except…
Except that I too easily slip into prayer. It was after all a habit I’d had for a vey long time. Like riding a bike etc. Not that that itself is a problem, but it means that when I pray I’m automatically thinking of faith and God the way I used to. Not even thinking, it’s an emotional thing. And yet now I want to pray, but the God I want to pray to is different. So emotionally it’s a bit weird.
But I am doing it anyway.
And speaking in tongues. (that’s a whole other blog post probably)
Remind me that I need to do some reviews at some point. I’ve got at least three I could do – all strangely enough based on comparisons.
They are
– Why Just Like Heaven is better than Ghost
– Zathura – Jumanji in space
– A tale of two Fever Pitches (US v UK)
Just Like Heaven I saw a while back and James King (standing in for Mark Kermode on his podcast) compared it to Ghost but citing Ghost as the better film. Hmm. Not in my book.
Zathura I went to see last night because I wanted to get out of the house for a while and it was the only half-way decent film on that hadn’t already started. And it was decent too. (but more of that in the actual review)
Today on a whim I picked up ‘The Perfect Catch’ on DVD, which is the UK title of the film which in the US was ‘Fever Pitch’. Obviously they couldn’t call it that in the UK when there had already been a film of that name, based on the same book. I watched it post gas-man and it was fun and there’s definitely a paragraph or two to be written in the differences between the two versions.
So that’s my manifesto. If I haven’t written those reviews by the end of the week call me a slacker and a fool.
I spent most of yesterday and a good part of today tidying and cleaning my flat so that I didn’t die of shame when the guy came to do the yearly check on the gas heaters.
Actually, some of it was necessary. He needs to check the outside vent and for the heater in my bedroom that means going into the garden, which means I had to
– clear the ivy from the vent, window and door frame
– clear the kitchen of empty wine bottles and generally clean up (I also washed the floor)
just so that he could actually do the job. Similarly in the lounge I tidied up the various stuff on the floor, hoovered and removed the stacks of old newspapers from the porch. (Incidentally this meant a big win for recycling this weekend)
It wasn’t practical to really clean the bathroom so I just made sure the door was shut. Also, I confess, some of my ‘tidying’ involved merely moving stuff temporarily under the stairs.
Part of what makes my flat look messy is that it’s really too small for me. You could also argue that I keep too much stuff and need to learn to ditch stuff I don’t need, but even so it’s too small.
It’s also untidy because I don’t have people around and sadly I don’t go to this effort for myself. But then again, as I’ve said to M. perhaps I don’t have people around because it’s so untidy. Egg-chicken. Chicken-egg.
Now, for a brief moment, it’s clean enough for the gas-man, which is also clean enough for good friends. It’s not good enough for less-close friends, acquaintances or family members. And of course there’s an even higher standard – it’s nowhere near clean enough for the landlord. It’s really his place at the end of the day, and look how bad I’ve let it get. That scares me actually. What will he say when he sees it?
So because of the way I live, the standards I have and who I chose to let come around, after a significant amount of effort cleaning up, by choosing carefully what’s allowed to be seen and by hiding a lot – I can get to the point where it’s good enough to let a total stranger or a good friend in. But not the landlord.
It’s like this flat is a metaphor for my life.
I’ve been putting off this entry for a while, cos it’s difficult to write, but having changed the name of the blog a while back to reflect where I’m at faith-wise it’s odd not to have written about it at all. So I shall try to write this down. I think it will be helpful for me.
I’ll try my best not to turn it into autobiography but some background would be useful. I was raised in what I’d call a fairly dry evangelical methodist church. I remember making a conscious decision to make the faith my own. Later when I went away to study, I went to various charismatic churches. I ended up at a New Frontiers church in Newcastle where I was for six or seven years. However I became disillusioned and also burnt out and stopped going to church. I stopped praying and no longer considered myself a Christian. However in the back of my mind I think I always thought I’d “go back” eventually.
In many ways the first step towards that was joining Ship of Fools and reading and posting there. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I think I found that my views had changed, were changing. So it was no longer just a question of getting over disappointment and disillusionment but of asking what I (still) believed.
I guess one starting point, certainly a key in why I left the church to begin with, is in not overriding my experience with the ‘absolute truth’ of the bible. And though it wasn’t a feature so much of my Christian background that same principle would now apply equally to Church Tradition. Any external standard that gets to overrule the evidence of my or others experience is suspect to me. So for example, I used to believe that to have gay sex was wrong, but ultimately my only reason for saying so was what it said in the bible. Today I say that it’s no more right or wrong than hetero-sex in that it can be an expression of love or it can be abuse – or any of hundreds of other things. The problem with saying something is wrong purely based on some absolute standard that can’t be questioned is that it short-cuts the learning process. You are unable to learn from your experiences if certain conclusions have to be ruled out (or in) before you start.
What I find is from that one standard a lot of what I used to believe falls away because I can no longer say, I believe this because this is what the bible says (or because it’s what the Church historically has believed). Without such an objective source I’m left without much certainty and when it comes to God and stuff you need revelation. So I thought it might be useful to write down what I still believe.
What I Believe
– I believe that there is something more to life than can be apprehended with our senses.
– I also believe that there is some sort of conscious force for good in the universe which is what I’ll call God. Whether God is the Christian God or not, I don’t know. Whether he’s the creator, all-powerful, all-knowing I don’t know.
– I believe that experiencing some sort of connection with God can be a good thing.
– I also believe that having a higher purpose can be a good thing.
– I’m not sure what I think about Jesus. He was at least a very radical man who shook up the religious establishment of his day. Whether I follow his teachings or see him as God, I’m not so sure.
That’s about all I can think of. Not much is it? Also in light of the last point especially perhaps I should be looking at other faiths but somehow, I can’t quite let go of Christianity because it’s where I came from. It’s where I learned a lot of stuff, had a lot of experiences and still have friends. It’s where I learnt that there is a ‘spiritual world’ for want of a better term. Maybe it’s foolish but for the time being I can’t see myself throwing it in to look at Bhuddism or something.