Wednesday, July 11, 2007

What DO demons do all day?

I don't know how I'm going to go to work tomorrow and stay conscious for a full eight hours, since I was practically falling asleep while walking down the sidewalk. A few trivial errands took a lot out of me. First, the Catholic bookstore, where I always figure I'm going to be ID'ed as an apostate, even when the Pope isn't making official proclamations about it. They're moving to a new location, so I stocked up on various prayer cards, a plastic grotto-shaped Holy Water bottle, and this book on exorcism, which oddly comes with an introduction by the Bishop of my Obscure Midwestern City. The idea of exorcisms being performed here is giving me crazy mental pictures.

Then I picked up some rhubarb wine, stopped by the antique shop, and then shambled home like, well, more a zombie creature than one possessed. Now I'm pouring coffee down my throat and hoping to type myself awake.

Yesterday I did not go to the Harry Potter premiere, but as the last two people in America to see the pre-existing summer hits, we did a deranged, mind-numbing, blockbuster-trilogy-palooza of Spider-Man 3 and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. As I had gathered from the criticism, Spider-Man was too busy, too clutttered, and had way, way too many coincidences. But I was forgiving it for all that until it suddenly turned into a bizarre Saturday Night Fever parody.

And then, well, I've seen a lot of crazy shit in movies. Maybe more than the average film-goer. But for sheer WTF-ness, I don't know if anything can top the moment when Peter Parker turns into a singing/dancing/piano playin' fool, complete with dramatic wind gusts and faux "cool jazz" vocal stylings. I think the word I'm seeking for is "excruciating."

Despite that, the movie still managed to be kind of emotionally affecting in the big climax, but
how much better it would have been if they'd cut out thirty minutes of musical "comedy" and trimmed some hectic fight scenes to the point where they didn't start boring me.

Just by virtue of not making any inexplicable, egregious fuck-ups (and by using the word "egregious" as a joke, which has to be a shout-out to ME) Pirates came out the winner of the smackdown. In my perfect world, though, we'd have a movie with a similar style and tone but way more voodoo, and with Jack Davenport and Naomie Harris as the stars, not as supporting characters. He hunted vampires in Ultraviolet, she killed zombies like a pro in 28 Days Later; they're perfect for each other!

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