Plain View #67 - April 26, 2007

Bufe

Fairy tale parody

World View

Kurt Vonnegut

Memory of Running

The Yearling

The Crucible (spoiler)

Children of Men

Beaver Trilogy

Battlestar

Bug Book

The Skull Camper

The Paperboys

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I just realized I'm falling behind with posts again. I'll try and start catching up soon, although work is starting to get busy, so we'll see how it goes.

We saw Grindhouse a couple of weekends ago with my sister. As most people are aware, Grindhouse is a double-feature of stories inspired by old grindhouse b-movies, complete with previews in between the two main features. "Planet Terror" is written and directed by Robert Rodriguez and "Death Proof" is written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Planet Terror nicely brings together an unlikely troop of people who combat an outbreak of zombies. It has a dark sense of humor but never treats the situation like it's something ridiculous - the story is taken seriously by its characters, and as a result, the audience can feel connected to the story while also laughing a lot and being entertained by all sorts of crazy action.

The sneak previews sandwiched between the two big stories are fantastic. My favorite was actually "Don't", but each one had plenty of laughs, from Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu to the unfortunate fate of the girl in "Thanksgiving". I don't think a single person left the theater for snacks - in fact, some people got up to leave, then couldn't tear their eyes away from the screen; they just stood in the aisle for a couple of previews and then returned to their seats.

Death Proof is set up slowly and beautifully as a few girls out to have some fun are stalked by a man who likes to use his car as a weapon on unsuspecting victims. The front half of this story is engrossing and leads to an awesome end and the second half, about another set of girls, is incredibly annoying until the action sets in. Tarantino gave a couple of the girls dialogue that felt unconvincing and too mannish, even for tomboys. Luckily, their story is redeemed by an awesome ending that kept me laughing for quite some time.

Grindhouse is a fun experience, full of creative storytelling, great acting, perfect stunts, and lots of humor. I'm not saying it's the best movie out there, but I was thoroughly entertained for a good few hours.

I think a lot of us can relate to this column in the satirical newspaper The Onion: If Someone Wanted To Publish My Blog Entries For Money, I Wouldn't Say No

The No. 1 rule of my blog is that there are no rules. I write about everything from movies I've seen to crazy observations that just pop into my head about Starbucks. And sometimes I'll just write, "Had a pretty boring day today," take a picture of myself eating cereal for dinner, and call it a night. It's a web log, people. I'm not striving to be a great essayist, but if by chance some amazing commentary flows out of my keyboard, so be it. I don't write my blog to entertain anyone else, especially not some uptight Esquire editor. But if an Esquire editor is crazy about my work, and wants to run a three-page spread on my hilarious reviews of horrible movies, who am I to dismiss it out of hand?

That made me laugh in a painfully self-conscious way.