Holiday Weekend
I went to see War of the Worlds last night. Visually stunning, but far from Senor Spielbergo's best work. As the whole world probably knows by now, Tom Cruise plays a Jersey dock worker and lousy father of two who along with everyone else on earth gets caught up in an alien invasion. He spends pretty much the whole movie trying to get to Boston to meet up with the kids' mother and her new husband, although I was never exactly clear as to why this was necessary. Dakota Fanning is creepy good as Cruise's daughter (how can she only be 10 years old!?!), but she spends most of the movie looking terrified and screaming. Tom also has a teenage son, who's only real characterization comes from the fact that he acts really angry and wears a Boston Red Sox hat to spite his Yankee-fan father.
As for the aliens, there really isn't anything new or interesting about them. It's a little bit of a twist that the aliens attack not from the sky but via long-buried, lumbering mechanical tripods that climb up out of the earth, reminding me a little bit of the giant spider from Wild Wild West (it seemed strange that thousands of these giant attack machines have apparently been buried all over the planet throughtout all of recorded history and no one ever accidentally stumbled upon one of them while digging a well, but never mind). Spielberg also never really feels it necessary to explain why the aliens are here, but I don't really have a problem with that--the point of the story is not to give us a global view of the invasion a la Independence Day, but to track one guy and his kids as they try to deal with a global disaster that they can't possibly comprehend or know how to deal with. The alien tripods are not even on screen for long stretches of the film, and in fact these tend to be the movie's best parts as Spielbergo examines the way the rules of civilized society that govern human interaction are strained and in some cases completely obliterated by a horrific crisis. Inevitably we get huge special-effects laden showdowns, and the VERY convinient ending (if you've read the book or seen the original 50's sci-fi movie you know exactly what to expect) comes so swiftly and is so jarringly out of step with the rest of the film that you almost feel cheated. Anyway, the ending may be unrealisitic--a strange complaint to make about any detail of a movie that is, after all, about aliens that invade earth from underground--but it certainly isn't any sillier than, say, the President of the United States jumping in a fighter jet to take on the alien mother ship mano a mano.
This morning I worked at the farm, where we opened the stand up for the first time this season. In the afternoon my friend Steven and I played nine holes of golf. I come back to golf periodically, and never cease to marvel at what a wondeful game it is. Unfortunately, this means I spent about eight hours today out in the high-altitude desert sun, and have once again managed to turn my skin a brilliant shade of fire engine red. It was worth it, though; a person never feels so right with the world as when he's spent the day working and playing out in nature, or at least in the artificially simulted but still beautiful nature of a golf course. Melissa has gotten it into her head that she wants to take a balloon ride tomorrow in Sparks, where they are allegedly being given for free out at the Marina. The catch: it's at six a.m. We'll see how that goes.
As for the aliens, there really isn't anything new or interesting about them. It's a little bit of a twist that the aliens attack not from the sky but via long-buried, lumbering mechanical tripods that climb up out of the earth, reminding me a little bit of the giant spider from Wild Wild West (it seemed strange that thousands of these giant attack machines have apparently been buried all over the planet throughtout all of recorded history and no one ever accidentally stumbled upon one of them while digging a well, but never mind). Spielberg also never really feels it necessary to explain why the aliens are here, but I don't really have a problem with that--the point of the story is not to give us a global view of the invasion a la Independence Day, but to track one guy and his kids as they try to deal with a global disaster that they can't possibly comprehend or know how to deal with. The alien tripods are not even on screen for long stretches of the film, and in fact these tend to be the movie's best parts as Spielbergo examines the way the rules of civilized society that govern human interaction are strained and in some cases completely obliterated by a horrific crisis. Inevitably we get huge special-effects laden showdowns, and the VERY convinient ending (if you've read the book or seen the original 50's sci-fi movie you know exactly what to expect) comes so swiftly and is so jarringly out of step with the rest of the film that you almost feel cheated. Anyway, the ending may be unrealisitic--a strange complaint to make about any detail of a movie that is, after all, about aliens that invade earth from underground--but it certainly isn't any sillier than, say, the President of the United States jumping in a fighter jet to take on the alien mother ship mano a mano.
This morning I worked at the farm, where we opened the stand up for the first time this season. In the afternoon my friend Steven and I played nine holes of golf. I come back to golf periodically, and never cease to marvel at what a wondeful game it is. Unfortunately, this means I spent about eight hours today out in the high-altitude desert sun, and have once again managed to turn my skin a brilliant shade of fire engine red. It was worth it, though; a person never feels so right with the world as when he's spent the day working and playing out in nature, or at least in the artificially simulted but still beautiful nature of a golf course. Melissa has gotten it into her head that she wants to take a balloon ride tomorrow in Sparks, where they are allegedly being given for free out at the Marina. The catch: it's at six a.m. We'll see how that goes.
posted by Yukon Sully | 1:43 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home