The Thingy of Whatsit
Nov. 28th, 2008 11:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnIt's strange to have an important yearly date suddenly added to your life. The second half of November wasn't very special to me until recently, when it became - in a tradition rather different from how the rest of the country celebrates it - a day of eating potatoes and eggs for breakfast, going to see a film, playing a board game and then having far too much seafood soup and apple pie afterwards. (I have guiltily skipped the further tradition of going out to get a Christmas tree today, on the surface because of being ill due to last night but in reality in favour of having a bit of much-needed peace and quiet instead.)
We usually wake up to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, which consists of a heap of giant odd-shaped balloons and floats going through New York, with some Broadway casts, singers and awful boybands that I've never heard of performing the second-worst guitar miming in the world. Rick Astley was also there for some reason, looking as bewildered as everyone else at his accidental comeback.
After seeing James Bond's comeback two years ago, the film this year was Quantum of Solace, which made in all honesty rather a disappointingly non-existent effort to tie the film in with the original title and therefore make it really mean anything. In taking away the sort of camp factor that the films had - which I know wasn't intended in Ian Fleming's original works, but it became what you went to see a Bond film for - it feels rather more like the Bourne films, and shares the sort of incomprehensible style of fight scenes. Is it my brain that's just getting slower, or can anyone understand what's going on in these at all? They're all filmed very close up with an average take length of about a pico-second, and after a couple of moments I can hardly tell who's who any more. And between those the chases, like those in the first of the Daniel Craig era, are via jumping and swinging around rooftops like so many Princes of Persia. The first one ends (after a vertical shot of bursting through a glass roof that's nothing short of spectacular) on a pile of scaffolding and stretched ropes that reminded me all too much of a giant game of Ker-Plunk.
The structure of them is still quite similar to the old ones, though, even if the tone has changed. They're more believable, though the general cyclical structure of action/plot-advancement scenes is still intact, leading up to a final confrontation at the big enemy's base, which this time isn't a space station or underwater research lab but a power station at a dam that looks rather like The Crystal Maze.
The experience would have been rather better if we didn't have the Coughers' Union to our right and the National Board of Annoying People behind us, one of whom stood on my elbow - but it's still better than it's going to be when I'm inevitably roped into seeing Twilight.
I also want to mention that Whitney performed the impressive feat of winning Trivial Pursuit against her entire family and me this year. That's something that's never happened before.
We usually wake up to the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, which consists of a heap of giant odd-shaped balloons and floats going through New York, with some Broadway casts, singers and awful boybands that I've never heard of performing the second-worst guitar miming in the world. Rick Astley was also there for some reason, looking as bewildered as everyone else at his accidental comeback.
After seeing James Bond's comeback two years ago, the film this year was Quantum of Solace, which made in all honesty rather a disappointingly non-existent effort to tie the film in with the original title and therefore make it really mean anything. In taking away the sort of camp factor that the films had - which I know wasn't intended in Ian Fleming's original works, but it became what you went to see a Bond film for - it feels rather more like the Bourne films, and shares the sort of incomprehensible style of fight scenes. Is it my brain that's just getting slower, or can anyone understand what's going on in these at all? They're all filmed very close up with an average take length of about a pico-second, and after a couple of moments I can hardly tell who's who any more. And between those the chases, like those in the first of the Daniel Craig era, are via jumping and swinging around rooftops like so many Princes of Persia. The first one ends (after a vertical shot of bursting through a glass roof that's nothing short of spectacular) on a pile of scaffolding and stretched ropes that reminded me all too much of a giant game of Ker-Plunk.
The structure of them is still quite similar to the old ones, though, even if the tone has changed. They're more believable, though the general cyclical structure of action/plot-advancement scenes is still intact, leading up to a final confrontation at the big enemy's base, which this time isn't a space station or underwater research lab but a power station at a dam that looks rather like The Crystal Maze.
The experience would have been rather better if we didn't have the Coughers' Union to our right and the National Board of Annoying People behind us, one of whom stood on my elbow - but it's still better than it's going to be when I'm inevitably roped into seeing Twilight.
I also want to mention that Whitney performed the impressive feat of winning Trivial Pursuit against her entire family and me this year. That's something that's never happened before.
