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So. Oops. Did not mean to let five days go between updates. I was going to post on Tuesday, but the power went out halfway through, and came back too late for me to do much more than let the people I was talking to on AIM know what happeneed.
Well. The past few days. First, I just worked my very first full week of work: six days in a row. Secondly, I ran into an old friend,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
slydragon4, whom I never thought I would see again. I only had her name still on my Buddy List for nostalgia purposes. I know her from the HP slash fandom, where she a) wrote these hysterical Harry Potter/Shakespeare MiSTings, and b) was the only other Gilderoy fan I knew for YEARS. So - hooray! And yesterday, I hung out with Betsey. We saw Pirates of the Caribbean and she accompanied me on my quest for clove cigarettes.
PotC was cool. I'm pretty sure it was, anyway. I was tired and we were at this place called Chunky's, which is a theatre/restaurant, so the waitresses were distracting. But what I paid attention to was cool.
Okay, so the plot's pretty standard. Blah blah love between two people of vastly different classes blah curse that doesn't really hold up in the face of logic blah blah undead pirates blah blah happy ending. Betsey and I spent a lot of time discussing the curse. Why did it need Will's father's or Will's blood specifically? And if the curse took hold of Captain Sparrow once he touched the gold, why did it never affect Will and Elizabeth? They sure did their share of handling that medallion. We decided: Because, dammit. We also were amused by the ending.
Elizabeth's father: Uh, you do realize your chosen is a blacksmith, right?
Elizabeth: Nope, he's a pirate now.
Elizabeth's father: Oh. Okay, then.
What an interesting lesson: Marrying below your station in life is sketchy at best, but marrying a pirate is okay. In other words, yay piracy! I love the unique morality there.
And the cast, because that tends to be my favourite part of movies these days.
Orlando Bloom as Will is meh. He doesn't suck, he's not great, he's just sorta there. His character basically serves as a plot device, and he performs this perfectly adequately. Geoffrey Rush, whom I was excited about because I adored his Marquis de Sade in Quills, does what he can with his dimension-free part, and seems to have fun with the scary undead makeup. I don't know, I'll have to see it again to have more to say about both of them.
But the real standout? The reason why I maybe didn't pay as much attention to Orlando and Geoffrey as I could have? Johnny Depp. Damn if he wasn't a blast to watch. It was like the director, Gore Verbinksi, took him aside on the first day just before shooting began, looked him in the eye, and said, "Okay, Johnny. You know what the seven pounds of eyeliner means." And Johnny took these words to heart. He swishes his way through most of the movie. It's reasonably subtle, but it's totally there. Swish swish swish. Betsey spent the next hour after the movie trying to swish around. I mean, he does other stuff too, but the eyeliner and the swishing are what will stay. Again, may have more to say on this after repeat viewing. I can, however, assure that Billy Joel was right: Captain Jack will get you high tonight. And take you to his special island.
And, the category of Casting That Is Only Amusing To Me: Commodore Norrington is played by Jack Davenport, who plays Steve on Coupling, an excellent British sitcom. My very first exposure to Coupling was the last ten minutes or so of "Inferno," which is Steve stumbling through a plot synopsis of a porn flick called Lesbian Spank Inferno to persuade his girlfriend and their assembled friends that the movie is indeed a legitimate film. He fails quite spectacularly, of course, and it's all hysterical. So, once I figured out that the Commodore was indeed Jack Davenport (it took me a while; I wasn't expecting to see him, and the white wig threw me off, too), whenever he was onscreen, I was thinking, "Lesbian Spank Inferno!" and could not be even remotely serious. I shall also forever refer to the character as Commodore Steve.
So after the movie, we found a place that sells clove cigarettes. I've been questing for them for a while, but they don't get sold at grocery stores and such, so it has not been easy. And I like them very very much. They taste good and smell good and pretending to be a pretentious trendy goth is fun. Do not worry for my health for, like Bill Clinton, I do not inhale. I don't want breathe the smoke, I want to eat it. Am limiting myself strictly to one a day. Which is pretty easy because I take little tiny puffs - too much and it tastes harsh - so it takes me forever to get through one. I narrowly avoided hiding them from Mom last night; I went to do it but then I remembered that I'm twenty years old. Heh.
Betsey and I also watched The Road to El Dorado last night. I'd seen if before, but that was long before I knew or cared that Kenneth Branagh voices Miguel. Such a cute, cute, slashy movie. Kenneth has tons of chemistry with Kevin Kline, who does Tulio, and the animators were kind enough to make sure that that chemistry carried over to the characters themselves.
So that's been my last few days. I'm going to see PotC again tomorrow or Saturday, and may well have more to say in my next entry, which may not be fore another couple of days as I will be visiting Rikki.
Well. The past few days. First, I just worked my very first full week of work: six days in a row. Secondly, I ran into an old friend,
slydragon4, whom I never thought I would see again. I only had her name still on my Buddy List for nostalgia purposes. I know her from the HP slash fandom, where she a) wrote these hysterical Harry Potter/Shakespeare MiSTings, and b) was the only other Gilderoy fan I knew for YEARS. So - hooray! And yesterday, I hung out with Betsey. We saw Pirates of the Caribbean and she accompanied me on my quest for clove cigarettes.PotC was cool. I'm pretty sure it was, anyway. I was tired and we were at this place called Chunky's, which is a theatre/restaurant, so the waitresses were distracting. But what I paid attention to was cool.
Okay, so the plot's pretty standard. Blah blah love between two people of vastly different classes blah curse that doesn't really hold up in the face of logic blah blah undead pirates blah blah happy ending. Betsey and I spent a lot of time discussing the curse. Why did it need Will's father's or Will's blood specifically? And if the curse took hold of Captain Sparrow once he touched the gold, why did it never affect Will and Elizabeth? They sure did their share of handling that medallion. We decided: Because, dammit. We also were amused by the ending.
Elizabeth's father: Uh, you do realize your chosen is a blacksmith, right?
Elizabeth: Nope, he's a pirate now.
Elizabeth's father: Oh. Okay, then.
What an interesting lesson: Marrying below your station in life is sketchy at best, but marrying a pirate is okay. In other words, yay piracy! I love the unique morality there.
And the cast, because that tends to be my favourite part of movies these days.
Orlando Bloom as Will is meh. He doesn't suck, he's not great, he's just sorta there. His character basically serves as a plot device, and he performs this perfectly adequately. Geoffrey Rush, whom I was excited about because I adored his Marquis de Sade in Quills, does what he can with his dimension-free part, and seems to have fun with the scary undead makeup. I don't know, I'll have to see it again to have more to say about both of them.
But the real standout? The reason why I maybe didn't pay as much attention to Orlando and Geoffrey as I could have? Johnny Depp. Damn if he wasn't a blast to watch. It was like the director, Gore Verbinksi, took him aside on the first day just before shooting began, looked him in the eye, and said, "Okay, Johnny. You know what the seven pounds of eyeliner means." And Johnny took these words to heart. He swishes his way through most of the movie. It's reasonably subtle, but it's totally there. Swish swish swish. Betsey spent the next hour after the movie trying to swish around. I mean, he does other stuff too, but the eyeliner and the swishing are what will stay. Again, may have more to say on this after repeat viewing. I can, however, assure that Billy Joel was right: Captain Jack will get you high tonight. And take you to his special island.
And, the category of Casting That Is Only Amusing To Me: Commodore Norrington is played by Jack Davenport, who plays Steve on Coupling, an excellent British sitcom. My very first exposure to Coupling was the last ten minutes or so of "Inferno," which is Steve stumbling through a plot synopsis of a porn flick called Lesbian Spank Inferno to persuade his girlfriend and their assembled friends that the movie is indeed a legitimate film. He fails quite spectacularly, of course, and it's all hysterical. So, once I figured out that the Commodore was indeed Jack Davenport (it took me a while; I wasn't expecting to see him, and the white wig threw me off, too), whenever he was onscreen, I was thinking, "Lesbian Spank Inferno!" and could not be even remotely serious. I shall also forever refer to the character as Commodore Steve.
So after the movie, we found a place that sells clove cigarettes. I've been questing for them for a while, but they don't get sold at grocery stores and such, so it has not been easy. And I like them very very much. They taste good and smell good and pretending to be a pretentious trendy goth is fun. Do not worry for my health for, like Bill Clinton, I do not inhale. I don't want breathe the smoke, I want to eat it. Am limiting myself strictly to one a day. Which is pretty easy because I take little tiny puffs - too much and it tastes harsh - so it takes me forever to get through one. I narrowly avoided hiding them from Mom last night; I went to do it but then I remembered that I'm twenty years old. Heh.
Betsey and I also watched The Road to El Dorado last night. I'd seen if before, but that was long before I knew or cared that Kenneth Branagh voices Miguel. Such a cute, cute, slashy movie. Kenneth has tons of chemistry with Kevin Kline, who does Tulio, and the animators were kind enough to make sure that that chemistry carried over to the characters themselves.
So that's been my last few days. I'm going to see PotC again tomorrow or Saturday, and may well have more to say in my next entry, which may not be fore another couple of days as I will be visiting Rikki.
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From:
no subject
And...I really like your icon there =)
~Markus...commenting with random nonsense~
From:
Re:
I really need to see this movie. It was already next on my Kenneth list, but now it's really, urgently next.
From:
Re:
From:
Jack Davenport
I can't remember if you've seen it or not or if I've just hammered about it at you (I do it to everyone) but Jack's *also* in The Talented Mr Ripley as Peter. If you've seen it, the one at the end, if not, you won't have a clue what I just said.
*wonders why no one who's seen the movie ever bloody remembers him, he was much nicer than Jude*
From:
Re: Jack Davenport
Uh, yes, I did give this a little thought in the car today. Now if only they had given poor Commodore Steve a first name.
I did see The Talented Mr Ripley, and I hated it so much (sorry) that I must have repressed it quite thoroughly, because never once while watching Coupling have I gotten that "I know him from somewhere" feeling. And now I'll never watch it again (well, not that I planned to) because I don't think I could stand watching Steve get strangled. And no, I don't think I'll ever see Jack Davenport as anyone other than Steve. I can usually make these distinctions between characters, but he's so good at Steve.
From:
Re: Jack Davenport
Names...ah, so difficult to come up with if not provided.
Oh, don't apologise, it's one of those movies that people love or hate (like Quills seems to be, too, at least IME). Very little neutral feeling.
And hey, I live in book universe, not movie. Except he had the character he did in the movie and of course loved Tom and the visuals are sweet - I mean, Matt and Jack? *makes incoherent lustful noise*
But he can never be Steve for me first, he will always be Peter to me. Not that I don't adore Coupling - I love it.
And besides, no body, no death. Period. We never see his body in the movie.
And I'm convinced the reason John Malkovich did the third book was because they didn't want to raise questions about the changes.