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Am weary and must sleep, but quick post first.
Have received new computer. As it is a Mac, and thus assumes that its user is the biggest imbecile to ever exist in the past, present, or future, it was extremely easy to set up. And, as it turns out, it comes equipped with a wireless card, so I don't have to go out and buy one. =D It is shiny and beautiful and I love it.
Also, Betsey and I got together tonight and attempted to see Blade: Trinity. However, as it turned out, the listings were wrong and the showtime we had chosen was axctually a closed-captioned showing of Bridget Jones: But The First Movie Was So Good, What The Hell Happened?. So, we had about thirty seconds to choose a different movie, and settled on A Series of Unfortunate Events, based primarily on the fact that it was starting at that moment.
I'd meant to see it anyway - I realized after seeing Huckabees that I'd inadvertently seen the first three of Jude Law's eighty-four new movies this year (okay, technically two and a third, but I really had better things to do than sit through Sky Captain), so I decided to try and see the rest of them, just because. I was wary, though, because I like the books, and considered Jim Carrey as Count Olaf to be a tragic miscasting, the kind that can ruin any chance that a movie-based-onna-book might have to be a successful adaptation. I fully expected to see the typical Carrey comedy persona, which is hideously wrong for the character. (I think Jeffrey Combs, with his genius for playing a seriocomic role in perfect deadpan, would have been a great Olaf. But I digress.) I mean, sure, Carrey was so good in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that I eventually forgot that I was watching him, but I attributed that to a director with the ability to rein him in and force him to perform rather than pander.
I should mention here that I lost interest in Jim Carrey shortly after The Truman Show, just to give you a rough indication of how I remember him: An actor with potential held back by painfully overplaying any comedic scenes.
It has finally become clear that, sometime during the intervening six or seven years, he decided to ditch the schtick (mostly) and learn how to act for real.
Rather than the hammy, wink-at-the-camera performance that Ifeared expected, Carrey instead opts to camp it up. It's a subtle but crucial difference, difficult to explain but patently obvious when you see it for yourself. Sure, there are moments where the old Carrey persona breaks through, but overall he opts to act out the humour rather than whack the audience over the head with it. I ended up enjoying his performance immensely, which is such a relief I can't even tell you.
As for the movie itself - well, I did want to keep this semi-short, so I'll have to restrain myself to the two points that were (after Jim Carrey) the biggest for me. First, the look and mood of the film are excellent. It's grim and Gothic, Victorian in appearance while still incorporating modern details. It's just gorgeous and really works with the darkness of the story.
Second of all, speaking of the darkness of the story, I did not appreciate the ending one bit. It goes with the storyline of the books, but the tone suddenly changes entirely and becomes bright, sentimental, and hopeful. Up till then, the movie has preserved the books' grimness almost too well (some of the scenes, which are black humour in the books, are more disturbing in the movie), so the ending is quite jarring and very obviously Hollywoodized.
Okay, I definitely have to go bed now. Goodnight!
Have received new computer. As it is a Mac, and thus assumes that its user is the biggest imbecile to ever exist in the past, present, or future, it was extremely easy to set up. And, as it turns out, it comes equipped with a wireless card, so I don't have to go out and buy one. =D It is shiny and beautiful and I love it.
Also, Betsey and I got together tonight and attempted to see Blade: Trinity. However, as it turned out, the listings were wrong and the showtime we had chosen was axctually a closed-captioned showing of Bridget Jones: But The First Movie Was So Good, What The Hell Happened?. So, we had about thirty seconds to choose a different movie, and settled on A Series of Unfortunate Events, based primarily on the fact that it was starting at that moment.
I'd meant to see it anyway - I realized after seeing Huckabees that I'd inadvertently seen the first three of Jude Law's eighty-four new movies this year (okay, technically two and a third, but I really had better things to do than sit through Sky Captain), so I decided to try and see the rest of them, just because. I was wary, though, because I like the books, and considered Jim Carrey as Count Olaf to be a tragic miscasting, the kind that can ruin any chance that a movie-based-onna-book might have to be a successful adaptation. I fully expected to see the typical Carrey comedy persona, which is hideously wrong for the character. (I think Jeffrey Combs, with his genius for playing a seriocomic role in perfect deadpan, would have been a great Olaf. But I digress.) I mean, sure, Carrey was so good in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind that I eventually forgot that I was watching him, but I attributed that to a director with the ability to rein him in and force him to perform rather than pander.
I should mention here that I lost interest in Jim Carrey shortly after The Truman Show, just to give you a rough indication of how I remember him: An actor with potential held back by painfully overplaying any comedic scenes.
It has finally become clear that, sometime during the intervening six or seven years, he decided to ditch the schtick (mostly) and learn how to act for real.
Rather than the hammy, wink-at-the-camera performance that I
As for the movie itself - well, I did want to keep this semi-short, so I'll have to restrain myself to the two points that were (after Jim Carrey) the biggest for me. First, the look and mood of the film are excellent. It's grim and Gothic, Victorian in appearance while still incorporating modern details. It's just gorgeous and really works with the darkness of the story.
Second of all, speaking of the darkness of the story, I did not appreciate the ending one bit. It goes with the storyline of the books, but the tone suddenly changes entirely and becomes bright, sentimental, and hopeful. Up till then, the movie has preserved the books' grimness almost too well (some of the scenes, which are black humour in the books, are more disturbing in the movie), so the ending is quite jarring and very obviously Hollywoodized.
Okay, I definitely have to go bed now. Goodnight!
