My Blog In the Middle of Your Net

I’ve come to the end of the Oversight Marathon and it is the last hour and a half of September, for me, as I type this.   This is the Chicago write-up.   Let’s get right to the one thing I want to talk about when it comes to Chicago.   I want to write about the way the movie is framed.   Not widescreen or fullscreen.   I mean the setup of the movie and how the musical part of the movie exists in the world of the movie. The interesting thing that Chicago did, which I haven’t seen in many musicals was that the musical portion was separate from the core story of the movie.   The numbers did relate to what was happening within the story at the time when they were performed, but they were in another universe.   Usually the universe could be attributed to Roxy’s mind.   The exceptions being the first and last number which were performances in the actual world of the main characters, and Mr. Cellophane, which I’m not sure how it could be in Roxy...

Sometimes I will sit down, watch a movie, and have the reaction I had to The Usual Suspects.   The movie isn’t a bad movie.   Not by any means.   It’s a good movie; it’s better than average.   Thinking about it, though, it’s not a great movie.   Somehow, over the years, I’ve heard so many stories about how great the movie is that I was led to believe that my mind would be blown by how great it was.   That did not happen. It might be unfair of me to make this assessment upon my first viewing, when I knew the twist at the end of the movie.   I think it’s completely fair.   Like I said when I saw Citizen Kane, a movie should be able to hold up with multiple viewings when it has a twist ending.   The ending should not help to accentuate flaws within the movie.   I feel that in the case of The Usual Suspect, knowing the twist ending only goes to point out how obvious certain other points are.   Be warned, SPOILERS ARE AHEAD. ...

E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial is a movie about an alien who is stuck on Earth and befriends a boy while trying to get home.   Some military-like people are trying to find the alien and the boy fights to protect the alien.   It’s a rather simple story told in an elegant fashion.   The one problem I had with it was that I felt I had seen E.T. before.   That was when it struck me.   E.T. was ripping off the classic film Mac and Me. Mac and Me tells a very similar story.   An alien is stranded on Earth and befriends a wheelchair bound boy while trying to get to its family.   Some military-like people are trying to find the alien and the boy fights to protect the alien.   They are very close in plot, don’t you think? There is a six year difference between the release of Mac and Me and the release of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.   This means that there were six years in which the story could be perfected.   Six years of tampering with...

There were two main reasons that I decided to do this Oversight Marathon.   The first reason was that I had never seen Citizen Kane.   It’s supposedly the best movie ever, according to many sources.   The other reason was a trilogy that is known as one of the greatest, with two movies known as two of the greatest movies of all time.   This was the saga of The Godfather. I had previously only seen The Godfather, and not either of the sequels.   I didn’t like The Godfather upon my first viewing.   It was too slow for my liking.   I was fifteen or sixteen at the time.   What I wanted was fast-paced gangster action, and I didn’t get that through a lot of the movie.   Instead I got a lot of serious acting interspersed with the odd action sequence that lasted a few seconds then was done. Boy, was I wrong to write the movie off like that.   I rewatched it before watching the two sequels for the first time.   I now know what I ...

There’s something about seeing the Civil War portrayed in movies that just doesn’t do much for me.   That’s not to say that I don’t like some movies that involve the American Civil War.   That would be wrong for me to say.   I’m saying that, in most cases, something about the Civil War doesn’t connect with me. It might be because I’m Canadian.   I am not going to rule that out of the equation.   Movies that involve the Civil War might connect more to an American audience than with anyone else.   Since I am not American, I don’t have the national historical connection to the events portrayed in many movies.   Even with the USA being right across the border from my homeland, I don’t fully grasp the stakes of the Union and the Confederacy fighting one another.   It doesn’t have the same punch as I think it might to an American. Another reason I might not care is because I don’t find musket fighting all that exciting.   Most of what ...