A for Awesome

I saw V for Vendetta last night. It's awesome. Go see it!

Currently, it's my top movie of 2006. (I'm not counting Bull Durham, which I recently saw for the first time, but only movies currently out in theatres that I also saw in 2006. Otherwise, Bull Durham would get this trophy.)

I haven't read the original source material (and, in fact, the author of that took his name off the flick's credits because of differences in artistic vision) and the movie is heavily into the post-9/11 frenzy. Supposedly, it's more heavily into such things than the original, but many such aspects were already there. (The original apparently had a much larger emphasis on the love story.) Hugo Weaving is excellently cast, and some of his (occasionally borrowed) poetry was really cool. I loved when he first was talking to Evie and did his alliterative 'V' bit. That was so awesome!

The Guy Fawkes theme was pretty cool too, although I'm pretty dubious (to say the least) about blowing up the parliament building being a symbole of rebirth of the society (or that so many people would go along with something like that). The movie was quite heavy-handed in its message, but I read about that coming in. They stressed the "former" United States and its second civil war quite a bit. (I was amused by the British pundit's statement about paying back the colonies for what they did a few hundred years ago. This amused me. As we discussed in this blog a few months ago, some Brits apparently do still view the US as the spoiled little children who rebelled, at least at some level.)

Also, V's home was really sweet. I want some of those toys!

Throughout the movie, I was extremely amused by the fact that the High Chancellor looks like Carver Mead (who has a fairly extensive wikipedia page, by the way).

On a completely separate note, I was at Border's today and I saw a book which included a script + pictures of Mirrormask. In an introductory part of the book, the authors were discussing how the Henson people specifically set out to make a new Labyrinth-style movie. (I need to see Labyrinth again. I know I keep mentioning this, but I haven't seen it since it first came out, I really enjoyed it, my memory of it is rather hazy, and I want to refresh it.) Also, I saw Amber and Iron, the new book in the main Dragonlance novel line, which was supposed to come out last August but had (I thought) been delayed until August 2006 or later. Apparently, it was released in February, and I was quite pleased to have seen it unexpectedly when I was in the check-out line. Another new Dragonlance book by Weis and Hickman will be released in July. The excerpt in the book I bought included old favorites like Tasslehoff, so I'm not sure what this book is going to be. It is supposed to be the first in a trilogy, and I'm very intrigued. I also bought a Phillip K. Dick short story collection. I haven't read any of his stuff before, but I've seen at least one movie (and know of at least three others, one of which I will be seeing this summer when it comes out) based on his works. Border's had a number of his short story collections (and several novels). I wasn't sure which one to buy, so I got the 'Phillip K. Dick Reader', which had the ones based on at least three movies and seemed like a good one with which to start.