Four movies and a musical

I am going to get some reviews out of the way.

8/19/07: The Simpsons Movie: This movie was really good. (The mugging on the way home from it sucked, however.) I was going to write a review of the movie on the night I watched it, which I tend to do for many of the really good movies I see, but that got superceded (as all of you know). The movie redoes several jokes from the tv series (which I haven't watched regularly for close to 15 years, though I catch an occasional episode now and then), but it does them very well and I appreciated the chance to see The Simpsons on the big screen. Plus, the meta- jokes were really great! Anyway, I highly recommend this movie.

9/14/07: I want someone to eat cheese with: This movie was pretty good but not great. It was written and directed by Jeff Garlin, who was also the main star, and it contained a lot of members (and former members, I guess) of the Second City comedy club. In fact, I recognized many of the people in the movie as people who were really good actors but not necessarily huge stars. There were some good moments (and some high-quality one-liners), but as Lemming writes, there was tedium in between these moments. The protagonist's best friend was fantastic, Sarah Silverman played a crazy young women (umm.. she's getting kind of typecast now, although it seems at least partially by choice), and Richard Kind was awesome in his bit role. Anyway, the movie's worth seeing, but it's not great.

9/17/07: Chess: I had been waiting to see this musical for something like 15 years, and after seeing it, I feel like I am still waiting to see a proper version of it. Don't get me wrong --- I enjoyed what I saw because the music was catchy, so the overall night was decent. However, the acoustics were horrible in the first act and only marginally better in the second act. (I missed nearly all the lyrics in all but a few songs. It was very frustrating!) One could hear clipping from the mikes on multiple occasions! Oh, and they butchered One Night in Bangkok, which is only one of the very best songs of all time. They did the opening part of the song well, but the singer really didn't capture the flavor of the song and one particular lyrical change was a complete failure. (The line "Thank God I'm only watching the game" got changed to "Thank God I'm in the game." The reason that is broken is that the game being referenced at this point is not chess the board game but rather the political machinations going on, with which this character is not involved at all whereas his opponent and former manager are. So, in addition to a stylistic change I don't like, it completely fails in the context of the play itself. Whose idea was this? And, yes, I can go all Comic Book Guy when it comes to a song I like as much as this one!) The visual that went with the line, "I get my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine!" was, however, fantastic. Apparently, the musical Chess has massively different incarnations depending on the London performance, the Broadway performance, and many others, so I'm going to have to see another version of this (with reasonable acoustics, damnit!). I'm glad I saw the musical, but I still need to see it for real.

9/18/07: Balls of Fury: As Lemming wrote on his blog, this is what is known as a fun/entertaining movie rather than one that is "good" per se. I expected that the movie would be like this, and it didn't disappoint. That's what I wanted from it. Christopher Waalken was fantastic, by the way! And there is a comment about women in ping pong that I have the urge to use as a reference to this movie, though more likely than not I'd get a swift kick in the butt if I actually bothered. I should note that LA Weekly's review of this movie was in the form of a multiple choice quiz, which gives you an idea of what the reviewer thought of the film. It was about the most scathing review of a film I've read in LA Weekly, although I have since read the short synopsis of their review of Dragon Wars, which suggests that the reviewer was even harsher there. (One of the lines in the synopsis states that Dragon Wars was made for people who make it a point to go to premier showings of Uwe Boll movies. Ouch!) The Maggie Q question in LA Weekly that Lemming mentioned proceeded as follows:

"What role does Maggie Q play in this movie?

A. A pair of breasts.
B. A pair of breasts that knows kung fu.
C. Who's Maggie Q?"


Anyway, Balls of Fury is a fun movie that doesn't even remotely take itself seriously. One can see Caltech table tennis coach Wei Wang (the film's technical consultant) very briefly as a ping pong-playing nun (though practically the entire shot is shown in the trailers). I didn't see her name in the credits, though I zoned out during part of it, so it's probably just my fault. Indeed, Wei is listed under 'other crew' in the IMDB page, so she now has her own IMDB page. (I'll let you know if I get one from the Eddie Murphy flick on which I consulted.)

The ping pong quality in the movie didn't seem very good, and I remember Wei mentioning that they didn't even use real balls but rather video effects. (Also, the number of points it took to figure out that Christopher Waalken didn't have a backhand was far more than it would have taken in a real game. One doesn't learn all of forehand first before learning any backhand --- that's preposterous. Also, anybody playing me who doesn't have a backhand won't be able to return my serve at all...)

Flaws aside, the film is very fun and I definitely recommend it. It might also be a good movie to use with a drinking game.


9/21/07: King of California: On my third solo "date" with Lemming in a span of 8 days --- I guess we're going back to our old patterns --- we saw this movie, which I enjoyed very much. I recommend it highly! A certain part of the ending is really sweet! In the spirit of tv's best dramedies, the movie includes a mixture of light-heartedness and seriousness that was executed extremely well. The main actors (Michael Douglas and Evan Rachel Woods) both gave really good performances (I've heard rumors of a possible Oscar nomination for Douglas). As for what this movie is about, I'd say it's mostly about the relationship and bonding between an out-of-touch (in this case, literally) parent and their child, although there is certainly some adventure thrown in. Anyway, I hope that the rest of you get a chance to see this film at some point.