Films I have watched and not liked much

I am feeling much better today and am really very excited about travelling down south to see the Aged Parents on Wednesday. I am planning on making a cake for [...] birthday which on Sunday. I can’t normally cook at all, but Mum has promised to help. It is going to be a Black Forest Gateau, which translates into my second favourite German word Schwarzwaldkirschtorte (my most favourite German word, since you ask, is Gespensterheuschrecke which means stick insect).

I have been watching a series of very disappointing movies during my dip. I may include spoilers so be warned.

The new King Kong is a disgrace, it could have been really camp and fun and it was painfully long, boring and made little attempt to address the racist undertones of the original story. The stop-motion animation of the original is amusing now but it creates far more genuine suspense than what these guys have done with the CGI. I mean, just because it is possible to havea giant gorilla fighting three dinosaurs at once whilst holding damsel in distress in his fist, doesn’t mean it is convincing to watch. For a superior remake, check out Angry Alien.

Batman Begins (one has craving for comic book heroes from time to time) took itself terribly seriously and therefore reached new, as yet unexplored, depths of cheesiness. And they cast Gary Oldman as good everyman type character. Now, I’m not arguing for typecasting, but when you are making a Batman Movie, is it the right moment to challenge expectations? So one sits through this entire film expecting him to tear off his peachy face and reveal himself to be bright green underneath. He doesn't.

Crash<, having won Best Picture at the Oscars was a greater disappointment. It was beautifully made and terribly worthy, I know, but I felt it failed as a movie. It was just one lot of unpleasantness and tension, followed by a partial, usually unsatisfactory resolution, followed my another set of unpleasantness and tension involving a completely different set of characters. No central narrative, and whilst it illustrates the fact that racism is a complex, sometimes subtle and multidimensional thing, nobody who had the stamina to sit through the film needed to be told that.

It would have made for a better film if it had followed the stories of one or two characters rather than a dozen, each of whom we were required to make quite an investment in within a very short space of time. It would have made for a better film had it included some suggestion as to how this human misery could be resolved; instead it actually suggested that whilst racism is not the exclusive domain of monsters, there’s not a lot that can be done about it.

In fairness, I was having a bad day, it was exhausting to watch so all my negative feeling may have been greatly exaggerated by the sense of having wasted my time and energy. Perhaps what was most meritous about Crash was the fact that it wasn't about the sort of America we see all the time in the movies, where everyone lives in vast houses, is either a hero or a villain, and where people of different race and varying socio-economic status either rub along very nicely or exaggerate the differences to comic effect. The fact that guns were everywhere was demonstrated as the Very Bad Thing that it clearly is, which is unusual for an American film.

On a positive note, the only really good thing we have seen lately is the new series of Doctor Who as kindly recorded by friend Aunty Vic (her nephew was born yesterday). David Tennant rocks. A bit too much of the touchy-feelies so far, but otherwise it is brilliant.

Oh and in bloggings, there is this great new blog written by an enigma.