Evil in Movies

I have a problem in movies that examine murders.  Not your standard horror films, or crime thrillers, but these movies that claim to be some character study in evil or something like that.  My issue is that most of the time these people are so evil, so reckless that they couldn’t exist in our world as they are portrayed.  That’s not to say evil and horrible people who do horrible things don’t exist.   Absolutely they do, but in a movie someone goes on thru and kills a dozen people in a couple days or weeks.  They’re either a hit man or just crazy or something.  They’re often portrayed as so bleakly and so incomprehensibly that you’d think this person just wants to spend their free time killing.  Yet obviously they’re 20 or 30 years old or something and have managed to not kill tens of thousands of people along the way…

I guess what I’m trying to get at here isn’t that what I find freaky about the idea of such people is not just their violent actions.  It is that they live their lives, even if just going thru the motions, like many other people without killing, without doing all those things the movies show them doing with scary music, and yet they’re capable of it seemingly with ease or more so than the rest of us.  Films never really go there.  The characters are just evil, just bad, horrific and incompressible.  To me that is all too simple and the least interesting part of such people, and feels woefully unrealistic.

Movie Talk: The Insider

Finally got to sit down and watch it in one sitting.  Russell Crowe is a great actor.  He seems like the kind of guy I’d really hear what he has to say about acting but if I saw him would just let him eat his lunch or whatever.  Al Pacino is fun to watch but if I ever wanted to yell at someone I’d like to be Christopher Plummer.  Plummer somehow can be the comforting wise elder one minute, and the next if needed like some unstoppable force that even if you had a good response to his argument you wouldn’t bother to speak up out of fear or awe.

Anyway the movie is entertaining even if not entirely accurate.  Michael Mann’s hand in the film is a bit strong.   I became aware of the dramatic music a bit too much IMO but if it had been done dry and matter of fact I might have gotten bored too.

Movie Talk: Reign Over Me

It was an alright film if you’re looking for a feel good flick and you don’t think about the film… at all.  I kept thinking Adam Sandler looked like Bob Dylan all the time but all the acting is just fine.

The issue is they just cram SO MUCH into the film.  There’s this sexual harassment subplot, this marriage on the rocks subplot, this courtroom scene where the movie makes some characters into illogical asses out of nowhere and then they’re good people at the end because it is required by the film but not that it would actually happen.  Oh and one of my growing pet peeves a hot chick therapist who always seem to so easily cross lines that dip into the land of unprofessional. 

Movie Talk: Knocked Up

You saw this film before if you saw 40 Year Old Virgin.  If you really liked 40 Year Old Virgin you will at least enjoy (maybe not as much) Knocked Up so see it if you did.

I thought both films were ok but hardly as funny as made out to be.  Knocked Up even less funny.  It is all much the same thing as the plot in these things is fairly irrelevant and the time between plot seem like improve clumsily grafted into the film (frankly some of the outtakes were comedy gold but of course weren’t in the film).  I’ll skip critiquing the comedy as I’m not sure anyone can do that effectively but I will say like 40 Year Old Virgin the jokes grow stale as they grow predicable and along the same lines over and over again. 

The only difference between those two films is that when Knocked Up tries to be a bit sentimental and it doesn’t work, or at least it shouldn’t on anyone who ever thought about relationships.  There is no way everything is so easily resolved.  The conflict in the film feels a lot more like token conflict than much else.

I got some chuckles, a couple great laughs, and that was about it.  Not worth the entire time of the movie though.

Movie Talk: Bee Movie

Mrs. duxup is a movie pushover.  She likes lots of movies, and good for her as while I’m often in agony she’s having a good time.  At least she agreed with me to some extent about Bee Movie.  The plot is the problem.  The wife described it as something along the lines of a Saturday morning cartoon plot.  It wanders, is painfully convenient, and is unsatisfying.  On a Saturday morning cartoon so what, but on a regular film it just makes the movie feel long.

There are funny moments but they’re laid out sparingly compared to the many great CG kids films out there.  There are the token “adult” inside jokes but they’re just references to celebrities (oh my that is sooooo funny….) and other films. 

It’s all just very flat.

Gaming My 360

My 360 that died / was killed last month is due to arrive today.  The wife is waiting to sign for it at home.  Total repair time for a wide spread hardware failure that resulted in MS putting $1.5 billion aside to fix… about a month.  ####ers!

House Hunting 6: The Closing Nears, The Neighborhood

Status:
Purchase Agreements Signed
Closing Day Set
Mortgage Application and such proceeding
Stuff moved into the third car garage

Mortgage

We chose to go with the mortgage broker who gave us the lowest rate we could find after calling around.  Not significantly lower than the others, but nothing to turn up your nose at either.  All is well on that front according to our guy.  Paperwork proceeding, even though there’s not much paper, we have awesome credit scores, bla bla. 

In a world the media’s approach is largely “you’re going to die, suck, or otherwise be irrelevant if you don’t do what we say” I find my credit score is one of the few validating forces in my life.

Taxes

Being the future owner of a home that I normally wouldn’t own if not for exceptionally generous in laws I found myself at a crossroads at the voting box earlier in November.  There I stood in front of three questions regarding our schools.  If the school district was to believed the question was Do you want our school to become a ghetto school, or do you want us to make all your children above average? Choose you pitiful land owners!  The actual wording on the ballots were a bit different and broken into three questions and gave very specific numbers as to my potential tax increase. 

My little townhouse would see a minimal increase if only because it isn’t worth a huge amount.  Sure real money but nothing I would really notice.  The new house, those were real numbers to me.  On three options I voted yes, yes, no.  The last being what I read as an INSANELY large budget increase for technology.  The end result of the election was yes, no, no with my little wealthy section of the district voting yes yes yes.  Apparently I’m now a tax hating republican.  It doesn’t feel very good.

Friendly Faces

We moved load number 223 (maybe number 6) of our Subaru Outback filled with stuff to the New House.  We haven’t closed yet but the owners are nice enough to let us load our crap into car stall #3 as they’ve been out of the house for six months (although they still have car stall #1 and #2 filled with stuff).  I noted the school buss pulled up not far from us and some High School kids tumbled out. 

One girl stopped when she saw me and said hello asking if we’re moving in.  She was a nice kid and innocently noted “oh you lived over there before, you’re really moving up, congratulations”.  The wife came up and asked her mother’s name.  Turns out my wife worked with her mother for quite some time and they got a long really well.  She noted she would tell her mother.  Five minutes later I hear screaming down the street OMG insert mrs. duxup’s name!.   She asked the usual questions, was very excited (as was Mrs. duxup) and nice.  She noted that we really must be doing well.  We noted that we’re doing alright and we got some assistance from Mrs. duxup’s parents and she noted that is wonderful and she hopes to do the same for her children one day.

Mrs. duxup is more sensitive about the money issues than I am.  She’s not fond of accepting help from her parents but is pragmatic enough to know that it’s a chance of a lifetime when she talks about it (well most of the time).  Mrs. duxup is also a bit low on her self esteem tank in general, on the other hand I couldn’t care less what most people think.  We don’t have any reason to believe it is a snobby neighborhood, but if so I wouldn’t care at all if some folks felt we didn’t belong there or something stupid like that.  The wife would be a bit more sensitive to that.

That’s not to say I’m the “I don’t give a rats ass” neighborhood jerk who doesn’t mow his lawn and etc.  I find extending neighbors every cursory possible is the best route as neighbor fights IMO are way way way bad from what I have heard.  At the same time I don’t care what they think about me personally.

I make jokes about needing a top hat and monocle to move into the neighborhood.  The wife has found these jokes less funny as I’ve told them over and over and over.  I think they’re still funny but I’ll have to cut back as we now know people.  It violates my “avoid the topic of money” rule anyway.

Of course the questions following the inquires regarding the house purchase are about when we’ll start filling that space with our spawn.  The wife says about a year or so after we move in and that seems about right.  The space really does call for children. 

Anyway the neighbor lady Mrs. duxup knew told us about the neighborhood.  It seems like a good place if I take her word for it.  Plenty of kids.  There’s a neighbor behind a bunch of the houses (including ours) who I was calling “the hold outs” (apparently they have a name) who own about 12 acres of partly wooded and partly “way huge mowed meadow” and are friendly folk and let the neighborhood kids play in their massive plot of land.  I wonder if those folks REALLY knew what their land was worth if they’d sell, but even if they eventually did I’ll enjoy them being there for the time.

Mrs. duxup is quite happy that she has a friend in the neighborhood.  We don’t have many friends in the area, or friends really.   I’m a bit of a hermit, the wife is shy, we’re 29 and 30, have only lived in our area about 7 years and lived in the “everyone works nobody is home” town house area.  Making friends is hard.  I’m happy for the wife as well.

Mrs. duxup:  I’m so happy that she lives here.  I’m excited!

duxup: Does she have teenage boys who play video games?

Mrs. duxup:  Yes, I think so.

duxup: Maybe I could be friends with them?

Summary

So there we go.  I haven’t talked about the little jobs around the our townhouse we’re doing.  As always they’re little to start then become more difficult, but they are getting done.  I’m exited and also just want it all to be over ASAP.