Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Speed 3: Liftoff
Went to see Gravity last night. I had assumed it was a sequel to the classic Sandra Bullock feature Speed 2: Cruise Control, but it turns out it's just another one of your standard Sandra Bullock Struggles in Space features. For the first ten minutes or so, I thought I had made a huge mistake and was going to have to either walk out or slam my head against the wall until I passed out, because the dialogue was so faux-chatty and clever that I thought maybe Aaron Sorkin had written it, and he was using again. But once a bunch of crap slammed into the shuttle and radio communications cut out, things improved a great deal on that score. The movie turned into a series of terrible things happening in stunningly visual fashion, which was immensely suspenseful if ultimately kind of ridiculous. After a while you do kind of have to start wondering what horrible thing can happen next; I would propose the following:
-- It turns out there was a cage full of tigers in the space station and they all attack SB, weightlessly.
-- Somebody left a needle filled with the AIDS virus on the seat of the escape pod and SB sits on it, weightlessly.
-- SB forgot to do her taxes this year and she gets an interstellar audit, weightlessly.
-- It turns out Kirk Cameron lives in space now and SB is forced to watch one of his movies.
Feel free to use any of those for the sequel. All I ask is that I be invited to the premiere or, better yet, the after party.
Anyway, it was pretty good, if not quite as great as it was all hyped up to be. Clooney actually kind of bugged me and I swear to God if they give Bullock a second Oscar for this I will hunt ever single member of the Academy down individually and force them to watch The Lake House until they vomit, which should take about forty-five seconds. We saw it in IMAX 3D, which did practically nothing for me. I guess I just don't know what to do with my Ds.
Went to see Gravity last night. I had assumed it was a sequel to the classic Sandra Bullock feature Speed 2: Cruise Control, but it turns out it's just another one of your standard Sandra Bullock Struggles in Space features. For the first ten minutes or so, I thought I had made a huge mistake and was going to have to either walk out or slam my head against the wall until I passed out, because the dialogue was so faux-chatty and clever that I thought maybe Aaron Sorkin had written it, and he was using again. But once a bunch of crap slammed into the shuttle and radio communications cut out, things improved a great deal on that score. The movie turned into a series of terrible things happening in stunningly visual fashion, which was immensely suspenseful if ultimately kind of ridiculous. After a while you do kind of have to start wondering what horrible thing can happen next; I would propose the following:
-- It turns out there was a cage full of tigers in the space station and they all attack SB, weightlessly.
-- Somebody left a needle filled with the AIDS virus on the seat of the escape pod and SB sits on it, weightlessly.
-- SB forgot to do her taxes this year and she gets an interstellar audit, weightlessly.
-- It turns out Kirk Cameron lives in space now and SB is forced to watch one of his movies.
Feel free to use any of those for the sequel. All I ask is that I be invited to the premiere or, better yet, the after party.
Anyway, it was pretty good, if not quite as great as it was all hyped up to be. Clooney actually kind of bugged me and I swear to God if they give Bullock a second Oscar for this I will hunt ever single member of the Academy down individually and force them to watch The Lake House until they vomit, which should take about forty-five seconds. We saw it in IMAX 3D, which did practically nothing for me. I guess I just don't know what to do with my Ds.
