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The previews of this film had sort of got my hopes up, despite it being by the same pratt that did Waking Life.

As a film, it's far better than Waking Life.

But as far as I go, it didn't really live up to what I was hoping for. The visuals didn't go as far into the surreal as I would have hoped and the whole film really sucked any of the sense of fun out of the drugs. You didn't see any reason people would be using Substance D.

The 'revealation' at the end was no surprise at all. It was like it came up two minutes into the film and they kept beating it into my head with a claw hammer every two minutes. Maybe that was the point though, to try to get you to experience conditioning.

The overall effect for me was the overwhelming sensation that I will never watch another film by Lancelot Link or whatever his name was, and I felt like I was being forced to sit through one of those D.A.R.E. lectures in a sweaty highschool gymnasium.

Overall, not a film I really enjoyed. It had a few good moments and it was more coherent than Wanking Life but it still didn't do it for me.

Cars

You know, when I watched this film, I kind of felt cold indifference to it and disliked a few pieces of it. The more I think about it in retrospect, the more I dislike it. Total flaming piece of crap.

First off, Car-world is creepy. No people and the cars never open their doors. They have big freakish eyes that go into the wrong end of the uncanny valley.

Asthetics aside, there's so much more of this film to hate.

Cliched characters.
A plot that's been done several times before.
And the subtle things. The ones that really bother me.

Like the part about how mean and superficial 'city people' are.
And conversely, how deep and meaningful ignorant yokels must be.
Didn't you know that gap-toothed freaks know everything?
The film totally bashes 'modern life' and instead clings tightly to the 1950's kitchy fantasy world of Babyboomer land and Route 66 Nostalgia. I grew up not far from old route 66 and spent entirely too much time in towns way too similar to that one. The film somehow skips over all the ignorance, racism, prejudice, and xenophobia of those little shit-hole towns. There also wasn't a single chain-smoker with a beehive and blue eye-shadow wearing a mumu to be seen in the whole picture. Though of course we had the requisite hippy and militia freak.

There were other things, maybe even more subtle that bothered me. Like I've heard lots of people drone on about how this movie was at least better than Shark Tale or Shrek because it wasn't trying to use urban ghetto-speak.

Oh no... Not at all. Instead, it uses white-trash ghetto speak. That's SO much better. Or at least it's what America is more comfortable with. Remember. The moral of this film is: Cities bad. Inbreeding good.

Moreover, the american obsession with the auto industry was leaving an unpleasant taste in my moth throughout the film. Cars are so great! Everybody loves cars! Everyone should take a long car trip with frequent stops in middle america!

You know why they built the interstates, fuckheads? For the military! But now wait. Aside from that, the built it because the midwest fucking sucks. No one really wants to spend more time there than they absolutely have to. Do you know how many times I heard the same story about that funny time with Aunt Fae's bunions, or about that time Aunt Vicki cut some Z-list actor's hair? ABOUT A MILLION TIMES TOO MANY. People move to big cities because they can't stand you and while there's other people like you in the city, it's a hell of a lot easier to avoid you.

All in all. Hated it in almost every detail but hey, the money is in white suburbanites, so I'm sure it'll make fantastic amounts of money. That's all that really matters right? People in big cities sucking more money out of these little Hell hole towns?

Hmm. In that light, maybe this movie wasn't half bad afterall. :)

Monster House

Hello internets!

After a stinker film, it's always nice to see something you enjoy.

I admit it. I really enjoyed Monster House. A lot of the animation was crap, and by crap, I mean worse than 1st year animation projects by people who later went on to work on Jimmy Neutron. Crap crap crap! Who can't animate a bouncing ball? Sheesh. It's a freakin' parabola! Maya has a built in 'physics' mode that will animate it better than this was done.

Also, some of the writing is bad in the set-up to the real film.

But after about 15 minutes, it suddenly got really fun and continued to be really fun and vaguely ghoulish for the rest of the movie. It was fun. Not high art, of course, but I really enjoyed it. :) It's somewhere in the realm of Edward Scissorhands or Beetlejuice.