Danger Power Man Christmas Dragon Fight Watering

Danger
5/14/10

I unexpectedly filled another journal yesterday. Yes, in addition to blogging, working on my novel, editing a short story, writing a short story as an exercise with Teddy Gardner, I'm also keeping up with my handwritten journals. So, the filling of the journal was unexpected, and I thought I had an empty one lying around here somewhere, but it doesn't look like I do. So, I'm going to use an old one that hardly was filled at all. I'm pretty sure I intended it to receive only drawings.

I figured I'd dump them here and get these out of the way right quick. I spent a good hour on Danger, if I remember correctly. I'm proud of it, even if it's not good.

In the past few days I've watched Flypaper, Love, 50/50, and The Dramatist, a Jack Taylor TV movie thing.

Flypaper was alright. It was a very average movie. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but I also wouldn't tell anyone not to watch it. It killed some time and I didn't hate myself for watching it. I'd say it was sort of like Clue on bank robbing steroids, but not as good as that sounds.

Power Man

Love on the other hand, I do have an opinion on. There will be spoilers. The Netflix description was super deceptive.

Stranded alone aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Lee Miller fights to survive the stress of isolation and stay alive. But everything changes when he discovers something unexpected that allows him to travel through space and time.

So, the whole time travel thing is completely subjective based on interpretation. At least as far as I understood it. The movie was visually impressive, especially for a $500,000 budget. I was waiting the whole movie for the time travel. For me, it never happened.

It seemed like the movie was trying to do two things, which would have been pretty cool if they had kept the two things separate. The movie felt like two short films smashed together with a lot of crazy-man-on-a-space-station filler. There was one aspect of the movie that attempted to show the necessity of connection, of love. It did that, the guy went crazy because he was separated from people. It also had this neat (I thought so, but the buddy I watched the movie with didn't think so) message at the end, where it presented the idea that you were just emerging from an hour or so long relationship with the movie itself. Not only are you emerging from a relationship with the movie, but with thousands of others who have watched the movie as well. It brings up the idea of a shared experience. Pretty cool. They could have done that in one short (fifteen minutes or so) film.

12/25/09

The other thing they threw into the movie, which I thought was a wicked idea that didn't live up to its potential because it was getting crowded by this experimental experience thing, was the basic plot. The guy goes up to an old space station to see if it's still functioning (they're in the year 2039 or something). It is, but after he makes the discovery he loses contact with the people below. It's made apparent that the Earth has fallen into some war or disaster. So, this guy Lee is stranded above Earth while all of humanity is destroyed beneath him. That's pretty intense. That could be a good short story/film, or even a long one if you play your cards right and focus on him moving past this situation, whether it's through his own actions or the actions of another. Unfortunately, this movie focuses on the process of him going crazy.

There's also something about some guy (also named Lee, but not our astronaut buddy) from the civil war who finds something (which I'm pretty sure is supposed to be the object that allows astronaut Lee to travel through space and time), and wrote about it in a journal that somehow makes it onto the space station. I don't know. The opening monologue caught me, so I was really pleased with the existence of the civil war narrative, I just wish they tied things together better.

Bottom Right
Dragon Fight

50/50 was pretty great. Seth Rogan's character was pretty hilarious, the girlfriend was pleasingly awful, JGL had a pretty sick emotional explosion, and Anna Kendrick was adorable. It was definitely the best of the four, even if Iain Glen's voice wasn't anywhere to be found.

Jack Taylor is worth watching if you're into hard boiled Irish detectives. Actually, I guess you don't have to specifically be into that to enjoy the show, but if you were, then this would be the one for you. They're movie length episodes (think Sherlock), and I've enjoyed every one so far. They're not by any means amazing, but they have a great atmosphere, I'm into the characters, and seriously that voice, too good.

Watering

I started reading The Magician's Nephew, which interrupted my reading of Snow Crash. So far, so good.

Spotify Premium for my birthday month ran out, so that sucks.

For some reason, today a fire was set under me, and I applied to a few places. That was good, I'm in need of a job. I also threw up an ad on Craigslist for a fourth renter (which we still need [message me]), and got a few responses. Setting up interviews where the four of us are available is proving more difficult than I anticipated.