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squamousI have this addiction to DVD that came about when I was making good money in Chicago. I dunno what it is exactly but I am hooked on the things... I am not a person who fancies himself a frustrated filmmaker at all, but like most (?) Americans I am happy to watch movies for recreation. With DVDs I like the ability to easily pause and back up, the occasional commentary tracks, the extras, the crisp picture... and when I was cash-happy, I didn't mind the high price.
A couple discs came out recently that I somehow determined I needed. I actually got them today and have been watching them tonight, and lo and behold feel like talking about them. The first movie is actually called Them!.
I always dug Them! as a kid. If you've not seen it, it's a classic 1950s monster flick, featuring giant ants. It's really the essential version of the form, taking place in the U.S. southwest, with the dotty scientist and his daughter, the U.S. military, and of course murderous atomic mutations. I guess part of what fascinates me about it is that I think ants are cool, and always have... I think most kids get intrigued with ants from time to time, watching them go about their busy lives on the sidewalk or in the yard. And of course, I am a fan of nearly anything once it has been prefaced by the phrase "giant monster". I am pleased to report the cover of the "Them!" disc has a garish period-looking poster I had not seen previously, but of which I wholly approve (it is not the image you will see currently at imdb.com). I really love the part of the movie where the people actually enter the giant ant hill... I guess that gets back, in part, to being a kid and being fascinated with ant hills.
So, Them! is something that I can just kind of flop back and enjoy. My relationship with the other new DVD is a little more complicated, by which I mean to say I intend to rattle on about it, without really making any points or offering any conclusions. You might want to click "back" now.
The other disc is "The Fellowship of the Ring"... the Peter Jackson one I mean, not that freaky Ralph Bakshi thing. As I have mentioned before, my mom turned me on to various kinda nerdy things when I was really young. Did I mention for example I once drew a picture of Beowulf fighting Grendel when I was in nursery school? Yes... and the teachers didn't care for it at all. One of the sorta unusual things she got me interested in was "The Hobbit". Then, even before I read LotR I had this favorable impression of it through her. I remember visiting her when she was in college once... she was living next door to these hippies who had a gray cat called Gandalf. I didn't really know the character yet, but I thought that was just the finest name for a cat.
I read The Hobbit at some point... later saw the Rankin-Bass cartoons... eventually, I am gonna say around fifth grade, I finally read the Lord of the Rings itself. Like a lot of awkward youngsters, I was sucked right into the story and overwhelmed by it and never wanted it to end. It led to years of reading various "fantasy trilogies" and the like through my junior high and early high school years. The Tolkien books became this big deal to me, this standard by which I measured just about anything else that I read. I got into all sorts of oddball fantasy things more or less due to them. It was silly.
Jump forward to 1993. I am living in Austin, TX and working for Apple Computer. I hate my job but have made a lot of new friends who I think are fabulously cool. I got into this weird thing where I denied myself almost nothing since I disliked my job... I would suffer through this job with which I was so incompatible, then spend all of my dough on food or alcohol, or going off to do whatever my friends wanted to do. I also huffed up plenty of marijuana... for some reason, with some of the friends I had there, one could never just do anything. Instead you got high and did it - got high and went to see a movie, got high and went for a walk, got high and went shopping for shoes, got high and played Boggle, etc. I felt like I should've been happy - I had these friends and we were always doing something, I was working for Apple, I had a good paycheck - but instead I was just miserable, then further upset with myself for being so miserable.
I also stopped reading and writing. This was odd since I was the original bookworm prior to moving to Austin. After several months like this, I decided I needed to return to "my source" - this hallowed Lord of the Rings text I had not read or touched for years and years. I picked up a copy of "Fellowship of the Ring" and prepared to be centered again, rejuvenated, reminded of what made me happy... sat down to read... I don't think I threw the book across the room, but I may well have. I thought it sucked. I read a couple of chapters and thought man... this is fey, stilted, boring... what the hell... it sucks... I renounce you J.R.R. Tolkien, you and all of your works.
Years passed. It's the late 90s and I am in Chicago. I now have various new groups of friends who I think are swell, and a job that I actually like. I also have been reading online that someone is making a film adaptation of LotR. At first I think this is just another instance of wild-eyed Internet bubble era hype, but the movie is actually made. I eventually see a special on "the making of" this thing on TV, and the special does just what it is supposed to do - it gets me interested in seeing the movie. I was impressed at the level of craft and attention to detail I saw documented in the special... it really looked like they were making an effort to immerse filmgoers in their manufactured world. I decided to not only check out the movie, but to actually reread the books first.
So, back to the books... I was really hesitant at first... but this time I was able to make my peace with them. I didn't love them, as I had when I was a youngster, I didn't hate them as I did as a young man... they were page-turners and I appreciated the ideas and adventure in them. I also read some more about Tolkien himself, which enhanced my view of the books some... I have a weakness for the kind of eccentricity that results in thousand-page plus tales of an invented mythology. Revisiting the books was, for me, not unlike going back to a building where you've not been since you were a child - everything seemed smaller than I remembered. Scenes that I thought went on for chapters unwound in just a few pages. Things that seemed cumbersome or boring on the first read were now more-or-less breezed through.
When the movie was released, I went to see it with my friend Mike P., who was an unapologetic LotR fan. He loved the movie... I liked it quite a bit as well. I am sure someone will make another adaptation someday, some extremely long and detailed thing that transfers to the screen all that purists love in the books. For me, this movie was entertaining and in a way even moving... the sense of the hobbit characters being asked to sacrifice everything for a world they might not survive to enjoy had some new relevance for me post 9/11.
I can't recall if I heard this on the phone or just read it, or both... but this fella once said, "Most people wake up in the morning and think, 'What will I have for breakfast?' You don't need to worry about them. It's the ones who wake up thinking, 'I need to conquer Europe today' that bear watching." The LotR, at its simplest, is the story of a handful of people who would rather be thinking about breakfast being forced to contend with someone who is trying to conquer Europe. I sometimes think that a lot of the twentieth century was about that very thing as well. I know Tolkien refuted his story as some WWII allegory, but I think it had to be informed by his experiences with WWI and WWII.
With that in mind, I dug the movie quite a bit. Yeah I guess it had some sappy and clunky stuff, some awkward moments... but Christopher Lee as Saruman just ruled (even if the interior of his little wizard's tower reminded me of some head shops I've been in), and several of the other roles seemed to be perfectly cast. I'm really looking forward to seeing the next movie in the series, too. And hopefully also the expanded version of Fellowship that they are going to release on DVD later this year. Sigh. Such a junkie.
A couple discs came out recently that I somehow determined I needed. I actually got them today and have been watching them tonight, and lo and behold feel like talking about them. The first movie is actually called Them!.
I always dug Them! as a kid. If you've not seen it, it's a classic 1950s monster flick, featuring giant ants. It's really the essential version of the form, taking place in the U.S. southwest, with the dotty scientist and his daughter, the U.S. military, and of course murderous atomic mutations. I guess part of what fascinates me about it is that I think ants are cool, and always have... I think most kids get intrigued with ants from time to time, watching them go about their busy lives on the sidewalk or in the yard. And of course, I am a fan of nearly anything once it has been prefaced by the phrase "giant monster". I am pleased to report the cover of the "Them!" disc has a garish period-looking poster I had not seen previously, but of which I wholly approve (it is not the image you will see currently at imdb.com). I really love the part of the movie where the people actually enter the giant ant hill... I guess that gets back, in part, to being a kid and being fascinated with ant hills.
So, Them! is something that I can just kind of flop back and enjoy. My relationship with the other new DVD is a little more complicated, by which I mean to say I intend to rattle on about it, without really making any points or offering any conclusions. You might want to click "back" now.
The other disc is "The Fellowship of the Ring"... the Peter Jackson one I mean, not that freaky Ralph Bakshi thing. As I have mentioned before, my mom turned me on to various kinda nerdy things when I was really young. Did I mention for example I once drew a picture of Beowulf fighting Grendel when I was in nursery school? Yes... and the teachers didn't care for it at all. One of the sorta unusual things she got me interested in was "The Hobbit". Then, even before I read LotR I had this favorable impression of it through her. I remember visiting her when she was in college once... she was living next door to these hippies who had a gray cat called Gandalf. I didn't really know the character yet, but I thought that was just the finest name for a cat.
I read The Hobbit at some point... later saw the Rankin-Bass cartoons... eventually, I am gonna say around fifth grade, I finally read the Lord of the Rings itself. Like a lot of awkward youngsters, I was sucked right into the story and overwhelmed by it and never wanted it to end. It led to years of reading various "fantasy trilogies" and the like through my junior high and early high school years. The Tolkien books became this big deal to me, this standard by which I measured just about anything else that I read. I got into all sorts of oddball fantasy things more or less due to them. It was silly.
Jump forward to 1993. I am living in Austin, TX and working for Apple Computer. I hate my job but have made a lot of new friends who I think are fabulously cool. I got into this weird thing where I denied myself almost nothing since I disliked my job... I would suffer through this job with which I was so incompatible, then spend all of my dough on food or alcohol, or going off to do whatever my friends wanted to do. I also huffed up plenty of marijuana... for some reason, with some of the friends I had there, one could never just do anything. Instead you got high and did it - got high and went to see a movie, got high and went for a walk, got high and went shopping for shoes, got high and played Boggle, etc. I felt like I should've been happy - I had these friends and we were always doing something, I was working for Apple, I had a good paycheck - but instead I was just miserable, then further upset with myself for being so miserable.
I also stopped reading and writing. This was odd since I was the original bookworm prior to moving to Austin. After several months like this, I decided I needed to return to "my source" - this hallowed Lord of the Rings text I had not read or touched for years and years. I picked up a copy of "Fellowship of the Ring" and prepared to be centered again, rejuvenated, reminded of what made me happy... sat down to read... I don't think I threw the book across the room, but I may well have. I thought it sucked. I read a couple of chapters and thought man... this is fey, stilted, boring... what the hell... it sucks... I renounce you J.R.R. Tolkien, you and all of your works.
Years passed. It's the late 90s and I am in Chicago. I now have various new groups of friends who I think are swell, and a job that I actually like. I also have been reading online that someone is making a film adaptation of LotR. At first I think this is just another instance of wild-eyed Internet bubble era hype, but the movie is actually made. I eventually see a special on "the making of" this thing on TV, and the special does just what it is supposed to do - it gets me interested in seeing the movie. I was impressed at the level of craft and attention to detail I saw documented in the special... it really looked like they were making an effort to immerse filmgoers in their manufactured world. I decided to not only check out the movie, but to actually reread the books first.
So, back to the books... I was really hesitant at first... but this time I was able to make my peace with them. I didn't love them, as I had when I was a youngster, I didn't hate them as I did as a young man... they were page-turners and I appreciated the ideas and adventure in them. I also read some more about Tolkien himself, which enhanced my view of the books some... I have a weakness for the kind of eccentricity that results in thousand-page plus tales of an invented mythology. Revisiting the books was, for me, not unlike going back to a building where you've not been since you were a child - everything seemed smaller than I remembered. Scenes that I thought went on for chapters unwound in just a few pages. Things that seemed cumbersome or boring on the first read were now more-or-less breezed through.
When the movie was released, I went to see it with my friend Mike P., who was an unapologetic LotR fan. He loved the movie... I liked it quite a bit as well. I am sure someone will make another adaptation someday, some extremely long and detailed thing that transfers to the screen all that purists love in the books. For me, this movie was entertaining and in a way even moving... the sense of the hobbit characters being asked to sacrifice everything for a world they might not survive to enjoy had some new relevance for me post 9/11.
I can't recall if I heard this on the phone or just read it, or both... but this fella once said, "Most people wake up in the morning and think, 'What will I have for breakfast?' You don't need to worry about them. It's the ones who wake up thinking, 'I need to conquer Europe today' that bear watching." The LotR, at its simplest, is the story of a handful of people who would rather be thinking about breakfast being forced to contend with someone who is trying to conquer Europe. I sometimes think that a lot of the twentieth century was about that very thing as well. I know Tolkien refuted his story as some WWII allegory, but I think it had to be informed by his experiences with WWI and WWII.
With that in mind, I dug the movie quite a bit. Yeah I guess it had some sappy and clunky stuff, some awkward moments... but Christopher Lee as Saruman just ruled (even if the interior of his little wizard's tower reminded me of some head shops I've been in), and several of the other roles seemed to be perfectly cast. I'm really looking forward to seeing the next movie in the series, too. And hopefully also the expanded version of Fellowship that they are going to release on DVD later this year. Sigh. Such a junkie.
