Author: Teel

Author, artist, romantic, insomniac, exorcist, creative visionary, lover, and all-around-crazy-person.

Antsy.

last night. We commisserated satellite internet re. money and dissatisfaction dish network with the whole schema of “jobs”, mengumalogy in general, and how, of course, directv we’d so much rather be doing loan art full time, and filling satellite tv our days with something of mortgage genuine interest and of genuine online poker value. For me, I feel myself cialis placing more and more importance online casino on TIME, on freedom within

Daredevil – movie review

Better than I expected in some respects, disappointing in others, Daredevil is a plain vanilla comic-book adaptation of a much darker source. Or at least that’s what everyone keeps saying; I’ve never really read the comic book. I bought an issue or two once because I wanted to practice drawing in the art style used, but I don’t think I ever read them; I just looked at the pictures. Still, the art style was dark and gritty, and while the bulk of this movie occurred at night and the hero killed and killed and killed the bad guys, it was not a movie that i would describe as dark.

A lot of reviewers are saying that Ben Affleck was a disgracec, creating a character that was less interesting with the mask off and dialogue flowing than with the mask on and silently fighting. I will say that several of the fight sequences were impressively choreographed, and that the initial meeting/fight sequence bewteen Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) and Electra was not just well-choreographed but genuinely entertaining, funny, and endearing to both characters. The problem with that is that that was probably the only scene in which the idea that any of the characters featured had any depth of character whatsoever.

Sure, yeah, Matt’s father was killed by Kingpin, which lead him to become a vigilante in the first place, and yeah, it’s too bad he has those annoying super senses that give him perceptions superior to regular human beings, what with casual noises at a distance keeping him up nights (unless he’s just had sex, apparently), but I didn’t really care one way or the other about Matt Murdock as a person. Electra’s father was killed suddenly and unexpectedly and when I cared about his death it only made me notice that I didn’t care about Matt’s father, Electra, Matt himself, or anyone else in the movie. Which meant that my liking the movie was left in the hands of the writers’ ability to come up with clever riffs and the choreographers’ ability to come up with interesting fights.

There were some very funny and entertaining conversations in the movie. Jon Favreau was excellent and Matt Murdock’s law partner. Joe Pantoliano shined in every scene he was in, even when they were weak scenes. Colin Farell was exactly the right amount of cocky SOB to be Bullseye, yet his best moments appeared to be Colin improvising within a weak, cliched screenplay. The funny or romantic scenes between Matt Murdock and Electra were appropriately funny or romantic. Their fights (after that first one) were not, unfortunately, compelling or entertaining or especially believable.

I just want to mention one more thing about the fights, and I’ll get on with a summary: As I watched the best of the fights (the initial one-against-thirty fight and the Bullseye v. Daredevil fight in the cathedral) I was entertained and excited and drawn in by the film’s action and off-again-on-again choreography, but I kept thinking “I can’t wait to see The Matrix Sequels. They are going to blow this movie totally out of our memories.” They’re good, fun action sequences, despite DD’s tendency to move uncannily like Spiderman, but I know something better is right around the corner.

So overall I would say that Daredevil is acceptably entertaining as a vanilla comic book movie, with excellent performances from the supporting cast despite an over-worked and too-many-cooks screenplay. Kudos to the director for allowing the actors to work around it from time to time. Ben Affleck was not among those who rose above the level of the material and we do not feel his struggle – it is forced down our throats. The ‘romance’ amounts to a couple of cute-but-not-really-emotional scenes and a sex scene, and when Electra dies it seems like DD is reacting because that’s how he believes he’s supposed to react, not because he actually cares. Not a summer blockbuster or a movie I’d bother to buy, but certainly worth my time and the matinee price I paid to see it.

Happy Daredevil Day!

Okay, so, I realize it’s Valentine’s Day, and that people doing google searches for “anti-valentine’s day” have increased site traffic to levels higher than we’ve ever seen before at Modern Evil*, but I’ve personally been ‘officially’ single since before Valentine’s Day, 1998, and have no intention of celebrating Valentine’s Day more than I already have today. Oh, and it is Arizona Statehood Day, by the way. That’s right, back in… 1912, I guess, on February the 14th, Arizona became the 48th state of the United States. The last contiguous state so far. So hooray for that!

Oh, but something more relevent to my life also happens today; Daredevil opens. Now, I’m not that big of a comic book guy, I don’t think Ben Affleck was the best choice for the role, and there are some other movies coming out soon that I’m actually really, really looking forward to (ie: Matrix sequels, and increasingly the Hulk, plus I’m looking forward to Love Liza more than Daredevil, if that speaks to you), but I am a movie kind of guy, and will certainly enjoy Daredevil when I see it later today. SO, I’m inviting you to join me.

Which is quirky, because I don’t know when or where I’ll be seeing it, or with whom yet. I believe my younger brother and sister may be interested in going to go see it, and maybe Art and Callie as well. I know Zoe and Amy will be seeing it as part of a date, probably on their side of town, and I respect their celebration of the holiday (and more importantly of their relationship). Who else may be interested in seeing it, I do not know, but this is the sort of fun movie that most everyone can have a good time seeing, and may be more fun in a larger group. Since no one has let me know what my plans are yet (that’s the way most of my social activities go – if someone wants to do something with me, they just have to tell me when and where), I beleive it may end up being first-come, first-served. That is, whoever contacts me first with the most reasonable plan will probably dictate the plan that I try to get everyone who calls me later to conform to.

Now a little on my sleep: (totally optional reading)

Continue reading Happy Daredevil Day!

That was not quite right

So, errr.. Among the things I was supposed to at least get started on yesterday, Thursday, is cleaning this house in Tempe to the best of my ability so it can be rented out ASAP, and maybe I’ll even get part of my deposit back. There’s more to the story, since the cleaning was actually supposed to start Wednesday, except that the moving didn’t get done until late Wednesday night and … well, at this rate I may never do a proper post about the ordeal, but… suffice it to say, I was supposed to do some cleaning yesterday. I was also extremely physically exhausted and sore from four continuous days of packing and lifting and carrying and lifting and sometimes dropping on my toes just about everything I own, so slept in and spent many hours relaxing. Then around 8PM last night I was getting ready to get started working on the kitchen, and I was going through the programs on my laptop and quitting them or telling them I would be away from the PC for a while, when I noticed that at some point I had started up Fool’s Errand. You may remember I mentioned it was an early game by the same guy who developed the contest puzzles for David Blaine’s book, which I never solved before, despite years of access to it in High School. You may also remember that I downloaded it with the intention of going through it and 3 in Three to get my mind back in the mindset of the creator… you know, so I can solve the ones that could be worth $100k easier. So as long as it was running and I hadn’t even taken one minute to look at it since downloading it, I figured I could take a look, maybe solve one or two puzzles, and go start on the kitchen in a few minutes. Keep in mind that this is a game that I spent months playing when I first discovered it and which I know Zoe has been playing off and on since I linked to it and as of three days ago was only about half-way through the thing. Keep that in mind, I mean, when I say that I just completed it moments ago.

Not that I just realized I’d been sitting here playing a Mac Classic game all night and should quit and go to bed. I just totally finished the game. In one sitting. Literally. I didn’t get up once, to eat or drink or pee or anything. I just started playing and played and played and played until I won. I didn’t even look online for help until I literally had all the puzzle clues deciphered and onto the last screen and couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t triggering the ‘finale’ after I’d double-checked my solutions twice, and after carefully reading through all the explanations for the final set of clues and their solutions, I found that I had mis-spelled the very last word. I had put ‘Amythyst’ instead of ‘Amethyst’. Probably because it was 6AM and I’d been playing the game all night and am very tired. So that’s it, huh? That wasn’t so bad. The only puzzle I seemed to really have trouble with was Death’s puzzle, and only until I realized you had to cheat to beat death. Man O Man.

I did end up totally filling a little 4″ square piece of scratch paper. For some reason I had trouble doing a couple of the scrambled word-cipher puzzles in my head, and in others I just made notes until all the data for the puzzle had passed through my head and onto the paper, then didn’t look at the notes as I solved the puzzle. It’s a good way to doublecheck you’ve gone through all the evidence, I think. Three colors of ink in overlapping layers of tiny rows of cryptic symbols and jumbled letters oriented all four directions… I doubt it would be of much use after a year or two when my mind has filed away how to read it so far that it becomes easier to just make new notes.

Anyway, I’m going to sleep now. I’m looking forward to playing 3 in Three (in a week or two, after I get settles in up in Pine) again now. I believe I only played through about 2/3 of that, and I put a lot more hours into it than fool’s errand in HS. Maybe it’ll take two nights.