Saturday, September 29, 2007

quiet evening takes a turn for the puppet

just saw death at a funeral with kim this evening. we had a quiet evening in the neighborhood - geeking out over john krakauer books [kim's reading under the banner of heaven and i've read into thin air and into the wilderness] at telephone bar and then we hit the movies on 3rd and 11th. though we had just had dinner, a movie is not complete without icees. blue icees. i'm not alone on this love, though folks aren't usually as forth coming as i am about it. [my tongue did not turn as blue as i would have liked.]

the movie was delightful. the opening credit sequence was a bit long and thought it was cleverer than it was. [i was not as offended by it as kim was.] the actors in this ensemble did a great job and i was chuckling, if not laughing outright, through most of the film. just truly enjoyed it and felt good at the end. though i was [again] disappointed in the end credits - i felt they fell short. am i focusing a bit too much on the bells and whistles? maybe. but i haven't completely processed the film beyond the fact that frank oz has director more films that we love than any of us realize. imdb him as a director. do it. aside from the fact that his picture on there is absolutely adorable, you'll start to recall that the man directed in and out [oh kevin kline], the score, bowfinger, and seminal films like what about bob?, dirty rotten scoundrels, little shop of horrors, and the dark crystal. that's right. the dark crystal. putting aside my perverse love for ruprecht the monkey boy in dirty rotten scoundrels, the dark crystal was a formative film for me. i remember my parents went out for the evening when it first came out on video, and dean and wyatt and i huddled on the floor in front of the couch watching it. i don't think i slept for about a week. though part of that could be that dean and wyatt kept hiding in my closet and under my bed and making weird noises the minute the lights were out.

the dark crystal, and for that matter the original star wars movies, are more believable and realistic to me even now than all of these cgi computer-generated things put together. maybe it's the nostalgia that clouds my judgement but i think that the use of puppets and models and miniatures gives these films an organic vs. generated feel. these things are REAL. a computer generated movie looks computer generated - even if you know that a mystic is an amazing puppet, it's still a moving, breathing creature [breathing because there's a puppeteer behind it]. there's a depth and a realness to these movies that all the computer programmers in the world can not recreate.

i'm by no means denigrating computer generated things, or the amazing people and technology behind them. i'm just saying that these films are more real, more tangible, than the most fantastical futuristic computer animated/generated one.

my babbling has gone beyond my ken, so i'm going to slip into bed and dream of lush puppet trees and bumbling british boys.

go see death at a funeral. not only because it's funny but because i think we should all support frank oz.

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