Breakfast and a movie
Feb. 24th, 2008 10:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironicWhat I've done so far today:
- Wake up abominably early for a Sunday after having one of those nights where you sleep in twenty-minute increments, thinking all the while that there's something important you have to be doing (and dreaming over and over that you're doing it)
- Get dressed, check email, etc.
- Drive 34 miles to airport to pick up mother & mother's boyfriend
- Circle around, give up, park
- Wait with them to get their baggage
- Drive them 23 miles to their house
- Help them unload their luggage, receive gifts from trip, etc.
- Drive the 18 miles back to my house
- Go to supermarket
- Make and eat breakfast
Time of completion: 9:15 a.m.
So, what to do with the rest of the day? Besides not fall asleep, that is.
What I need to do is work on some of the stories I have due, but that didn't work out so well yesterday, when, having spent a fruitless morning trying to write, I gave up and watched Star Trek III (still mediocre, although teen Spock anguishing through pon farr is still hot) and Star Trek V (still awful) and then Apocalypto (2006) (theatrical trailer), which was just spectacular visually, as I'd hoped. Mel Gibson's a bit of a freak, and he completely mishandled the controversy around The Passion of the Christ, but boy he can make gorgeous movies. The aesthetic of the whole film, from scenic rainforest/mountain/river panoramas to the teeming Mayan city down to the finest details in every character's piercings and tattoos, and the immense budget and creative freedom the production team clearly enjoyed—definitely wow.
The plot was simple—Mayan village chief's son, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), is captured and eventually escapes from an aggressive fellow tribe seeking to collect payment for captives, runs and runs and runs from them through the jungle, and tries to shake them off or pick them off so he can rescue the wife and son he'd hidden when their village was attacked. Themes of defeating fear, taking pride in one's land and heritage, coming of age, subjugation from within and without, dedication to one's family. As the previews promised, the film's two hours and ten minutes were filled with action, violence and beauty, mostly all at once. It very much conveyed the sense that horrific violence could and did occur at any time for these people, whether it took the form of quotidian tapir-hunting or a sudden attack from a neighboring tribe or a human sacrifice at the great temples. So there was that kind of anticipation/dread hanging over the whole film, heightening the tension of anything anyone did, and overshadowed again by the knowledge that the Europeans would soon be descending to wreak more havoc with their weapons and diseases and religion, although the violence was not quite as graphic as I'd braced myself for. The worst of it came early, in Jaguar Paw's prophetic dream, where a kid he'd met in the jungle that day appeared to him with a huge upside-down U-shaped wound below his ribcage, holding out his own beating heart, and breathing hard and fast, too fast, grimacing. That was the one that affected me most, anyway, because while not as graphic as many other injuries depicted throughout the movie (people being shot with arrows, having their hearts cut out [mostly off-screen], attacked by swarms of bees, bitten by snakes, stabbed, clubbed, speared through, shot with poison-tipped blowdarts, hunted, throats slit, heads and headless bodies tumbling down the blood-soaked pyramid steps, etc. etc.), this one was somehow more disturbing. The next-strongest image was when one of Jaguar Paw's pursuers had his face chewed off by a cat that looked like a black panther though they called it a jaguar. Yum. Though again, there, there were only a few very short shots of the attack, and only one of the skin stretching off his face, and we didn't see the effects of the mauling aftewards; it was more the idea of the thing than anything else that aroused such horror.
But everything was beautiful, including the violence—the people's facies and bodies, the wigs, the piercings, the tattoos and scarifications, the costumes, the jewelry, the jungle, the sets, the blood, the unusual weapons, the colors (browns and greens and bone-white everywhere, white at the lime mine, a dizzying rush of bright colors at the Mayan city, blue paint on the captives, red and black blood, black mud, the white of Jaguar Paw's eyes), the sounds, the music. All the dialogue was in ancient Mayan, and the costumes and performances and world-building were so complete that when the credits came up afterwards and all the actors had modern Hispanic and French names mixed in with Native American names, it was a funny shock.
The movie took its time, letting us soak in all the work that had been put into making it and sink into the world these people inhabited, or at least one man's interpretation of it. The only thing I could have used less of were the shots of the Mayan city marketplace; it may have reflected how the captives were wondering and overwhelmed, but it got gratuitous. Also, the coincidence that saved Jaguar Paw on the sacrificial altar—a solar eclipse—didn't sit so well, not only because it was a coincidence but because (a) the eclipse happened so suddenly and so quickly (from full-sun to full-sun, it lasted perhaps two minutes) and (b) the Mayan masses panicked, as though they weren't an intelligent sun-worshiping civilization who'd been around more than long enough to know what an eclipse was. Eh. I suppose the second point was that they thought the eclipse at that particular moment was a bad omen from the gods. I did love the creepy jumping/shouting dance the wigged women performed as the captives were led up to the pyramid steps. And one thing I was grateful for, being susceptible to recurring dreams of being hunted, was when Jaguar Paw managed to reach his own tribe's area of the jungle and turned himself around from pursued to pursuer, from running to planning.
Overall, highly recommended for those who like out-of-the-ordinary historical fiction/action flicks and who enjoy or don't mind sustained violence.
10,000 B.C. (mammoth and saber-tooth tiger fights and people who look like Ronon in the split-second shots they get in the preview!) looks like it'll be a little like this, although probably not nearly as good.
- Wake up abominably early for a Sunday after having one of those nights where you sleep in twenty-minute increments, thinking all the while that there's something important you have to be doing (and dreaming over and over that you're doing it)
- Get dressed, check email, etc.
- Drive 34 miles to airport to pick up mother & mother's boyfriend
- Circle around, give up, park
- Wait with them to get their baggage
- Drive them 23 miles to their house
- Help them unload their luggage, receive gifts from trip, etc.
- Drive the 18 miles back to my house
- Go to supermarket
- Make and eat breakfast
Time of completion: 9:15 a.m.
So, what to do with the rest of the day? Besides not fall asleep, that is.
What I need to do is work on some of the stories I have due, but that didn't work out so well yesterday, when, having spent a fruitless morning trying to write, I gave up and watched Star Trek III (still mediocre, although teen Spock anguishing through pon farr is still hot) and Star Trek V (still awful) and then Apocalypto (2006) (theatrical trailer), which was just spectacular visually, as I'd hoped. Mel Gibson's a bit of a freak, and he completely mishandled the controversy around The Passion of the Christ, but boy he can make gorgeous movies. The aesthetic of the whole film, from scenic rainforest/mountain/river panoramas to the teeming Mayan city down to the finest details in every character's piercings and tattoos, and the immense budget and creative freedom the production team clearly enjoyed—definitely wow.
The plot was simple—Mayan village chief's son, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), is captured and eventually escapes from an aggressive fellow tribe seeking to collect payment for captives, runs and runs and runs from them through the jungle, and tries to shake them off or pick them off so he can rescue the wife and son he'd hidden when their village was attacked. Themes of defeating fear, taking pride in one's land and heritage, coming of age, subjugation from within and without, dedication to one's family. As the previews promised, the film's two hours and ten minutes were filled with action, violence and beauty, mostly all at once. It very much conveyed the sense that horrific violence could and did occur at any time for these people, whether it took the form of quotidian tapir-hunting or a sudden attack from a neighboring tribe or a human sacrifice at the great temples. So there was that kind of anticipation/dread hanging over the whole film, heightening the tension of anything anyone did, and overshadowed again by the knowledge that the Europeans would soon be descending to wreak more havoc with their weapons and diseases and religion, although the violence was not quite as graphic as I'd braced myself for. The worst of it came early, in Jaguar Paw's prophetic dream, where a kid he'd met in the jungle that day appeared to him with a huge upside-down U-shaped wound below his ribcage, holding out his own beating heart, and breathing hard and fast, too fast, grimacing. That was the one that affected me most, anyway, because while not as graphic as many other injuries depicted throughout the movie (people being shot with arrows, having their hearts cut out [mostly off-screen], attacked by swarms of bees, bitten by snakes, stabbed, clubbed, speared through, shot with poison-tipped blowdarts, hunted, throats slit, heads and headless bodies tumbling down the blood-soaked pyramid steps, etc. etc.), this one was somehow more disturbing. The next-strongest image was when one of Jaguar Paw's pursuers had his face chewed off by a cat that looked like a black panther though they called it a jaguar. Yum. Though again, there, there were only a few very short shots of the attack, and only one of the skin stretching off his face, and we didn't see the effects of the mauling aftewards; it was more the idea of the thing than anything else that aroused such horror.
But everything was beautiful, including the violence—the people's facies and bodies, the wigs, the piercings, the tattoos and scarifications, the costumes, the jewelry, the jungle, the sets, the blood, the unusual weapons, the colors (browns and greens and bone-white everywhere, white at the lime mine, a dizzying rush of bright colors at the Mayan city, blue paint on the captives, red and black blood, black mud, the white of Jaguar Paw's eyes), the sounds, the music. All the dialogue was in ancient Mayan, and the costumes and performances and world-building were so complete that when the credits came up afterwards and all the actors had modern Hispanic and French names mixed in with Native American names, it was a funny shock.
The movie took its time, letting us soak in all the work that had been put into making it and sink into the world these people inhabited, or at least one man's interpretation of it. The only thing I could have used less of were the shots of the Mayan city marketplace; it may have reflected how the captives were wondering and overwhelmed, but it got gratuitous. Also, the coincidence that saved Jaguar Paw on the sacrificial altar—a solar eclipse—didn't sit so well, not only because it was a coincidence but because (a) the eclipse happened so suddenly and so quickly (from full-sun to full-sun, it lasted perhaps two minutes) and (b) the Mayan masses panicked, as though they weren't an intelligent sun-worshiping civilization who'd been around more than long enough to know what an eclipse was. Eh. I suppose the second point was that they thought the eclipse at that particular moment was a bad omen from the gods. I did love the creepy jumping/shouting dance the wigged women performed as the captives were led up to the pyramid steps. And one thing I was grateful for, being susceptible to recurring dreams of being hunted, was when Jaguar Paw managed to reach his own tribe's area of the jungle and turned himself around from pursued to pursuer, from running to planning.
Overall, highly recommended for those who like out-of-the-ordinary historical fiction/action flicks and who enjoy or don't mind sustained violence.
10,000 B.C. (mammoth and saber-tooth tiger fights and people who look like Ronon in the split-second shots they get in the preview!) looks like it'll be a little like this, although probably not nearly as good.
no subject
Date: Feb. 24th, 2008 04:03 pm (UTC)There are black jaguars, just as black panthers are the black versions of leopards. We saw a very handsome black jaguar a few years ago at the Montgomery, Alabama zoo:
He looked like a very strong, somewhat stubby -- especially with his shorter tail -- version of a black panther.
no subject
Date: Feb. 24th, 2008 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Feb. 24th, 2008 04:14 pm (UTC)Apocalypto was much better than The Passion. Much better. I'm saying that from a storytelling and aesthetic perspective, outside of all the religious implications and the way Jesus and the Jews were portrayed. The focused violence in The Passion was more what I was expecting here, but instead of long shots of a man's back being torn up with glass-studded whips, in Apocalypto the violence was swifter, and the most gruesome slow action (like the human sacrifices) did take place off-camera, so you'd see the guy tensed-up awaiting his doom, then a cut to someone else, then the priest holding up the heart.
no subject
Date: Feb. 24th, 2008 04:30 pm (UTC)