Wednesday, August 03, 2005
"Four Brothers" go see a movie
Monday night I got a call as I was finishing up some work before heading home for the night. Turns out some of my friends from church had gotten ahold of some sneak preview tickets for "Four Brothers" that evening, and were wondering if I was interested in joining them. It was kind of short notice (they called at 6:30, it started at 7:30), but I was able to finish up my work and then wolf down a couple of pieces of cold pizza for dinner (it was left over from Sunday night) just in time to have them come pick me up to go see the movie. We arrived at about 7:15, only to be told that "the rep" had decided not to let any more people in to see it. Evidently the theater had handed out about 1,000 of these but only had about 300 seats, which makes them worse than the airlines for overbooking. The guy at the door said he was sorry, especially seeing as my friends and I looked sort of like the four brothers (we even had the ethnicity thing going for us). After a bit of banter with him, he said that to make up for not letting us "four brothers" go see "Four Brothers" he would let us in free to see one of four other movies. None of us knew much about any of the choices, but since it was free, we decided to try one. We ended up going to see "The Island."
I suspect that this was a good thing. A bit back I'd gone with one of these guys to see "War of the Worlds," at which I'd seen the trailer for both "Four Brothers" and "The Island." Of the two trailers, I think I liked "The Island" better, but neither trailer was good enough for me to actually be interested in watching the movie. It's a good thing that I didn't remember about seeing the "The Island" trailer until we walked in, or I would have voted for something else. Anyway, we missed the first few minutes of the movie, but I don't think we missed anything really important.
I enjoyed the beginning of the movie the most, I think, because it was sort of like a cross between "1984" and "Paranoia" (particularly the "Title Deleted for Security Reasons" book). As the plot unfolded, it devolved into an enjoyable but not very intellectually stimulating action movie, with lots of high speed chases, explosions, and a fair amount of graphic violence (which I didn't enjoy, but a fair amount of it was needed for the plot). The movie brings up some interesting issues pertaining to business and cloning, and it had a decent plot, but there were times when characters were forced to act out of character to help the plot along, which served as a blatant reminder that this is only a movie. The last thing that I think detracted from the movie was the overuse of blatant product placement, which was obvious enough that I went from enjoying the scene to groaning at the product placement several different times.
All in all I'd say it was definitely worth the price. And I doubt I'd have been disappointed even if I'd had to pay to see it. I'm fairly certain that I would have enjoyed "Four Brothers" less, so I'm glad it worked out that way.
On the way out of the theater I saw that they had a DDR Extreme machine there, so the guys waited patiently while I tried playing a round of DDR. Sadly, I almost failed "Silent Hill" (a song I use as a warm-up because it has interesting steps and because I've played it so much that I usually get at least an A rating on), and then failed "Can't Stop Falling In Love (Speed Mix)" (probably my favorite song to dance from Extreme), but they were duly impressed none the less. This weekend I didn't end up playing DDR because my legs felt a bit lethargic. Last weekend I did play, but failed almost everything because my legs weren't able to move fast enough, even though I usually do really well on some of the songs I played. I wonder if there's something missing in my diet that's resulting in my legs being lethargic?
PS. I know I said I was going to rant on random topics (some that I've been kicking around in my head are "thinking outside the box" and "the placement of light switches in my apartment"), but that was before I knew I was going to go see a movie, so those topics will have to wait till next time, unless something else interesting happens to me first.
PPS. I've been asked about getting an RSS feed for this page. Since blogger charges for that, I've enabled the free Atom feed instead. It can be found at feed://jeshua.blogspot.com/atom.xml and hopefully that will suffice.
I suspect that this was a good thing. A bit back I'd gone with one of these guys to see "War of the Worlds," at which I'd seen the trailer for both "Four Brothers" and "The Island." Of the two trailers, I think I liked "The Island" better, but neither trailer was good enough for me to actually be interested in watching the movie. It's a good thing that I didn't remember about seeing the "The Island" trailer until we walked in, or I would have voted for something else. Anyway, we missed the first few minutes of the movie, but I don't think we missed anything really important.
I enjoyed the beginning of the movie the most, I think, because it was sort of like a cross between "1984" and "Paranoia" (particularly the "Title Deleted for Security Reasons" book). As the plot unfolded, it devolved into an enjoyable but not very intellectually stimulating action movie, with lots of high speed chases, explosions, and a fair amount of graphic violence (which I didn't enjoy, but a fair amount of it was needed for the plot). The movie brings up some interesting issues pertaining to business and cloning, and it had a decent plot, but there were times when characters were forced to act out of character to help the plot along, which served as a blatant reminder that this is only a movie. The last thing that I think detracted from the movie was the overuse of blatant product placement, which was obvious enough that I went from enjoying the scene to groaning at the product placement several different times.
All in all I'd say it was definitely worth the price. And I doubt I'd have been disappointed even if I'd had to pay to see it. I'm fairly certain that I would have enjoyed "Four Brothers" less, so I'm glad it worked out that way.
On the way out of the theater I saw that they had a DDR Extreme machine there, so the guys waited patiently while I tried playing a round of DDR. Sadly, I almost failed "Silent Hill" (a song I use as a warm-up because it has interesting steps and because I've played it so much that I usually get at least an A rating on), and then failed "Can't Stop Falling In Love (Speed Mix)" (probably my favorite song to dance from Extreme), but they were duly impressed none the less. This weekend I didn't end up playing DDR because my legs felt a bit lethargic. Last weekend I did play, but failed almost everything because my legs weren't able to move fast enough, even though I usually do really well on some of the songs I played. I wonder if there's something missing in my diet that's resulting in my legs being lethargic?
PS. I know I said I was going to rant on random topics (some that I've been kicking around in my head are "thinking outside the box" and "the placement of light switches in my apartment"), but that was before I knew I was going to go see a movie, so those topics will have to wait till next time, unless something else interesting happens to me first.
PPS. I've been asked about getting an RSS feed for this page. Since blogger charges for that, I've enabled the free Atom feed instead. It can be found at feed://jeshua.blogspot.com/atom.xml and hopefully that will suffice.
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