As you must know by now, my other mania is for all things related to Cirque Du Soleil. The last show I saw of saw of theirs was "Kooza." The tickets were a combination Christmas/Birthday gift from my dear friend and fellow Cirque enthusiast Kathy (who just happens to be directing the show I am currently rehearsing).
While trolling my favorite blogs, I came across a post on BoingBoing which featured a link to a 1929 Disney cartoon called "Skeleton Dance," which only reminded me of the amazing skeleton dance number in "Kooza."
Here's a clip of from "Kooza." I hope you are as astounded and as I was in seeing the show live.
Oh, to be able to run away and join that circus...
I must admit that I am not a fan of the Final Destination franchise. I may have mentioned that I saw the original movie on one of the worst dates of my life. I did sort of like the second one, but the third was just downright silly.
Now comes the fourth in the series The Final Destination. I went for two reasons: First, it was in 3D; second, because my "Fabulous" angel, Matty, wanted to get together and spend some time with me. Since he is almost as big a horror fan as I am, I thought it the perfect movie for the two of us to see together.
If you know the franchise, you know its limitations. And the fourth film in the series follows the formula perfectly. A character has a premonition of his/her death along with a group of friends whom he/she then convinces to get out before the terrible event kills them all. But, since they all survived, Death comes stalking them in the order in which they were originally intended to die, anyway. And since Death has an outrageous sense of humor, each kill is precipitated by a series of circumstances that would make Rube Goldberg (not to mention Pee-Wee Herman) proud.
In this latest installment, all pretense of character development and plot are thrown out the window to make way for an increasingly gory set of killings. Blood flies, sharp metal objects are hurled about and every character dies. Was that a spoiler? I don't think so. The novelty here is in the mostly excellent 3D effects. Blood and chunks of flesh fly toward the audience with a manic sense of glee and director David R. Ellis uses the medium to it's fullest advantage, all the while eschewing everything that makes for a truly interesting film. The jokes are plenty and self-referential (a bottled water company is named for the character played by "Heroes'" Ally Larter in the first two films and a killer tow-truck is from the Destiny Towing company), but in the end, there is really no one to care about or root for.
I imagine that since there were few new films opening this week worth seeing, The Final Destination will probably retain its top box office status, though the audience with which I saw it all seemed to agree that the movie was pretty ridiculous. The movie stars no one you know or care about, in performances as memorable as your last trip to Walmart. On the whole, The Final Destination works better as a black comedy than an actual horror movie, though even then, it is silly, at best. * (One out of Four Stars).
I am sure that Synvisc is a wonderful product. I have noticed that my symptoms (i.e. knee pain) have been reduced in the past few days, but I'm not sure if that's because of my weekly injections, or because of the gorgeous weather we've been having here in southeastern Pennsylvania for the past few days.
Today was my last of three injections, all of them inserted under my patella and each of them more painful than the previous one. Today's was particularly excruciating. My osteopath told me that he was giving me this last shot where the arthritis was the worst. It was all I could do to keep from kicking him in the face as he administered the shot. I came home and promptly went to sleep for two and a half hours. I'm not sure if that's because I was tired, or because of the two hefty swigs of Southern Comfort I swallowed on top of the Xanex I took before going to my appointment.
In any case, I will continue to keep you updated as to the treatment's efficacy in the coming weeks. I am hoping the shots will allow me to get back on my treadmill and lose even more weight in my struggle to get healthy and attractive again.
Back to movies, theatre and nonsense soon. More, anon. Prospero
OK - I'm just getting used to Firefox, but have found that I can post stuff much more easily than on Explorer.
Anyway... here's my post about my favorite movies this year. And while I have hardly seen every film I've wanted to this year (Taxidermia, I Sell the Dead, andUpamong them,) I can speak about the movies I have seen. Here then, is my list of the best movies I've seen in 2009, in order of my love for them:
Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) directs this Neil Gaimon tale about a little girl who discovers an alternate reality behind a door in her bedroom:
Creator Alan Moore (among others) felt that his graphic novel was unfilmable. Dircetor Zach Snyder disagreed and created one of the top 3 Superhero movies of all time. My review is here. Watch the trailer below:
Neil Blomkamp's alien allegory is by far a perfect film, but it left me feeling less human for the viewing of it. My review is here. The trailer is below:
Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Spider-Man) makes his triumphant return to horror with this story about a young loan officer who refuses to extend a mortgage to teh wrong evil gypsy. My ecstatic review is here.
An astounding and "quiet" Sci-Fi film from director Duncan Jones (son of David Bowie), Moon features an amazing performance form the always wonderful Sam Rockwell in a film reminiscent of late '60's and early 70's films like 2001 and Silent Running. My #1 pick, so far:
So, there you have them. Agree? Disagree? Let me know. I always love hearing from you.
I downloaded several Windows updates today and now I can't seem to paste embed codes for movies I want to talk about. I'm sending the whole shebang to my work PC and we'll see if I can't load them from there.
