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ealgyldenToday's "Gerard 101" flick was Reign of Fire, and for a while there, I was really enjoying it. It had not-unpleasant special effects and some rather nice-looking dragons (albeit biologically impractical ones). It had an appropriately apocalyptic apocalypse (unlike, say, Independence Day). It had Julian Bashir and the Borg Queen. It had the Cutest Scene Ever, No, Really, with Quinn (Christian Bale) and Creedy (Gerard) demonstrating to a herd of moppets how a movie/tv-watching culture adjusts back to being a storytelling culture. But best of all, it had Christian and Gerard being brave, resourceful, attractively shaggy, and so, so in love. It might have been better for the beleaguered human race if Quinn and Creedy had been more interested in passing on their genes to the next generation of smart, pretty dragon food, but how could anyone begrudge their obvious happiness with each other? It would take a cold, unfeeling person to deny them their only bit of happiness, right? Of course right. And they were just so sweet (if rather stressed).
And then Matthew McConaughey showed up, and it all. went. wrong. I swear, everything that went badly after his entrance, which was pretty much everything, was his fault, undoubtedly because he was a psychotic testosterone-monkey whose brains had been tossed out in favor of his manly tattoos and his baseless confidence in his own superiority. What a jackass. Worst of all, he got Gerard killed! Boooooooooo! Christian told him flat out, "Don't go chasing after the dragon king without a less stupid plan, because you'll fail and get your entire team fried, and then the dragon king will come back here and fry all of us too, including my sexy, heroic boyfriend. And Joan will be very sad." And did he listen? No! And was Christian right? Yes!
I should probably call them by their character names, right? Probably, but it seems like work. Eh.
And how much did I hate McConaughey ranting at Christian and his tribe (for lack of a better term) when they had the gall to be happy that they'd had their first success against a dragon in, like, a million years? A whole lot. Where the hell does he get off saying that they disgusted him? Dude, I'm sure they're sad about your three casualties, even though they didn't know them. Every person there had lost somebody, had lost everybody in a lot of cases; he was standing on their blood-soaked land, a hundred feet away from their full graveyard. But they weren't soldiers permanently stuck in kill kill kill mode. They were children and noncombatants and... and a horse. And life goes on. People still have weddings and holidays and celebrations of birth even during war. Otherwise, what are you staying alive for? What's the point of an utterly joyless existence? You grab the happy moments, the moments that keep you sane, when you can, because you might not have another chance. And Christian's people had been living under seige for quite a while; they needed that brief release, that acknowledgement that yes, there had been more deaths and yes, they were sad about that, but that they had had a moment of success. That they were still alive. That there was still a chance. And Van Zan (hey, I remembered!) had no right to take that from them. Jerk.
And oh, Creedy's death broke my heart. He just looked at Quinn and then he was gone, and poor Quinn was left screaming and banging on the door. Sob! Evil movie. Evil Van Zan! Boooooo! All his fault! Booooo! After that, Quinn might as well end up with Alex the Lady Pilot, despite the fact that they hadn't even bothered to engage in the perfunctory flirting required of the male and female leads, since why not, he'd lost his true love and they had pretty genes to pass on. Besides, I liked her. She was tough without being The Tough Chick (tm), and she was far more smart and sensible than her crackhead CO. I'd rather have had Creedy (sob!) but Alex could have been much worse. Still, I think my icon (which I love and don't use nearly enough- it was practically dusty) fits this movie as well as the one it was intended for.
And I cheered when Van Zan died. Too bad it was so quick. Not really satisfying after how long I'd been calling for his death by then, but still, better than nothing. Woo, go dragon!
So to sum up: Gerard- lovely, Christian- lovely, Quinn/Creedy- lovely (sob!), Alex- okay, Van Zan- ruined everything. Everything. What a wretched character.
Oh, and then I went hunting for the reams of Quinn/Creedy fic that was surely out there. Ah ha ha ha. You'd think I'd learn. Well, I did find four. Which puts it slightly behind 13th Warrior and Miracles, but ahead of Swing Kids, Captain Blood and Moby Dick in the microfandom sweepstakes. So that's something. I also found a couple Quinn/Van Zan stories, but no, not in a million years, no way, no how. shudder
Next in "Gerard 101" will be Dracula 2000, assuming there isn't a run on the video store. Mobs of desperate Jonny Lee Miller fans converging on the shelves or something equally terrifying. It'll have to wait until next week, though, I think. Pity. I was in a groove.
In other tangentially-related-to-Gerard-news, Varese Sarabande has stepped up to the plate and released Jerry Goldsmith's unused score for Timeline. Came out today, in fact. Timeline was the second-to-last score he completed (and the last real movie score) and had been highly anticipated, but unfortunately before the movie was released, it was entirely rehacked, er, reedited, and Goldsmith's score literally no longer fit, as he had scored scenes and sequences that no longer existed. Brian Tyler, who wrote a fabulous score for Bubba Ho-tep and a strange-but-cool one for Six-String Samurai, stepped into the gap and came up with an indifferently likeable replacement. Still, advance word had been so good, and Goldsmith so generally popular, that Varese was smart to rescue his last work. I’m really looking forward to hearing it.
This release does raise again the question of Gabriel Yared's deleted score for Troy, arguably the highest profile score replacement in recent years (in part because Yared broke tradition and was very publicly vocal about his unhappiness). An unused score like Timeline or Legend may have a chance at a second life because Goldsmith is popular and sells well. Alex North's 2001 score got another chance because he's an historically important film composer. Elmer Bernstein's Last Man Standing score saw release because, again, he was an historically important composer, and it's one of his last works in the genre with which he's arguably most identified, the western (even though it, like North's 2001, was far from his best work). But Yared, while popular, isn't a huge seller, isn't historically important (not that he never will be), and Troy wasn't a super-blockbuster. And it would be a real pity if it's lost because of that, because the cues he released on his website were gorgeous, and supposedly the score as completed (which it wasn't quite) is his most accomplished yet. So we wait and hope, I guess. I'll probably end up blathering about that issue more when Troy hits DVD, since I've stored up a year's worth of anticipation and disappointment for this score (I apologize in advance). A would-be high point that became a never-was, alas.
And I'm sure this has made the rounds already, but there's so much political stuff out there that I can't keep track. This, at least, is funny. Goodness know I could use a laugh about politics by now. The RNC meets Nightmare Before Christmas.
And then Matthew McConaughey showed up, and it all. went. wrong. I swear, everything that went badly after his entrance, which was pretty much everything, was his fault, undoubtedly because he was a psychotic testosterone-monkey whose brains had been tossed out in favor of his manly tattoos and his baseless confidence in his own superiority. What a jackass. Worst of all, he got Gerard killed! Boooooooooo! Christian told him flat out, "Don't go chasing after the dragon king without a less stupid plan, because you'll fail and get your entire team fried, and then the dragon king will come back here and fry all of us too, including my sexy, heroic boyfriend. And Joan will be very sad." And did he listen? No! And was Christian right? Yes!
I should probably call them by their character names, right? Probably, but it seems like work. Eh.
And how much did I hate McConaughey ranting at Christian and his tribe (for lack of a better term) when they had the gall to be happy that they'd had their first success against a dragon in, like, a million years? A whole lot. Where the hell does he get off saying that they disgusted him? Dude, I'm sure they're sad about your three casualties, even though they didn't know them. Every person there had lost somebody, had lost everybody in a lot of cases; he was standing on their blood-soaked land, a hundred feet away from their full graveyard. But they weren't soldiers permanently stuck in kill kill kill mode. They were children and noncombatants and... and a horse. And life goes on. People still have weddings and holidays and celebrations of birth even during war. Otherwise, what are you staying alive for? What's the point of an utterly joyless existence? You grab the happy moments, the moments that keep you sane, when you can, because you might not have another chance. And Christian's people had been living under seige for quite a while; they needed that brief release, that acknowledgement that yes, there had been more deaths and yes, they were sad about that, but that they had had a moment of success. That they were still alive. That there was still a chance. And Van Zan (hey, I remembered!) had no right to take that from them. Jerk.
And oh, Creedy's death broke my heart. He just looked at Quinn and then he was gone, and poor Quinn was left screaming and banging on the door. Sob! Evil movie. Evil Van Zan! Boooooo! All his fault! Booooo! After that, Quinn might as well end up with Alex the Lady Pilot, despite the fact that they hadn't even bothered to engage in the perfunctory flirting required of the male and female leads, since why not, he'd lost his true love and they had pretty genes to pass on. Besides, I liked her. She was tough without being The Tough Chick (tm), and she was far more smart and sensible than her crackhead CO. I'd rather have had Creedy (sob!) but Alex could have been much worse. Still, I think my icon (which I love and don't use nearly enough- it was practically dusty) fits this movie as well as the one it was intended for.
And I cheered when Van Zan died. Too bad it was so quick. Not really satisfying after how long I'd been calling for his death by then, but still, better than nothing. Woo, go dragon!
So to sum up: Gerard- lovely, Christian- lovely, Quinn/Creedy- lovely (sob!), Alex- okay, Van Zan- ruined everything. Everything. What a wretched character.
Oh, and then I went hunting for the reams of Quinn/Creedy fic that was surely out there. Ah ha ha ha. You'd think I'd learn. Well, I did find four. Which puts it slightly behind 13th Warrior and Miracles, but ahead of Swing Kids, Captain Blood and Moby Dick in the microfandom sweepstakes. So that's something. I also found a couple Quinn/Van Zan stories, but no, not in a million years, no way, no how. shudder
Next in "Gerard 101" will be Dracula 2000, assuming there isn't a run on the video store. Mobs of desperate Jonny Lee Miller fans converging on the shelves or something equally terrifying. It'll have to wait until next week, though, I think. Pity. I was in a groove.
In other tangentially-related-to-Gerard-news, Varese Sarabande has stepped up to the plate and released Jerry Goldsmith's unused score for Timeline. Came out today, in fact. Timeline was the second-to-last score he completed (and the last real movie score) and had been highly anticipated, but unfortunately before the movie was released, it was entirely rehacked, er, reedited, and Goldsmith's score literally no longer fit, as he had scored scenes and sequences that no longer existed. Brian Tyler, who wrote a fabulous score for Bubba Ho-tep and a strange-but-cool one for Six-String Samurai, stepped into the gap and came up with an indifferently likeable replacement. Still, advance word had been so good, and Goldsmith so generally popular, that Varese was smart to rescue his last work. I’m really looking forward to hearing it.
This release does raise again the question of Gabriel Yared's deleted score for Troy, arguably the highest profile score replacement in recent years (in part because Yared broke tradition and was very publicly vocal about his unhappiness). An unused score like Timeline or Legend may have a chance at a second life because Goldsmith is popular and sells well. Alex North's 2001 score got another chance because he's an historically important film composer. Elmer Bernstein's Last Man Standing score saw release because, again, he was an historically important composer, and it's one of his last works in the genre with which he's arguably most identified, the western (even though it, like North's 2001, was far from his best work). But Yared, while popular, isn't a huge seller, isn't historically important (not that he never will be), and Troy wasn't a super-blockbuster. And it would be a real pity if it's lost because of that, because the cues he released on his website were gorgeous, and supposedly the score as completed (which it wasn't quite) is his most accomplished yet. So we wait and hope, I guess. I'll probably end up blathering about that issue more when Troy hits DVD, since I've stored up a year's worth of anticipation and disappointment for this score (I apologize in advance). A would-be high point that became a never-was, alas.
And I'm sure this has made the rounds already, but there's so much political stuff out there that I can't keep track. This, at least, is funny. Goodness know I could use a laugh about politics by now. The RNC meets Nightmare Before Christmas.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-07 08:50 pm (UTC)And how much did I hate McConaughey ranting at Christian and his tribe (for lack of a better term) when they had the gall to be happy that they'd had their first success against a dragon in, like, a million years?
Me, too. I actually screamed at the screen: "LET THEM HAVE THEIR HAPPINESS!" They've had precious little to celebrate for more than half their lives, so why rag on them? That was the moment I hated McConaughey.
Next in "Gerard 101" will be Dracula 2000, assuming there isn't a run on the video store. Mobs of desperate Jonny Lee Miller converging on the shelves or something equally terrifying. It'll have to wait until next week, though, I think. Pity. I was in a groove.
Heh. If you do see a desperate JLM, send him my way? The movie is good if you don't go in expecting Citizen Kane. Enjoy it for what it is: a good B-movie. Amuse yourself by playing Count The Hickeys. My last count: 8.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-07 09:52 pm (UTC)It really does, and it's just incredibly frustrating, because until then it had been a nice bit of shallow fun with a fair amount of Gerard/Christian cuteness. And he just wrecks it. Hateful little bastard.
If you do see a desperate JLM, send him my way?
D'oh, left out a word! But hey, I'm happy to give you full ownership, 'cause he doesn't do a thing for me except make me want to brush his hair. *g* I don't get the Jonathan Rhys-Meyers thing either. Maybe my tastes just aren't decadent enough? Heh.
Amuse yourself by playing Count The Hickeys. My last count: 8.
Heeeee. Okay, that sounds like a plus. And I have a terrible weakness for B-movies, so that'll help. I mean, I liked Attila, and that was, like, 200 years long on top of being silly. At least Dracula has length in its favor. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-08 06:31 am (UTC)Yeah, Attila can be overlong. But, bathscene.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-07 10:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-07 11:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-07 11:51 pm (UTC)King Arthur was also shot in Wicklow, and this caused a terrible crossover to begin forming in my mind, as all those dragons are surely getting hungry and just longing for more tasty film crews to show up. Thankfully, I have so far resisted writing it.
She answers comments with the speed of molasses...
Date: 2004-09-19 08:16 pm (UTC)Heeeee. This is not a plot bunny you should resist. This is a plot bunny that should be nurtured, lest it grow wings and fangs and start roasting the local livestock! I wonder if dragons can taste the difference between actors in good movies and those in cheesy schlock...
Re: She answers comments with the speed of molasses...
Date: 2004-09-20 12:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-08 07:41 am (UTC)Of course, we went into the theatre assuming it would suck like a tornado, so maybe that helped.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-08 12:47 am (UTC)Good lord, yes. Christ, I hated every moment he was onscreen. I ground my teeth whenever he spoke. Hell, make that whenever he breathed. And just like
I'm ever so good at answering these things in a timely manner...
Date: 2004-09-19 07:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-08 01:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-19 08:10 pm (UTC)even the fact that Alex (the token female) told Quinn that Van Zan "always knew he could do it" (she was obviously watching a different set of events than I).
Heh. I suppose there isn't a good way to phrase, "I know my CO is an ass who's ruined the little bit of happiness you'd managed to scrape together, gotten your people (and your sexy boyfriend) killed, and probably ended your life too, but really, he has good qualities... somewhere..." At that point, you might as well lie.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-09-30 01:54 pm (UTC)Well. . . not *quite.* Van Zan is being angry, mildly bitter, and is currently left to his own devices. I couldn't finish the story, because I can't bring myself around to actually putting Quinn in the same room as him.
What a loathsome character. Even a couple of weeks later, the mere thought of him sets my teeth on edge. Ruined a perfectly good cheesy movie... argh! What a frustrating waste.
Agreed. I wrote the Quinn/Van Zan for
Heh. I suppose there isn't a good way to phrase, "I know my CO is an ass who's ruined the little bit of happiness you'd managed to scrape together, gotten your people (and your sexy boyfriend) killed, and probably ended your life too, but really, he has good qualities... somewhere..." At that point, you might as well lie.
If anyone wanted to go there, there is room for a nasty Alex-Van Zan fic somewhere in all of that.