The Big Three-Oh
Mar. 24th, 2008 07:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6I claimed the whole weekend in the name of me, because I got ripped off this year due to Easter. Still, it was a rather lame weekend, even ignoring the general depression of the day itself.
Saturday did the family thing, though not for me, it was for Easter. And, well, the food wasn't bad, but it was still several hours sitting around mostly with people I don't know very well if at all, along with a few very noisy kids running around all the time.
Otherwise, it was like pretty much any other weekend, except with the added inconvenience of the stores being closed two days. (Though it did have one pleasant side-effect.. had to run to the gas station to get something since the grocery stores weren't open, and I noticed they have flavours of Mr. Noodles they don't have in any of the grocery stores near me... Pork, and Creamy Chicken. Tried Creamy Chicken, it was okay but I still prefer Curry Chicken, but still, cool for finding a new flavour.)
It occurs to me, that since virtually everything you can't classify supposedly tastes like "chicken", then "artificial chicken flavour" in a list of ingredients is spectacularly unhelpful and unspecific. Crocodile meat supposedly tastes like chicken, so theoretically artificial chicken flavour could be from crocodile meat. THINK ABOUT IT. Or not.
Let's see, what else is new?
I've decided that I'm going to boycott the 2008 Olympics. Not because of what's happening in Tibet, I just think the Olympics are really lame.
Finally got around to making this icon. Not quite as good as the other one since I had to pull from various sources, but still relatively pleased with it.
Oh, and I finally got around to watching The Mist, the adaptation of one of my favorite Stephen King short stories (well, novellas). So how was it? Generally, it was an excellent adaptation of the novella, faithful in almost everything but the ending. So we'll talk about the ending. (Major spoilers, of course, for both the book and movie).
Okay, the book ended ambiguously, with the small group of survivors driving out into the Mist on what might have been a hopeless mission, based only on the fleeting, and possibly imagined, feeling that they heard something from a radio station in Portland, and that it may not have been covered by the Mist.
The movie ended with them running out of gas, and with nobody wanting to get eaten, opting for suicide, with the main character shooting everyone, including his son, with the last bullets, and then walking out ready to be killed by the monsters. Except, that's when the Mist rolls back, and he's wrecked by his decision.
I think I still would have preferred the novel ending (which might have even left room for a sequel, potentially, but probably not), but I don't really mind them going for an ultra dark ending like they did. What I mind was the sort of... sloppiness of it. He kills them, and the Mist all of a sudden rolls back, army trucks spilling out of it... army trucks carrying loads of survivors IN AN OPEN BACKED TRUCK, that was surely open to the monsters (and including someone who left to go after her kids early in the movie), and lots of other people walking around as though the Mist wasn't full of huge monsters. Even aside from that, the timing of it all seemed far too _convenient_.
Yeah, I get that they were probably trying to say that Carmody's warped vision was right in some sense, that it was Dan's sacrifice of the four others "saved" him (despite him not wanting to be), but I don't like that either. It's too human centric for a story like the Mist (and there already were human sacrifices made if that was all that was required). In fact, one of my favorite things about the novella and to an extent
the movie, is that for all the characters beliefs to the contrary, it really _doesn't_
seem like anything _supernatural_. That is, the Mist is obviously NOT OF THIS WORLD,
and highly dangerous, but it still seems to run on laws, just highly divergent laws,
rather than laws of magic. There are predator/prey relationships - the pterodactyl creatures feed on the bugs, etc. To me the whole sci-fi/supernatural aspect reads
best as though there was a dimensional hole that was just spewing out some other
reality that had its own evolutionary history, dangerous mostly because of the scale their science allowed, and our unfamiliarity with it, but that could be survived if
you were smart enough and learned enough about the creatures. That is actually an idea that's really cool to me, the sudden imposition of a completely different ecosystem on people unprepared for it, who have to adapt. Like, imagine if sharks suddenly became able to fly in and breath air, and we'd all be WTF? and probably lots of people would die, but eventually we'd get a handle on it and start shooting them down. Actually, in a sense, that's one of the things that appeals to me about zombie stories, too. Humanity has to cope with a sudden change that's likely going to leave a lot of them dead, and if it didn't all come as a surprise that decimated them they might learn to deal with it. Anyway, that's a bit why I mentioned a sequel, because I know it would be a completely different style of movie, but there's a part of me that would really like to see a sequel where, instead of just normal people trying to survive, people who are developing skills and learning to survive in the highly dangerous environment.
Anyway, I kind of digressed wildly there. So, since I don't like any of the supernatural aspect, my other option is to believe the Mist was coincidentally naturally clearing up and the world returning to normal, just as he was killing his son.
Here's how I would have done it, were I going to keep the dark ending: He kills everyone, then walks out, screaming to attract the attention of the monsters. He hears a noise, ahead of the car, and he thinks it's one of the monsters, and decides, "Okay, if you won't come to me, I'll come to you," and starts walking. As he does, the sound he's hearing begins to shift, and the mist begins to lessen. It's not a monster, it's a siren (or army helicopter, or something else appropriate that could be ambiguous in the mist). He's stumbled out of the edge of the Mist at last. A soldier grabs him, shuffles him towards the other survivors, maybe spouting some lines about how not many people have managed to reach the edge, and as Dan realizes what's happening, he turns back towards the Mist and tries to go back in, desperate to die like he thinks he deserves, but is restrained. The Mist is still out there, and everyone inside is probably dead, but he managed to reach the edge... but now he'll never really be free of it.
(I also would have, instead of it just being 'oh well, we ran out of gas', liked to include a few scenes of them improvising around it... stopping for a few minutes at a gas station and fighting monsters, or just full on switching to another truck and hotwiring it, even if they eventually reach a point where there's no gas and no trucks they can use).
In general the effects were good but some of the monsters looked too obviously CGI, and I might have preferred a bit more use of practical effects vs CGI - like the loading dock sequence, and I would have liked a closer look at the a certain large creature (particularly the novel's description of the bugs hanging off it).
Oh, and the Mist, either the novella or the movie always reminds me of XET now, since I ripped off the idea for the Rutland TP, so I'm all nostalgic again.
Saturday did the family thing, though not for me, it was for Easter. And, well, the food wasn't bad, but it was still several hours sitting around mostly with people I don't know very well if at all, along with a few very noisy kids running around all the time.
Otherwise, it was like pretty much any other weekend, except with the added inconvenience of the stores being closed two days. (Though it did have one pleasant side-effect.. had to run to the gas station to get something since the grocery stores weren't open, and I noticed they have flavours of Mr. Noodles they don't have in any of the grocery stores near me... Pork, and Creamy Chicken. Tried Creamy Chicken, it was okay but I still prefer Curry Chicken, but still, cool for finding a new flavour.)
It occurs to me, that since virtually everything you can't classify supposedly tastes like "chicken", then "artificial chicken flavour" in a list of ingredients is spectacularly unhelpful and unspecific. Crocodile meat supposedly tastes like chicken, so theoretically artificial chicken flavour could be from crocodile meat. THINK ABOUT IT. Or not.
Let's see, what else is new?
I've decided that I'm going to boycott the 2008 Olympics. Not because of what's happening in Tibet, I just think the Olympics are really lame.
Finally got around to making this icon. Not quite as good as the other one since I had to pull from various sources, but still relatively pleased with it.
Oh, and I finally got around to watching The Mist, the adaptation of one of my favorite Stephen King short stories (well, novellas). So how was it? Generally, it was an excellent adaptation of the novella, faithful in almost everything but the ending. So we'll talk about the ending. (Major spoilers, of course, for both the book and movie).
Okay, the book ended ambiguously, with the small group of survivors driving out into the Mist on what might have been a hopeless mission, based only on the fleeting, and possibly imagined, feeling that they heard something from a radio station in Portland, and that it may not have been covered by the Mist.
The movie ended with them running out of gas, and with nobody wanting to get eaten, opting for suicide, with the main character shooting everyone, including his son, with the last bullets, and then walking out ready to be killed by the monsters. Except, that's when the Mist rolls back, and he's wrecked by his decision.
I think I still would have preferred the novel ending (which might have even left room for a sequel, potentially, but probably not), but I don't really mind them going for an ultra dark ending like they did. What I mind was the sort of... sloppiness of it. He kills them, and the Mist all of a sudden rolls back, army trucks spilling out of it... army trucks carrying loads of survivors IN AN OPEN BACKED TRUCK, that was surely open to the monsters (and including someone who left to go after her kids early in the movie), and lots of other people walking around as though the Mist wasn't full of huge monsters. Even aside from that, the timing of it all seemed far too _convenient_.
Yeah, I get that they were probably trying to say that Carmody's warped vision was right in some sense, that it was Dan's sacrifice of the four others "saved" him (despite him not wanting to be), but I don't like that either. It's too human centric for a story like the Mist (and there already were human sacrifices made if that was all that was required). In fact, one of my favorite things about the novella and to an extent
the movie, is that for all the characters beliefs to the contrary, it really _doesn't_
seem like anything _supernatural_. That is, the Mist is obviously NOT OF THIS WORLD,
and highly dangerous, but it still seems to run on laws, just highly divergent laws,
rather than laws of magic. There are predator/prey relationships - the pterodactyl creatures feed on the bugs, etc. To me the whole sci-fi/supernatural aspect reads
best as though there was a dimensional hole that was just spewing out some other
reality that had its own evolutionary history, dangerous mostly because of the scale their science allowed, and our unfamiliarity with it, but that could be survived if
you were smart enough and learned enough about the creatures. That is actually an idea that's really cool to me, the sudden imposition of a completely different ecosystem on people unprepared for it, who have to adapt. Like, imagine if sharks suddenly became able to fly in and breath air, and we'd all be WTF? and probably lots of people would die, but eventually we'd get a handle on it and start shooting them down. Actually, in a sense, that's one of the things that appeals to me about zombie stories, too. Humanity has to cope with a sudden change that's likely going to leave a lot of them dead, and if it didn't all come as a surprise that decimated them they might learn to deal with it. Anyway, that's a bit why I mentioned a sequel, because I know it would be a completely different style of movie, but there's a part of me that would really like to see a sequel where, instead of just normal people trying to survive, people who are developing skills and learning to survive in the highly dangerous environment.
Anyway, I kind of digressed wildly there. So, since I don't like any of the supernatural aspect, my other option is to believe the Mist was coincidentally naturally clearing up and the world returning to normal, just as he was killing his son.
Here's how I would have done it, were I going to keep the dark ending: He kills everyone, then walks out, screaming to attract the attention of the monsters. He hears a noise, ahead of the car, and he thinks it's one of the monsters, and decides, "Okay, if you won't come to me, I'll come to you," and starts walking. As he does, the sound he's hearing begins to shift, and the mist begins to lessen. It's not a monster, it's a siren (or army helicopter, or something else appropriate that could be ambiguous in the mist). He's stumbled out of the edge of the Mist at last. A soldier grabs him, shuffles him towards the other survivors, maybe spouting some lines about how not many people have managed to reach the edge, and as Dan realizes what's happening, he turns back towards the Mist and tries to go back in, desperate to die like he thinks he deserves, but is restrained. The Mist is still out there, and everyone inside is probably dead, but he managed to reach the edge... but now he'll never really be free of it.
(I also would have, instead of it just being 'oh well, we ran out of gas', liked to include a few scenes of them improvising around it... stopping for a few minutes at a gas station and fighting monsters, or just full on switching to another truck and hotwiring it, even if they eventually reach a point where there's no gas and no trucks they can use).
In general the effects were good but some of the monsters looked too obviously CGI, and I might have preferred a bit more use of practical effects vs CGI - like the loading dock sequence, and I would have liked a closer look at the a certain large creature (particularly the novel's description of the bugs hanging off it).
Oh, and the Mist, either the novella or the movie always reminds me of XET now, since I ripped off the idea for the Rutland TP, so I'm all nostalgic again.
