Pirates of the Carribean, Dead Man's Chest!

Omaha and I have been trying to put together a date for going to see Pirates of the Carribean 3, so as part of our preperation we rented PotC2, Dead Man's Chest (nice pun, that). Since my duties to my kid's school had ended at one, we sat down to watch it after lunch. The disc, being a rental, was a bit dirty and scratched, but I swear my cheap, plastic Lasonic player is a bit like one of those old Apple II disk drives: it'll try to play a frozen pizza, and would probably manage to pull some data out of it.

Dead Man's Chest can best be characterized by the caricature of Jack running away from just about everything. That's Johnny Depp through the whole film, running pell-mell through the sets, arms waving, screeching at the top of his lungs.

Hands up if you thought Naomi Harris (the voudoun girl) was hotter than Kiera Knightly.

I've used lj-cut to block off the spoilers. If you've circumvented the lj-cut feature on your friend's list display, consider stopping now.

( spoilers )

The CGI is kinda weak. I'm not sure why, but it felt hokey in places, and there were some mattes that didn't integrate well into the overall shot. That it used the same gag twice (escape in a rolling barrel, done in grand style) was a bad sign, but that can be forgiven. However, the movie as a whole was entertaining and fun, and I enjoyed it even when it went so totally over the top.

Oh, and stay for the credits. There is an end scene.

More holes in my damned teeth!

While Omaha and I were watching Dead Man's Chest last night, we were eating home-made kettle corn, and along the way of course I found the errant unpopped kernel which I dutifully spat out.

Except one of those unpopped kernels turned out to have been a part of my tooth. I didn't notice until almost an hour later. I called the dentist and went in this afternoon.

After much poking and x-raying (and a strange delay; these guys are almost always exactly on time, I don't know what it was with them today) and more poking and drying of the tooth, the doctor announced with solemnity that I would need a crown. They gave me a brisk cleaning, a three-week temporary fill, and will give me a temporary crown then, and a permanent one a few weeks after that.

Joy.

Pirates of the Caribbean, The End of the World

So, having seen number 2 last night, tonight Omaha and I went out to see Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End.

The film proceeds where the last one left off, with Barbossa leading a team with Will and Elizabeth off to the ends of the world to find Jack Sparrow and bring him back from the dead, because only Jack Sparrow knows how to take down Davy Jones.

I'm not going to post any spoilers because doing so would be pointless: there is a plot here, but it isn't the point of the film. You go in to let masters of the genre spend a lot of money poking your pineal gland as hard as they can over and over. The trouble is that you can only poke at it so often before it runs dry, and that's effectively what happens in the end. It is no spoiler to say that there's a huge, amazing battle at the end. That's the whole bloody point, isn't it? But the battle goes on for far, far too long. By the time the most astounding part of the beautifuly costumed computer-generated, green-screen stunted, Hans Zimmer-scored spectacle is before your eyes you've run out of awe. The shock has drained. It's all pretty pictures, but the ongoingness of it has successfully detached you from any emotional investment in the lives of the characters.

You've ceased to care.

This is not to say you shouldn't see it. It is beautifully and magnificently costumed-- oh, the costumes! I love good costume work. (It never ceases to disappoint me when SF writers spend pages and pages impressing us with descriptions of architecture but don't really deliver on the clothes.) The sets are gorgeous, the CGI work quite nice. But when you've started to appreciate the film for its technical delivery, the real point of movie-going has quite failed. And that, unfortunately, is where At World's End leaves you when the credits roll.