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Every morning I wake up is an adventure. The first thing on my mind is, "Hmmmm, I wonder which part of my body I won't be able to move today!" And since this started, I basically move like an old man. At its worst, I move about as fast as, and have about as much strength as, an 80 year old man. It takes about 3 minutes to change my shirt. At best, I move more like a 60 year old man, and with much less pain.
The pain can be unbearable at times, and the loss of strength... well, sometimes if I want to type at my computer, I have to lift one of my arms up there with the other one! Sometimes my fingers are affected and I cannot type. Often my legs and ankles are affected which inhibits my walking.
No one really seems to know what is going on, not my dad (a doctor), nor the doctor that I went to see. Some blood was drawn to be tested... to see if I have (and I sure hope I don't!) rheumatoid arthritis. The doctor told me to take advil as an anti-inflamitory for a week, and if it's not gone, then I should see a joint specialist. Well, all I gotta say is I sure hope it doesn't come to that! Welp, enough of this stuff... since I haven't been able to move a lot or do a whole lot of work, all I've really been able to do is watch a lot of TV and movies, so here are some more DVD reviews!
Gods
And Monsters: Collector's Edition
The movie: This movie is celebrated for winning an academy award for best adapted screenplay. Unfortunately, at least to me, this movie was pretty boring. I actually stopped it half way through to go cower in pain from the problem with my joints. A few hours later I came back to it and made myself watch it some more. I don't know why. This movie is a somewhat fictionalized, yet based-on-a-true story account of the end of James Whale's life. He's the guy that directed the Frankenstein movie, and is played by Ian McKellen. Anyway. Like I said, I thought the movie was boring.
The DVD: The film is presented in 2.35:1 widescreen anamorphic format, and the transfer looks really great. Very clean. There's also a documentary about the film and James Whale but it was pretty boring too and I stopped watching it after 3 minutes. This is just one of those DVD's where they were reaching pretty far to fill out the special features quota. Of course, there are probably some true James Whale fans out there that are screaming bloody murder about me saying this! Haha.
Leaving
Las Vegas
The Movie: This again is one of those movies that I should have seen a long time ago, but didn't. Everyone was raving about Nicolas Cage's performance in this movie, plus I am also interested in watching movies about Las Vegas because I love seeing the images of Vegas. Even the seedy underbelly, which is where a lot of this movie takes place. Well, I thought the movie was pretty good, but very, very depressing. There isn't really a resolution... you see a guy on a downhill slope, and he just keeps going downhill. Then he goes downhill some more. And a little while later, he goes even more downhill. The End. If this movie doesn't make you want to stop drinking alcohol, nothing will.
The DVD: To my surprise, this movie was anamorphically encoded. A lot of these "older" DVD's were letterboxed unless they were some kind of "special edition" or something, but yeah, 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen, baby! The film transfer is mediocre... kinda grainy, but I've seen much worse. There is also a pan-and-scan option, but who the hell would want that? haha. Special features are pretty sparse, standard trailers and notes. But in my opinion, I don't think studios should feel obligated to fill up a bunch of special features just to have them... if you want to include behind the scenes footage, or deleted scenes, at least make sure it's interesting to watch, and not just a bunch of crap!
Beavis
And Butthead Do America
The Movie: I love this movie! After all these years of being deprived of Beavis and Butthead, it's refreshing to see them again. Unlike the characters of South Park (and I certainly mean no disrespect to them), these guys are luvably naive and innocent.
The DVD: The good news is anamorphic widescreen! Even the menus! The bad news? The film transfer is really horrible. It's like watching a 16mm print, super grainy, and with like lots of hairs and dust and scratches and spots and everything. It's not unlike those movies I watched in elementary school where the teacher wheeled in the projector. But I forgot about that after a while. After all, the movie is still funny :) As far as special features go, there's two very short teaser trailers, and that's it.
The
Godfather DVD Collection -- revisited
Yeah I already reviewed these things. But I've been really bored so I decided to watch the movies with the director's commentary on. I made it through The Godfather, and The Godfather Part II, but I don't know if I'll be doing the same with part III. Then again, I could get bored again haha.
The director's commentary on The Godfather is great! It's full of insights and little tidbits of information. Little secrets of how they dealt the relatively modest budget... the constant butting of heads between Coppola and Paramout Pictures... the fact that Francis Ford Coppola almost got fired after the first week of shooting... did you know that the horse's head in that scene was an actual horse's head? They got it from a dog food factory!
It was pretty interesting to see Coppola talk about each scene and talk about the difficulties of shooting it, or why it was good, etc. etc. etc. I loved it! So the next day I decided to try doing the same thing with Part II... but things weren't so peachy keen after that.
You see, Coppola didn't really want to make part II. But the studio really, really wanted to make it. So Coppola said he would make it, but under the condition that there would be no interference from the studio -- he would have full control over every aspect of the production. This made for a really great movie, but very boring commentary. There were no interesting stories of conflict, because there was no conflict in the production.
There were no interesting stories of rigging stuff up to look like a different location because they had a big budget -- if they wanted to show Vegas, they went to Vegas. They wanted to show Florida? They went to Florida... they wanted to show Cuba? Well for that, they went to the Domincan Republic. The point is, there was no conflict between the director and the studio. There was no overcoming challenges of faking a location, because they had enough money to just go there. A lot of what he says is repeated from the commentary in Part I. In other words, the commentary just wasn't that good. I had to force myself to watch it. But I got through it!
And that's it for this update! In the mail coming to my house next are: Monty Python's Life Of Brian, and one of my favorite 80's movies, The Last Dragon!