Saturday, November 27, 2004
Morale is Low; We're Under Attack by Elephants
So Obnoxious Hack Theatre 3000 made its latest foray into the world of cinema last night, viewing Oliver Stone's Alexander, Hollywood's latest antiquity-based epic. Like Troy's, Alexander's cast features a number of big names: Colin Farrell, Anthony Hopkins, Val Kilmer, and Angelina Jolie's Nipples. Unlike Troy, Alexander isn't good. In fact, it's just the opposite (bad).
Going into the movie, one of the few things I knew about Alexander the Great was that he died at an early age. After sitting through this monstrosity, I can't help but to feel it wasn't nearly early enough. This movie would have been better if Stone had cut about three hours out of the middle of it.
Yes, it drags on a little - not because it's repetative, but because the things it has to say aren't really very interesting in the first place. As far as I can tell, the movie's moral is that you shouldn't be too obsessed with conquering all of Asia, or you'll die. Or possibly I'm wrong. Maybe the real moral is that if you're a gay man you shouldn't marry a woman, because she'll be jealous of your gay lover and she might kill him, though that angle really won't be very well explored. Or maybe it's that it's a bad idea to listen to crazy women with snakes. At any rate, the message I got out of it was that you shouldn't see this movie.
The acting was bad, the writing was worse. Or possibly the other way around. I did appreciate the way that everybody spoke in a Scottish accent, though (except for Jolie as Olympius, who spoke in a Transylvanian accent). What I didn't appreciate so much was the movie's obsession with eagles, which I suspect were intended to symbolize something, although it was really never very clear what.
Finally, it's a good thing that Roman didn't see this one, since it would have given him additional ammunition for his theory, first elucidated during Troy, that "if you hold a knife to somebody's throat, you'll eventually have sex with him/her" (N.B. "knife" is used literally in this theory).
At any rate, don't see Alexander. And if you do, don't blame me.
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So Obnoxious Hack Theatre 3000 made its latest foray into the world of cinema last night, viewing Oliver Stone's Alexander, Hollywood's latest antiquity-based epic. Like Troy's, Alexander's cast features a number of big names: Colin Farrell, Anthony Hopkins, Val Kilmer, and Angelina Jolie's Nipples. Unlike Troy, Alexander isn't good. In fact, it's just the opposite (bad).
Going into the movie, one of the few things I knew about Alexander the Great was that he died at an early age. After sitting through this monstrosity, I can't help but to feel it wasn't nearly early enough. This movie would have been better if Stone had cut about three hours out of the middle of it.
Yes, it drags on a little - not because it's repetative, but because the things it has to say aren't really very interesting in the first place. As far as I can tell, the movie's moral is that you shouldn't be too obsessed with conquering all of Asia, or you'll die. Or possibly I'm wrong. Maybe the real moral is that if you're a gay man you shouldn't marry a woman, because she'll be jealous of your gay lover and she might kill him, though that angle really won't be very well explored. Or maybe it's that it's a bad idea to listen to crazy women with snakes. At any rate, the message I got out of it was that you shouldn't see this movie.
The acting was bad, the writing was worse. Or possibly the other way around. I did appreciate the way that everybody spoke in a Scottish accent, though (except for Jolie as Olympius, who spoke in a Transylvanian accent). What I didn't appreciate so much was the movie's obsession with eagles, which I suspect were intended to symbolize something, although it was really never very clear what.
Finally, it's a good thing that Roman didn't see this one, since it would have given him additional ammunition for his theory, first elucidated during Troy, that "if you hold a knife to somebody's throat, you'll eventually have sex with him/her" (N.B. "knife" is used literally in this theory).
At any rate, don't see Alexander. And if you do, don't blame me.
