{"id":156,"date":"2011-03-08T23:35:24","date_gmt":"2011-03-08T23:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/?p=156"},"modified":"2011-03-08T23:35:24","modified_gmt":"2011-03-08T23:35:24","slug":"ash-is-a-goddamn-robot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/?p=156","title":{"rendered":"Ash is a goddamn robot!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--  p.MsoNormal \t{mso-style-parent:\"\"; \tmargin-bottom:.0001pt; \tfont-size:12.0pt; \tfont-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmargin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-top:0cm}  li.MsoNormal \t{mso-style-parent:\"\"; \tmargin-bottom:.0001pt; \tfont-size:12.0pt; \tfont-family:\"Times New Roman\"; \tmargin-left:0cm; margin-right:0cm; margin-top:0cm} -->I watched <em>Alien<\/em> five days ago. Yeah, I&#8217;m really dropping the ball on punctual blog entries  these days.<\/p>\n<p>Mind you, what is  there to say that more professional, more qualified and more verbose people  haven&#8217;t already said? It&#8217;s insanely atmospheric and lonely, and I love it. The  first hour very much reminded me of <em>Life Force<\/em> (which you may recall me  gushing about two years ago), with its very cold and lonely exploration of an  alien ship, though <em>Alien<\/em> came first, of course. In a way I was almost  disappointed when the alien started killing dudes full-time, not because it  wasn&#8217;t entertaining, but because it had less time to explore the dank and  desolate environment of space. I&#8217;m a total sucker for that kind of stuff.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I also watched <em>The  Hudsucker Proxy<\/em>&#8230; half a month ago? Yeah, it was part of a Coen Brothers  boxset and was one of the only two movies I was vaguely familiar with (the other  being <em>The Big Lebowski<\/em>). I only became aware of the film through Platypus  Comix&#8217;s very entertaining <a href=\"http:\/\/www.platypuscomix.net\/hollywood\/dingus.html\">synopsis<\/a> of the  film with comments and other titbits of information &#8211; it&#8217;s a very good read.  Also, hey, have I plugged the site before? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.platypuscomix.net\/index.html\">I probably should!<!--more--><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Well, gee, linking to  a very detailed summary of the entire film kind of spoils my sum-up-the-plot  paragraph. Not that it&#8217;s a movie you watch for story, I felt. The plot is a very  simple rags-to-riches, humble-to-jerkass story where they get a guy who appears  to be an oaf to replace the deceased head of the company so they can deplete  their stock and then buy it up for cheap afterwards, but whoops, he&#8217;s got a  bright idea that sells millions, and there&#8217;s a reporter who masquerades as a  secretary and there&#8217;s romance and ghosts and a magical negro who controls time  and an abundance of run-on sentences. Yes. I almost want to say that it didn&#8217;t  throw many surprises my way, but I just read the entire summary of the film  about half a year, so I think that particular criticism is moot.<\/p>\n<p>No, what you really  watch it for is the ambiance. The visuals. The atmosphere. The accents! It&#8217;s  like they had a big bucket full of paint that was the pure essence of the 1950s,  and they dunked a film in it. The old-timey New York is recreated fabulously,  not just in the sights, but in the mannerisms and archetypes of the people you  see throughout the flick. The visual direction is fabulous, with a variety of  motifs being used to great effect in many shots, and even just how a scene or  location is laid out is done fantastically. I haven&#8217;t seen enough of the Coen  Brothers&#8217; work to judge how much I like them (I can barely remember a thing from <em>The Big Lebowski<\/em> besides the memes), but I will say, if anything, they  know how to lay out a fantastic shot.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Today&#8217;s  observation: <\/strong>I&#8217;d sooner trust a piece of paper to tell me that the ATM is  out of order rather than the ATM&#8217;s fancy-pants touch-screen display. I&#8217;m clearly  not going to get along well with robot butlers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched Alien five days ago. Yeah, I&#8217;m really dropping the ball on punctual blog entries these days. Mind you, what is there to say that more professional, more qualified and more verbose people haven&#8217;t already said? It&#8217;s insanely atmospheric and lonely, and I love it. The first hour very much reminded me of Life [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[22,7,5,6],"class_list":["post-156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gratuitous-plug","tag-movie","tag-observation","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}