After Christmas

The night of Christmas Day we hung out at Brian's apartment and opened presents. I was very embarrassed because none of my presents were wrapped for anyone, and I didn't even have my dad's present in the state (of California). Luckily, my family loves me and none of that really mattered. We ate a snacky dinner of nuts, cheese, and crackers and hung out for a while before Brian took our parents back to the hotel.

The day after Christmas was much like the rest of the days. Didn't do a whole lot. I had mentioned that we watched and I eventually bought Napolean Dynamite. We all watched that and then my parents went home. When he got back, Brian and I watched I, Robot. After first seeing the previews and having read Isaac Asimov's book I was appalled at the way they had butchered the story (though now I am appalled to see that they are selling the book with Will Smith's picture on it). Then I read somewhere that the writer had written this screenplay with no connection to Asimov and only later they put in references to a few of Asimov's characters and the Three Laws. So that made me feel a little better and my interest grew back to normal levels.

Thankfully it did not grow too much as I didn't need to be appalled at the gall to have Asimov's name associated with it, it just wasn't a very good movie. Brian and I had many laughs at plot holes, coincidences, and the like. It's fun to watch bad movies with Brian. With his film school training and my cynicism, we can keep ripping the movie apart for nearly the whole time, it makes bad movies way more entertaining. (Like Jackie Chan flicks, right Steve?) Anyway, it had a little bit of good action, some of the effects were neat, and they had a couple of clever ideas about the future, but it was all in all what I expected, not very good.

The next day Brian and I took our parents to the airport and they left for Chicago. That day wasn't spent doing too much. The next day was just as lazy. Later in the evening we went to see House of Flying Daggers. The cineplex we saw it at was huge, I think it had over 20 screens and the "director's" theaters included leather seats and ginormous screens. We saw it in a normal theater, but still had to pay $11 a ticket. I ended up really enjoying the movie, Brian, not so much. I think he might have had his hopes too high, though I was pretty excited about it myself. I can't say it is as good as Crouching Tiger or Hero, but I still liked it a lot. There were so many of the same elements in the story from the other two, that made some things a little repetitive. One thing that I really enjoyed was the sound design. One of the characters was blind and thus was able to do all of her crazy moves just by detecting sounds around her. The feel and mood of those scenes was brought across excellently, I thought.