Friday, September 24, 2004

Let's all go to the lobby!

We took Garrett out tonight to the drive-in near Guelph. I'd been bugging Julie that I was going to go see Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow this weekend one way or another, so we saw it there.

This was nice since we got to see two movies (Sky Captain and Without A Paddle) for less than the usual price for one movie, plus Garrett could feed and sleep and cry and not cause half of the theature to rise up against us.

Without A Paddle was amusing, but I wouldn't bother seeing it again. Fun entertainment for an hour and a half, sure. Worth seeing once? Sure. Worth seeing again? Nah.

As for Sky Captain, it totally lived up to my expectations. It was a little different in the direction the story ended up going, but otherwise it was a total treat. It's a total throwback to the old serial movies of the 30's and such and as campy as it is, it works. I don't think that any other movie would have been able to pull the stylized look of the movie off except for one that is a tribute to those old action shorts of yesteryear. Very art-deco and surreal stuff abounds here.

It was also a movie that I could see them doing an excellent videogame adaptation of as there were so many options for one there. You've got arial combat, submarine combat, giant robots, action, adventure, romance. Given that 99% of the movie was made in a computer too, it wouldn't be too hard to make the leap from movie to game. Of course, you could say that Sky Captain is a movie version of Crimson Skies as the settings and a lot of the inspiration for both are the same.

I would love to see it again on an actual theatre screen as my windshield kept fogging up (the lady in the van next to us insisted on smoking about a pack of smokes during the 2 movies so we couldn't have the windows down much). It's definately a film I am going to add to my collection the second it comes out on DVD. I'd like to see if they have an option to watch the movie in black and white, as it was originally supposed to be B&W and then they went with a sort of sepia filter and colour for the final version. Either way, it still rocked.

I especially liked how the robots were extremely reminiscent of both The Iron Giant and the robots from Laputa: Castle In The Sky. Now, will they do a sequel? I would love it. And the best part of the movie was that Angelina only had screen time for about 10 minutes and she just chewed up the scenery, but in a good way. She didn't overstay her welcome, which was something I'd kind of dreaded.

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