I just discovered the movie Idiocracy, (made in 2005). It's tasteless yet genius in a way zoolander could never hope to emulate. (My brother loves zoolander for it's "genius", and I'm sure he's tried to get me to watch Idiocracy as well.) I think everyone should watch it, if only to scare you. During Idiocacy, I also rediscovered the Discovry channel, which was playing a documentary/ tv show on the biology and processes that have to do with sex and love. I really, really wish I wasn't so caught up with Idiocracy, because I would have loved to watch it.
There was a campus wide gaming night last night. Usually I love thiese, but not so much this time. If I had to say why, I'd say it's probably because my child like naievety was dashed regarding certain subjects. That's all I'm prepared to say, as it really isn't that intersting.
I saw the Watchmen yesterday; I whole heartedly recommend it. It actually made me want to go back and reread the book. They did a good job of capturing even the minutest details of the book, with one exception. The stuff left out (which was inevitable) was restricted to the parts of the book that left me disinterested in the book to begin with. Stuff like excerpts from Holis Mason's biography, Under the Hood. Two things that were left out: The psychologist in charge of Rorshauch had a bigger part, and originally you were allowed to see how being exposed to Rorshacuch's unique views on society ate away at him as a person. There was also the bit on "Tales of the Black Freighter," a fictional comic book within the comic book that left me disinterested, though I'm sure there are people out there who think it's genius. I think they turned the comic into an anime which will probably be released with the dvd. Other interesting things I noticed:
It was mentioned a number of times that President Nixon had served more than 2 terms. I think there were about six mentioned in the movie? Watchmen takes place in an alternate time line, I think for the most part dependent on 2 differences from real life. The existence of Doctor Manhatten, and the general trend of people dressing up to fight crime in general.
If you look at some of the background graffitti in some of the shots, there is a patriotic message that says "Please welcome Vietnam as our 51 state."
From here on, I'm gonna talk about the single biggest change they made to Watchmen, which directly relates to the ending. If you haven't seen it/read it, you should stop reading.
Where the fuck is my evil space alien? It drives me insane that I can't let this go, but damn it, with everything else being so faithful to the souce material, how can they change the overly camping ending in favor an ending that matches the dark tone of the movie? ...oh, right. Because the original ending was overly campy and they wanted an ending that matches the dark tone of the rest of the movie... let alone makes sense. This now make me the worst kind of fanboy. Even when they did everything they could to make a fantastic movie, I still nitpick the one thing they changed to for the good of the movie.
I think I do it though because Watchmen wasn't a fantastic book for me, and it was the ending that really validated the time put into it for me. For those who don't know, in the book, Ozymandias tricks America and the USSR into making peace by introducing a new target for them to focus on. He does this by faking an attack by evil space aliens. The difference between the book and movie is that in the movie, he plan is the same, but in this telling, he frames Dr. Manhatten, rather than faking an alien attack. I found the original ending poetic. In any case, I'm going to try to let this go.
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