Movies

It was a movie-licious weekend for me.

(That means I watched two movies on television).

Normally, I avoid the Family Channel (or whatever it's called now - is it "ABC Family" now?) like the plague, because it seems to be one of the loci of those horrible, syrupy, "meet-cute" movies, or those horrible, syrupy, "someone who is very loved is dying and this is the Special Story of their last months" movies. Or, despite the "family" monicker, it has some pretty raunchy stuff on it. Well, raunchy by my attitudes...

But. I will say that sometimes ABC Family kicks butt in holiday fare. I am all over their Christmas special-stravaganza when it comes out each year - a Saturday afternoon to relive my childhood and the glory of Rankin-Bass animation.

But it looks like they're doing Hallowe'en now, and even though there are a lot of horrible Hallowe'en movies and specials out there, there are some with a more "spooky" or magical theme that are very good indeed.

First up: Tim Burton's Corpse Bride.

Now, again - I normally avoid movies that are titled "Somebody's Name's Something Something" because what that means to me is that the Somebody who is Named is regarded as more important than the content of the movie. In other words: buy a ticket because Somebody made this movie. Not because "this movie will be entertaining" or "this movie will be good."

But hey - the movie was on cable, and therefore it was part of the all-you-can-watch buffet I pay $40 or whatever it is each month for. So, really, you could argue - the more I watch, the cheaper my cable is per minute. Or something like that.

But anyway. Corpse Bride isn't something I'd want a copy of on dvd. I doubt I'd really be into watching it again. But it was entertaining. One thing that strikes me about the types of human-forms in these movies: the youthful have these attenuated bodies (seriously; the Johnny Depp character loos like he has advanced consumption) and pointy chins and small noses and huge eyes. (Hmmm...it would be interesting for someone to do a comparative study on anime faces and faces in Tim Burton movies). And the more "mature" characters are all, well, more caricatured. In one family, the man is very thin and little and meek and the wife is hugely fat. And in the other, the man is short and rotund (and UG-lee...I kept trying to think of what Rankin-Bass character that Victoria's father reminded me of; I think it's Heat Miser) and the woman is tall and thin-ish but with a huge bosom and a long, disdainful face.

Didn't someone somewhere make reference to Burton's "father issues"? I wonder...the youthful characters are all rather helpless-looking and appealing, the adults seem corrupted. Interesting, that. (Burton, himself: I would not exactly call him a "catch." If he asked me out on a date, the first thing I'd do is ask him to cut his hair into something resembling an adult's haircut. Yeah, yeah, he's a genius and all, but still...his hair creeps me out. It's like a Thompson Twins version of the combover).

But - the movie was enjoyable. Probably would have enjoyed it more had I seen it as a teenager when seeing things like a Johnny Depp-inspired character falling into a faint would have done deep and meaningful things to my psyche.

But I will say the central conceit - and I don't think I'm giving too much away here - of a guy being married to a dead chick...well, if you take it to its logical and non-cartoon conclusion, it's rather horrific and creepy. And not creepy in a fun way.

But - if you can suspend disbelief for long enough, it's a fun, if high-camp-in-a-Gothic-style movie.

I also watched one of the Harry Potter movies..um, Chamber of Secrets? I don't know - I've only ever read the first book (although I keep saying I should get/check out from the library the rest, and make a pot of soup some weekend, and do nothing but read Harry Potter). These movies are very enjoyable - they have several of the elements that for me, make a good movie:

1. Often visually striking or "weird." The whole Hogwarts setting - I find myself peering past the actors, at the backgrounds.

2. Characters who are different from the people I meet every day. That's why I despise most "chick flicks" - I can see variants of those women in my classes on a regular basis. When I watch a movie, I want to be transported - to go somewhere else. I love Hagrid and I love Ms. McGonigal (I ADORE her accent; if I were the pretentious 14 year old I used to be again, I'd try talking like her for a week). And even the child-wizards are interesting (tho' not as interesting to me as the TEACHERS at Hogwarts; I found myself laughing over some of the character traits they displayed and thinking, 'oh, that's like Colleague X!'). And a lot of the actors are not merely "pretty" people; they have interesting faces.

3. The idea of a separate, internally-consistent world with lots of detail (this is something I also love in books). There was a scene where Harry lost the bones in his arm playing Quidditch - so they take him to the infirmary, where the nurse comes at him with a bottle of "Skele-grow."

"Skele-grow." I love that. That, for me, sums up what is good about the Harry Potter movies - the whole magical world apart from our world, where it's perfectly logical that someone could lose the bones in their arm, and equally logical that some doses of "Skele-grow" could bring them back again.

4. The whole good-vs.-evil thing. I get a bit frustrated with "modern" novels and movies where there's not a clear hero, where everyone's screwed up and rooting around in the same mudpit, and no one ever seems to look up from the mud to see the stars. In the Harry Potter books or movies, Harry and his friends may screw up - and there may be characters who are somewhat treacherous - but things right themselves in the end, and you know that Harry and his friends, at least, have good intentions and good hearts.

Oddly enough - most of the movies I really like, and will watch over and over again, tend to be movies aimed at kids. I unembarrassedly say that "Babe" (yes, the movie with the pig) is one of my favorite movies of all time. I love cartoons. I think part of it is that the format of cartoons or otherwise "imaginative" movies allows the screenwriters to stretch a little - it almost seems like the movies aren't trying so hard to be commercial as the latest "date" movies are - and the stories are often more inspiring and transporting to me.

Maybe I'm just bitter because I'm a single unattached woman, but it's not really that entertaining to me to sit and watch whoever is the New Julia Roberts romp for two hours through some story about finding a cute guy, attracting the cute guy, losing the cute guy, and ultimately entrapping marrying the cute guy. I mean, yeah, it's a fairy tale, just as much as Cinderella or Snow White is. Frankly, I'd rather watch Cinderella, because at least the Disney version has talking mice, and at least some of the indie film versions go back to Grimm and show her ugly stepsisters cutting their toes off to try to fool the prince...

I'd much rather watch something that is in a different time or place - ideally a time and place that never really existed.