Having learned a valuable lesson, I am now composing this in Word. That certainly wasn’t the first time Blogger ate a lengthy post, so I’m done taking chances. Sigh. I wonder if the Typepad kids have to put up with that kind of rubbish… Ah well.

So yes. Here I am. It’s… what, like the 27th of October or something? I realized today that I’ve spent maybe four days at home the whole month. And those four days were spent working my ass off. But I love what I do, even though I’m not getting paid for it yet. And even though I begin to have creeping doubts that I will ever get paid, or see the work in print… Ah well.

In the midst of this whirlwind adventure of travel and intrigue that has been October 2005, I’ve managed to see a crapload of films. Many of them were enjoyed with M, and have already been reviewed for your pleasure. But over the past few days I’ve seen a couple more, and they were mostly enjoyable. I shall say a few words about them now.

1. Corpse Bride.

This is the new Tim Burton film, animated in the style of Nightmare Before Christmas. I was a bit uncertain about this one. I used to be a huge (like, mega-huge) Burton fan, but then he went and pulled that whole Planet of the Apes spectacle. That cost him serious respect points from yours truly. Serious points, yo.

But I was, for the most part, pleased with Corpse Bride. It was delightfully gothic, in that lovely Victorian gothic way. Gothic like Edward Gorey was gothic. It was (I thought) genuinely very romantic and tragic as well. What happens is, this fellow Victor accidentally marries a corpse. This leads to a love triangle between himself, the corpse bride, and the human woman he was all set to marry.

The only problem I really had with the film was that it was full of tedious song and dance numbers. There seems to be this convention that all animated films are “for kids”, and all films “for kids” must be chock full of tedious song and dance numbers. I blame Disney.

(Aside: during my research for this post, it has come to my attention that there is a fan site for the song “A Whole New World” from Aladdin. This discovery is causing me actual physical pain. Dear lord. Not a fan site for the FILM, mind you, but a fan site for THAT ONE SONG. And I must say, that song is so terrible, I am certain that hearing it would cause my ears to bleed and my brain to explode. EXPLODE, people.)

So yes, tedious song and dance numbers. They really didn’t add anything to the film. If anything, they distracted from what was actually a darn good plot. Go see this one, but think twice about taking the kids. Yes, I am aware of the above-mentioned “animation is for kids” philosophy, but FFS, the main character is A ROTTING CORPSE. And I do mean rotting. Also, it’s a safe bet that nobody else in the cinema wants to be around your kids. Sorry.

2. Stay.

Oh my. Where to begin? What was this film about? To put it as simply as possible, this film was about the nature of man’s existential struggle. Really, that’s as simply as I could put it. Really.

You’ve got Ewan McGregor as a psychiatrist, and he’s got this patient Henry. And I’m not sure where to start trying to explain the situation, but suffice it to say that before too long, you start wondering, WTF is going on here? What is real? Is Henry real? Is Ewan McG real? Are the other characters real? Are You The Viewer real? Well, ARE YOU?!? Cos honestly, you don’t know.

This is truly one of those great mindfuck films that leads your brain through a maze of total confusion before throwing a simple conclusion at you. The film really strongly reminded me of a couple of other things I’d seen, and when I finally figured out what it reminded me of, I figured out what was going on.

Thing is, I can’t tell you outright what other two films this reminded me of. If you’re at all familiar with them, you’ll know right away what the twist is, and I don’t like to spoil things for people. But if you absolutely MUST know, I am referring to this film and this film here.

The verdict: see this one, but only if you can tolerate mindfuck films.

I was gonna take the time to review Serenity, but to be honest I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to say about it. It was based on some cancelled TV show I never watched, and I didn’t have a very high level of interest. I didn’t pay strict attention, and wasn’t terribly impressed. It had its moments, but not enough of them. And to be totally honest, I sort of prefer my sci-fi films to have Mega-Extreme Violence of the flesh-eating, acid-blood, face-hugging, offspring bursting through the stomach variety. So there.