May 26, 2007

• The last installment of Pirates seriously sucks.  I love Johnny Depp, and almost every time he showed up on screen, the movie became semi-watchable.  Still; what a waste of time.  The movie is nearly 3 hours long, and there's so much self-indulgent crap that could've been cut, plus each character has his own little storyline that needs to be tied up, so you get several different "endings."

  I had to go to this thing, because it was a summer associate event, and I promised my friend who was organizing the event that I would go.  I promised her I'd go on Monday, though, and between Monday and Thursday I billed 65 hours on this one case I was working on.  There was just a very bad combination of things to file, so I spent every waking hour of Monday to Thursday at work -- and four hours on Tuesday night at a summer associate dinner, which was fun but caused me to get even less sleep that night -- and was in no mood to spend time at a work event on Friday night.  But I promised her, and two people had already bailed out, so I went.  And I'm glad I gutted through it.  Hopefully I get some kind of karmic credit for going, I got to catch up with my friend from work and his wife at dinner beforehand -- generally I hate third-wheeling, but his wife is delightful -- and I got the chance to observe "normal people" (by which I mean, the general audience at the movie, not people from my firm) and what they do on a Friday night.

  I guess it amazes me that this movie passes for entertainment, and will probably be very successful entertainment at that (if it generates as much revenue as each of first two, anyway).  I watched the first Pirates and really liked it; didn't see the second.  This one just seemed so over the top though.  Maybe I was just in a bad mood, but action movies just seem so stupid to me, and all the computer graphics that go into this one seem to stupid as well.  Like, how much money was invested in making this movie, and for what purpose?  I guess it brings entertainment to people, which is a social good, but it seems like most of the people in the audience would be better served by reading a newspaper for three hours and that the money paid to both make and watch the movie would be better spent feeding people in Africa or rebuilding inner-city schools.  I know that's a ridiculous and naive observation, but that's how I felt.  I mean, what's the point of living if we're going to spent what time we have on earth on completely stupid diversions.  That is not to say there's something wrong with fun, only that I don't understand WHY or HOW anyone could possibly think watching a stupid movie like this IS fun.  And proceeding from that premise, the only thing watching it is doing is taking up time, and isn't time something we would like more of rather than less of?

  • 9:32 pm
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