{"id":1259,"date":"2007-12-26T23:22:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-27T07:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2007\/12\/26\/xmas-movie-marathon-2007\/"},"modified":"2007-12-26T23:22:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-27T07:22:00","slug":"xmas-movie-marathon-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/2007\/12\/26\/xmas-movie-marathon-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Xmas Movie Marathon 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s become a tradition for D and me to do an all-day movie marathon on December 25th each year. So yesterday, we stayed at the AMC Mercado 20<\/a> for thirteen hours and watched five movies:<\/p>\n

Sweeney Todd<\/span>
Juno<\/span>
National Treasure: Book of Secrets<\/span>
Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story<\/span>
Charlie Wilson’s War<\/span><\/p>\n

Of those, National Treasure<\/span> was the weakest, though I wouldn’t say it was downright bad. It didn’t pretend to be anything more than what it was: a bombastic spectacle, made up of increasingly ludicrous action scenes lubricated by increasingly gratuitous historical name-dropping. The ending practically beats you over the head with the setup for another sequel, but I’m not sure how much more early American chronology<\/a> they can exploit before it just becomes too silly.<\/p>\n

Walk Hard<\/span> was broader than I expected, but absolutely hilarious with moments of pure genius. The scene with the Beatles–in India–is alone worth the price of admission. On the other hand, Sweeney Todd<\/span> was actually less manic than most of Tim Burton’s other films, though it is unrelentingly Gothic. In a good way. With song and dance!<\/p>\n

Charlie Wilson’s War<\/span> was very good, though it suffers from the montage\/time-compression problem endemic to “based on a true story” movies (and which Walk Hard<\/span> lampoons brilliantly). And I predict Julia Roberts’ wig will receive a well-deserved Razzie<\/a> nomination, if not a win.<\/p>\n

The best of the bunch, Juno<\/span>, was simply amazing.<\/span> Ellen Page, who was quite possibly the best thing in X-Men: The Last Stand<\/span><\/a>, really hits it out of the park here, but there’s not a single bad cast member. The screenplay<\/a> is sharp, and Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking<\/span>) totally spanks his old man<\/a> in the film-directing department.<\/p>\n

Other qualities of note:<\/p>\n

It’s a close call, but Walk Hard<\/span> beats Juno<\/span> by a nose for being most quotable<\/span> (especially out of context). “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly… obvious.”<\/p>\n

Charlie Wilson’s War<\/span> has the funniest single scene<\/span>, a signature Aaron Sorkin character-juggling merry-go-round during the titular Congressman’s first meeting with the scruffy CIA operative played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.<\/p>\n

Charlie Wilson’s War<\/span> also features the single creepiest sound effect<\/span>. No spoilers here, but listen very carefully during the party scene at the end, when Gust hands Charlie the memo about Kandahar.<\/p>\n

Best music<\/span> is a three-way tie: Sondheim’s score for Sweeney Todd<\/span> is bulletproof, but not all the actors are great singers; Walk Hard<\/span> parodies a variety of musical styles very well, but by the same token, can’t be totally original; and Juno<\/span> has the perfect soundtrack for its quirky tone, but it’s a very particular style.<\/p>\n

One last thing: We had to sit through that stupid National Guard music video<\/a> five times, and I can say conclusively that it doesn’t make any goddamn sense at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

We’re in LA for the next few days, visiting my family, which means we’ll get the chance to see more movies–some, like The Savages<\/span>, which weren’t showing near Mountain View, and others, like There Will Be Blood<\/span>, which hadn’t opened yet. I’m also looking forward to checking out the ArcLight<\/a> and the Landmark at Westside<\/a>, to see how they compare with Cinetopia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hooray for Hollywood!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s become a tradition for D and me to do an all-day movie marathon on December 25th each year. So yesterday, we stayed at the AMC Mercado 20 for thirteen hours and watched five movies: Sweeney ToddJunoNational Treasure: Book of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.curtiscchen.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}