I was justing finishing off a pile of fragments I had on my desktop today. Wow, some seriously dark stuff…

• A Turn for the Worse Piano, Violin, and Clarinets. Years from now – this will be classified as a “fragment”. But it is still long enough to be useful for some applications
  
• Trio for Piano, Cello, and Clarinet Sounds like someone is leaving and feeling bad about it.
  
• Grave Matters Holy lush strings! Good background. The front and back sections are independently loopable.
  
• Simple Duet A simple piano and violin duet. Still getting used to that cursed violin. Touchy, touchy instrument, that violin is. This one isn’t so depressing as the others.
  

Yep. I went to see a horror movie. That’s spooky right there. It’s based on a Stephen King short story of the same name, which I’ve never read, because to be on the safe side, I’ve always assumed Stephen King was too scary for me. He’s even scary in real life, apparently — I once knew a guy who grew up with Stephen King, and it sounds like that whole town was seriously creepy. But I really like John Cusack, and I survived The Messengers all right, and though I try to avoid seeing reviews before picking out a film, I couldn’t help but realize just how bad Evan Almighty was. So 1408 it was.
John plays Mike Enslin, a writer who, after turning out one of those “stunning debut novels” that “heralds the arrival of a powerful new voice”, sinks into the realm of the new age section and the bargain tables, churning out book after book on hauntings: the 10 Scariest Hotels, 10 Scariest Graveyards, etc. He’s never seen a ghost, or indeed anything that really required explanation, apparently, but he gives his readers what they want — stories about strange atmospheres and eerie noises.
But he himself wallows in depression, drinking a lot (which you’d think might make him see a few things right there) and wearing his cynicism and annoyance with the world like a suit of armor. He lives like a beach bum in California, and dresses kind of like a regular bum, though I did like the baseball cap that read “Paranoia is total awareness”. It’s all to help him forget the pain of the daughter he lost. When he gets a postcard of the Dolphn Hotel in New York, telling him not to go to room 1408, it’s all just part of the job to him, another place trying to build up their business with a good ghost story.

It’s just so hard to find a good hotel room in New York these days.

Samuel L. Jackson (Gerald Olin, manager of the Dolphin) is billed in this movie also, which is actually kind of strange. He has one really good long scene with John at the beginning, before things get creepy, and then one odd little scene later, and that’s it. He’s really intense, as always, and scary in his own right as he tries to persuade John not to stay in the room, but it seems like something of a waste of Mr. Jackson’s talent. Tony Shalhoub (Men in Black and TV’s Monk — he’s from Wisconsin, just like me!) is also here, but don’t go for popcorn, or even blink hard, or you’ll miss his bit of exposition.
You know that John ends up in the room, though, in spite of Mr. Jackson’s best scares. Even a thick file folder full of pictures of all the gruesome deaths, stretching back 95 years, doesn’t dissuade him — not because he’s particularly brave, but just because he doesn’t believe in anything anymore.
This was, overall, a pretty creepy movie. But it’s more creepy in the sense of a drunk’s visions while in the grip of the DT’s, or someone having a really bad trip. It’s a tour of John’s subconscious, really, and the horror there is different than the standard horror movie stuff– it’s all more psychological horror, except for a few instances when the film lapses into slight silliness. The “Claw Hammer Maniac”, for instance, really wasn’t as scary as you might expect from the name — he made me jump, but only because he popped up out of nowhere. The really frightening things were much more subtle — mints appearing on the pillow out of nowhere, the TV blaring to life for no apparent reason, and the scariest thing of all: repeated playings of “We’ve Only Just Begun”, by the Carpenters. Yikes.
But aside from a few effects that just didn’t work out as they should have, it was pretty good. I’m giving this one three and a half idols. The film’s almost wall-to-wall John Cusack, which is fine with me — he’s a really good, low-key actor, which is what this movie needs. He plays a great cynic who suddenly finds out there’s more left in the world than he thought — not necessarily such good stuff, but at least more than he’d had before. And the moral of the movie is simple: When Samuel L. Jackdson tells you not to do something, you listen to the man. Seriously.

There are just so many movies these days to feed the inner comic geek! Strangely, I never got around to watching the first Fantastic Four movie, but I don’t think that mattered much this time. The FF was never a favorite of mine, but I’ve read enough of their comics to know what it means when “Latveria” shows up in the captions, and who always follows the Silver Surfer around, so I was pretty prepared for this sequel.
Too prepared, maybe. More than once I knew what people were going to say before they said it. I’d like to think that’s a sign of familiar characters well-written, but I think it’s more a sign of a predictable script. Still, they throw you pretty much right into the action, and you’re not likely to get bored watching.
Earth is in trouble. A strange, comet-like UFO has been spotted, and everywhere the thing goes, around the globe, bizarre things happen. The pyramids in Egypt are coated with snow. Power fails. And huge craters, 200 meters across, appear and look like they go all the way through the earth’s crust. That’s a looong way. Oh, and Reed and Sue are trying to plan a wedding in the midst of a total media circus. Obviously this crisis calls for some super-heroics.
Now, the guy playing Reed Richards (Ioan Gruffudd) is too young, but at least he can manage Reed’s super-brains. Jessica Alba, however, is totally unconvincing as a blonde, and I’m not sure why they bothered when they didn’t make her brother Johnny (Chris Evans) blond also. Ben Grimm (Michael Chiklis) is a pretty convincing Thing, though, and most of the scenes of he and Johnny bantering are good, and very much like the comic. Other such scenes just kind of feel like they were forced into the script, and were vaguely embarrassing, but on the whole, the actors have the camaraderie down, and it was nice to see.

The Human Torch and the Silver Surfer have a little heart-to-heart in the stratosphere.

The chaos (the environmental chaos, not the wedding planning chaos) is apparently being caused by a silvery man who rides around on a silvery, shiny surfboard. Hence, the Silver Surfer. (Duh. He’s played by two people: Doug Jones, who seems to be mainly a bit player and voice actor, and Laurence Fishburne as the Surfer’s voice. I never would have guessed that, though, because he really doesn’t sound like Laurence Fishburne.) Just like our heroes, he’s also cosmically charged, and an early encounter with him leaves Johnny’s powers unstable and prone to ‘swapping’ with his teammates. I remember that sort of thing happening in the comics also — poor Johnny often seemed to end up being the klutz, accidentally making things more difficult for the team, and that’s what happens here, all right.
The U.S. Army gets involved too, of course, and shoots missles and yells orders and does all the other things you expect but which never seem to help. It’s Sue that finally manages to make some sort of connection with the Surfer, because it’s always the pretty girl who gets through to the marauding, misunderstood bad guy, and they discover that they have a lot more to worry about than one surfing alien. My fellow comic geeks (and anyone who’s been looking for spoilers on the net) will know all about Galactus, who, thankfully, doesn’t look a thing like he does in the comics.
Does it work as an action movie? Absolutely. It’s a semi-mindless action-fest with good effects, just made for summer release on the big screen with giant stereo speakers everywhere. It isn’t much else, though. So two and three-quarter idols for this one. It really can be a fun movie if you don’t think about it too much, but I just can’t rank anything three full idols if I’m not interested in owning it on DVD, and on a smaller screen, this just wouldn’t have the visual kick it needs. From what I’ve heard about the first movie, it’s at least better than that, but that isn’t saying much. If you really want a good team super-hero flick, go rent X-Men 2 and watch it on the biggest screen you can find.

I’ve been posting music to the site… just been forgetting to tell you all that I’ve been doing it… so these may be old to you:
– Dragon and Toast
– Sonatina in C Minor
and a few others I’ve already forgotten about. oops.

Okay, I realize this is going to be a total blockbuster. If you sit quietly for a moment, you can probably hear the distant ‘ka-ching’ of this film raking in the ticket money. The problem is, I’m not exactly the best person to be reviewing it. I did see Ocean’s 11 (both versions, actually), but that was a long time ago. And I didn’t like either all that much, so I didn’t watch Ocean’s 12. Frankly, 11 was already so crowded, I thought adding one more star would make the movie implode or something. And… I don’t like George Clooney. Yes, I am female. I just don’t think he’s particularly handsome or charming. I read something once where they compared him (favorably!) to Cary Grant, and nearly fainted on the spot. Those of you who don’t understand what I mean need to go watch Notorious.
I’m also kind of indifferent to Brad Pitt. Both he and George Clooney seem like good enough actors, though I’ve only ever seen them playing the same kinds of parts all the time. I guess if you’re good at it, stick with it… However, on the major plus side, this film does have Matt Damon in it. Yummy. If they ever do an Ocean’s 14 (which I have to pray they won’t, because that film really would implode), then they need to give Matt much, much more screen time. Seriously.
Okay, to the plot: One of the original Eleven, Reuben (Elliot Gould, wearing glasses that look like they should make him fall on his nose) has been double-crossed and generally taken to the cleaners by his partner in a new casino, Willy Bank (Al Pacino, and I can hardly believe that they’ve already made two of these movies without him). Danny Ocean and friends, of course, can’t let this slide. But Bank is a high roller — a really, really high roller, so he’s hard to tackle. Not that this stops our heroes, of course. Bank’s weakness? His ego, which is probably true for anyone who’s ever earned more than four or five million dollars in his or her life. I hate to think what a Vegas billionaire’s ego is like.

See, the poster’s already at critical mass, and I only count twelve people.

Now, this is of necessity a huge scheme. The plan they settle on is to sabotage Bank’s casino on opening night by rigging the games — not so the team wins, but just so the house loses — which must be easier than trying to get one person to win, but still a daunting task. They work out ways to rig each game individually, mostly retreating back to old-fashioned methods like weighted roulette balls because the casino is so high-tech. But the real problem is the supercomputer security system, Greco, named for its creator, Greco Montgomery (played by Julian Sands, who I also wish would’ve had more screen time). Greco monitors all the games down to the last detail, and it’s so high-tech, it’s an A.I. It thinks and reasons.
Just a bit of an aside: I don’t think they used nearly so many gadgets in the first film of this trilogy, though I may be misremembering — all I remember for sure is that Matt was a shy pickpocket. (He’s still shy here, but he seems to have forgotten how to pick pockets.) But you should not only suspend your disbelief for this film, you should probably send it over to a different movie. They have gadgets for everything. X-ray machines that look like a piece of cloth, magnetrons that look like cell phones — they even have some sort of super-pheremone-releasing thing that’s applied as a patch to the skin, and apparently can make anyone turn into a raving sex machine. They make Matt use that last one on Ellen Barkin, who plays Bank’s right-hand woman, Abigail Sponder, though I don’t see why. Silly fake nose or no silly fake nose, he’s still Matt Damon.
So they figure out ways to rig all the games, and, since they can’t outwit Greco, they decide to do the next best thing, which is to force it to reboot, thus allowing them somewhere around two minutes to make the house lose big. That doesn’t seem like much time, but in Vegas, it’s enough. This requires more gadgets, of course, including one that has to be maneuvered into place on a semi, and, well, it all gets wilder from there. That’s without even mentioning the contrived side plot where Virgil (Casey Affleck, who has a very bizarre part to play here but still does much better than his brother ever could) starts a labor movement in a Mexican plastics manufacturing company. I told you it was contrived.
You have to remember that there just had to be all kinds of fun references to past movies that I didn’t catch, so people familiar with the first two will probably enjoy this one even more. Still, even for me, it was a fun, energetic sort of film — you know a gadget will save the day, but how can they possibly do it in time? It’s a lot like a Bond movie in that respect, and the superspy himself wouldn’t have been out of place here. There’s a lot going on, lots of faces you recognize, all the glitz you can handle, and more misdirection than any Vegas magic act.
So three and a quarter idols for me, but if you like George Clooney, then you should probably consider it three and a half idols. It’s pretty much all flash and no substance, but the flash is so good you don’t mind much. I do hope, though, that the movie’s way off base in how it portrays the safety standards at Las Vegas hotels, or one of these days, we may lose an entire generation of high rollers and Texas Hold-Em’ champs to just one little earthquake.