Even though the story itself seems rather played out (nerdy bookworm makes good through imagination), I thought they did a pretty nice job with the story. It moves along well with a nice blend of tension, tragedy, sighs of relief and guffaws. And considering it was 1984, the effects are pretty good. They seemed to have a lot of fun with size.

 My favorite line, “Don’t worry, it’s a racing snail.”

 I did like the first 50 min of Never Cry Wolf though. There are some really awesome shots of the Canadien North or Alaska. I am not sure where they filmed it. The story of the man studying the wolf is interesting, though sometimes it seems like things worked out a little too well. A big plus of watching this with sixth graders was watching them all squirm as he started eating mice.

The imdb site said that some wolf expert is very skeptical as to the scientific accuracy of the wolf man’s findings. I feel like there are some interesting comparisons between this and grizzly man. Maybe Never Cry Wolf is Grizzly Man without a camera and not on crack. 

 What happened then? Not a whole lot. They establish some other characters and a subplot involving a peddlar with some sort of foreign accent. The first act ends with a really bizarre, long ballet set. The dancers act out some sort of drug induced vision that the girl has after sniffing some egyptian salt she got from the peddlar. When I say long, I mean long, it was probably 7 minutes of dancing but felt like 15. How did they fit this into a Western?

The second act is a little more satisfying story wise as the protagonists get together after some drama and stay together after a fiery climax. But there was really no story created tension in the whole thing. And the songs just weren’t that good. I mean the titular track is fun and all, but no where close to anything from West Side Story, The Music Man or Guys and Dolls. And the rest are even more pedestrian.

I don’t know how this bodes for the Sonics, but I think there is an interesting comparison to be made with the movies about Seattle and Oklahoma. For Seattle I would choose Singles, because not only about Seattle, but has a big music component.  Singles, while not a great film tried to capture a certain moment in time and is certainly more watchable than Oklahoma. I would also say that the quality of the music is way better. But Oklahoma! has one very well known  song and a reputation as a great musical and the world acknowledges it as the superior movie. Oklahoma City has acquired a reputation as an NBA city because they sold out one season of basketball. I can  only hope that Seattle’s luck is better with the basketball than cinema.

 I thought this movie was pretty good. Lots of angst, but they did a nice job of making Umbridge very distasteful, Luna a little odd and made some of the wizarding very spectacular. There was a lot left out, but nothing that really detracted from the story. I appreciate that he kept it under two hours.

 This movie seemed to attempt some of that same blending, but it felt a bit forced. There were some great CGI fight scenes but the bad peter parker theme was just not compelling for me.

But in other movies Spielburg is just not as good. I tihnk the things that make minority report good are that he spends less time showing us the humanity of the characters and more time having Tom Cruises eyeballs taken out. Now that’s a movie!

also interesting was a teacher’s decision to show this to an ESL history class. they had absolutley no clue what was going on. i have never seen so many heads hit so many desks so fast.