Trying to whip my new short story into shape. I need to get it into the mail by Tuesday morning to make the deadline. I also posted two new book reviews at Onyx Reviews: Long Gone by Alafair Burke and Flashback by Dan Simmons. The latter garnered a lot of negative—acrimonious even—reviews because of its right-wing conservative stance, but I enjoyed it for the most part. I don’t believe the book’s politics are necessarily Simmons’ but even if they are, it doesn’t matter. He posited a future where certain things happened, extrapolating from contemporary pressure points, and went on from there. He could have picked a different set of stressers and pissed off a different political faction. I am a moderate liberal, mostly, but I didn’t find my hackles rising…much. Writers like Tom Clancy irritate me much more, for some reason.
We went to see Men in Black III yesterday. We went to a 3:45 showing. I expected the multiplex (17 screens) would be a madhouse and that there would be a queue to get into that particular showing. Instead, we walked straight up to the box office, had no line at the concessions stand, and entered a mostly empty theater twenty minutes before showtime. It never did fill up. There was a much larger audience when we saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel at an earlier screening the previous week. We’d seen the trailer for MiB3 and thought it would be amusing.
It was. It wasn’t the best. movie. ever. or anything like that, but it was a lot of fun. Will Smith was firing on all cylinders, and Tommy Lee Jones was his usual cranky self. The revelation was Josh Brolin playing a 29-year-old version of Agent K (Jones). Some reviewers speculated that Jones might have dubbed in the dialog, but that is apparently not the case. Brolin deserves some sort of award for the way he mimicked Agent K’s voice and demeanor while at the same time playing him as a looser, less uptight version of him. Michael Stuhlbarg (Boardwalk Empire) plays a character named Griffin who experiences reality in five dimensions: he can see every possible variant of reality, all at the same time. He is charming and full of energy. He reminded us of a younger Robin Williams and was dressed like Williams’ character from The Fisher King. Lots of cool and gross aliens and whiz-bang effects. For the most part they set aside the problems inherent with time travel and just inject Agent J back into 1969. There are a couple of scenarios that deal with the issues a black man might face in that era, and then they drop that, too, all for the better. And there is a poignant revelation toward the end that surprised the hell out of us.
The only negative thing I have to say about the film is the 3D experience. I can’t say that it enhanced the film one little bit and we had to wear these stupid glasses for two hours, which is a pain when you already have to wear glasses. The best 3D effect was the billboard that told you to put on your 3D glasses—those glasses really popped out of the screen. There were a few 3D trailers: who on earth thought The Great Gatsby needed to be in 3D? The estate footage looked impressive with the added depth, but not much else seemed to be the better for it. I haven’t seen many films in 3D in recent years—I think Coraline was the last one. It had a few impressive moments where ghostly apparitions seemed to emerge from the screen and float around the theater. In general, I’m not sure I’m sold on the concept.
