I treated myself to a geeky double feature.
I Robot I found surprisingly enjoyable. I was expecting to be disappointed in Alex Proyas, whose Dark City is one of my favorites. So yeah, it's nowhere near as amazing a film, it's got much more of a mainstream big production feel, but it's got some nice touches. I think. Now that I think back on it, I can't quite remember them. But Will Smith was pretty likable, robots were... uh??? OK, well, cross Robocop with Minority Report, and you get I Robot I guess. *sigh*
Maybe I've lost the mild enthusiasm I felt at the time because right after I saw Spider-Man 2, during most of which I was bored out of my mind. I don't get why this franchise is so great. I also don't get why we need more movies made from comics. Who asked for them? They're not even science fiction, they're just silly nostalgia pieces and Hollywood at its uninspired best. *sigh*
Posted by Kai Carver at August 6, 2004 09:04 PMOne thing I forgot to mention about I Robot - oops, forgot the comma, the title is I, Robot (I have to have a soft spot for a movie with such a title: I, Robot, You, Robot, We All, Robot!).
So anyway I didn't like the way the feel of the movie is affected by the extensive product placement. That's one reason why it felt similar to Minority Report. I don't want to get all moralistic, and I guess it's like everything, you can do it well or badly. I love the way movies can make you feel like you live in a wonderful, slick, aesthetic, material world. But when the ads are too obvious, and when the movie feels like a stroll through the mall, something's gone wrong.
I wish product placement was a category in IMDB. And legally requiring product placement disclosure would be nice. Information Just Wants To Be Free, but maybe it needs a little government help sometimes.
Hey it turns out the deodorant trees in Repo Man were a product placement. I don't know if I'm disappointed.
On a totally different subject, why doesn't the above link work the way I want it to? It says: "point to the 16th bullet in the document". I've wasted lots of time on trying to get Xpointer-type technology to work here (works in Mozilla), but it only seems to work in very specific cases. Pity. This will be very useful when the browsers finally get around to implementing it usefully.
Maybe an extension is the way to go? Erik, how's that extension work going? Is it easy to make an extension? I may have some free time in August. I have various little projects lined up, wonder if I'll get to any of them.
Posted by: Kai Carver at August 7, 2004 06:43 AM