amber lunar horizon

To escape the heat and spend some time in someone else's air conditioning for a while, I went to a matinee of Minority Report this afternoon. Even though I'm generally not overly fond of Spielbgerg films, I don't regret having gone to see it. Actually after seeing the movie I am fairly sure that Spielberg and Cruise will ride hide on the box office charts for a few weeks. It may not have broken new ground in the science fiction genre, but it does qualify as a fairly decent summer movie.

Most of the plot was a given for me before I sat down, but there were elements of the Philip K. Dick story that echoed the Blade Runner film that I love so that stopped me from getting bored. Once again I haven't read the short story so the film was my only exposure to the idea of people being arrested before they commit a crime and that may have been a good thing. I could just sit back and watch the film rather than wondering why they changed important parts in the story.

The visual aspect of the movie gave me mixed feelings. I could have done without the chase scenes and the wipe board computer made me think of something that Apple might do in a decade. I also started to wonder why the future seemed to be draped under a blue tint. It didn't seem natural to me and I have no idea why Spielberg filmed it that way.

In the spirit of The Onion, which used to be based in Wisconsin, it made me happy to see that Aquafina and The Gap will still be around in the future. Sigh. Blatant product placement in films really annoys me and I know that it doesn't have to be that way. Somewhere down the line someone makes the decision to save my money by placing an ad in the movie and to me that often takes away from the story. I guess that Steve and Tom didn't want any more money coming out of their pockets to make the movie. Then again it might have been a decision by someone in the studio office. To be fair I can see the point that they were making with The Gap store, but it did start to wear on me.

...

After the movie I went by my parents place to see if they were in the pool. Ninety plus degree heat is enough to send me into the water. However by the time that I got there the day was starting to cool off and I was getting tired. Suddenly I didn't feel as warm anymore and only dived into the pool twice. Instead of swimming I wanted to sleep.

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Phantom Menace may not have done much for me, but my niece was asking question after question as we watched it this afternoon. She wanted to know who was good and who was bad. She wanted to know when they were going to race. She wanted to know when was Darth Vader going to appear. At first it was cute, but after fifteen minutes of questions it was starting to wear on me and I wished that she would just watch the movie. Plus some of her questions were being answered as we sat there.

...

Before I left for home I watched a small amount of television. In fact it was the longest amount that I had seen since I got back from Europe. For some unknown reason I sat through a documentary on Jennifer Capriati of all people and I don't even like tennis.

 
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