It would seem that I am in the minority on this one, but I did not enjoy the latest Harry Potter movie. Maybe it was just the aggregate rottenness of the day, but it just didn’t work for me. I figured catching a 12:30 show on a Thursday would net me a less-than-full theatre, but alas I am a complete idiot. At least one bus full of little brats was in the parking lot already and apparently they had been there for some time as I was 20 minutes early.

Needless to say the place was packed full of obnoxiousness and my seat was less than desirable. I love Star Cinema, but man-o-man do not sit along the fringes. The speaker directly above/behind me was an order of magnitude louder than the others and slightly out of phase. So every piece of dialog was delivered with a really loud echo.

Then there’s the 3D. The best scene in the movie was completely ruined by the stupid 3D. If I thought the overall movie was as good as the last four had been I’d bother seeing it in a non-iMax.

Oh well, Half-Blood Prince & Deathly Hollows are what? 2 years away? At least someone slapped some sense into Emma finally.

A week later than intended I managed to catch an iMax showing of Spider-Man 3…

By my unofficial count, there were no less than 950 crying scenes. It was ridiculous. Which is unfortunate as the movie, outside the fucking emo, wasn’t horrible. At least from a CGI perspective.

As is his modus operandi over the run of this series Raimi ham-fisted the material and rendered barely adequate caricatures of the “real” people from the pages. I tolerated the organic web-shooters fiasco (a friend of mine ran that website!) but the Gwen Stacy thing bugs the living crap out of me. Ben Parker’s death formed the motivation for Peter to become a “hero” and to use his gifts to help people. The death of Gwen Stacy, however, truly changed the way Peter saw those gifts and crystalized the oft-quoted axiom: with great power, comes great responsibility. This moment is a pivotal one not just for Peter, but for the medium itself! Ignoring the story in favor of one that will get more teen girls and itty-bitty children in the theater is detestable, at best.

Instead of manufactured teen angst we could have had a movie with actual emotion and relevance for the viewer. Running away from this opportunity is tragic. Especially given that Raimi COULD have done a meaningful story given the unparalleled financial success of his little trilogy.

Note: The Venom and Sandman CGIs were fine. The Venom stuff, despite some whiners, is pretty close to the page and I found that I was genuinely impressed by their willingness to go that route. The Sandman stuff was wrong, but only “a little”. I don’t recall a point in time where he ever flew off as a cloud of dust.

The rotten tomatoes score is pretty close to how I feel. It was passable and rousing for a summer popcorn movie. Beyond that it remains in my memory only because of its failure.

Another weekend-long movie binge is behind me and I want to get the fuck out of the office fast as it’s a Monday.

Saturday I headed on over to the iMax @ Star Cinema. Boy was I pleased with that decision. The movie in and of itself wasn’t the best thing ever, but the sheer spectacle of it combined with 3D goggles and an iMax screen was just overwhelming. I can’t see how Superman will ever measure up in another medium… Spacey’s rendition of Lex Luther is as good if not a scosh better than Rosenbaum’s character on Smallville – whom I consider, at this point, to be the definitive Lex. At least as far as live action goes. The rest of the cast/movie is meh. Sorry kids but Singer & Spacey carried the flic as far as I’m concerned. You didn’t do a BAD job either, which is unfortunate. If you had I could just point out some stupid thing and say “hahaha, you suck” and we could both just move on. Instead you end up just being fairly expensive props.

Sunday rolled around and I made my first foray to the cesspit that is Marcus theaters in months to catch that flic people are all talking about. {Insert “meh” here} I won’t go so far as to say it was shitty shitty stinky farty smelly, but it certainly wasn’t entertaining. Even Keira was annoying which shouldn’t even be physically possible. Orlando did his level best to act himself out of a wet paper sack and failed miserably…again. Not even the Depp could save this train wreck. *ring* *ring* er…hello? Oh, Dead Man’s Chest it’s for you. It’s A COHESIVE FUCKING PLOT calling. Apparently you slipped it a roofie, stole it’s car and left town. You cheeky bastard.

In betwix the main stage was nestled a diamond in the rough. I speak, of course, of the Cinemax HD Saturday premiere of Wedding Crashers. Two words: FUN NY. This was my first viewing and I laughed just about the entire way through. Rachel McAdams was lovely, as always and the Wilson/Vaughn duet played perfectly. Kudos chaps. Kudos.