Thursday, September 12, 2002

I'm afraid I'm going to have to cut this short - I've got to fix a serious problem at work. By the time I finish, it'll be too late to finish the movie. I'm stopping it just after Cole disappears from the mental hospital and returns to the present. Er. Future. Er. You know what I mean. =) Hey - Gorshin just did a Riddleresque thing with his tongue and lips...and there's the Dream Scene again and I have to comment on it - because the guy who runs by the kid in the Dream Scene (not the one who gets shot, but that's not a clear distinction right away) is Goines (Pitt) this time...as I mentioned before, we're off on the red herring for a while now. anyway - gotta cut thsi short, but I'll be back to it tomorrow evening...

9:52:15 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Crap - just wiped out a page worth of writing. ah well - Goines, monkeys, a Florida Keys reference or two, keys, more monkeys, Monkey Business, a red herring, and a nutcase walking past security. Except security briefly looks like the guard working for the scientists - and he's reading the Weekly World News with Batboy on it - anachronism, maybe? When did he first appear? Double crap - gotta take a break and do some work. Be back in a few...

9:43:59 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

...and we're introduced to the guy who knows he's not from outer space - he's mentally divergent, hallucinating an alternate reality to escape problems in the real world. This is, well, key. Yup - Frank Gorshin, a.k.a. The Riddler, is the lead psychiatrist in the mental hospital... One of the fun things about this movie is that Cole IS insane - even if he's right. Willis does a great job playing insane here. He throws off the attempts to verify his insanity by the assembled shrinks - who are sitting at a table, lined up akin to the Scientists from the present/future/whatever. Tracking the dialogue is always just a bit confusing... Railly's reminded of something by Cole again, and then Cole freaks out about years and...the Dream Scene shows up. This time, we can clearly see that the woman running is Railly, but we can't see the face on the guy who gets shot. I've never much cared for the night-time mental hospital scene. It's got some great Pitt bits, but seems a little overlong for what it is. But we do get to see Willis eat a spider. Ok, the scene does have value - Pitt's reaction to Willis eating the spider is great.

9:34:45 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I like it when a movie does a lot of little things. 12 Monkeys does a LOT of little things. From Cole's reaction to seeing sunlight, to a repetition of the hands-on-the-wall-butt-to-the-camera-being-washed imagery from when Cole came back from above ground in the future. It feels like every scene in the mental hospital, or at least in the patient area, is shot at a slight angle. "Games, games, here's some games... *rattles chained door w/ games behind* games that want to get out..." Brad Pitt is fucking fantastic in this. I still think he's better here than Fight Club. Strange, though - Pitt's character in 12 Monkeys freaks out in his attack on consumer culture in a way not unlike Tyler Durden. Jeffrey Goines, is that his name? yeah. That's it. More fun with Jeffrey ranting about an inmate who wanted the charge nurse to show tv shows from the day before - "you can't turn back time!"

9:27:32 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I seem to remember reading that the jail the first Baltimore scenes were shot in was an actual decommissioned jail...I know the mental hospital was a real mental hospital at one point. Seeing Bruce Willis drooling over himself is really kinda disturbing. Railly (Stowe's character) feels like she's seen Cole before - more fun playing with time... Gotta copy some dialogue I really love: Cole: "What year is this?" Railly: "What year do you think it is?" Cole: "1996" Railly: "That's the future, James. Do you think you're living in the future?" Cole: "1996 is the past." Railly: "No, 1996 is the future. This is 1990." In those six lines, the entire madness of time in this movie is set up for us. Now it's time to get confused. =)

9:22:02 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Hey look! It's the Scientists. They rock my world in their spookiness. I love the various things that Gilliam came up with to look great AND save money - the decaying factories, the weird machinery... Actually, Gilliam's done a LOT with retro machinery in both 12 Monkeys and Brazil - it's not as consistent a pattern as Cronenberg's organic machinery fixation, but still... Madeline Stowe's got nice legs. Sorry, but they built a 5 second shot on her having nice legs. =)

9:16:08 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Ok, he wasn't actually at the surface yet. He was in the sewers - NOW he's in the surface...Philly, I think. I had absolutely no clue how to react to this scene the first time I saw this. When the bear roars, I was certain that it was a tape and a stuffed bear. Gilliam's knack for freaky sound comes into play here, as a children's choir singing 'Silent Night' floats in the background as Bruce explores a decrepit department store, all decked out for Christmas. I saw La Jetee, the French avant garde film Twelve Monkeys was based on, for a class in school. Weird film, even weirder than 12 Monkeys. We see the 12 Monkeys poster with 'We Did It', and a great shot of a male lion roaring from a ledge on a high building. And then we see Cole's butt - Bruce's character is named James Cole. Forgot that...

9:12:49 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Now we're in some prison...Bruce Willis is talking to Jose - who shows up again in World War I, I think. BRuce is volunteered for something - there's refernces to previous volunteers going insane, and then he's in a full body condom. Quasi high-tech costuming covers him, as he rises...to the surface. Hey - Frank Gorshin's in this. Didn't he play the Riddler?
9:08:30 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I remember seeing this in the theater and getting confused as hell from the beginning - the opening quote they show seems like a traditional post-apocalyptic bit - "5 Billion people will die of a disease in 1997" or something like that...then there's a line underneath the dire quotes - attributing them to a schizophrenic in 1990. Then we get some strange credits, and the first appearance of the Dream Scene. The Dream Scene shows up often enough that I'll be talking about it a LOT later.

9:06:24 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Things have finally calmed down, and I finally feel sane enough to go watch 12 Monkeys. So, here we go - live blogging of one of the most interesting movies of the '90s...
9:04:01 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

My new sofa and loveseat are very big. They've got enormous poofy cushions, so they take up more space than their dimensions...but my god, they're comfy. Sadly, my chair here at work is nowhere near as comfortable. Dammit. =)
12:59:40 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I've decided not to rearrange my living room now - I was thinking I'd do something for when the furniture got here, but I'll play with it later. The furniture's on the way as we speak - just got a call from the delivery people letting me know. Woohoo!
8:03:38 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

AltaVista tries to beat Chinese ban. The second search engine to be banned by the China is looking at ways of making the site available to Chinese surfers. [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY] I heart beating the Great Firewall - good luck, AltaVista!
7:47:10 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Strike in India's hi-tech capital. The Indian city of Bangalore has been brought to a halt by a strike over a water dispute with neighbouring Tamil Nadu state. [BBC News | TECHNOLOGY] This is the area of India that I just *have* to visit. That bandit I've mentioned in the past operates in this region...a co-worker of mine from Bangalore blames corrupt government officials from Tamil Nadu for his continued success. It seems that Bangalore and Tamil Nadu really don't get along at all - Bangalore is the most modern city in South Asia, while Tamil Nadu is, well, not. We're working with Wipro, a technology outsourcing type firm in Bangalore, to do sustaining work on some old revisions of our core software. We're reconfiguring a machine and sending one of my fellow release engineers out to Bangalore to get it all set up properly. I was almost tempted to ask for the gig myself, but Bangalore is *hot*. I can't stand heat. =)

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