This last weekend was great fun. As it was Danny's birthday we spent much of it doing the Danny Favorites; we went to the zoo with friends (which was awesome!), we played a ton of Civilization V, and we watched some movies, including National Treasure 2 and finally finding and re-watching The Phantom Menace. The former was fun, and aside from the "romantic" subplots I enjoyed it. The relationship between Nicholas Cage's and Diane Kruger's characters was pretty much the kind of relationship I totally hate seeing in films, because as friends they totally work, but because it was a movie they had to get back together at the end, even though they'd pretty thoroughly proved that outside of life-or-death adventure situations, they couldn't stand each other and were no good for each other romantically. (Not to mention there was a romantic subplot about an identical relationship between Nicholas Cage's character's father and estranged wife getting back together for the exact same reason.) The movie was considerably less enjoyable for me than it might have been because so much of it was spent listening to the male characters harp at the female characters. Like, really, an enjoyable movie for me generally involves less vindictive bitching on part of all parties.
As for Phantom Menace, it's still terrible, but it's way less terrible than Revenge of the Sith, which most of us still agree is less terrible than Attack of the Clones. It's hard to tell if Liam Neeson's reticence is our imagination, knowing he didn't want to be in the film after seeing the script, or just the way he decided to play the character. Overall, aside from the fact that the plot makes no damn sense, it is the best of those three, and while Jar Jar is totally still annoying, he's not as bad as "I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND".
I had never really given much thought to HOW hare-brained Qwi Gon Jinn's antics are, but by the end of the film I half thought he ought to secretly be a Sith. Not that I of all people have any problem with the "haggard old cop who's seen too much in the line of fire" stereotype, but it did make him a kind of strange Jedi.
Episode I also has the distinguishing privilege of still using Yoda-the-puppet instead of only Yoda-the-CGI. The big question we were left with in the end was, why is Boss Nass in charge of the Gungans? He clearly isn't one. Dustin suggested he must be a Hobgungan, which is as good an explanation as any, really!
The zoo trip was especially fun. We brought along Dusty, Bret, Christian and Alicia, and we did manage to make it there pretty early. The cool thing about going to the zoo early in the day is definitely that you get to see a lot of the animals who usually aren't around, given the weather here, by mid-afternoon. Notable things included cheetahs snuggling and playing together, prairie dogs doing all kinds of weird things-- from cute little bark-jumps to one trying for five or six minutes to shove his butt into another's face while it continued to evade him (Dustin: That must be the Bitch Puddin' prairie dog. Danny: What's this smell like? Huh? What's this smell like?) to rolling around in the dirt to get dry after a mysterious bath-- and Dik-diks being super adorable and dashing and jumping around. Christian also did vile things to the Oryx statue next to the Oryx pen, which we even took a picture of for posterity; and on the way out, it was warm enough that the turtles had made an appearance, sunning themselves on the logs below the bridge in. They were the cutest of all! But yes, that was a nice outing.
Tonight, D&D will continue. I need to check to see if I finished last week's summary, hmm.
As for Phantom Menace, it's still terrible, but it's way less terrible than Revenge of the Sith, which most of us still agree is less terrible than Attack of the Clones. It's hard to tell if Liam Neeson's reticence is our imagination, knowing he didn't want to be in the film after seeing the script, or just the way he decided to play the character. Overall, aside from the fact that the plot makes no damn sense, it is the best of those three, and while Jar Jar is totally still annoying, he's not as bad as "I HAVE THE HIGH GROUND".
I had never really given much thought to HOW hare-brained Qwi Gon Jinn's antics are, but by the end of the film I half thought he ought to secretly be a Sith. Not that I of all people have any problem with the "haggard old cop who's seen too much in the line of fire" stereotype, but it did make him a kind of strange Jedi.
Episode I also has the distinguishing privilege of still using Yoda-the-puppet instead of only Yoda-the-CGI. The big question we were left with in the end was, why is Boss Nass in charge of the Gungans? He clearly isn't one. Dustin suggested he must be a Hobgungan, which is as good an explanation as any, really!
The zoo trip was especially fun. We brought along Dusty, Bret, Christian and Alicia, and we did manage to make it there pretty early. The cool thing about going to the zoo early in the day is definitely that you get to see a lot of the animals who usually aren't around, given the weather here, by mid-afternoon. Notable things included cheetahs snuggling and playing together, prairie dogs doing all kinds of weird things-- from cute little bark-jumps to one trying for five or six minutes to shove his butt into another's face while it continued to evade him (Dustin: That must be the Bitch Puddin' prairie dog. Danny: What's this smell like? Huh? What's this smell like?) to rolling around in the dirt to get dry after a mysterious bath-- and Dik-diks being super adorable and dashing and jumping around. Christian also did vile things to the Oryx statue next to the Oryx pen, which we even took a picture of for posterity; and on the way out, it was warm enough that the turtles had made an appearance, sunning themselves on the logs below the bridge in. They were the cutest of all! But yes, that was a nice outing.
Tonight, D&D will continue. I need to check to see if I finished last week's summary, hmm.
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