Good news x3 for J: she passed her orals yesterday, she's been hired by Providence (40hr/wk, work @ home), & the relationship reconfig with E is going well. J & her M are off to Bend for the weekend for well deserved rest.
Amelia is getting too thin, is only eating a quarter can at a time. We're worried. G tried mixing two foods -- and Amelia exploded -- even onto the walls.
Artist's Way collage night yesterday was a major success. Five people came, all left very excited. P.S. Summer Artist's Way at the MAC ended this past Monday. I came along to help set up the labyrinth.
Movie-making, the past three days: Tues 8hrs, Wed 11hrs, Thurs 8hrs. This morning I had some little chest pains going on. ...Did I not say that walking was *mandatory*??
Took G to see "Charlie & the Chocolate Factory" yesterday. A few good visual moments, but sadly forgetable. The problem in a nutshell:
(1) Four "bad" parent-child combos... As object lessons, we're supposed to be able to see ourselves in them, and thus choose not to let those parts of ourselves go to such extremes. Instead, the producers' patterned the bad eggs after Jerry Springer guests -- you don't empathize, you're simply appalled.
(2) It looked like a fruit roll-up commercial. Fantasy works because you observe most of the laws of physics, possibly inventing a few of your own. But to simply ignore physics -- particularly momentum in the glass elevator -- makes you not care about what you're watching. Reality must be suspended judiciously.
(3) Nobody cared the slightest that the children were being picked off one-by-one like in a bad horror flick. That profound lack of human empathy was awful to look at. It could have been a directorial choice -- instead it was just carelessness with one's characters.
(4) Wonka's flashbacks were appropos of nothing -- we simply went to them whenever there was a lull in the action. Furthermore, Wonka is supposed to be a magical character. Giving us a clinical reading of how he has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder saps all the magic out of the universe -- and adds to the sense that we're watching a Springer-esque side-show of broken people.
(5) The oompa-loompas were just god-awful. And their musical numbers were unintelligible. We could barely pick out the lyrics.
The costume design was great, and the set for Charlie's house was great. The first room inside the factory was quite good -- but only because it was lifted entirely from the first film adaptation. Depp had a number of quite good acting moments.
I'm left wondering if the reconciliation with the father was in the book. Unfortunately there wasn't enough magic left in this universe to make dad's moving the house plausible.
Let the "Charlie & the Chocolate Factory" remake stand beside the "Stepford Wives" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" remakes: three half-assed attempts to capitalize on sure-sell properties -- none of which stand on their own, all of which insult the source material.
Amelia is getting too thin, is only eating a quarter can at a time. We're worried. G tried mixing two foods -- and Amelia exploded -- even onto the walls.
Artist's Way collage night yesterday was a major success. Five people came, all left very excited. P.S. Summer Artist's Way at the MAC ended this past Monday. I came along to help set up the labyrinth.
Movie-making, the past three days: Tues 8hrs, Wed 11hrs, Thurs 8hrs. This morning I had some little chest pains going on. ...Did I not say that walking was *mandatory*??
Took G to see "Charlie & the Chocolate Factory" yesterday. A few good visual moments, but sadly forgetable. The problem in a nutshell:
(1) Four "bad" parent-child combos... As object lessons, we're supposed to be able to see ourselves in them, and thus choose not to let those parts of ourselves go to such extremes. Instead, the producers' patterned the bad eggs after Jerry Springer guests -- you don't empathize, you're simply appalled.
(2) It looked like a fruit roll-up commercial. Fantasy works because you observe most of the laws of physics, possibly inventing a few of your own. But to simply ignore physics -- particularly momentum in the glass elevator -- makes you not care about what you're watching. Reality must be suspended judiciously.
(3) Nobody cared the slightest that the children were being picked off one-by-one like in a bad horror flick. That profound lack of human empathy was awful to look at. It could have been a directorial choice -- instead it was just carelessness with one's characters.
(4) Wonka's flashbacks were appropos of nothing -- we simply went to them whenever there was a lull in the action. Furthermore, Wonka is supposed to be a magical character. Giving us a clinical reading of how he has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder saps all the magic out of the universe -- and adds to the sense that we're watching a Springer-esque side-show of broken people.
(5) The oompa-loompas were just god-awful. And their musical numbers were unintelligible. We could barely pick out the lyrics.
The costume design was great, and the set for Charlie's house was great. The first room inside the factory was quite good -- but only because it was lifted entirely from the first film adaptation. Depp had a number of quite good acting moments.
I'm left wondering if the reconciliation with the father was in the book. Unfortunately there wasn't enough magic left in this universe to make dad's moving the house plausible.
Let the "Charlie & the Chocolate Factory" remake stand beside the "Stepford Wives" and "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" remakes: three half-assed attempts to capitalize on sure-sell properties -- none of which stand on their own, all of which insult the source material.
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