Tonight, we went to see my mother-in-law’s new movie Telephone Pole Numbering System at the Northwest Film Forum. My wife and her mother are both actors. Julie was a child actor (she was in some of the old James Garner Polaroid commercials) and her mom was on Days of our Lives back in the 70s. I have always had a passion for movies and spent significant time back when I lived in LA writing bad screenplays (not bad on purpose of course). This movie was mostly OK – it had some very funny bits but also long stretches that were uninteresting and seemingly unrelated to the plot. Luckily, all the parts with my mother in law fell under the “funny bits” category.

While it was cool to see a family member on the big screen, I am really interested in getting more involved with the NWFF. The organization is a not-for-profit film arts organization that includes a two-screen cinema in downtown Seattle, production facilities for rent, workshops and classes plus a non-profit film studio (which produced Telephone Pole Numbering System). In many ways, this is like community theater, but for movie making. I got to chat briefly with the film’s director Bill Weiss, but Patrick was up past his bed time so I’ll need to make time for a longer chat with these folks soon.

If you could make a movie, what would it be? For me, if we’re talking pie-in-the-sky, no-real-world-constraints, it would be “Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League” hands down. (Laugh while you can, monkey boy)

Favorite Line from Telephone Pole Numbering System:

“If I was a tree, I’d want to be a telephone pole”
“You’re too short”

Halloween is the time for scary movies. Julie and I have seen two since I got back from OOPSLA – 28 Days Later… and The Grudge. I’m not sure I would have called 28 Days Later “Scary As Hell” but I did really like it. It had a real plot and real characters that had real arcs. True, it also had zombies running around, but that was much less the focus than I expected. In fact, I think it had some thinly veiled social commentary (that I can’t discuss w/o spoiling the movie).

On the other hand, The Grudge is simply a run-of-the-mill haunted house story. Not that scary and no plot or characters worth mentioning. Simply a series of loosely strung together scary scenes with little consistency. Which was a bummer as it did have a great opening scene. After all the comparisons to The Ring (which I liked, though not as much as most people) and the fact that Sam Raimi was producing, it was very dissappointing.

Of course, neither of these can compare to the potential horrors of election fraud on Tuesday. Apparently, over 80 lawsuits have already been filed (on both sides) which I don’t take as a good sign.

My wife and I saw the latest Harry Potter movie over the weekend. It’s my favorite so far. I’m not sure if it was the new director, or just the fact that this book was longer than the first two, but I thought this movie spent far less time on stuff from the book that wasn’t relevant to the story. I took a film class back in high school, and the teacher explained that every scene in a movie has to do one of three things.

1. Advance the plot
2. Advance the character
3. Get a laugh

I amended rule #3 to be “Get a reaction” since there are often scenes in a horror or thriller movie that are there just to scare you. The first two Harry Potter movies seemed to spend a significant amount of screen time on getting the reaction: “I remember that from the book”. For example, in the last movie, when Harry and Ron drink a potion to transform into Malfoy’s two henchmen (henchboys?) , Hermione accidentally transforms herself into a cat. The only reason that scene is in the movie is because it’s in the book. Not having Hermione doesn’t affect Harry and Ron’s mission (i.e. it didn’t advance the plot) nor was there any fallout or change to Hermione in later scenes (i.e. it didn’t advance the character). It doesn’t even get a laugh. Given the Harry Potter movies are around 2 1/2 hours long each, there’s no excuse for extraneous scenes like this.

Kill Bill Vol 2, Troy, Shrek 2 and Harry Potter so far with Spider-Man 2 and King Arthur on the horizon. Sure we’ve had Van Helsing and The Day After Tomorrow, but so far the summer movie season is looking good.

There are a wide variety of web pages to get movie times information. How about web services? My wife and I went to see a movie on Saturday (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind – loved it). On the way there, we got worried we weren’t going to make it in time. I figured I’d check if there was any other movies starting a little later in case we didn’t get there in time. Of course, I have my new Smartphone, so I wanted to use it. This turned out to be much more difficult than it should have been.

MSN Mobile entertainment section was useless – lottery and horoscope only. There don’t seem to be many sites tuned for smartphone access. TV Guide has a smartphone site - in case I want to check what’s on TV while I’m out?

I want a program that downloads local theatre movie times into my phone. Not too much to ask. In fact, I’d write it myself and give it away if there was a simple source for the data. However, for all the movie time sites, I can’t find a web service or even a source for the raw data.

Is there a movie times web service that I just don’t know about? If there isn’t where do the movie sites get their movie times data and how can I get a copy?

Thanks to Werner for linking to the Flick Filosopher. I liked the analysis of The Passion of the Christ and the comparison Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I especially liked her Best & Worst Of 2003 article as well. An you have got to respect anyone who has “The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension” at the top of their list of 100 comfort movies. Only downer – no RSS feed. <sigh>

The other movie review site I read regularly is Mr. Cranky. I’m a big fan of his unique comments on bad movies such as ” I have never come closer to tearing my own penis off and throwing it at the screen while watching a movie” (Laura Croft 2) “Chris Klein is like Keanu Reeves without any talent…Frankly, I have a hard time even comprehending that sentence and its terrible implications.” (Rollerball) and “This film caused the kind of pain I’d normally associate with being shot through the thigh by a rusty nail from a high-powered nail gun” (Saving Silverman). Again, no RSS feed. <double sigh>