{"id":1135,"date":"2010-04-28T16:01:12","date_gmt":"2010-04-28T23:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1135"},"modified":"2021-05-14T19:09:56","modified_gmt":"2021-05-15T02:09:56","slug":"free-showtime-my-bane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/?p=1135","title":{"rendered":"Free Showtime.. my bane"},"content":{"rendered":"

Showtime gave me 4 days of free viewing of about 10 of their channels.  Whoa and wow and woe… too much television!  But I just have to share my opinions.  Because movie watching is meant to be shared.  Its why we pay outrageous prices to see movies in theaters.  Its just all better with a group of other people enjoying it also.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

So I watched Bottle Shock<\/em> with Alan Rickman and LOVED IT!  I’m a big Alan Rickman fan.  Yet the casting and writing and filming made this an enjoyable movie all around.  The acting was superb and Rickman says more without saying a single word than any man I’ve ever seen.  The movie was even more enjoyable knowing it was based on a true story.
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And I watched a lovely little film called Charlie Bartlett<\/em>.  I highly recommend it.  It is so reminiscent of a classic John Hughes teen flick and leaves you with that same good feeling about the characters that Hughes did.  I wanted to BE a friend of Charlie Bartlett, he was so likeable.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

And no, not THAT kind of Friend.  Although I would have completely moved in with Gustavo from Bottle Shock… but he’s my exact type, (dark, deep, smart, strong-willed, contained fire in a small package) so not quite surprising there!<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

THEN I buckled down and watched Twilight<\/em> to see what the hoopla was about.  After reading an interview with the author I couldn’t bring myself to read any of the books.  But there was the movie, free on Showtime, so I said, “What the hell.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

OMG… what a piece of drivel.  It should be used in film school as an example of WHY casting is important.  And WHY directing is important.  And Holy Shit… WHY camera work is important!  Besides the plot being boring… I really hated Edward.  Now, perhaps that’s because of who they cast or how badly his acting was directed or the fact that I prefer my men dark and deep not pale and pasty.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

But the close up scenes of him made me want to hurl.   I literally turned away cringing!  Then the close ups of Belle (which were almost as bad) made me realize… this was bad film making.  Because the wide shots of them acting together wasn’t too bad, it worked and he didn’t look so, so…. God, just icky. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps the newcomers didn’t have a director good enough to bring anything decent out of them.  But I could barely bring out any sympathy for the lead characters.  As a matter of fact I thought the entire supporting cast were far more interesting that either of the two leads.  Drop Belle and Edward and you might have an interesting film. <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Plot wise… Laurel K Hamilton (author) does vampires and werewolves so much better.  Because she’s given them a serious culture.  A deep, rich, intensely interesting history that I didn’t get any sense of from Twilight.   There is a film project for Hamilton’s Anita Blake vampire series and that one I’m definitely seeing in the theaters or upgrade my cable package if necessary.  Because Hamilton is a perfectionist who’ll make sure the flick is good enough for her characters.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Plus instead of having her heroine choose between the vampire and werewolf after several books.. she said, “ah, hell, have both!”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

I kind of like that philosophy! <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n


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Showtime gave me 4 days of free viewing of about 10 of their channels.  Whoa and wow and woe… too much television!  But I just have to share my opinions.  Because movie watching is meant to be shared.  Its why … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twirling-my-skirt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1135"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5031,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1135\/revisions\/5031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heatherbarton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}