picture by Jupiter
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Troy
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I'm going to see Troy again today. The sad thing is, I didn't even like it that much the first time around. Sure, I appreciated the male nakedness that was displayed but that was about it. The plot itself was deeply annoying. If I understand things correctly then Brad Pitt's Achilles was supposed to be the hero of the film. Well, I couldn't see it. He was probably the most unpleasant hero I've ever come across (Ellie said that Clint Eastwood's characters are probably worse but since I've always avoided seeing him on screen I don't really know). He didn't make me feel for him and I was wishing that his death came about sooner. He didn't deserve the girl he got and, quite frankly, I couldn't understand why she still loved him after what he did to Hector. Now, I know that the Hector thing was straight out of the 'Iliad' as were many of the things that bothered me and I don't mind that. What does bother me is the fact that they were trying to carve a positive hero out of something that couldn't possibly be positive. He was obnoxious and cruel for the most of the film and the inexplicable love for Briseis (and the relief he got from it) was out of place. And the other thing that annoyed me was the overabundance of The Big Gestures. It reminded me of the time I went to see Intolerable Cruelty. Again, I know what they were for - to show that both Paris and Helena (and possibly someone else I can't remember right now) felt really bad about what they've brought on for Troy but still... Say it once and I understand! You don't have to hammer it home by having someone exclaim "I will sacrifice myself" every five minutes! What I did appreciate were the unorthodox twists you don't find in most action films. Especially the scene with Paris being afraid to die and asking his big brother to end the battle for him. I'm glad they're giving Orlando Bloom a role slightly different from the usual 'fearless hero' stuff. I'm not sure how good he actually was in it, though. I was too surprised at the thing to notice any details. I guess I'll have a chance to pay attention to it tonight. And why am I going again if I don't consider it to be "Probably 2004's BEST!" (a quote from the user comments at imdb.com) is a different story altogether. A friend of mine recently broke up with her boyfriend and I'm going to cheer her up by going with her. Of course, there's more to the story but it's not mine to tell. Ohhh, I forgot to include a strange thing that happened on Friday at the cinema. I was a bit late because I couldn't get out of work on time and I hadn't eaten anything since forever, so I gave the tickets to Ellie, Megan and Chris and went to get food for myself. As a result I missed some of the previews (although there were many more even when I finally got into the theatre). When Spider-Man 2 came on, I told Chris that they'll be showing the new Harry Potter trailer everywhere soon. To which the girl on the other side of me (a girl I didn't know) replied that they'd already shown it. OK, that's more or less normal (maybe not in Estonia - the land of perpetually introverted, but in general...). What was really strange was the fact that she didn't really shut up after that. I didn't mind talking to her during the previews but it did get annoying during the film itself. Mind you, it was also funny since she was a bit younger (I'm not really sure how young since it was too dark to properly see her but she was probably someone in secondary school) and therefore had funny ideas about how the world should work. And she was very naive about the film as well - the scene where Achilles' cousin goes to battle pretending to be him. The camera doesn't do any close-ups so you can't actually see the face and she actually thought it was Achilles going to battle and getting killed. For me it was painfully obvious it wasn't him since they had spent most of the film showing us close-ups of Brad Pitt's face in every battle scene. ***** There was something else I was going to write about but my boss just called and let me know there's a chance the bankrupcy proceedings may make some people to storm my office and try to seize my computer. The possibility of that has erased any other thoughts I might have had. Instead I have the image of me and the co-worker barricading the doors and climbing out the windows in a frantic attempt to escape the clutches of evil lawyers. You can never say being an accountant is boring!
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