23 January - Monsters vs. Aliens
I watched this while on the way over to Melbourne for a six day holiday (including Australian Open tennis, sight-seeing, and shopping). It had some good animation sequences, but took a while to seem as if it knew what it was all about; much of the humor throughout was bizarrely tangential and therefore confusing at best. The character of the US President typified the I-don't-really-understand-what's-going-on...? effect of the gag-writing - I suspect his 'bizarre antics' would leave most kids and adults equally baffled. It certainly had that effect on me.
Fundamentally, the writers didn't seem to have reconciled the film's different plot elements in a very coherent or satisfying way. This made it hard to gauge the intended audience. Was it for adults (it seemed to be a romantic comedy about a woman who is engaged to marry an obnoxious louse... and finally realises it) or was it for kids (an Alice-in-Wonderland type plot about a women is hit by meteor, grows to giant size, and is carted off to secret government facility where she befriends other 'monsters' who then save the world from alien invasion when no one else can)? Having said that, clunky beginning and lingering incoherence aside, I did enjoy the finale battle of the title.
28 January - Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs
Yet another animated movie, seen flying back from Melbourne, but I liked this one much more. Flint is a lonely wanna-be inventor in a small, dying town (famous only for sardines, which the world has now realised "are totally gross"). He knows there's greatness-lurking-somewhere-within-him, and after some mishaps invents a machine makes food out of water. Obviously mayhem follows, during which he meets and falls for an aspiring meteorologist, can't communicate with his taciturn father, and is tempted to do the wrong thing by the town's unprincipled Mayor and his own ego...
I enjoyed the richly woven allusions and borrowings from familiar genre set-pieces (notably from Star Wars IV) and the plain whimsy of much of the movie, especially the climatic food storm at the end. Giant food is about to destroy the Earth! While the follow-your-dream plot is entirely predictable in principle, the execution is completely unexpected as heart-warming geekiness, unexpressed feelings, and giant pasta tornados all combine with great merriment.
29 January 2010 - Daedelus live at Bar Bodega, Wellington
Having enjoyed two of his albums (Denies the Day's Demise and Exquisite Corpse) I couldn't pass up the chance to see Daedelus live last night at Bar Bodega here in Wellington. So I sat patiently - well, impatiently would be more accurate - through the end of the boring Dodos and the excruciatingly bad Signer (some sort of local NZ electronica outfit who should never be allowed on a stage again) until finally, at 2am, Daedulus appeared. And it was worth it, even if I was a little tired to appreciate it fully. Great digital sound-crunching and cool duds...
It was a little heavier than I expected but listening back to Denies the Day's Demise this morning I don't know why that was - it sounded very much like what he played. In one notable moment, near the beginning of the set, he playfully remixed/reimagined a Burial track to great effect. Overall the intensity of the set reminded me of a kind of demonic disco! Which was good. Shame about the warm-up act though....
