November 15, 2003
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WEBSITE OF THE WEEK
This website is a collection of user-submitted ideas that they believed when they were kids. It’s pretty funny, and easy to identify with, since all of us had weird beliefs at one time (and if you didn’t, you must’ve had a sad, deprived childhood). It’s also interesting to see how many other people believed the same thing you did (Just about everyone on this site used to believe that all cats were female and all dogs were male). Anyone can submit their own silly childhood beliefs (you don’t have to register with the site or anything). I’ve submitted some. See if you can find them. Enjoy some nostalgic fun!
Previous Websites of the Week:
The Deadly Follies of Stick Figure Warning Man and Family
Jennifer Government: Nation States
Cannot Find Weapons of Mass Destruction
The Shadowlands: Ghosts and Hauntings
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Please welcome divesoar, my newest subscriber!
I’m sorry that Website of the Week is, once again, a day late, but Xanga seemed to be read-only all day yesterday, so the situation was out of my hands. I know I said I’d post my comic concepts today, but I think I’ll wait until tomorrow, so I’ll post them along with my commentary on the movie I have to see for History of Cinema tomorrow, which my professor says is “very XXX-rated.” I told Liz about this, and she found it highly amusing. She said, “How often is it that you actually have to watch porn for a class?” I don’t particularly enjoy porn, but I’ll watch it if I have to (I’m not really offended by it; I mostly just find it to be extremely boring). The part that I object to is that there are significantly more guys in my class than girls. When I go to watch these movies, I’m lucky if there’s one other girl in the room (the movies are shown more than once, so that’s why not all the girls are there). The only other times I’ve watched porn, it was in all-female groups. I don’t want to watch porn with a bunch of guys. That would just be weird. But enough about that. My professor was probably exaggerating anyways, and it’ll probably just be another boring movie.
I found out some interesting casting trivia related to The Matrix. Apparently Keanu Reeves was only the directors’ third choice to play Neo. They first asked Ewan McGregor (who I think would’ve done a decent job as Neo), and then Will Smith, who turned them down to make Wild Wild West (He’s probably kicking himself for that now. Actually, I can’t really picture Will Smith as Neo, although he probably would’ve been good as Tank or Link. Ironically, his wife plays Niobe in Reloaded and Revolutions). In addition, Carrie-Ann Moss was in a short-lived TV show in 1993 called Matrix. The most bizarre fact I learned was that Morpheus was originally supposed to have been played by Val Kilmer (Thank God they got Laurence Fishburne instead).
Revolutions was awesome. I liked it way better than the first two. With the first two, I would watch them and wait for “something else” to happen (I don’t know what the “something else” could be). The “something else” didn’t happen, but I liked the movies anyways. However, in both cases, it was kind of a retrospective “Yeah, I liked it. It was pretty good.” With Revolutions, I enjoyed it as I was watching it, and I felt like I didn’t need to wait for “something else” to happen. The action sequences (and there are plenty) are much more exciting than in the first two (well, most of them, anyways). As an added bonus, there’s somewhat of a Return of the Jedi feel to the action sequences this time around. Actually, Revolutions nearly fit the expectations I had for the first movie. When the first movie came out, Chris talked about it incessantly for months, so that when I finally saw it, I had built up some pretty high expectations for it, and when it didn’t meet my expectations, I was a little disappointed (Don’t get me wrong; I still liked it, just not as much as I thought I would). When I saw Reloaded, I didn’t bother with expectations, since I didn’t want to be disappointed again, so I guess I just liked Reloaded based on its own merits. I didn’t really have expectations for Revolutions, either, since I only went because Liz wanted to see it. I had heard that critics gave it bad reviews, but I’ve lost faith in critics over the past few years, with a few exceptions (this was not one of those exceptions, though). For once, I actually found the special effects to be impressive (except for a few slow motion sequences that didn’t need to be in slow motion). Revolutions is nowhere near as pretentious as the first two, and I like that’s a good thing. However, at the same time, it compliments the first two very well and brings the series to a fitting and appropriate conclusion.
Actually, the only truly annoying part was that the woman sitting a couple seats down from Liz had brought her two-year-old daughter with her. WHO BRINGS THEIR TWO-YEAR-OLD TO AN “R” RATED MOVIE?! First off, this hyperactive toddler would not stay in her seat. She kept climbing all over the railing in front of it (The theater was stadium seating, and we were in the first row of the raised section). Then she would fall off the railing, or hit her head on the railing, and start crying, so Liz and I would be trying to watch some dramatic scene, and then we’d hear CLANG! “Waaaaah!” She would also start crying whenever something scary (at least, to a two-year-old) or violent happened on screen. By the end of the movie, Liz was fuming (since she was sitting closer to the kid, she was more distracted by her), and she went on and on about how she was tempted to get the woman and her kid thrown out of the theater, and that when parents take their kids to a movie, they should take them to the entrance when the kids get fussy so they don’t bother anyone else, and that they shouldn’t be taking kids that young to “R” rated movies anyways. She said, “I’m much more patient when I go to see stuff like Brother Bear, because that’s a kid’s movie. It’s ‘G’ rated, and I expect there to be a bunch of fussy kids. When I go to an ‘R’ movie, I expect to be safe from kids.” Anyways, other than fussy two-year-olds, it was a pleasant evening.
Comments (2)
I would have gone over and dragged the kid out of the theatre regardless of whose kid it was – unfit mother. I would have been perfectly right to do so – who was the mad usher who let a kid below the fricking age limit in to see that kind of movie???
I also wanted to say thank you for the message in my guestbook – I made my list of songs for “The Soundtrack of My Life”… that was hard! But fun!
Haven’t seen “Revolutions” but those are interesting trivia tidbits! I too could see Ewan McGregor in Neo’s role… he’s so gorgeous…
But yes, how could someone bring someone that young to that movie? I remember when I saw “Dogma” in the theaters and next to me was a little kid about 3-4 years old on his mother’s lap! And that movie gets kinda bloody! Very interesting…
Take care and have a lovely week!