Tim’s Ramblings

Yup. The movie. Hm. How can I put this. It’s….ok. It’s…well…better than I thought it would be. And that’s saying a lot since I personally dislike Nicolas Cage.

First off keep in mind that this is based on a comic book. This does not mean that it’s a bad thing. X-men movies were decent. So was, and is, Spider Man. Blade was entertaining as was V for Vendetta and even From Hell. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen deviated a bit from the original source materia buuuut it was still entertaining (Sean Connery helped), and the very first Batman and the most recent Batman Begins were good too.

*ahem*…then there was Fantastic Four in which I found myself embarrased watching it. Dare Devil was just plain horrible and I refused to even acknowledge the fact that Elektra happened. The Incredible Hulk looked like a giant Shrek rampaging in the desert. I fell asleep during Ultraviolet.

Ghost Rider to me was better than Fantastic Fou but it just wasn’t in the same calibur as the GOOD ones. The dialog was painful to listen to at times. The characters were flat 2 dimentional stereotypes (comic books…2D…get it? *sigh*…). And even the animation was bad. I mean this is GHOST RIDER for godsakes. It’s a flaming skull in leather on a motorcycle from hell with blazing wheels. It should at least LOOK bad ass.

Instead when he turns into the Ghost Rider, you can instantly tell it’s CG. Not just the head…which has to be CG…but the entire body. The entire character. All of a sudden he looks stiff and walks and moves like a cheap Playstation 2 level graphic. Granted, he looked better than the all CG Neo from the last two Matrix movies…but still…I was pretty dissappointed.

Oh, and I can’t forget Eva Mendes. Mmmm….yes…she’s purty. Actually unbelievably smoking hot. But she has been reduced to nothing more than pure eyecandy. Which is fine too except it’s so blatant that I found myself going “oh…come on…” every time she entered a scene. Let me explain. In EVERY scene save one, she had on basically the same outfit. A super tight button up shirt that was so tight there was no way to button up her cleavage which is exactly what the camera would focus on before focusing on the rest of her. She was spilling out every single scene. The one scene where she wasn’t wearing a blouse she was wearing an incredibly tight form fitting one piece dress that no self respecting news reporter would ever wear (which is what she was in the movie). I mean….damn….

And finally…I hope to god that this is not the last movie that Peter Fonda does before he dies. I hope Ghost Rider is not like Raul Julia’s Street Fighter. That would be unfortunate.

Campy dialog. Unnecessary plot lines. Mediocre animation. Nicolas Cage. …if you can get over those, then you may at least be semi entertained. Hey…after all…it was better than Dare Devil!

Wow…I didn’t think it was a week since my last post. It’s just been busy and I’ve been really really tired after work to really do anything these past few days. But I’m alive and doing well overall.

Friday night was a goodbye gettogether at the Winking Lizard for a coworker who is switching jobs and also went with a coworker and his wife to go see Ghost Rider. More on that movie in another post. For now I will just say…um…I thought it was better than The Incredible Hulk but yeah…that’s not saying much.

Saturday I got to go to the West Side Market for the first time in a while and then at night it was our first night gaming (D&D-esque) since last August! Eeeesh. My traveling isn’t helping the scheduling conflicts… But it was fun! Nothing like rolling some 20 side dice and geeking out. :)

Today though was a treat. My friend S and I have been planning to go see the new exhibit at the Art Museum for a while and we finally went today. The Cleveland Art Museum is showing the exhibit Monet in Normandy until May 20 and it was fantastic!

She brought along her 5 year old neice and the three of us took a little trip out to University Circle to the Art Museum. Of course, she knows NOTHING of Monet or art…she’s FIVE for godsakes. But she’s a bright little girl and she behaved herself really well in there looking at the pretty pictures :) S took care of her since I tend to be slow and read and look at the paintings longer than her. Personally I had a great time and I was really really glad I got to see it before it left. I’ve missed far too many special exhibits at the Museum either due to scheduling conflics or lack of interest. Though I think from now on I’ll just go by myself if I really want to see it :/

Anyway, Monet. Yes. First off, it’s Monet. So you all know what you’re in for. To this day when I hear the name “Monet” I can still hear the quote from the movie Clueless where Alicia Silverstone’s character, Cher, calls a girl a Monet. Pretty from far away but up close she’s a mess (^_^) Of course, that’s not true of this artist’s work at all. This exhibit was unique in that we got to see so many of his works all together in one show. Many of his works were of one subject and it was great to see all of his different styles.

I’ve always liked his impressionist artwork but seeing it live and in front of you, the one thing that really struck me isn’t his brush work (which is amazing) nor his ability to depict so much emotion from just a few flicks of paint, but his use of color. For example, in his paintings of the cliffs by the ocean, when you just casually look at it you see a gorgeous painting that not only shows the brightness of the scene but the texture of the cliff face and the reflection off the water and how the sky actually seems to truly illuminate the scene. But on closer inspection, you notice that the reason why the cliff seems so warm and natural is because he has specks of color that just doesn’t exist in real life. Purples and reds and blues of all hues. It’s simply amazing to me how he was able to use these colors that do not exist in real life and incorporate them into the painting to, surprisingly, make it look even more natural than reality.

Some of the artwork that they had on display where he depicts morning mists and even some architectural paintings of cathedrals at various angles and time of day were simply phenominal.

Oh, and of course, you got to see various version of Water Lillies at the end as a finale. Always breathtaking. Not just the size of the canvas but just how his mastery of color and perspective can make something look even more natural and beautiful than it’s real life counterpart.

Alas, the exhibit IS a tad short. I was able to get through it in a bit over an hour. But was it worth it? Every penny. At least for me. I think even S’s neice got a small bit of early education on art and she seemed to not mind it so that’s a good thing. Never too early to expose them to Monet :)

Afterwards, we had lunch at the Winking Lizard at Coventry (yes…I went to WL twice in 3 days…) then got dessert at Presti’s and took them home.

All in all, it was a nice Sunday. Oh, and as for the Cleveland Art Museum, it is still going through some incredible construction and I have no idea what it’s going to look like or even when it’s going to be done, but from what I saw partially completed, it is going to look awesome. The new additions are huuuuge and I can’t WAIT to see what it’s going to look like and what art collections we will be able to see as part of the permanent collection once the new addition opens. I don’t know where they had the space to cram this addition in but it’s looking good so far. Who said the midwest has no culture hmm? :)

For anyone living near Cleveland and likes art, I highly recommend the Monet Exhibit. If it’s slated to come to your town, even better. It’s on until May 20th so you still have some time!