I just saw a commercial on TV (I think by Michigan's tourism agency Michigan.org that showed a couple walking on the beach at sunset, with the caption: "Suddenly, yard work doesn't seem as important anymore". What a terrible ad, I was filled with rage to see how ignorant people can be, dissing my beloved hobby of yard work.
Finally, I saw Last Samurai as a rental. I thought it was a pretty good movie, not awesome though. A lot of parts of the story were not very realistic, and some scenes were flat out corny at times, but you know what, since the last movie I saw was Van Helsing, no amount of corniness can compare. In my opinion, the best thing about the movie was the scenery and the battle scenes, especially the ninjas vs. samurai.
Also, I didn't really see the movie as being "condescending" or "racist" against Asians as I've heard. I can see how some people could get mad about certain things, but that's only if you're looking for stuff to get mad about. I mean, if it were up to me, every movie would portray the yellow man as more complete, 3-dimensional characters. I don't expect every Asian in every movie to be shown in a positive light, but at least put some thought into developing the characters is what I ask. Anyways, while the makers of Last Samurai could have done a lot better in terms of promoting racial awareness and understanding, I don't think this movie was that bad enough for people to call it "racist". There are definitely bigger fish for you Asian American activists out there to fry.
It seems like at least once a week, people will be talking about old movies when I'll say "I've never seen that movie", which leads to me getting some looks of disbelief. This leads me to conclude that there's a lot of supposedly good movies that I haven't seen. So I've decided to keep a running list of titles that fit into this category here. Here's what I have so far:
- Godfather (any of them)
- Field of Dreams
- The Natural
- Major League (I think there's more than one, I haven't seen any)
- Top Gun
- Desperado
- Romeo & Juliet
- Apollo 13
- The Wedding Singer
- Seven
- Die Hard (any of them)
- Caddyshack
- Freaky Friday
Also, happy bday to Rich. And belated to Paul (sorry I missed your bashes).
