Where We've Been

Busy weekend at MoltenThought HQ.

WordGirl and I had a little birthday celebration for her this weekend, which involved a costume party, Irish food, and far more tequila and rum than we'd anticipated.

Needless to say, Sunday was Recovery Day, with WG and I spending most of it in a darkened movie theater.

We caught a double feature this time out---"The Prestige" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D".

"The Prestige" was quite good. I'm a sucker for Christopher Nolan films---his "Memento" is one of my all-time favorite movies. Christian Bale is good in everything; he's got a great performance in him here. It's even got Scarlett Johansen, whom WG cannot stand but whom I enjoy as much today as I used to enjoy Jennifer Connelly, and for many of the same reasons. It's a twisty thriller like "Memento", but it's quite a bit more obvious than its predecessor (I imagine the studio heads insisted it be dumbed down). We figured it out before the halfway point. Beautifully shot, well-acted, and interesting from start to finish nonetheless.

"The Nightmare Before Christmas" is of course already a classic. It's a Halloween movie, it's a Christmas movie, but, most importantly, it's a movie for that bleak time of year between the two. From the twisted mind of Tim Burton, it is one of the oddest looking films you'll ever see, kind of like one of those Burl Ives holiday movies had Trent Reznor been the director. It looks simply amazing in 3-D, although I must admit it was rough on my hung-over stomach at times. The Danny Elfman soundtrack sticks in your head for days, too; not a bad thing here. The main attraction is the twisted sense of humor of the thing---there's nothing funnier in my book than a snake swallowing a Christmas tree while a goggle-eyed child opens a present to find a shrunken head.