War of the Worlds
Jul. 16th, 2005 08:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clayhornikWell... at last Steven Spielberg has stopped making pro-Alien propaganda. I wonder what prompted his change of heart?
My biggest criticism of the movie is the fact that it didn't just have a "name" star, it was **TOM CRUISE!!!** and to hear him utter the line "I'm going to bed because some people have to work for a living" then seeing him collapse onto his bed, exhausted from a long day at the docks... well, I just didn't buy it. I can only suspend disbelief so far. And the fact that he proposed to his girlfriend on the Eiffel Tower (!), well, I wasn't watching Joe Sixpack, I was watching Tom Cruise. Bah.
Dakota Fanning rocked. Not too familiar with her other roles, but I see her growing up to be the next Kirsten Dunst.
Cute bits- Cruise's son's paper due on French Algeria, or somesuch. Colonialism being the one of Well's themes of the original novel.
Morgan Freeman's opening narrative was right up there with Burton's in Jeff Wayne's WotW.
TRIPODS!! Yummy, techno-organicy Martian War Machine Tripods. As near and dear to my heart are the hovery style craft from the fifties... well those always seems to float closer to the ground, while the tripods say "LOOK UP HERE, PUNY HUMAN! FACE YOUR MARTIAN MASTERS!!".
AND THE BEST PART OF ALL:
Gene Barry and Anne Robinson. Less than 5 seconds of screen time, but that was worth it to me.
--
I picked up the Jeff Wayne musical edition the other day. Amazing. They've actually got most of it available for streaming listening. Go. Listen. Try before you buy. Then go buy it. Ear candy. Some bits have a disco era feel, but Richard Burton's narration is wonderful.
I had to go to four places to find it... the chain at the mall was out, the two alterna-rawk places had no idea what i was talking about, and the place at Ward's Corner had it misfiled. I checked the "W"s in the rock section- nothing. So I asked the clerk if they had it. Specifying "Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds" and not the soundtrack to the movie. Nope. Don't have it, the recordstore guy said. Since I am a distrusting sort, and prone to believe the worst about most retail operations, I went and check the soundtrack section and DAMN if it wasn't there. I hate shopping lately.
--
There's a new, remastered version of the Mercury Radio Theatre version. They're billing it as the "official licensed unedited" version, but if the quality of the cd is anything like the quality of the web site's audio, they've cleaned it up. The one I have from both the net and a book that included both the orignal novel and the radioplay is weak at points. Listenable but weak. Drops in volume, stuff like that. I don't mind cracks and pops, the static gives it a little feel of being there.
--
My biggest criticism of the movie is the fact that it didn't just have a "name" star, it was **TOM CRUISE!!!** and to hear him utter the line "I'm going to bed because some people have to work for a living" then seeing him collapse onto his bed, exhausted from a long day at the docks... well, I just didn't buy it. I can only suspend disbelief so far. And the fact that he proposed to his girlfriend on the Eiffel Tower (!), well, I wasn't watching Joe Sixpack, I was watching Tom Cruise. Bah.
Dakota Fanning rocked. Not too familiar with her other roles, but I see her growing up to be the next Kirsten Dunst.
Cute bits- Cruise's son's paper due on French Algeria, or somesuch. Colonialism being the one of Well's themes of the original novel.
Morgan Freeman's opening narrative was right up there with Burton's in Jeff Wayne's WotW.
TRIPODS!! Yummy, techno-organicy Martian War Machine Tripods. As near and dear to my heart are the hovery style craft from the fifties... well those always seems to float closer to the ground, while the tripods say "LOOK UP HERE, PUNY HUMAN! FACE YOUR MARTIAN MASTERS!!".
AND THE BEST PART OF ALL:
Gene Barry and Anne Robinson. Less than 5 seconds of screen time, but that was worth it to me.
--
I picked up the Jeff Wayne musical edition the other day. Amazing. They've actually got most of it available for streaming listening. Go. Listen. Try before you buy. Then go buy it. Ear candy. Some bits have a disco era feel, but Richard Burton's narration is wonderful.
I had to go to four places to find it... the chain at the mall was out, the two alterna-rawk places had no idea what i was talking about, and the place at Ward's Corner had it misfiled. I checked the "W"s in the rock section- nothing. So I asked the clerk if they had it. Specifying "Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds" and not the soundtrack to the movie. Nope. Don't have it, the recordstore guy said. Since I am a distrusting sort, and prone to believe the worst about most retail operations, I went and check the soundtrack section and DAMN if it wasn't there. I hate shopping lately.
--
There's a new, remastered version of the Mercury Radio Theatre version. They're billing it as the "official licensed unedited" version, but if the quality of the cd is anything like the quality of the web site's audio, they've cleaned it up. The one I have from both the net and a book that included both the orignal novel and the radioplay is weak at points. Listenable but weak. Drops in volume, stuff like that. I don't mind cracks and pops, the static gives it a little feel of being there.
--
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Date: 2005-07-16 02:49 pm (UTC)