eating crayons and glue

I know I come late to the party with 'V for Vendetta', but I wonder if I'm not one of the few people who didn't think this was just a totally marvelous movie?

It seems to happen usually that movies taken from graphic novels and comics are almost too big to fit the screen, that even CGI is just barely able to support the vision of the artist. V on the other hand seems like it was stretched to fit. This is not to say that there is not some very fine acting going on here because there is. I was prepared to pass Natalie Portman off but she does a damned convincing job. Now if only the child would have a sandwich. Poor Hugo Weaving has to spend the entire movie behind a mask, and just brushes the fine line between symbol and camp with his suspiciously well-tailored ensemble. His voice does the majority of the work and does it very well despite some of the lines he's expected to deliver. This is a role that could have easily given way to operatic gesturing and it doesn't...good thing. Steven Rea as detective Finch is fantastic. John Hurt playing the Chancellor is amazing (although Chancellor Sutler would never have made it politically on this side of the Atlantic without a set of porcelain veneers and a laser peel).

It's the story that seems stretched thin, somehow. We know that V idolized Edmund Dante, but in The Count of Monte Christo the backstory is a vital part of the architechture of his revenge. We get only the barest hint of a backstory with V...a numeral on a door, an image seen through fire. Evey's final 'He was all of us' made me want to ask for my money back. Except that I was home. Likewise the government baddies...just hints. Nothing at all about the evil Chancellor himself.

Furthermore I had a lot of trouble believing that the general population were mobilized into united action in only a years' time. That was the point at which the entire move fell apart for me.

It must have been a balancing act indeed to make this a movie about symbols and ideas instead of characters and plot, but what was left was like a Swiss cheese it was so full of holes.

Still, give the Devil his due; you do get to see Parliament go up in a huge, gigantic monstrous ball of fire, which kicks ass and is excellent. In my book a good explosion excuses a lot. (Almost as excellent as seeing the White House get firebombed by aliens in 'Independence Day', and also the only reason to rent it out.)
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It is raining and I hate it. I hate it and it pisses me off. I have things to do out in my yard and I would rather be doing them than sitting in this stupid house.

Today I have to go in and wait on my father in law, and I don't feel much like doing that, although I know I will enjoy myself. Why I would rather stay at home and feel grumpy than go into town and shop is a mystery, like Howling Cave in Kentucky or why Lindsay Lohan cannot seem to keep her bathing suit areas in check for more than five minutes at a stretch.