aviator

well, saw the aviator last night (it took a couple days to post this, given the rush to use the computer and the fact that blogger was acting up yesterday...). the theatre was about 70 percent full, the regular crowd with a larger percentage of gringos (about 5) than usual. anyway i won't get into details but it's pretty much an overwrought ballyhooed mess of a film that never should have been considered for so many awards.

not that it's all bad, and i can certainly see why some people might like it - but never once did i really care for anyone, i felt detached the entire time and spent a good part of the second half checking my watch to see when i could go. a big part of the let down was the choice of music. scorsese decided to forego the usual sweeping violins and such for more period musical selections, but rarely did they fit the tone or message. they seemed lumped on afterwards, haphazardly.

and you should have heard the collective sigh by the audience at the end. there was a palpable sense of disillusionment - a two beat before everyone in the theatre rose at the same time and headed orderly but quickly for the doors. and really, howard hughes was a weird and interesting guy but, despite all the info and insight offered by the film, i feel they only scratched the surface. watching the reaction of howard's entourage to his increasingly erratic behaviour was like watching a pavlovian experiment, they were innoculated to his strangeness and barely raised an eyebrow or anything.

there were times too, little moments like throwaway quotes and such that were disappointing. thinking back i think martin would've been helped by watching ed wood and the performance by johnny depp to see how to inject some sort of enthusiasm or energy into the film.

some parts were cool though - one part in particular, where they are piloting the hercules across the san francisco bay trying to get it airborne, left me with goosebumps. you could actually feel the roar of the motors as it swept from right to left, and that was cool.