Movie Stuff

I saw Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer today. Like most of the people that I know, I enjoyed it. I liked it at least as much as the first one, and possibly a little bit more. It's always hard to tell that sort of thing right as you walk out of a movie; I feel I can judge where it sits in scope a few weeks from now as I've let it digest in my memory.

The changes that they made to the story were perfectly understandable, and I feel that the movie overall had a very solid pace and structure to it. Not too many pitfalls, and the ones that were there didn't drag me out of the movie (unlike any of the "blockbuster" films that have been released to date this year). After talking to my friend Cliff, he cited that he thought the new FF film was an A-Class B-movie, unlike several B-Class A-Movies that are out, such as Spider-Man 3 (a film that I didn't hate, but it didn't live up to the first two--not by a long shot).

But that's not really what I wanted to talk about...

You might have noticed a video-presentation that happens in front of movies these days. It's little more than ads for upcoming films, television series, or whatever any advertisers pay to show on the screen before a movie. The productions are slick, and the ads are as innocuous as anything you would see on TV, and just as easy to ignore. (Though on a quick side-note, I will say that between the trailers, movie ads, and voluminous television ads, I don't think that I'm going to go see Evan Almighty. I was GOING to, because I like Steve Carell, but at this point I don't think that there is anything left to be revealed in the film. I'll wait for DVD or TV.)

One of the things that has bugged me about one of those video presentations is simply this: the title. I don't know if you have it in your part of the world, but here we have one called The 20-wenty. Yeah, you read right. The 20-wenty. This trend in graphic design bugs me. Sure, I understand that the name of the piece is "The Twenty" in the minds of the people that made it, but that isn't what it says. It clearly has the number "20" followed by the letters w-e-n-t-y. The 20-wenty.

It reminds me that we are living in an era where people can't spell because they "text" to many messages. They only know shorthand. And now those people have moved into the professional field, and they are bringing their habits with them. It's not a new trend, and one that is sure to fade--I hope and pray--over time, but for right now it's the trend, and it's one that I could live without. I hope that the whole "texting" craze dies soon, too. I hate watching people type letters that mean words during a movie. It just seems...rude.

Guess I'm old, but all those thoughts just rambled through my mind today while sitting in a movie theater with friends.

LOL

...aw damn...