nothing safe

Some years ago I remember reading about a form of commercially-funded home computer scheme whereby users could sign up for the use of a personal computer for which they paid by exposing themselves to a predetermined amount of advertisment on a regular basis though the volume and frequency was not specified. Whilst I like to consider myself reasonably resistant to going out and needlessly buying things after seeing or hearing adverts I didn't seek any further information about the scheme primarily because deliberately putting myself in the line of marketing would have left me resenting the continued existence of many more things than is currently the case; I might not be compelled to buy cars, perfumes, razors, beer, cars, leather sofas or cars after the ad-reel in the cinéma mostly because I resolve to never buy anything perpetrated by such people who would commission and approve the release of the garbagey advertisments, the garbage they promote and their manner of so doing.

It's probably lucky that I generally decide which films I want to go and see on the bases of print reviews, peer reviews and the films' basic premises rather than the trailers which frequently produce much the same product-dislike as the preceding adverts or I'd never go to the pictures. It'll make a massive difference when Don LaFontaine and his rumbling colleagues all retire or die and people with normal-er voices are hired to V.O. the bulk of the world's trailers unless the film industry has considered this and is hard at work recording enough source material in order to be able to synthesize new trailers from stored phonemes in the manner of automated telephony response systems. Although that might be stiltedly amusing rather than annoying. They could instead use the voices of Bobcat Goldthwaite, Emo Philips, Steven Wright or Alan Bennett so that the clips used in the trailer have to be really good to get their point across through the voice-over.

In this case the film turned out to be the bobbins indicated by the trailers and was vastly inferior to the 2003 Ang Lee version despite the harpings-on about it being better now that Marvel have full control and so on. It's arse from script to actors to effects, the latter particularly silly when the film is a computer-age adaptation of a comic-book super-entity but instead of the ILM of the 2003 version there are a selection of models, animatronics, prosthetics and low-rent CGI all badly joined-together and with the added sub-cartoon-physics employed to appalling effect in the Spider-Man trilogy. No idea what they were thinking with this nor why reviewers have suddenly started slagging the 2003 version in comparison to this. Edward Norton can't run properly, either; he showed this in Fight Club though as he didn't have any trousers on at the time it looked appropriate but he constantly looks as if he's going to fall over when his knees give way until he's replaced by a double for the stuntier bits of a rooftop chase. William Hurt was good in |The Village. Dark City and The King but isn't Sam Elliot and shouldn't attempt to play characters formerly played by Sam Elliot. He also shouldn't try to run up stairs on film. The Tims Blake Nelson and Roth should have stayed away and there's something very odd-looking about Liv Tyler's eyes. AVOID.