Apostrophe S

Couple things:

I saw X-Men: The Last Stand last weekend, and I’ve been meaning to write about it. Since it took me this long to get around to it, you can probably guess what I thought of it.

I’d heard plenty about the movie before I even got comfortable in the chair. I heard all about Bryan Singer’s departure being the death of the series. I saw how many rotten tomatoes it got. I read 4 or 5 reviews telling me what a stinker it was. I was even told by a friend that I shouldn’t bother. But I looked past all that and tried to keep an open mind. After all, I was a big fan of the X-Men United.

Well, I was both rewarded and disappointed. After the credits rolled (and the bonus scene!), I felt a sense of accomplishment, like I’d finished something. It was similar to how I felt after viewing the third Matrix movie. Like I now knew The Whole Story. And the action sequences, although some of them felt rushed and cliché, delivered everything they needed to. As for the director switch, I will say the movie lacked a certain something, and maybe that was just Singer’s absence. But Brett Ratner is no hack. The Rush Hour movies had their weaknesses. Namely, their scripts and their entire concepts, but they were well assembled, spotless buddy action flicks. And “Red Dragon” was a hell of a taught thriller, with some excellent performances by A-list actors to boot. So screw you and your “Ratner ruined X-Men” crap. “Last Stand” suffered from a case of scriptitis. Too many characters, and too many rather pointless scenes. Predictability. That sort of thing. But hell, I enjoyed it anyway, because I’m that guy. I’ll list a handful of curiousities, and let that be that. (Spoilers!)

• When did Logan have his balls removed?
• Since when does Magneto issue threats via television like Osama Bin Laden?
• Am I mistaken, or did they switch out a wax double for 3/4 of Jean/Pheonix’s scenes?
• Why did the Professor get a headstone and an eternal flame first, despite the fact that Scott was killed probably weeks earlier?
• The Golden Gate bridge? Surely there was a slighty easier was to get to Alcatraz.
• Where was Nightcrawler? And why did they imply that the Juggernaut was a mutant?

I also happened to find the recent ABC movie adaptation of Stephen King’s “Desperation.” I don’t recommend it. I remember the book being a spooky supernatural thriller with memorable characters and a bizarre “other dimension” companion book called “The Regulators,” written by King pseudonym Richard Bachman. Together, the books created an interesting parallel-dimension style of storytelling. The only thing memorable about the ABC movie was Ron Perlman’s performance as the Tak-possessed Collie Entragian.

Perhaps if they had stretched the story across a few more installments, it would have given them time for some crucial character development that would have helped us understand several characters’ eleventh-hour decisions. As it stands, the movie feels rushed and rather cheesy. Which is too bad, because I really like the source material. I had higher expectations, too, because King himself adapted the story into a teleplay. The worst part is the incredibly poor performance by Shane Haboucha, whose character has an important psychic connection to the town’s sinister past, and his cheesy recitations of barely remembered lines corrode the core of what could otherwise have been a much better experience, as TV movies go. But if you’re a King fan like I am, you look past all that and enjoy it anyway.

We lost our fourth softball game. I think we’re getting better, but unfortunately we played a team made up of guys who pour concrete for a living, with more than a few puffed-up egos on it. I think they would have been just as happy if we’d had a long-ball hitting contest instead of a game. They swung for the fences every time, but they committed as many, if not more, errors as us. We weren’t really keeping score, but I’m pretty sure they scored a few more runs than we did. But someone brought beer, so I was able to look past all that and enjoy it anyway.

So despite setbacks, I’ve had a pretty good week.