Mark and I rode our bikes to the movies yesterday—17.5 miles round trip. I left ten minutes before him and got to the theater ten minutes after him (ha—I’m so slow). I’d have been there sooner, but I dicked around in the U-Haul parking lot (I pulled off to let a long line of cars pass, since the lead car wouldn’t pass while I was on the road; it was a couple minutes before I could get back on the road after that) and I dicked around in the Dick’s Sporting Goods parking lot (’cause I wound up in a right-turn-only lane when I meant to go straight). But still, 50 minutes to get there was better than I’d expected, so yay. And I survived driving in traffic with traffic lights and all of that, so yay again.

We saw The Dark Night. Micro review: eh. And: crap was it long. Then we stopped at EVG for dinner and rode home.

I think I enjoyed Iron Man more.

Also, we watched The Machinist the other night, the one where Christian Bale gets down to 121 pounds? I had to keep covering my eyes. Yuckyuckyuck.

Yuck.

We caught M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie at the theater on Sunday—so you won’t have to.

I loved, loved, loved Unbreakable. I enjoyed The Sixth Sense, but I’m not all OMG! about it, probably because the entire world spoiled the twist for me at exactly the same moment I learned of the movie’s existence. THANKS ENTIRE WORLD. I loved The Village, even though I figured out the twist way early on—it was such an enjoyable story that I didn’t think of the “twist” as a “twist”; it was just part of the trajectory of the movie. Also, I didn’t think Lady In the Water was as bad as critics said. It had some draggy moments, but on the whole I was mesmerized and had a good time. And Signs was a very good movie up till that groaner of an ending.

The Happening, on the other hand….

The Happening is the movie that made me decide I need to wait till M. Knight Shyamalan movies come out on DVD before seeing them, ’cause I just don’t enjoy spending movie theater money on disappointments. Here is the list of sins (minor spoilers), as I see them:

• Wooden expository dialogue. (Why oh why did you just blurt that line, character? Oh, to inform the audience? Gee, could you be any more obvious about it?)
• Pacing completely off-kilter. One moment dragged on so long that I was willing strangers in separate cars to burn rubber out of there, leaving the main characters stranded. (Who knows—that might have been a better plot turn anyway.)
• A twist you not only see coming from very early in the movie but that is so unsatisfactory it makes you spend the rest of the movie in a growing panic: “Oh my god please don’t let it be that.” It is that, and ‘that’ is even lamer than water.
• Conflict between the main characters that turns out to be not so much. The “Joey” thing is either a badly played red herring or evidence that Shyamalan wussed out on giving his main characters a real personal trial. Srsly. Tiramisu? Put the relationship in real jeopardy prior to the “happening” or make the “happening” put it in real jeopardy—don’t give us this lame-ass tiramisu crap. “Tiramisu” is my new code word for ado about nothing.
• Several points in the movie where you can clearly see the wires that your disbelief is supposed to be suspended from (and they’re kind of frayed to boot). I’m not talking about the main premise, just stuff that happens during the course of the movie.

So, even though I’ve been up till now kind of an M. Knight Shyamalan fangirl, I’m giving this movie one exasperated star. Is this akin to the Anne Rice problem or what? Is no one watching his dailies and saying, “Hey, M—this needs a little work, yo.”

My God, just since Sunday the movie’s rating on Rottentomatoes.com has dropped from 44% to 21%. If it doesn’t go lower it’ll only be because there are bigger M. Knight Shyamalan fangirls/boys out there than I turned out to be.

But I just watched a video clip on the new hulu.com site, which is the product of a collaboration between NBC Universal and Fox and has a whole bunch of big media players as content partners. You can watch movies, TV shows and clips on the site—all for free. (Or “free” if you’re recently het up over LJ’s recent nonannouncement about the demise of basic accounts. I’m all right with advertising-supported—businesses gotta pay their bills.)

On the good: decent quality video, complete television shows, complete movies. And it’s not likely to squash YouTube like a bug, land of user-generated content that YouTube is (and hopefully always will be).

On the potential bad: What does this mean for unsanctioned fanvids on places like YouTube? Will Hulu media partners get more aggressive about DCMAing them out of existence?

Meanwhile, I’d better get writing if I want to have time to watch an old Fantasy Island on Hulu later.

(Someone let me know when a Firefox extension or Mac app shows up that’ll rip videos off the site—I like flexibility in what I watch, from the Archos on the go to the big screen with the nice sound system downstairs. Or what if I want to watch on my Macbook—when I’m not online?)

I found out about FutureMe this morning, and I’m not sure which is more compelling: sending emails to myself in the future or reading emails others have sent themselves.

Speaking of the future, Mark and I watched Sunshine last night (science fiction movie that takes place in 2057 under the premise that the sun is dying and a nuclear payload from earth may be able to re-ignite it). I liked it/hated it. SPOILERS FOLLOW:

First off, the story the movie had to tell was powerful, particularly once it clearly became a one-way mission—powerful enough on its own that the Pinback crap was an unnecessary distraction from the movie’s real potential.

But secondly—and maybe more importantly—the movie failed to sell me on the decision to change course. We had eight scientists and astronauts in the room—and that lady who drove nonstop to Florida in diapers notwithstanding, scientists and astronauts are pretty smart people. So here are the facts they had: Icarus I did not complete its mission; seven years have passed since; if the crew are still alive, the ship is not operational; if the ship is not operational, the mega payload it’s carrying is useless; if the crew is dead, the ship may be operational—or not. Ever tried to start a car after it’s sat for seven years?; the Icarus II has a small crew, each member with a specific function—there are no extra pilots, engineers or navigators to drive Icarus I, and there are no extra physicists to set off the second payload; and finally, Icarus II is the earth’s Absolute Last Hope. The choices are 1) complete the mission and 2) jeopardize the mission, and given the importance of Icarus II, given the fact that there can never be an Icarus III, “jeopardize the mission” is never an option.

What I really needed was for the crew to have no choice but to change course. If the O2 garden had gone up in flames first, they wouldn’t have had enough oxygen to complete the mission. They would have therefore been forced to head over to the Icarus I in hopes of finding some way to complete their mission. And I wouldn’t be left thinking, “What were they thinking?”