movies : Pirates & Sunshine

After weeks of subtle and not-so-subtle conniving, the wife lured me into the theater to check out the Pirates of the Caribbean sequel.

I'm usually down on sequels because they usually suck ass.
The only reason they exist is to make money off a built-in audience who crave more of whatever magic the original delivered, said delivery in a sequel being severely compromised by corporate terror of changing anything in a formula that works.

Any big budget film is a triumph of cash over creativity and in a sequel situation the table is rigged even more ridiculously in favor of the of the house.

Taking all that into account, I had a good time with Pirates II.
In fact, on first pass I liked it better than its predecessor. The oceanic undead crew of Davy Jones routed the snore-inducing zombie pirates of the first flick, and with so much screen time in each dedicated to the opposition this was a major improvement.

A good summer watch, even if I waited until the tail end of the season to catch it.

On to a real movie, Little Miss Sunshine.
We caught this one during our midwest swing, at the gorgeous Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor (the only town we visited with any signs of cultural life obvious to a touristy sort).

Great flick, I recommend it to everyone.
It's an interesting hybrid.
The underlying structure could not be more mainstream Hollywood- family undergoes journey of discovery (the 'journey' being made explicit via that hoary cinema cliche, the road trip), obstacles are overcome, lessons are learned and everything is neatly wrapped up in the appropriately heartwarming finale.

But that hackneyed Syd Field structure is populated by living, breathing (and excellently acted & written) characters, and utterly free from the creative straightjacket imposed by the corporate studio system currently suffocating mainstream American cinema.

It's a mainstream Hollywood family drama re-imagined by people with talent, which supports my long-held belief that nothing's wrong with Hollywood that locking up the suits and letting genuinely creative people operate free of focus groups and corporate meddling wouldn't fix.