{"id":660,"date":"1998-06-19T06:43:00","date_gmt":"1998-06-19T06:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/1998\/06\/660\/"},"modified":"2010-03-24T15:15:29","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T15:15:29","slug":"660","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/1998\/06\/660\/","title":{"rendered":"Cinematic Interlude"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"initial-letter\"><p>\nThe truth certainly is &#8220;out there.&#8221; What a strange movie.<\/p>\n<p>\nI need to locate Mark Snow&#8217;s score album. I want to listen to some of that again.<\/p>\n<p>\nI think I&#8217;d have to watch the movie a second time for it all to sink in completely.<\/p>\n<p>\nI&#8217;d give it a thumb and an eyebrow up.<\/p>\n<p>\nA lot darker than I&#8217;d expected it to be. I&#8217;m surprised it got only a pg-13 rating. <\/p>\n<p>\n<b>Later:<\/b><\/p>\n<p>\nAll right &#8212; a more complete analysis. . .<\/p>\n<p>\nFight the Future is. . .well, dark. It&#8217;s much rawer, scarier, and more bombastic than the show ever has been. It&#8217;s good, but a little confusing and. . .strange. I&#8217;ll have to watch it again before it completely sinks in, I believe. I&#8217;d give it about 3.75 stars (out of five, o&#8217; course), based on this one viewing. It starts out slowly, but after the first twenty minutes or so it picks up and becomes more engaging than I recall the series has ever been at any individual moment. After all that, the end drags on a little. <\/p>\n<p>\nThe big problem was really that everything seemed much more bleak than the actual show. The program is very character-based, and oftentimes is very light and warm. The movie kind of pushes the audience back away a little.<\/p>\n<p>\nAlso, the guy who plays the &#8220;other&#8221; main character in Millenium &#8212; not Frank Black, but the bald guy &#8212; is a minor-but-pivotal character near the beginning. This is very strange, seeing as how both shows take place in the same &#8220;universe,&#8221; and there have been a few cross-overs here-and-there. One reviewer described the casting of that guy as a notable figure other than the character he actually plays in his show as &#8220;distracting,&#8221; and that&#8217;s exactly the way I&#8217;d describe it as well.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe music was great. There&#8217;s one scene in the middle of the film where Mulder and Scully&#8217;re chasing down a couple of tanker trucks and, unexpectedly, a creepy, powerful variation on the X-theme comes up<\/p>\n<p>\nActually, the tone of Millenium &#8212; that much more violent, dark atmosphere (which disturbs me a little too much) is pretty much what the movie has, rather than the &#8220;safer&#8221; bleakness the X-files has always had as a contrast.<\/p>\n<p>\nI want to locate Mark Snow&#8217;s score cd next time I&#8217;m in town. There were a couple other great things (though the music, I noticed, was almost subliminal. It was dubbed really very low in the mix) I noticed which I don&#8217;t individually recall at this moment.<\/p>\n<p>\nAs long as one goes into the movie with patience and is forewarned that the tone is a little uncomfortable, the thing will be great. I didn&#8217;t really know what to expect at all, and, of course, this being the X-files, anything I might have expected or anticipated didn&#8217;t take place or wasn&#8217;t done exactly as I thought it would be. Even just the editing of the thing &#8212; I&#8217;ll mention this, because it won&#8217;t detract from anything. . .<\/p>\n<p>\nThe title sequence &#8212; there really wasn&#8217;t one. Normally these days the credits last for about five or ten minutes, it seems. . .and even in the show, actually. I swear &#8212; the credits keep appearing at the bottom, even fifteen minutes into the program! Yeek. Here, however, the new X-logo just gradually forms and the six notes of melody are played exactly once, kind of trailing off. Then everything fades into the first scene. That&#8217;s it. Just a neat computer animation of the X-files logo and &#8220;twoo-twee-twih-too-twee-twooo. . .&#8221; and a scene fade. But at the end &#8212; me-yimminy. The Ending credits last for half an hour, it seems. There must be sixty pages of special-effects personnel. . .<\/p>\n<p>\nIt isn&#8217;t really until about when Martin Landau steps in that the movie starts to become involving. Until then, it&#8217;s just kind of a long setup (which tried my patience just a little, but, this being the first movie, I know it was needed for anyone who doesn&#8217;t watch the show as much as I do; thusly, I forgive the thing).<\/p>\n<p>\nIf the series didn&#8217;t exist, the movie could stand on its own devoid of that context &#8212; but in so doing, which is how I was kind of trying to watch it, it becomes an intrestingly complicated and bizarre film &#8212; something which would attract a cult following, for sure, but which would completely elude the mundane viewer, just from its strange, experimental-seeming nature.<\/p>\n<p>\nThat&#8217;s exactly what I&#8217;ve been trying to put my finger on &#8212; It seems very much like an &#8220;experimental&#8221; flick, like Citizen Kane (just to give an example of the unconventionality rather than precisely the quality) or something. It&#8217;s like a Jimi Hendrix album or Nine Inch Nails back before they became accepted and copied as much as they were. It&#8217;s hard to put a finger on whether it&#8217;s pleasing or not, because it&#8217;s so. . .well, unusual, and while obviously very well-done it has an unpolished, disorienting quality.<\/p>\n<p>\nThat&#8217;s a good thing, now that I think about it &#8212; it&#8217;s not a typical American Movie. Pretty much everything pumped out of the film factories over here is easilly classifiable and shiny and impressive, and then, every now-and-then, something strange crawls out which feels more like a single person&#8217;s idea which somehow made it through the system without being shined up. This film would definitely fit that description. As big as the show&#8217;s become, it still seems small and self-centered &#8212; Fox tried to screw with it early on, but eventually they just learned they wouldn&#8217;t get anywhere and, the thing being popular enough, just to leave the thing alone and let it run itself the way it wanted. The movie is exactly the same way &#8212; it&#8217;s not something a studio put out; it&#8217;s a project a small group worked on because they wanted to. It feels like an independant film.<\/p>\n<p>\nIt&#8217;s taken until just now for me to completely make up my mind about the movie. I wanted to like it, and I did to some extent, but something really bugged me and eluded my grasp. I&#8217;m satisfied now.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The truth certainly is &#8220;out there.&#8221; What a strange movie. I need to locate Mark Snow&#8217;s score album. I want to listen to some of that again. I think I&#8217;d have to watch the movie a second time for it all to sink in completely. I&#8217;d give it a thumb and an eyebrow up. A [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[28,127,253],"class_list":["post-660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-film-tv","tag-nine-inch-nails","tag-x-files","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aderack.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}