Random Thoughts in the Movie Theater, Part I

1) Queen should stop performing "We Are The Champions."

(I got to hear a sampling of "hot" hits while waiting in the near-empty theater for Monster House to begin. More on that in a future post.)

The guy can't sing like Freddie Mercury, which means that during the chorus, you can't really hear him, and he can't hit those nice high notes, as in "we'll...keep on FIGHTing...'til the end..." - he doesn't even try. That's bad enough. What's worse is that the he adds a lot of cheesy "whoah-oah-oah yeah"s, which I think is his attempt to really own the song, but which makes it crappy instead of, if not good, then at least not a horrible rendition.

2) Transamerica is a great movie if you think "transwoman" means "prissy drag queen." Or if you really want to see Felicity Huffman with a penis. It's basically a trans version of To Wong Foo, but without the small town and with one born woman playing the lead instead of three straight men.

I mean, really. Was the studio all out of good scripts? This is, no question, a movie for straights, not as in strictly heterosexual people, but as in "don't scare the straights." This has all the important components: self-loathing, awkward attempts to "act" like a woman, the hating family that miraculously becomes supportive almost on a whim. Couldn't we have a transwoman character who isn't uptight and doesn't have a penchant for bad makeup? Cripes. I felt like I was watching Tootsie.

And, for that matter - what? Are there no transwomen who can act? Whatever happened to Jaye Davidson? Surely there was a role for her somewhere in there - perhaps during the transwoman house party?

3) Firewall. Yawn. Even the title is boring. Poor Harrison Ford is running out of opportunities, and even I am getting tired of seeing him play the same guy over and over, seeing the same tired expressions cross his tired face. I swear, one of his opening lines is lifted right out of one of his many other films (something about asking the maid to take his blue suit to the cleaners). Also, his name is Jack in this one, which is weird, considering. I kept wondering what had happened to Anne Archer, if she didn't want to do another sequel or what, until I realized that he wasn't playing THAT Jack.