June 16, 2017
Dear Everyone:
My laptop, Oberon,
has begun to show a bit of a personality quirk.
At first, it was barely noticeable; but lately it has become just
short of tiresome.
When I want to look something up on the
Internet, it seems
to take forever. Usually, in
Wikipedia, as soon
as I begin to type in a subject to search, the system begins to
helpfully display possible matches.
But lately, nothing.
At first, I blamed the
wireless
modem. Naturally.
However, I also have a 2-in-1 tablet,
Petruchio, who
doesn’t seem to have the same problem.
In fact, when I set them up more or less side by side, and did
the same exact search, Petruchio happily displayed the search results
almost immediately, while Oberon just kept whirling.
And whirling. And
whirling.
I went back to my Gadget Log and found that I had bought Oberon just a
year ago because the previous laptop had lost its wireless
transceiver.
Rather than wait until it became an emergency, I decided to check
out laptops at the nearby Really Big Office Supply Warehouse Store.
I found a very nice new computer on sale for $130 off the original
asking price. Tentatively
nicknamed “Hermione”.
Oberon appears to be sensing the competition, even though
Hermione is still in the box, because he’s trying very hard to respond
more quickly. We shall see.
In the meantime, “Jeannie” and I decided to take in a movie last
weekend, the first in quite a while.
It was
The Mummy.
Again.
The first
Mummy
movie, made in 1932, was set in 1921, just a year before
Carter’s
discovery of the tomb of
Tutankhamun,
also known as “King Tut”. It
was the usual
Hollywood hodgepodge of anything-vaguely-Egyptian, with
Boris Karloff
as Imhotep,
a priest who committed some sacrilege and was “mummified
alive” for a forbidden love.
It followed the usual Hollywood nonsense, ignoring the fact that the
first step in mummification was to remove the internal organs, including
the brain.
Nevertheless, Imhotep was accidentally, magically brought back to life
and immediately set about searching for his lost love.
Ultimately he was defeated.
It was a big hit.
So naturally the studio churned out sequel after sequel.
The Mummy’s
Hand (1940).
The Mummy’s
Tomb (1942).
The Mummy’s
Curse (1944).
The Mummy’s Ghost (1944).
Return of the Ghost of the Mummy’s Hand…
You get the picture.
Then things quieted down for a while until the late 1950’s, when a new
production company,
Hammer
Films, decided to (excuse the expression) resurrect a lot of the old
horror movies like
Frankenstein,
Dracula,
The Wolf Man
and (you guessed it) The Mummy.
In color! And with
much better production values.
Of course it helped that all these subjects were pretty much in the
public domain, which made rewriting everything easier.
Plus, no royalties to pay.
The Hammer Horror films were fun for a while, then the public
lost interest again.
Fast forward a few decades and another studio decided to produce yet
another remake of
The Mummy,
this time with
Brendan Fraser and
Rachel Weisz.
And with computer-generated special effects that would have blown
Boris Karloff out of the water if he hadn’t passed away thirty years
earlier.
Again, Imhotep and long-lost love, this time with lots of bullets and
creepy little
scarabs (beetles). And
again, the good guys won.
And, again,
lots of sequels. Rachel
did one, then dropped out of the franchise.
Fraser, who was born the year before Karloff died, continued for
another, then wisely decided to let “younger” actors take over.
And now, the “New! And Improved!”
Mummy stars Tom
Cruise, along with
Russell Crowe,
in an attempt to reboot the franchise.
But there are a few problems.
First: Tom Cruise is
actually older than Fraser. In
fact, he’s in his fifties.
So the usual devil-may-care boyish charm doesn’t quite work these days.
What is Cruise doing in this movie?
Maybe he needs the money.
After all, he has a lot of ex-wives to support.
Maybe he thought it would be fun.
Or maybe it’s just a mid-life crisis.
He’s at that age, you know.
Plus, according to Variety,
Cruise insisted on total control, rewriting scenes on the fly, and
enlarging his own role over the others.
Next: Russell Crowe.
And just why is he in this movie?
Consider this:
Paul Newman and
Dustin Hoffman
both won the
Academy Award for Best Actor with (a much younger) Tom Cruise as
their co-star. Granted,
Hoffman already had one Oscar and Crowe got his for
Gladiator
without any help from Cruise. In
any case, maybe Russell just wanted the opportunity to work with Tom.
Or maybe, he couldn’t quite resist the opportunity to play
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
Which, of course, brings up the question:
What the heck is (are?) Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde doing in this
movie? He/they first
appeared in 1886, making him/them at least three-quarters of a century
older than any of the other actors.
But why quibble about picky little details?
In the final analysis, this is a case of special effects in
search of a film. If you’re
looking for a believable story-line and comprehensible motivation, check
out the latest incarnation of
Despicable Me. After
all, those little
minions
are just so cute. And they
make more sense than any of The
Mummy this time out.
Love, as always,
Pete
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