AudioShocker

A few months ago, when I still had a real job, on/off AS commenter Tom (aka Spicoli!) said his favorite movie of all time was Patton. Embarrassed that I hadn't seen it yet, I played it off and said "really, Patton?" Then I quickly added it to my Netflix queue - and it finally came through this week.

First off, this movie is long, it clocks in around 170 minutes. Wish someone had told me that beforehand. But hey, some stories just don't fit the 120 minute Hollywood paradigm.

In short, I liked it - but it didn't move me. It's not like I had a phantom undescended testicle drop into place during the viewing or something. I didn't feel a strong desire to shout out U-S-A and enlist. If anything, you wonder how Patton succeeded at being such a huge dick for so long before getting reprimanded by Ike.

The second half was eh... I feel like all the cool stuff happened at the beginning - like in Apocalypse Now.

I was also little surprised how much the film clowns Montgomery and the British 8th. I mean, they just made that guy a total joke.

What I liked most was all the in camera work. Obviously in 1970, advanced SFX were yet to come, but nothing looks more real than a real explosion.  They had tanks, and howitzers, and blew up buildings! The cinematography was on point too - you usually don't get a lot of great camera angles with tanks.

It makes no sense that we rely on CG for everything now. I was reading in the WSJ today that it took nearly 9 months to render a CG shot of Dumbledore twirling around some fire in the new HP flick. How is that cheaper or more effective than rigging up some pyrotechnics? I motion for more in camera effects. I want to see dudes in rubber monster suits with Tom Savini makeup - not some pixel shaded microchip mashup. CG is the Autotune of movies, and we all know that Jay Z declared D.O.A. a few weeks back.

Bottomline: Glad I saw it - but not the greatest movie of all time.

Am I the only one who thought George C. Scott was related to Woody Harrelson and Ed O'Neill? I see them in his look and performance. It's a bit creepy. Perhaps Woody will star in a George C. Scott biopic.

My mom just got back from Tunisia and had been telling me about all the history and battles that took place there. The thing is, I had no interest in any of it until Patton strolls through a centuries old battlefield and starts talking about the Carthaginians, Romans, and reincarnation. Clearly all history should be presented as wistful nostalgia by a poetic army general.

Oh, and do I have terrible timing or what? Both Karl Michael Vogler (Field Marshal Erwin Rommel) and Karl Malden (Gen. Omar N. Bradley) just passed (June 9 and July 1 2009).