Going back to work on Sunday after having Saturday off was kind of odd. In one way, it made it feel like it was my “Monday” all over again, even though it was actually my “Friday.”
Because the party had been the night before, Scott, Chris, and Chip all opted to come in to work a bit late to allow themselves to recuperate from either drinking, being up late, or both.
So that mean that for the first part of the morning it would be just me and Brian manning the desk, which, on a typical Sunday wouldn’t be an issue.
Of course, when I got there the overnight people told me that Brian had called in and said that he’d be late, which would be a little more bothersome.
I was immediately suspicious that it was a joke, but, prepared for it to not be, I got pissed at Brian just in case.
The week before Brian hadn’t come in on Sunday because in the middle of the night he responded to a fire call. Knowing that it would just be us on Sunday morning I told him that he was absolutely not allowed to respond to a call.
I got the hand-off from the overnight crew and resolved to work the desk by myself.
A couple minutes after six Brian walked in to reveal that it was a joke. He had told the overnight crew to lie for him when he left Saturday night, and then waited in his car until after six to add believability to the whole thing.
Once he came in I said things to him that I won’t repeat here.
Today I went to see “Aeon Flux” with Scott and Chris. Brian was invited as well but didn’t show, which is hardly surprising, as it really wasn’t his kind of movie.
I’d heard nothing but bad things about the movie, but I was at least somewhat pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn’t as bad as I’d expected.
It wasn’t especially good, but it had its moments.
While it differed considerably from the source material, that really wasn’t a big deal.
“Aeon Flux” began life as a series of highly stylized – and weird – animated shorts on MTV’s early 90’s animation series “Liquid Televison.”
Most of the “Flux” shorts had no discernible plot, consisting of a series of visually stunning – and often stunningly violent – action sequences that typically ended in the death of the titular protagonist.
Stylish, sexy, and sometimes unsettling, the “Aeon Flux” shorts mostly resulted in you either saying, “That was cool,” or scratching your head in bafflement.
Eventually it grew into an actual series with plots and dialogue, though I seldom saw many episodes of the show, and even with the dialogue and tacked-on plots the half-hour episodes were just as puzzling as the shorts.
One of the most memorable things about “Aeon Flux” was the Pepsi commercial that featured Cindy Crawford and Malcolm McDowell engaging in a bit of dialogue that seemed lifted from the show, followed by the transformation of the “real” world into a world animated in the style of “Aeon Flux,” with an animated Aeon Flux-esque Cindy engaging in the kind of acrobatics that were a hallmark of the shorts and the series.
In any case, in my opinion, the movie didn’t have much to live up to in terms of the source material. Really, all it needed to do was be stylish and have interesting visuals.
And it did.
One complaint I actually had about the movie was the attempt at making a nod to a classic scene from the source material – Aeon catching a fly in her eyelashes – which was just kind of silly and unnecessary.
There were some other bits of imagery that were in line with the sort of creepy/sexy visuals of the animation, most notably the scene early on in which a fellow agent passes something to Aeon via a kiss. The close up of her tongue wrapping around his to retrieve the object was like something directly from the shorts.
Another visually similar scene also involved Aeon’s tongue – along with a trademark act of brutal violence.
Where the movie fell short in comparison to the source material, though, was in the nature of the action.
Just as I had read in a review of the movie, the unarmed combat was incredibly vicious. A lot of it actually made me uncomfortable. Between Charlize Theron’s performance and the way the director just zoomed in on the action the fight scenes elicited a visceral response. You almost felt like you were in the fight, struggling to kill or to be killed. It almost seemed too personal, as if it were something that you shouldn’t be watching.
But the gunfights, which were a hallmark of the animated shorts, were much weaker by comparison.
As for the plot…meh. It had some interesting ideas, but there were a lot of unexplained holes.
Some of the ideas were actually quite similar to the basic concepts of the universe in which one of my characters – who is herself a bad-ass, sexy femme fatale in a skin tight outfit and a futuristic world – lives.
That’s not too surprising, given that Aeon played a (small) part in the character’s genesis in my mind, though I did actually develop most of the concepts of my character’s world before Aeon ever acquired any sort of plot.
In any case, overall the movie was nowhere near as bad as some people would lead you to believe it is, but I can’t really recommend seeing it.
I will say, though, that Charlize, as always (except in “Monster,” though her performance in that was amazing) was incredibly hot. I would have liked for her have worn an outfit more like the animated version, though…
Of note to any Neil Gaiman fans out there, the actor who portrayed the Marquis de Carabas in “Neverwhere” has a role in “Aeon Flux.” (Props to Scott for recognizing him)
Once the movie let out we went outside to see that there had been a light dusting of snow, which, quite naturally, had brought everything to a standstill.
And that was pretty much my day.
I made an appointment to meet with my realtor on Wednesday.
It looks as though I’m going to try to buy a condo in Leesburg.
It’s a less-than ideal space – it’s actually smaller than my current place – but it seems to be the best deal I’ve seen so far, and it’s in a nice development.
So we’ll see how that goes.
In any case, that will do it for this entry. I’m sure that I’ll be here babbling quite a bit for the next little while, as I don’t have to go back to work until the 16th.
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