A quick one, while hes away

A quick one, while he’s away I dont really like The Eagles Desperado, but its sure been stuck in my head for the last few days. I wonder why. Last night I did some things and I thought I would relate them to you in the form of reviews. I know, its a bold blog structural experiment, but just have some faith in me. First, I went to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Spencer 07 in a 654-seat theater. Thats a lot of seats. Now, I have to admit, the original Gene Wilder version was never my favorite movie, though I think it might be Spencers. Still, I read pretty much all of Roald Dahls major output (Chocolate Factory, Glass Elevator, James and the Giant Peach, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The BFG and the stunningly brilliant Matilda) by third grade, so I feel pretty familiar with the authors style and themes. Also, growing up only 20 minutes from Hershey, PAthe sweetest place on Earthand having taken the Chocolate World tour ride countless times, I feel in a unique position to evaluate a movie about an insane philanthropist chocolatier. Well, it was pretty good. Johnny Depp will, in fact, haunt your dreams, and I think that Violet Beauregardes mother deserves an Academy Award just for her bizarre facial tics and for seriously rocking a blue velour tracksuit. The set design and special effects are fantastically imaginative and vibrant, and the kids are quite adorable. And I hate children. The familiar Oompa Loompa song has been rewritten (and apparently perfomed) by scientologist Danny Elfman, but the new music does incorporate Dahls original lyrics and I thought the second song of the five (about Augustus) was incredibly catchy. The movies only flaws occur when it strays too far from the book. After Augustus Gloops unfortunate accident in the chocolate river and the subsequent Oompa Loompa musical number describing it, Veruca Salt wonders how the entire work force of the factory was able to improvise such detailed lyrics about the incident. This might be entertaining as a throwaway joke on the musical genre, but its treated as a suggestion that Willy Wonka had actually planned the demise of each child, which pretty much makes no sense even in the context of the movie. Theres also a subplot involving Wonkas father, an authoritarian dentist, which seems inserted to give the whole work a family-oriented theme. If theres one thing I know about Roald Dahl, its that hes not exactly sympathetic to thbe families of his characters. James leaves his house behind and flies across the ocean in a giant mutated fruit, and Matilda basically destroys her family with psychic powers and runs off to live with her schoolteacher . Count Dooku does do a great job as Dr. Wonka, but the whole thing detracts from the real theme of the book, which is Impossible things can happen because chocolate is delicious. Anyway, I think Ive analyzed this movie aimed at ten-year-olds too deeply. Overall, I give a solid B. Still, the entire 654-seat theater was pretty much filled with college students, not, ten-year-olds, which Spencer theorized was a result of the Harry Potter book opening that night. When I got back to the dorm, I saw that Erica 07 and Gemma 06 were going down to H****** Square (am I allowed to write it, Ben?) to check out the delivery of the sixth book at their Coop, so I figured itd be cool even though Ive never even touched (literally) any of the books. After running four blocks to catch up to the #1 bus, we ended up going to four different places, so I thought I could offer some reviews of these establishments based solely on how well they dispense Harry Potter merchandise. H****** CoopThey had a bunch of people dressed up as Harry Potter characters, which I wasnt able to appreciate because I have no idea who any of them are. But there was a big black hooded thing (Dementor?) that was breathing in a really intimidating fashion. Still, they werent very organized hadning out the reserved books, and they didnt seem to be doing any children-oriented activities. B- Curious George toy storeWe headed over here because everybody who had their face painted (with a lightning bolt?) said they got it at Curious George. They were also handing out sorbet (is there a lot of sorbet in Harry Potter?) Unfortunately, they exceeded their maximum occupancy and had to close at 11:30 to get their store set up for the books arrival, so we got neither lightning nor sorbet. Poor planning, Curious George. I bet even your monkey namesake could have organized a better book opening. C+ Harvard Book Store (not affiliated with H****** the university)We never actually went inside, but there were two jugglers and a fiddle player putting on a show together outside. One of the jugglers was dropping things a lot and the last thing in the show was a fairly complicated routine with machetes, so I was really nervous standing five feet from them. Then I gave them five dollars for not killing me. I love Harvard Book Store, though, so I bet they did something great. A- ToscaninisThis way-too-expensive Boston ice cream chain, which is inferior to J. P. Licks anyway, stayed open late to capitalize on the book opening, so we stopped in for some water. They had a flavor called Voldamint, which must be hilarious if youve read the books. B+ You should realize in my grading that plusses and minuses do not count toward your GPA at MIT. Therefore, your goal, in general, is to get more minus grades than plus grades. Okay. Thats it for today, Parappa.