Ready Player One directed by Steven Spielberg

Its the second day with the Movie pass. I was like fuck yeah lets keep it rolling with the Movies! Get my moneys worth and then some asap, you know what I'm saying? So I didn't even stop at home first I went directly from work to the movies by my place. The 5:25pm showing of Ready Player One.
I have been using my Regal Card when buying these tickets with the movie pass. I knew I had enough points for a free popcorn. The girls who work concession at the movies by my place are goddess gorgeous. Always a gentleman I stay respectful, look I understand my current state of existence is not ideal, the wheels are turning that I need take better care of myself lose weight, work out and take bigger risks socially, bigger than going to the fucking movies, but after work most of the time I don't want to do shit, so at least I'm not doing that.

Now that I have this movie pass I have zero incentive to save my regal card points for movies, and I know I'm not going to eat real food til after this two hour movie is over, so I'm buying my usual deal that I rarely ever get at the movies because its so expensive, a small popcorn and a medium coke zero from the blond goddess. She almost sold me a very cool Black Panther themed movie/cup popcorn for $10. Some of you know how much I like movie cups, but I am also pretty dang frugal. Tuesdays are half price popcorn days, so I got a half price small popcorn for $4.23 which the blond goddess handed to me and spent my regal points on a ginormous medium coke zero that the redheaded goddess with red glasses simultaneously handed to me. and I looked at these college girls both framed behind the same register counter as I took my popcorn drink combo and thanked them and thought "This is probably the highlight of my day"

Now that may in fact be sad, but it didn't feel sad.
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Ready Player One is alright. I read the book by Ernest Cline last year. Which is basically a roll call for everything a gen xer might have nostalgia for. This is both mildly interesting and potentially repugnant. It just comes off as cheap to me to, to write a book like that. Lots of unearned goodwill is elicited, but when everything you grew up with is just listed off in name check after name check. its only natural to ask "and then what?" It wasn't like there was nothing there in the book, but it wasn't a literary masterpiece either. The strongest feature was that it was about the future of VR right when consumer VR came to the masses.

We have been living in nostalgic remix culture most of our lives. There's great stuff that comes out of remix culture like Paul's Boutique, and then there's the opposite side of the pendulum like Kid Rock sing/rapping over Skynyrd.

Ready Player One is actually a better more competently told story than the book, and it is more of a remix of the novel's narrative, more of a Paul's Boutique for Spielberg. It has a lot of great moments. It's got a cast of fresh faces some of whom are awesome, especially the female lead Art3mis played by Olivia Cooke who reminds me of Helena Bonham Carter, but young and possibly sane.Image result for olivia cooke And the female villain who rocks some world class Swing Out Sister caliber bangs Hanna John-Kamen.Image result for hannah john-kamen bangs

The movie is saved by the competence of Spielberg and his team. It's got joy, it is a romp it has lots of cool moments and visuals. Spielberg even revels in his cinematic reference to Kubrick and that's fucking worth the ticket, right there. It even succeeds in telling a story with cg people that look fake as shit. You all know how much I loathe CG people being passed off as real on a movie screen, but in a movie about vr when that happens it finally makes sense within the world of the story. Its about an advanced vr version of the internet created by a guy who loves 80's nerd pop culture. It has a message to live in the now, and getting out and living  in the world that I appreciated and is right in my wheelhouse.

But overall its a dumb movie about smart people enjoying things smart people recognize and remember from when they could still feel joy. made for today's dumb audiences. and is that ok?

Yeah, sure. Sometimes a dumb movie is what you want to see. Its a good dumb movie. I recommend seeing it at a dollar theater on a weekend matinee hopefully drunk.


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