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I was talking to a fellow chorister after rehearsal on Monday, and he mentioned Joyce Hatto. The remarkable story of her plagiarism is fascinating reading. And, to me, reminds me of some of the fandom scandals there have been, mostly in how people were so in love with the narrative, they weren't critical when they should have been.

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Dark Shadows
Critics said this was crap, and boy was it. And not in the fun way. There were moments of campy humor, but all of them are in the trailer. The main problem is that they took a soap opera that ran for years and turned it into a movie without reducing the number of characters or their attendant storylines. So each character has three or four stories going on--even if they get ten minutes on the screen in total. The climax depends on an emotional connection between Barnabas and two other characters--neither of which he's spent any time onscreen with. There's a twenty minute prologue with portentious voiceover. It's just not any fun.

The one moment I liked was the nemesis has been alive in this town for two hundred years, posing as her own descendants (hand wave hand wave logistics of how that could possibly work). At one point, they pan down a row of portraits. Each one is not only in the fashioin of the time, but the artistic style. So it goes from colonial to John Singer Sargeant-esque to cubist. I quite liked that. ...And that's about all I can say positive for the movie.

A Good Day to Die Hard
Completely forgettable action movie. No interesting villain, no witty banter, lots of shit blowing up. And some absolutely eye-gougingly awful inaccuracies. Like, they drive from Moscow to the Ukraine in a few hours. And apparently all you have to do to get rid of radiation is spray some shit around, and then it's fine. *headdesk*