Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory
The movie: Now who doesn't love this movie? It's great! It's total psychadelic 70's wackiness mixed into a children's musical! What's not to love? The songs are great, and hey, it's got Oompa Loompas in it. Definitely one of the most creative movies ever made with awesome visual design. If you have never seen this movie as a kid (or at all, for that matter) you don't know what you're missing! But for now I'm going to assume that you've all seen this movie at one point or other and get on with...
The DVD: I rented the standard aspect ratio version from Netflix, and after watching it, ended up going out and actually buying the widescreen version. For all intents and purposes, both versions are exactly the same except one is a standard 4:3 pan and scan presentation, and the other is anamorphic widescreen. In other words, it's not like one is the "special edition" and the other one is a crappy version. Both versions are the same thing.
The film transfer is very clean and the colors are vibrant. I had previously only ever seen this movie on broadcast TV and lemme tell ya, I was seeing things on the DVD that I never knew where there before! This film has never looked so alive. The interactive/animated menus are spectacular, creative, and fully in the spirit of the movie, with neat great-glass-elevator themed transitions between the different screen.
Special features include the original featurette on the film, your usual bios and stuff, as well as some interesting things like Wonka "Sing-Alongs" -- musical selections from the film with "follow-the bouncing ball" type lyrics on the screen so you can sing along... and also the brand new 2001 documentary about the film -- holy cow Gene Wilder looks old. But there were some intersting insights into how the movie came to be (the director's daughter, aged 10, had just read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and suggested to her father that he make it into a movie), and you also get to see all the people who played the kids in the movie all grown up.
I rate this DVD highly, and I think it's a worthy addition to anyone's DVD collection. The movie is great, and the DVD content is all top-notch.

Oompa loompa, doobity doo...

Thursday, 6 December 2001 11:59pm

V

egas baby, Vegas! After a fairly uneventful and easy drive out here, my friend Dave and I made it out. We've both been to Vegas pretty often this year, so we're not to hard pressed to be constantly doing stuff... just relaxing mostly. What we did do is go to Sushi On Tropicana and got a great all you can eat sushi dinner...
After that we visited a few casinos, including Bellagio where their conservatory was filled with poinsettias and and overall Christmas theme. As usual, it smelled great in there. After that we headed to Hard Rock where we found these great 12" action figures of MC Hammer and 80's Michael Jackson.
Oh yeah, it was Dave's birthday today. He was complaining that nothing ever happens on his birthday and hence, we are here. Us and about 100,000 cowboys who are here for the National Finals of Rodeo. Yeeha. Tomorrow we'll probably check out the new Palms Hotel and Casino and also go and watch Ocean's 11. Movies about Vegas, in Vegas, baby!

MC Hammer as an Action Figure

Saturday, 8 December 2001 9:50pm

L

ast night Dave and I checked out the new Palms, and well I gotta say that I am rather underwhelmed by the place. They were trying to hit the Hard Rock market, but they missed the mark by a mile. The decor on the inside looks like your typical mall food court, the gambling is just average and they are stingy on the comps!
Not only that but we checked out the buffet and man was it just plain ol' crap. The new fad in buffets these days seems to be to be "international", and while the Palms buffet has a big selection of "international" foods, none of them are any good. All the chicken (from whatever country it's supposed to be from) was dry and flavorless. The prime rib was way overcooked.
Am I being harsh? I don't know, but I really don't see any reasons to come back to that place. Their one redeeming quality was snappy drink service at the gambling tables, and that is about it. Oh there is one other good thing about them, and that is that they have a fantastic view of the south strip from the roof of the parking garage.

Earlier in the day yesterday we did head out to Sam's Town to see Ocean's Eleven. It was a pretty fun movie, although they did some minor creative liberties in geography (no instantly switching back from the Strip to Downtown like in Con-Air though) and some dramatic liberties in casino ownership. But definitely a movie worth watching.
It was quite odd though, watching a movie largely set in Vegas casinos, then exiting the movie theater... into a Vegas casino. It was also weird cuz we had just been in the Bellagio the night before, and that was the main setting for the movie.
Today... today... I don't have much to say about today except too much free whiskey. Oh, that and the Caesars buffet is still my favorite. On weekends they have a seafood buffet for $25. Doesn't sound to exciting until you realize that included in that price is one whole Maine lobster! And lots of people don't even want the lobster so there are people giving out their extra lobster tickets everywhere!
Now I just wanna rest... The Matrix is on TNT right now so we are watching that and just chillin' out for what.