Theatrical

I watched most of "Gangs of New York" last night (twice -- saw it on Bravo or FX; I can't remember, now -- saw the latter half of it first, then about the first third of it second). Interesting, odd movie. Daniel Day-Lewis does a great job, I think, in his role as Bill the Butcher. Memorably villainous in a faintly ridiculously melodramatic setting -- he steals the movie with that flinty glint in his eyes and his almost gleeful malevolence. Now I feel like I have to get it on DVD or something and watch the whole from front-to-back.

There used to be a neighborhood in Chicago called "Hell Town" -- the whole Five Points thing made me think of that. Hell Town was sort of near where Pearl Art Supply is, downtown, to the west a bit.

I also watched "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," which was alright, despite getting shellacked by the critics and was a bomb at the theaters. But, having actually read the graphic novel it's based on, I was more forgiving of it, I guess. It didn't seem any worse than most of the summer blockbuster types of movies, and I liked some of the fanciful details, like the rendering of Nemo's Nautilus, which looked cool. Stuart Townsend was great as Dorian Gray, I thought. Maybe there was just too much to pay attention to (and too little?) for most of the viewers? I don't know -- I didn't dislike it, anyway, and I'm usually pretty picky about movies. I think Moriarty could have been better cast -- Gary Oldman might've been a good choice.