Sam Jackson cures a nymphomaniac Christina Ricci of her sex addiction. Forget Snakes on a Plane. I wanna see Black Snake Moan.

Between this job, this school, and my lack of self-transport skills, I am slowly dying inside. Seriously. Oh, there went my spleen.

Someone asked me the other day why I stopped writing my blog. Honestly, I don’t have much to write about anymore. Everything is either job related and I can’t talk about it, sorority related and I can’t publicly talk about it, or school related and you don’t really want me to talk about it. I have finally become what I never, ever wanted to be: boring. At some point I feared I might be boring but knew deep down that I really wasn’t. Now, I know I am. Truly. I have, however, had some interesting experiences as of late.

Yay for Me!
First was the agony and ecstasy that was seeing Dave Chappelle and the Block Party All Stars at Oven’s auditorium last month. Agony: the show selling out in 20 minutes and my having balcony seats despite being in line at the box office and on line at Ticketmaster.com since 9:50 AM. Ecstasy: the seats being not all that bad and the show being AWESOME! I wasn’t old enough to attend the 25-and-up afterparty, nor was I bright enough to guess that Dave would do a surprise aftershow at the Comedy Zone, so the only pictures I have are screenshots from the dozens of minutes of illegitimate video shot on my wonderful (and now broken, which is another story) digital camera, which I will, out of respect of copyright law and the code of the streets, not distribute to the public. Kweli rocked it, Erykah ripped it, and Dave… Dave is just fucking classic, is all.

I went to see the Block Party movie instead of the stepshow during CIAA weekend, and that might have been the best and only good reason for avoiding social engagement that I’ve had in a long time. There were all of 8 people in the theater, counting the people who came in late. I thought this might have been because all the black people were CIAAing it up, but apparenly this continued across the country and the following weeks. That’s a dissapointment, but an understandable one… if it had been a standup special, the theaters would have been packed. The movie was WONDERFUL and only solidified my standing belief that that concert would have been one of the standout experiences of my life and would probably have made up for my not getting to see the Roots/Fugees show in Charlotte when I was in the 9th grade (but that is yet another story). Maybe there’ll be a Block Party II? Some weekend when I can ditch school and work? Maybe I’ll have friends by then? Who knows? That last one is only half rhetorical.

*This is the closest approximation I can think of to that sound Prince always makes. You know the one.

sidebar: was the first one called Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory?

Anyway, I must say that I was surprisingly dissapointed. I really thought that the Roald Dahl-Tim Burton-Johnny Depp trifecta would have produced some wonderfully weird Wonka World on par with… well, everything else Tim Burton does. So what the heck happened?

First of all, let me back up. I am a Wonka fan on all levels. Even when I read the book as a kid, I was delighted with the darkness of it all and the well-veiled social undertones that Dahl was so great at. I was thrilled when I read the book to find that the Oompa Loompas were originally African Pygmies who Wonka “rescued” (best social commentary/character kink evar).The movie never gets old to me because while the visuals and wackiness were so cool to me as a little kid, I enjoyed it even more as I grew older because of Wilder’s deadpan character… the whole thing is just great to me. So I was expecting this movie to be a older, darker Wonka.

And I think that may be what Tim Burton wanted too… but it didn’t quite get there. I think they tried to make it too similar to the first movie. I think the studio pushed the whole package from “dark and witty” to “summer kids’ blockbuster”. I thought this would be a movie that I’d enjoy talking about later and watching again. But it just wasn’t. I even liked Wonka’s backstory and the casting was perfect But the plot just fell through.

The musical numbers were overrought and gimmicky and Depps delivery only shone in those beginning moments where these potentially beautiful and interesting plot points started off… he came off goofy and stilted in the other 70% when those plot points dissapeared into thin air and never developed. I feel like I should have walked out of the theater feeling like I did when I saw Edward Scissorhands, but instead felt like I’d seen one of Disney’s latest non-Pixar animated gumball flicks. Depp was perfect for what this version should have been, but came off goofy much of the time because of what the film ended up being.

I am not daunted, though.Corpse Bride looks delightful.