last night charlie and i hit a double feature in evanston – ‘16 blocks‘, the new bruce willis/mos def thriller and ‘night watch‘, the incredibly popular and incredibly awesomely-subtitled russian fantasy/horror movie. both were pretty good and i’m excited to see the sequels to ‘night watch’.
as i said, the ‘night watch’ credits were insane. if the action was slow, the subtitles faded on and off. if a character suddenly stood up, the subtitles would be pulled out of frame. credits wiped on and off in time with characters crossing frame or camera pans. blood-red credits over a swimming pool scene dissolved into tendrils of red liquid. freaking AMAZING. but i guess when you have the highest grossing russian movie in history, you can afford to make some pretty hardcore subtitles for your US release.
the visual effects were good too – not too in-your-face, which i like. there was a really awesome scene near the beginning wherein a woman turns into a TIGER and leaps across an apartment, but unfortunately there was no more of that in the rest of the movie. hopefully we’ll get to see tiger cub and bear and olga change back and forth into their animal forms in the rest of the trilogy.
overall the night was pretty laid back except, oh yeah, the part where charlie and i are sitting in the car on western near the blue line and suddenly a guy chases another guy into an alley. shortly after this is two separate volleys of shots. a lot of shots. by some natural instinct for ‘guys about to get popped’ charlie knew something was up when he saw the two guys running. i however, was totally at a loss as to why he was suddenly so quiet, allowed a single curse under his breath and was staring out the window. also, hey! why are those cars all backing up? and, what is that sound – fireworks?