I Saw "I Am Legend" Last Night
 

Okay, I saw it at 5pm and I really, really liked it.

First, for the younger, "all-movies-gotta-have-nonstop-action-like-a-video-game" people, you're going to be disappointed with parts of it. For the rest of us, this is a really good movie. I doubt he will win, but Will Smith will get an Oscar nomination out of it.

The story is only basically faithful to the book (I just -re-read it) in concept...but no matter...the book was very light on detail anyway. I'll only say that overall I found the movie to be positive and life affirming when I thought it was going to be exactly the opposite...like the Omega Man of my childhood. Go see it, I'd love to hear impressions.

Third remake.

First starred Vincent Price. Second starred Charlton Heston.

Are there no new stories out there?

I enjoyed it. It was close to what I expected -- haunting as much as exciting and with a bit of thoughtfulness. It got a little lazy in its examination of an intelligent man stuck in hopeless solitutude. But such are the limits of genre, I suppose. Talking to store mannequins and tossing plates of scrambled eggs as emotional release valves for a "brilliant scientist" don't do it for me. But man against the mutants always has appeal, and there was no keeping me away from the chance to see a german shepherd in a key role. Notice how the dog kept circling him after he was wounded and backing away toward his car? Trained dog.

I also question the hyper-steroidal special effects. While the early hints and glimpses of the mutants were effective, I found the growing assault of special effects taking me out of story.