In what has become basically the last of my kept blogging traditions, I present my annual round-up of new movies that I watched this year. As always, everything is arbitrarily ranked in numerical order from least to most enjoyed. This year I had to cut down the categories, as I watched way less movies than normal, but also liked waaaay more than I usually do.
Movies that I Hated Beyond All Rational Measure:
24. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (also known as man's greatest crime against art in at least 24 months)
Movies that I Liked:
23. Confessions of a Shopaholic (seriously y'all, one disliked movie. It was a good year)
22. Fired Up
21. Monsters Vs. Aliens
20. Sunshine Cleaning (you'd think all the good acting would have saved this movie from such a low fate, but no)
19. Push
18. 9
17. The Twilight Saga: New Moon (I cannot begin to decide where to put this movie)
16. I Love You, Man
Movies that were Great:
15. Precious (Yes, the acting is phenomenal. It's also the most depressing thing I've ever seen and have no desire to ever revisit it again)
14. Julie & Julia
13. The Informant! (Another movie too hard to rank well. It was hilarious and interesting, but really all I remember is the soundtrack)
12. Watchmen
11. Zombieland
10. Coraline
9. 17 Again (How is this movie ranked so high in my mind? It is a mystery)
Movies that were Excellent:
8. The Hangover (Seriously, maybe one of the funniest straight comedies I've seen in ages)
7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
6. Up (Have I mentioned that this movie made me cry 4 times? No, really, 4)
5. District 9
4. Star Trek
3. Adventureland (I can't remember if I wrote this one up, but man I loooved this movie. Kristen Stewart represent!)
2. Paranormal Activity (Scariest damn movie I've seen since The Ring)
1. (500) Days of Summer
So what did we learn from this list? Absolutely nothing, except that it has spurred me to reactivate my Netflix/Blockbuster membership because there were so many movies I wanted to see this year that I missed.
Next up: Booklist!
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts
Monday, December 28, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Harry Potter And The Teenage Angst Monster
(Long and SPOILER filled, for both the 6th movie and the 7th book so watch the heck out)
It's a tricky thing, adapting a book into a movie. Particularly one that's been read, analyzed, dissected, fought over, and devoured millions of times over. You keep it too tightly to the book and it would no doubt be long and dry. Go too far off base and you hear the unending outcry of an angry horde of rabid fans from across the globe. It's basically a no-win situation, if you discount the huge piles of money that you're being paid.
I think that overall, though, I'm in the camp that likes it when things are switched up. My favorite of the Harry Potter movies is Alfonso Cuarón's take on Prisoner of Azkaban, and I think it's mostly because the movie doesn't try to copy over the book word for word (like it seemed the first two tried to) and it didn't just try to get all the set pieces of the story in (like the 4th seemed to). There was a story that was told, and even though the denouement exposition scene was probably too much, it felt like a standalone decent film.
David Yates is obviously taking a long-term approach with parts 5 through 7A & 7B that doesn't really fit any classification. He's taking a sort of half-and-half approach to adaptation that you can only try when you know you're going to have the continuity of the films in place. Because just like 5, 6 really doesn't stand on it's own as a great film. Don't get me wrong, it's almost endlessly entertaining. For a movie that runs over two and half hours, keeping my attention that high and engrossed throughout is a great triumph. But he's obviously taking the long view on the series as a whole, and is okay with making the 6th installment fun, but ultimately incomplete. And if the currently leaked plans for the first movie of the seventh book are accurate, this will continue to the end.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing (cohesion rarely is), but it's not what I would have done. We'll get into that later, but let's for now have a small discussion on how much I enjoyed this one.
My primary joy in this movie was the strength of acting, which is the highest it's been in an HP movie thus far. Particularly Emma Watson and Tom Felton, who brought up the level of their games significantly from Part 5. I could spend a few hours gushing over Watson, but mostly because I was terrified that after that Order of the Phoenix disaster, that she would drag this movie straight down, as Hermione has such an arc to get through in Half Blood Prince. But she pulls it off with room to spare. Felton adds some umph to Draco's story, and the decision to reveal a lot more about the vanishing cabinet directly was a very smart decision.
Plus, Michael Gambon as Dumbledore finally puts it all together for this movie, and just in time as he could have easily been the make or break piece of the puzzle. (This was sidestepped by the directing decisions, but we'll get to that). I wasn't on board with his acting style for part 4 at all, but by 5 I could come around to it, and in 6 he has real pathos - he obviously cares for Harry, and is doing a delicate balancing act that is nicely highlighted in some of the more subtle bits of his acting.
I also greatly enjoyed the little liberties that were taken with the book - I loved getting rid of the tedium of the Dursleys and instead getting the off-beat diner scene instead. That's the exact kind of thing I'm looking for in a movie adaptation - reverence to the spirit of the book, but not slavish devotion to the recreation of the text. I was less pleased with the added attack on the Weasleys' house, but that's more the plot nerd coming out in me than an actual complaint. The scene itself is incredibly well-done, it just raises so many canon questions that my brain starts flailing internally.
And just like for the last movie, lets stop and take a paragraph to revel in the glory that is Luna Lovegood. It's such a perfect bit of casting, and she's played so delightfully, I want an entire movie just about her and Harry having little adventures together. I loved the way she was integrated into the movie even better than in the book - her finding Harry on the train was economical and well thought-out, and she gets some great lines floating in and out of her various scenes. I can't say enough good things.
My last bit of gushing comes for the Horcrux reveal scene - which seems crazy, as it's something that I kind of hated in the book. Textually, when Harry gets the Slughorn memory, all it does is confirm Dumbledore's expectation of what is going on (basically the sum reveal is that he's expecting 7 horcruxes). This is similar to the movie, but Gambon is able to ham it up a little, and give it some gravitas. And then the bit that I didn't expect - the really nice foreshadowing for Book 7 - Dumbledore's explanation of how the dark magic leaves its traces, only to have Harry himself get hit with a bolt Voldemort when he touches the ring. Because he's got the dark traces inside himself, right? Since he's a horcrux too. And while they're a little overdone, I love the ambiguity of Dumbledore's lines that follow, about how he can't destroy the horcrux himself, and again he's going to have to ask too much of Harry. Because he doesn't really say which horcrux he's talking about, does he? Whatever, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but let me have my delusions, I think it's amazingly well done.
-------------------------
But back to the idea of adaptation. I understand what the director is doing here - he's going for the larger picture. The fifth movie sets the adult portion of the Harry Potter arc in motion - introduces the main characters and themes, but doesn't resolve much of anything. The sixth movie carries that through, raising the stakes by staying so close to the character-study side of things, rather than getting bogged into the deepening past plot. The opposite sides weighing in - the normal teenage life beset on all sides by the darkness - it makes sense when you're building to the overall conflict that will be Harry, Ron, and Hermione cutting ties to complete their mission in the next movie, and then the eventual grand conclusion where everything comes back together in the final one.
So taking this into account, I can see why the cuts were made where they were, and why the additions were necessary. It's a four movie payoff, nothing too immediate. See: Mrs. Weasley's long tear-stained reaction shot to Bellatrix burning down The Burrow. Can't even imagine what that might be leading up to a few movies down the road, no?
Or the cutting of all the other Voldemort memories: While it's all great backstory, it ultimately has little to do with the matters at hand in the story they're telling. How they'll nail down the horcruxes in the next parts is irrelevant to the set up the Half-Blood Prince is setting up. And for that matter, keeping the fight for Hogwarts at the end of HBP would introduce and remove the threat too quickly and too hollowly for the theme to continue (unless they re-added Bill and Fleur, which would be just too much.)
The only part I don't necessarily understand is the removal of the funeral, and the astronomy tower discussion put in its place. The new scene fits the theme well, but then so would the funeral. And had they carried the funeral to the expected conclusion, having Harry do his little homage to Spider-Man and dumping Ginny at the end would complete the natural arc of story nicely, and provides the ramp into the next movie. Instead we get a sort of soft fade out on the reflections of how the kids have grown up.
These are all things I can rail against, but don't see the need. It's a great entry into the series, and as a whole I think they'll acquit themselves nicely, particularly when viewed in the series as a whole.
It's a tricky thing, adapting a book into a movie. Particularly one that's been read, analyzed, dissected, fought over, and devoured millions of times over. You keep it too tightly to the book and it would no doubt be long and dry. Go too far off base and you hear the unending outcry of an angry horde of rabid fans from across the globe. It's basically a no-win situation, if you discount the huge piles of money that you're being paid.
I think that overall, though, I'm in the camp that likes it when things are switched up. My favorite of the Harry Potter movies is Alfonso Cuarón's take on Prisoner of Azkaban, and I think it's mostly because the movie doesn't try to copy over the book word for word (like it seemed the first two tried to) and it didn't just try to get all the set pieces of the story in (like the 4th seemed to). There was a story that was told, and even though the denouement exposition scene was probably too much, it felt like a standalone decent film.
David Yates is obviously taking a long-term approach with parts 5 through 7A & 7B that doesn't really fit any classification. He's taking a sort of half-and-half approach to adaptation that you can only try when you know you're going to have the continuity of the films in place. Because just like 5, 6 really doesn't stand on it's own as a great film. Don't get me wrong, it's almost endlessly entertaining. For a movie that runs over two and half hours, keeping my attention that high and engrossed throughout is a great triumph. But he's obviously taking the long view on the series as a whole, and is okay with making the 6th installment fun, but ultimately incomplete. And if the currently leaked plans for the first movie of the seventh book are accurate, this will continue to the end.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing (cohesion rarely is), but it's not what I would have done. We'll get into that later, but let's for now have a small discussion on how much I enjoyed this one.
My primary joy in this movie was the strength of acting, which is the highest it's been in an HP movie thus far. Particularly Emma Watson and Tom Felton, who brought up the level of their games significantly from Part 5. I could spend a few hours gushing over Watson, but mostly because I was terrified that after that Order of the Phoenix disaster, that she would drag this movie straight down, as Hermione has such an arc to get through in Half Blood Prince. But she pulls it off with room to spare. Felton adds some umph to Draco's story, and the decision to reveal a lot more about the vanishing cabinet directly was a very smart decision.
Plus, Michael Gambon as Dumbledore finally puts it all together for this movie, and just in time as he could have easily been the make or break piece of the puzzle. (This was sidestepped by the directing decisions, but we'll get to that). I wasn't on board with his acting style for part 4 at all, but by 5 I could come around to it, and in 6 he has real pathos - he obviously cares for Harry, and is doing a delicate balancing act that is nicely highlighted in some of the more subtle bits of his acting.
I also greatly enjoyed the little liberties that were taken with the book - I loved getting rid of the tedium of the Dursleys and instead getting the off-beat diner scene instead. That's the exact kind of thing I'm looking for in a movie adaptation - reverence to the spirit of the book, but not slavish devotion to the recreation of the text. I was less pleased with the added attack on the Weasleys' house, but that's more the plot nerd coming out in me than an actual complaint. The scene itself is incredibly well-done, it just raises so many canon questions that my brain starts flailing internally.
And just like for the last movie, lets stop and take a paragraph to revel in the glory that is Luna Lovegood. It's such a perfect bit of casting, and she's played so delightfully, I want an entire movie just about her and Harry having little adventures together. I loved the way she was integrated into the movie even better than in the book - her finding Harry on the train was economical and well thought-out, and she gets some great lines floating in and out of her various scenes. I can't say enough good things.
My last bit of gushing comes for the Horcrux reveal scene - which seems crazy, as it's something that I kind of hated in the book. Textually, when Harry gets the Slughorn memory, all it does is confirm Dumbledore's expectation of what is going on (basically the sum reveal is that he's expecting 7 horcruxes). This is similar to the movie, but Gambon is able to ham it up a little, and give it some gravitas. And then the bit that I didn't expect - the really nice foreshadowing for Book 7 - Dumbledore's explanation of how the dark magic leaves its traces, only to have Harry himself get hit with a bolt Voldemort when he touches the ring. Because he's got the dark traces inside himself, right? Since he's a horcrux too. And while they're a little overdone, I love the ambiguity of Dumbledore's lines that follow, about how he can't destroy the horcrux himself, and again he's going to have to ask too much of Harry. Because he doesn't really say which horcrux he's talking about, does he? Whatever, maybe I'm reading too much into it, but let me have my delusions, I think it's amazingly well done.
-------------------------
But back to the idea of adaptation. I understand what the director is doing here - he's going for the larger picture. The fifth movie sets the adult portion of the Harry Potter arc in motion - introduces the main characters and themes, but doesn't resolve much of anything. The sixth movie carries that through, raising the stakes by staying so close to the character-study side of things, rather than getting bogged into the deepening past plot. The opposite sides weighing in - the normal teenage life beset on all sides by the darkness - it makes sense when you're building to the overall conflict that will be Harry, Ron, and Hermione cutting ties to complete their mission in the next movie, and then the eventual grand conclusion where everything comes back together in the final one.
So taking this into account, I can see why the cuts were made where they were, and why the additions were necessary. It's a four movie payoff, nothing too immediate. See: Mrs. Weasley's long tear-stained reaction shot to Bellatrix burning down The Burrow. Can't even imagine what that might be leading up to a few movies down the road, no?
Or the cutting of all the other Voldemort memories: While it's all great backstory, it ultimately has little to do with the matters at hand in the story they're telling. How they'll nail down the horcruxes in the next parts is irrelevant to the set up the Half-Blood Prince is setting up. And for that matter, keeping the fight for Hogwarts at the end of HBP would introduce and remove the threat too quickly and too hollowly for the theme to continue (unless they re-added Bill and Fleur, which would be just too much.)
The only part I don't necessarily understand is the removal of the funeral, and the astronomy tower discussion put in its place. The new scene fits the theme well, but then so would the funeral. And had they carried the funeral to the expected conclusion, having Harry do his little homage to Spider-Man and dumping Ginny at the end would complete the natural arc of story nicely, and provides the ramp into the next movie. Instead we get a sort of soft fade out on the reflections of how the kids have grown up.
These are all things I can rail against, but don't see the need. It's a great entry into the series, and as a whole I think they'll acquit themselves nicely, particularly when viewed in the series as a whole.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Transformers - Robots in Disg-THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD
My review of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, which was so bad that my hate-review spilled over the character limit on the sidebar.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - I told myself as I was walking out of the theater that I wouldn't write up this review for at least a couple of days. "The pain will be too fresh in your mind, and you will say things that you regret."
But you know what? Screw it - This was the worst movie I have ever paid money to go see. And I went to both the remake of Prom Night last year, and I saw The Fog on its opening weekend. Terrible in every way imaginable, and then terrible again in ways that you couldn't even guess. Boring, long, insulting, misogynistic, borderline racist, loud, overly long, annoying, poorly acted, unforgivably dumb, confusing, way too long, illogical, ugly, vaguely nauseating, and (oh did I mention) TOO DAMN LONG. One of my friends complained that when he went to see it, someone pulled the fire alarm at the 2 hour mark and they had to evacuate the theater and he missed the end. Rather than complain, I would have gladly given whoever pulled the fire alarm a hug and maybe a kiss on the mouth. Another friend said she would have had more fun sleeping than watching the movie - I said I would have had more fun hitting myself on the hand with a large, sharp rock for TWO AND ONE HALF HOURS.
The plot is nonsensical to the point that you wonder why they even decided they needed a script at all - just give in to inertia and just go from set-action-piece to set-action-piece without any explanation if your rationalizations are going to be that lame. (Which they did at one point, I might mention. They literally had the cast gather in a circle in the middle of a field outside of the Smithsonian and then magically teleported themselves to a desert in Egypt.)
And then even the action sequences are so poorly shot (or rendered in most cases) that you don't even know what's going on. There are two formulas available:
#1:
#2:
I will credit the movie for making me laugh on three separate occasions (Rainn Wilson, I absolve you for being in this movie) but that doesn't make up for the damage done to my soul. We were trapped in that theater for 150 minutes of my life. Just a terrible, terrible, horrible, unconscionably bad movie.
And I haven't even talked about that part at the end where (SPOILER FOR THE ENDING OF WORST MOVIE IN THE WORLD) the boy dies and goes to Transformers Limbo where he is praised by the spirits of dead robots and is turned into Keanu Reeves from The Matrix except even more lame (because of his robot loyalty he's now The One? After he only started trying to save a robot because he felt guilty for abandoning him earlier and causing said robot's death?). But then he comes back to life because of the power of either Megan Fox's love, or a magically reassembling tiara. Had I been holding anything in my hands at the time, I might very well have chunked it at the screen. I mean, I can enjoy mindless comedy or I can enjoy mindless action, but this was neither. It was just loud, nonsensical, boring and hate Hate HATE HATEHATEHATEHA--- Okay, I'm out.
Jesus.
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen - I told myself as I was walking out of the theater that I wouldn't write up this review for at least a couple of days. "The pain will be too fresh in your mind, and you will say things that you regret."
But you know what? Screw it - This was the worst movie I have ever paid money to go see. And I went to both the remake of Prom Night last year, and I saw The Fog on its opening weekend. Terrible in every way imaginable, and then terrible again in ways that you couldn't even guess. Boring, long, insulting, misogynistic, borderline racist, loud, overly long, annoying, poorly acted, unforgivably dumb, confusing, way too long, illogical, ugly, vaguely nauseating, and (oh did I mention) TOO DAMN LONG. One of my friends complained that when he went to see it, someone pulled the fire alarm at the 2 hour mark and they had to evacuate the theater and he missed the end. Rather than complain, I would have gladly given whoever pulled the fire alarm a hug and maybe a kiss on the mouth. Another friend said she would have had more fun sleeping than watching the movie - I said I would have had more fun hitting myself on the hand with a large, sharp rock for TWO AND ONE HALF HOURS.
The plot is nonsensical to the point that you wonder why they even decided they needed a script at all - just give in to inertia and just go from set-action-piece to set-action-piece without any explanation if your rationalizations are going to be that lame. (Which they did at one point, I might mention. They literally had the cast gather in a circle in the middle of a field outside of the Smithsonian and then magically teleported themselves to a desert in Egypt.)
And then even the action sequences are so poorly shot (or rendered in most cases) that you don't even know what's going on. There are two formulas available:
#1:
- Two large collections of bits of metal go flying at each other from opposite sides of the screen
- There is a terribly loud screeching noise and some little bits fly off
- The camera then spins around the metal mass about 5 times
- Sometimes then one of the robots will "die," sometimes they won't. Sometimes there is a terrible robot-related quip by the victorious robot.
#2:
- An airplane fires a missile at a robot
OR - An airplane drops a bomb on a robot
(Note: Neither of these things will have any effect on the robot, but explosions = cool, apparently)
I will credit the movie for making me laugh on three separate occasions (Rainn Wilson, I absolve you for being in this movie) but that doesn't make up for the damage done to my soul. We were trapped in that theater for 150 minutes of my life. Just a terrible, terrible, horrible, unconscionably bad movie.
And I haven't even talked about that part at the end where (SPOILER FOR THE ENDING OF WORST MOVIE IN THE WORLD) the boy dies and goes to Transformers Limbo where he is praised by the spirits of dead robots and is turned into Keanu Reeves from The Matrix except even more lame (because of his robot loyalty he's now The One? After he only started trying to save a robot because he felt guilty for abandoning him earlier and causing said robot's death?). But then he comes back to life because of the power of either Megan Fox's love, or a magically reassembling tiara. Had I been holding anything in my hands at the time, I might very well have chunked it at the screen. I mean, I can enjoy mindless comedy or I can enjoy mindless action, but this was neither. It was just loud, nonsensical, boring and hate Hate HATE HATEHATEHATEHA--- Okay, I'm out.
Jesus.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
A Brief Oscar Follow Up
I have mostly nothing to say about The Oscars, except that I pretty much uniformly enjoyed this year's ceremony, much more so than usual, even if the winners were a bit predictable.
Best Bits (In order of Bestness):
Best Bits (In order of Bestness):
- Anne Hathaway! God, I love her. Totally being the best part of the intro pretending to be Nixon, getting all choked up at Shirley MacLaine's tribute, and then looking genuinely happy for Kate Winslet when she won. She completes me.
- Dustin Lance Black, and that super cute (and political) speech. Definitely the best one of the night.
- Sean Penn. Not only did he win, he was sort of charming about it! I was absolutely dreading my mixed feelings of happiness and loathing if he won and then gave a douchey speech, but instead it was all happiness. Good for him.
- Tina Fey & Steve Martin. The best presenters by a mile, and genuinely funny.
- The part of the opening dance number when Hugh Jackman was all "The Reader... I haven't seen The Reader" and all the crazy metallic dancing guys. Possibly the only time I laughed out loud during the whole show.
- No wait, I also laughed when Will Smith said "Boom goes the dynamite."
- James Franco watching James Franco. If Anne Hathaway hadn't already completed me, he would do the job.
- Kate Winslet winning and being ultra cute and having her dad whistle. I am really glad she finally won one.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Instant Oscars Review
I was so close this year, y'all. Within one movie of meeting my goal of seeing all the Oscar level movies I was gunning for before nominations came out. Damn you, The Reader! The Nazis always ruin everything.
So now, as always, I'll have to do initial impressions on the nominations without my hoped for level of movie seeing. Be prepared for some ultra crazy strong opinions of things I haven't come close to understanding.
Blogging! It's fantastic!
We'll start with the lesser categories, picking and choosing the ones that I have any opinion on, and then move on to the fancy acting ones where I will wail and gnash my teeth endlessly.
Original Screenplay
Frozen River, Written by Courtney Hunt
Happy-Go-Lucky, Written by Mike Leigh
In Bruges, Written by Martin McDonagh
Milk, Written by Dustin Lance Black
WALL-E, Screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter
Only seeing 2 of the 5, I can't have a real opinion on this, but I think I would like to see WALL-E win out, although I have heard good things about In Bruges. But seriously, even though I love Milk with all my heart, the screenplay was straight up the worst thing about that movie.
Adapted Screenplay
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Screenplay by Eric Roth, Screen story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord
Doubt, Written by John Patrick Shanley
Frost/Nixon, Screenplay by Peter Morgan
The Reader, Screenplay by David Hare
Slumdog Millionaire, Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy
See, if I had seen The Reader already, I could give a very convincing statement about this category (since I basically refuse to go see that Benjamin Button movie), but instead I'll just have to wing it. I thought that Slumdog Millionaire, while amazing, did not have the best writing; it was really the story that pushed it along. And while I love the dialogue in Frost/Nixon, the screenplay was waaay to stage-adapted for my tastes. Whereas I thought Doubt brilliantly handled the conversion to the screen, while keeping the strong dialogue intact.
Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
WALL-E
Don't even play with me. WALL-E should be a best picture nominee, if there was any justice in the world. I do kinda want to see Bolt, though. Just a little.
Achievement in Directing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher
Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard
Milk, Gus Van Sant
The Reader, Stephen Daldry
Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle
This one I'm probably least objective about, but I would absolutely love it if Danny Boyle won. Not only because his movie is brilliantly shot, but he also made Sunshine and 28 Days Later, two of my absolute favorite movies ever.
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Josh Brolin in Milk
Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road
And here we pause and take a quiet moment to grieve over my one great hope for the Oscars - no Emile Hirsch for Milk. I know it was hopeless, but still, I'm a little sad. Otherwise, though, it's a good category. Obviously Ledger will win, and everyone will be happy (and sad). But take note y'all. Every year, without fail, when I've seen 4 of the 5 nominations in this category and liked them all, the 5th one that I hadn't seen has won. On 3 separate occasions this has happened. What I'm saying is, watch out for Michael Shannon here.
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie in Changeling
Melissa Leo in Frozen River
Meryl Streep in Doubt
Kate Winslet in The Reader
Winslet is the one to beat here, I think. Which is awesome, since I irrationally love her and only want good things to happen to her. And I'm still bitter 3 or 4 years later that she didn't win for Eternal Sunshine. But I'm really pulling for Anne Hathaway in a way that almost shocks me. Such a good performance, I want her to win so bad. Did you see her give that toast? I almost melted. The rest of them, though, eh. Streep was good, but of all 4 acting noms for Doubt, I liked hers the least. I have no desire to ever see The Changling. And I've heard off-the-wall amazing praise for Melissa Leo, but I doubt there will ever even be the opportunity for me to see that movie.
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Richard Jenkins in The Visitor
Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn in Milk
Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler
Another one where I don't really have a horse in the race. Obviously I've come to terms with it, and really want Sean Penn to win, but otherwise I'm not going to care too much. I guess I am going to have to see The Wrestler, even though I know it's only going to end badly and make me want to cry (I've learned my lesson: Darren Aronofsky lives only to make movies that depress the crap out of me).
Best Motion Picture of the Year
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
Weirdly, I thought this would be a lot closer in my mind, but it's Milk all the way. Slumdog Millionaire is the dark horse, and was great, but I've only got eyes for the one (although I still need to see The Reader). I mentioned it earlier, but I really and truly have no desire or inclination to see that Benjamin Button movie. It looks long, and unappealing, and ever since one of my friends told me that the plot basically mirrors Forrest Gump, I've actively tried to not see it. Which has sort of put a damper on my Oscar fever this year, since it's nominated in basically every category.
Ah well.
Better luck next year.
So now, as always, I'll have to do initial impressions on the nominations without my hoped for level of movie seeing. Be prepared for some ultra crazy strong opinions of things I haven't come close to understanding.
Blogging! It's fantastic!
We'll start with the lesser categories, picking and choosing the ones that I have any opinion on, and then move on to the fancy acting ones where I will wail and gnash my teeth endlessly.
Original Screenplay
Frozen River, Written by Courtney Hunt
Happy-Go-Lucky, Written by Mike Leigh
In Bruges, Written by Martin McDonagh
Milk, Written by Dustin Lance Black
WALL-E, Screenplay by Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, Original story by Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter
Only seeing 2 of the 5, I can't have a real opinion on this, but I think I would like to see WALL-E win out, although I have heard good things about In Bruges. But seriously, even though I love Milk with all my heart, the screenplay was straight up the worst thing about that movie.
Adapted Screenplay
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Screenplay by Eric Roth, Screen story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord
Doubt, Written by John Patrick Shanley
Frost/Nixon, Screenplay by Peter Morgan
The Reader, Screenplay by David Hare
Slumdog Millionaire, Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy
See, if I had seen The Reader already, I could give a very convincing statement about this category (since I basically refuse to go see that Benjamin Button movie), but instead I'll just have to wing it. I thought that Slumdog Millionaire, while amazing, did not have the best writing; it was really the story that pushed it along. And while I love the dialogue in Frost/Nixon, the screenplay was waaay to stage-adapted for my tastes. Whereas I thought Doubt brilliantly handled the conversion to the screen, while keeping the strong dialogue intact.
Best Animated Feature Film of the Year
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
WALL-E
Don't even play with me. WALL-E should be a best picture nominee, if there was any justice in the world. I do kinda want to see Bolt, though. Just a little.
Achievement in Directing
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher
Frost/Nixon, Ron Howard
Milk, Gus Van Sant
The Reader, Stephen Daldry
Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle
This one I'm probably least objective about, but I would absolutely love it if Danny Boyle won. Not only because his movie is brilliantly shot, but he also made Sunshine and 28 Days Later, two of my absolute favorite movies ever.
Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Amy Adams in Doubt
Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis in Doubt
Taraji P. Henson in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Marisa Tomei in The Wrestler
Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role
Josh Brolin in Milk
Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder
Philip Seymour Hoffman in Doubt
Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight
Michael Shannon in Revolutionary Road
And here we pause and take a quiet moment to grieve over my one great hope for the Oscars - no Emile Hirsch for Milk. I know it was hopeless, but still, I'm a little sad. Otherwise, though, it's a good category. Obviously Ledger will win, and everyone will be happy (and sad). But take note y'all. Every year, without fail, when I've seen 4 of the 5 nominations in this category and liked them all, the 5th one that I hadn't seen has won. On 3 separate occasions this has happened. What I'm saying is, watch out for Michael Shannon here.
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie in Changeling
Melissa Leo in Frozen River
Meryl Streep in Doubt
Kate Winslet in The Reader
Winslet is the one to beat here, I think. Which is awesome, since I irrationally love her and only want good things to happen to her. And I'm still bitter 3 or 4 years later that she didn't win for Eternal Sunshine. But I'm really pulling for Anne Hathaway in a way that almost shocks me. Such a good performance, I want her to win so bad. Did you see her give that toast? I almost melted. The rest of them, though, eh. Streep was good, but of all 4 acting noms for Doubt, I liked hers the least. I have no desire to ever see The Changling. And I've heard off-the-wall amazing praise for Melissa Leo, but I doubt there will ever even be the opportunity for me to see that movie.
Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role
Richard Jenkins in The Visitor
Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn in Milk
Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler
Another one where I don't really have a horse in the race. Obviously I've come to terms with it, and really want Sean Penn to win, but otherwise I'm not going to care too much. I guess I am going to have to see The Wrestler, even though I know it's only going to end badly and make me want to cry (I've learned my lesson: Darren Aronofsky lives only to make movies that depress the crap out of me).
Best Motion Picture of the Year
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire
Weirdly, I thought this would be a lot closer in my mind, but it's Milk all the way. Slumdog Millionaire is the dark horse, and was great, but I've only got eyes for the one (although I still need to see The Reader). I mentioned it earlier, but I really and truly have no desire or inclination to see that Benjamin Button movie. It looks long, and unappealing, and ever since one of my friends told me that the plot basically mirrors Forrest Gump, I've actively tried to not see it. Which has sort of put a damper on my Oscar fever this year, since it's nominated in basically every category.
Ah well.
Better luck next year.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Big Honking Movie List 2008
Woo for annual traditions. As always, this is the list of every new movie I saw that was technically released in 2008. The list is then sorted by order of preference and divided into 5 categories: Hate, Dislike, Eh, Good, and Great. Theoretically this helps me sort out my feelings as we enter into serious awards time, but as usual it's mostly just an arbitrary mish-mash of conflicting emotions. (Which is better Stop-Loss, or Baby Mama? Of course there is a right answer!)
And also, wow, my movie consumption is way, way down this year. Mostly due to the removal of the Blockbuster membership, but really that's no excuse. My pop culture knowledge is at an all time low.
Anyways, on with the listing!
Movies that I Actively Hated
32. Prom Night
31. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Movies that I Just Disliked
30. Appaloosa (Man, I just do not like Renee Zellweger's squinty face anymore, apparently)
29. Mad Money (Oh, Queen Latifah. How the cast of Chicago has fallen.)
28. Hancock
27. Leatherheads (see: notes for #29 and #30. Confidential to John K - Don't take it personal, I still love you. But seriously, make better movies.)
Movies that I am Basically Ambivalent Towards
26. Charlie Bartlett (wins the award for movie I was certain had come out at least two years ago)
25. Ghost Town
24. Wanted (huge downgrade from my initial impression, but now all I focus on is the Loom of Fate. I can't even remember what James McAvoy looked like minus a shirt. So sad.)
23. Semi-Pro
Movies that were "Good," on a Very Loose Scale that Tightens as We Move Up
22. 27 Dresses (*sigh* the things I do for James Marsden)
21. The Spiderwick Chronicles
20. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
19. The Incredible Hulk (gets a huge bump down on the list because I forgot that it even came out this year, but was still very good)
18. Definitely, Maybe
17. Get Smart
16. Baby Mama
15. Stop Loss (gets a huge bump for being the movie I remember the most that I didn't really like this year)
14. Pineapple Express
13. Hamlet 2 (time has also been very kind to this movie. All I remember is Rock Me Sexy Jesus at this point)
12. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
11. Twilight (DON'T JUDGE ME)
10. Brideshead Revisited (gets the award for most moved around on the list, because I can't decide how much I liked it)
Movies That Were Excellent
9. Frost/Nixon
8. Iron Man
7. Tropic Thunder
6. The Dark Knight
5. Doubt
4. Cloverfield
3. Rachel Getting Married
2. WALL-E
1. Milk
Some specific notes on the top of the list:
And also, wow, my movie consumption is way, way down this year. Mostly due to the removal of the Blockbuster membership, but really that's no excuse. My pop culture knowledge is at an all time low.
Anyways, on with the listing!
Movies that I Actively Hated
32. Prom Night
31. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
Movies that I Just Disliked
30. Appaloosa (Man, I just do not like Renee Zellweger's squinty face anymore, apparently)
29. Mad Money (Oh, Queen Latifah. How the cast of Chicago has fallen.)
28. Hancock
27. Leatherheads (see: notes for #29 and #30. Confidential to John K - Don't take it personal, I still love you. But seriously, make better movies.)
Movies that I am Basically Ambivalent Towards
26. Charlie Bartlett (wins the award for movie I was certain had come out at least two years ago)
25. Ghost Town
24. Wanted (huge downgrade from my initial impression, but now all I focus on is the Loom of Fate. I can't even remember what James McAvoy looked like minus a shirt. So sad.)
23. Semi-Pro
Movies that were "Good," on a Very Loose Scale that Tightens as We Move Up
22. 27 Dresses (*sigh* the things I do for James Marsden)
21. The Spiderwick Chronicles
20. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
19. The Incredible Hulk (gets a huge bump down on the list because I forgot that it even came out this year, but was still very good)
18. Definitely, Maybe
17. Get Smart
16. Baby Mama
15. Stop Loss (gets a huge bump for being the movie I remember the most that I didn't really like this year)
14. Pineapple Express
13. Hamlet 2 (time has also been very kind to this movie. All I remember is Rock Me Sexy Jesus at this point)
12. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
11. Twilight (DON'T JUDGE ME)
10. Brideshead Revisited (gets the award for most moved around on the list, because I can't decide how much I liked it)
Movies That Were Excellent
9. Frost/Nixon
8. Iron Man
7. Tropic Thunder
6. The Dark Knight
5. Doubt
4. Cloverfield
3. Rachel Getting Married
2. WALL-E
1. Milk
Some specific notes on the top of the list:
- Gigantic downgrade to Frost/Nixon, as when I started this list I had it around #3, but realized that I didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much as I thought on first consideration.
- 6, 7, & 8 are all basically subtitled 'Summer fare that was far better than summer fare has any right to be.' No lie, I spent 15 minutes rearranging their three positions in sequence. I cannot pick between them. In the end, I put DK first because of Heath Ledger's acting, Tropic Thunder second because of Robert Downey Jr's acting, and Iron Man third because of Robert Downey Jr's acting. (Wait...)
- I feel like Doubt is in the right place now, because I place acting above direction in terms of importance. I could very easily see it dropping down below Frost/Nixon though, once the dust settles in my mind.
- Cloverfield is the wild card - probably the movie I enjoyed the most this year, even though empirically it's pretty bad. In other words, it's this years She's The Man.
- The top three are a toss-up. Rachel is probably the best acted movie of the year, and the most affecting, but it has serious pacing issues and rambles off topic too easily. Wall-E is the most enjoyable of the three, but has moralizing issues that keep it down. Milk is an amalgam of the strengths and weaknesses of the other two, but I think in the end it is the most complete and important of them all.
- By far the fewest movies in a year since I graduated college.
- Very few movies I hated this year (I'm stretching with Madagascar, which truth be told was not as horrible as I expected)
- There was just a glut of middling-ly good comedies this year, weren't there? And I didn't even see a bunch of them that I meant to (Zach & Miri, Nick & Nora, etc.)
- Things that I still plan on seeing before the end of the year: Slumdog Millionaire, Repo! The Genetic Opera, and The Reader/Revolutionary Road (so I can get my Kate Winslet fix)
Monday, December 22, 2008
Short-form Reviews Turned Long: Doubt, Frost/Nixon
(So I was trying to write up both these movies for the side panel, and they ended up being so long that they bumped everything else off the main page. Thus, we try alternate text layouts.)
Anyways, as is my regular custom, the last two weeks of the year are easily the busiest I get as far as movies are concerned. The combination of freezing cold, Oscar contenders, and wild shopping stress make for the perfect time to hide for hours at a time in a darkened theater.
This last week I saw Frost/Nixon and Doubt on back to back nights. Their number of similarities are stunning, and they make for a good pair to review in tandem. It also doesn't hurt that both are near the top of my list of best movies this year (which totally isn't getting posted until January this year, because I am extraordinarily lazy right now).
The short-form reviews first:
Frost/Nixon - Tight, powerfully written and acted. The direction is... I guess competent is the word. Good, not great, and I take issue with a couple the devices that frame the whole movie (primarily the use of the documentary-style interviews to intercut tense in-the-moment scenes of action). Frank Langella is in the fight of the year in my mind right now for Best Actor with Sean Penn. Crazy, crazy good performance. Really, everyone brought it to this movie. Sam Rockwell was particularly great despite some tough, almost caricature-level lines to work with. I'd have to say the weakest link in the whole cast was Kevin Bacon, and that was more a failing of the script than the acting, since he had so few lines to develop a ton of character, and it just didn't come through.
Actually that's the only real quibble I have with the whole movie (besides the documentary interview thing - seriously that bugged me) - the way every character that was not Frost or Nixon basically was given a three line summary as characterization and then basically acted as a cardboard cutout through the rest of the movie. I understand that the movie needs focus, and it really is only about them, but I wish there could have been more depth on the sides.
Still, an excellent movie over all. Funny, dramatic, and interesting from start to finish.
Doubt - Grabs you early and never lets go. It's surprising, because the plot description doesn't sound like it would be that compelling. Head nun at a Catholic school suspects an inappropriate relationship between a boy and the local priest (who she already really dislikes). Frankly, it sounds like it would lead to nothing but scene after scene of religious moralizing and speechifying, which is the opposite of what I'm looking for in a movie. But the screenplay avoids almost all of that. Instead we get a real inspection of the nature of doubt and certainty, as played through three complex character-studies. It's unexpectedly enthralling.
I'll try not to gush too much on the acting, but yeah, it's ridiculous. Meryl Streep knocking down the stereotype of stereotypes as the head nun, evening out a characature into a person, by sheer will of personality, basically. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the one who does all the heavy lifting - making sure that everything stays in doubt throughout the whole movie, jumping from guilty to innocent just by the change of an expression. Without him, the movie could have been ruined. And even Amy Adams, who gets an absolute clunker of a character (she is officially type-cast and the naive optimistic one, after Junebug, Enchanted, and now this), manages to steal a few moments to shine, digging into the tiny allowances her part gives her to keep it from being as one-note as it might be.
And I haven't even gotten to Viola Davis, who gets two scenes and like 10 minutes of the movie, but owns the entire thing. Really, it's just unbelievable. I can't do it justice.
I'll go ahead and rail against the film for a while though - it's by no means a great movie. The direction is terrible. Terrible. Shots taken at an angle for no real reason, except to be arty. Heavy handed literal metaphors every other second. I can't stress that part enough - if you were able to go on the merits of acting and script, I would rate this among the best movies ever. As is, with the ham-fisted imagery and shot selection, it's going to drop so far down my list, I have a hard time keeping it in my top 5 this year without wincing. That's just unendingly depressing.
Still, possibly the most worthwhile viewing experience of this entire year (provided you have already gone to see Milk).
---------------
Okay, so that was a complete lie, those reviews were like the opposite of short-form. But they get the individual parts out of the way so I can ramble on about their similarities. Both come from Tony winning plays, and it's very easy to see their roots. Frost/Nixon has the ultra powerful phone call scene, Doubt has both the rainstorm confrontation and the mother vs. nun revelation scene - all amazing things that are done without a spec of action, and are basically nothing but monologues or huge intercut speeches. Not that this is a bad thing (I love great theater) but sometimes it can take you out of the natural moment of the movie. Example: Nixon's phone call soliloquy is brilliant, but even in the character of Nixon (who is prone to rambling eloquence) it seems calculated. Langella gives it his all, for sure, and it comes very close, but you could tell the audience was drawn away from immediacy of the moment, and was instead stuck on the speech. It certainly did not help that Frost's response it basically the same as ours - slack-jawed astonishment.
The whole things is uniformly better handled in Doubt, although Hoffman comes very close to blowing it with all of his yelling at the high points of conflict. The speechy-ness is mostly relegated to natural moments (obviously you're supposed to speechify in a sermon) and the real tough stage-level moments are handled brilliantly (see: Viola Davis' revelations, and one flawless tiny moment by Amy Adams and a student). Keeping stage characters is shockingly difficult (see: any high school production of Shakespeare ever) but when it's handled well, it can give you shivers.
Allow me a small moment for a digression - one of my favorite movies in the entire world is The History Boys, something that fits right into the exact same category as these two movies: brilliant plays adapted to the screen with minimal changes. Just like Frost/Nixon they even kept the original cast intact. But where these two mostly succeeded in avoiding the speech and soliloquy trap that a play naturally entails, The History Boys seemed to revel in it. Just straight-up 'let's stop for a moment because I feel like giving a speech.' And it destroys the rhythm and sense of the movie. Which kills me, because even as-is I find it a completely brilliant, funny, and real experience. Massaged and worked on long enough, it might have been an amazing film on its own right. Instead, it's terrific writing and great scenes, that combine to form a clunky, wheezing machine of a movie.
Okay, diversion mostly over.
The real question that I was trying to get to was: which movie succeeds more? Or which one was better? Yeah, I'm still not sure which question I'm trying to answer. I think in the end, Frost/Nixon is more accomplished, but less important, so it wins on both of those counts, even if it loses the battle for the one that is most compelling.
Obviously, I have issues with the direction of Doubt, which lowers it in my mind, especially in terms of success. But I also take issue with the lack of real accomplishment in Frost/Nixon. Yes, the story is endlessly interesting, but mostly because it's a retelling of a real life event. It has its drama provided for it. I can't help but think that it enjoys far too much of a built in advantage, particularly when there is no real revelation in the execution - even the brilliance that Langella teases out of Nixon isn't unexpected, just interesting. Frost and his cohorts follow the lines, fulfill their underdog role, and the movie winds down. Similarly, this is why I'm so hard on Milk as far as the movie's greatness goes - the story is so fascinating that you wonder if the movie is getting a pass because the plot it's given is enough to carry you along.
Doubt is technically the lesser movie, but has better acting, and makes you think more. I'm not sure how to rate these things into a quantifiable scale. Eh, in the end I still don't have any good answers, but I still have time to mull it over before I come to any hard conclusions. I mean, the Oscars don't happen until like March, right? Plenty of time.
Anyways, as is my regular custom, the last two weeks of the year are easily the busiest I get as far as movies are concerned. The combination of freezing cold, Oscar contenders, and wild shopping stress make for the perfect time to hide for hours at a time in a darkened theater.
This last week I saw Frost/Nixon and Doubt on back to back nights. Their number of similarities are stunning, and they make for a good pair to review in tandem. It also doesn't hurt that both are near the top of my list of best movies this year (which totally isn't getting posted until January this year, because I am extraordinarily lazy right now).
The short-form reviews first:
Frost/Nixon - Tight, powerfully written and acted. The direction is... I guess competent is the word. Good, not great, and I take issue with a couple the devices that frame the whole movie (primarily the use of the documentary-style interviews to intercut tense in-the-moment scenes of action). Frank Langella is in the fight of the year in my mind right now for Best Actor with Sean Penn. Crazy, crazy good performance. Really, everyone brought it to this movie. Sam Rockwell was particularly great despite some tough, almost caricature-level lines to work with. I'd have to say the weakest link in the whole cast was Kevin Bacon, and that was more a failing of the script than the acting, since he had so few lines to develop a ton of character, and it just didn't come through.
Actually that's the only real quibble I have with the whole movie (besides the documentary interview thing - seriously that bugged me) - the way every character that was not Frost or Nixon basically was given a three line summary as characterization and then basically acted as a cardboard cutout through the rest of the movie. I understand that the movie needs focus, and it really is only about them, but I wish there could have been more depth on the sides.
Still, an excellent movie over all. Funny, dramatic, and interesting from start to finish.
Doubt - Grabs you early and never lets go. It's surprising, because the plot description doesn't sound like it would be that compelling. Head nun at a Catholic school suspects an inappropriate relationship between a boy and the local priest (who she already really dislikes). Frankly, it sounds like it would lead to nothing but scene after scene of religious moralizing and speechifying, which is the opposite of what I'm looking for in a movie. But the screenplay avoids almost all of that. Instead we get a real inspection of the nature of doubt and certainty, as played through three complex character-studies. It's unexpectedly enthralling.
I'll try not to gush too much on the acting, but yeah, it's ridiculous. Meryl Streep knocking down the stereotype of stereotypes as the head nun, evening out a characature into a person, by sheer will of personality, basically. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the one who does all the heavy lifting - making sure that everything stays in doubt throughout the whole movie, jumping from guilty to innocent just by the change of an expression. Without him, the movie could have been ruined. And even Amy Adams, who gets an absolute clunker of a character (she is officially type-cast and the naive optimistic one, after Junebug, Enchanted, and now this), manages to steal a few moments to shine, digging into the tiny allowances her part gives her to keep it from being as one-note as it might be.
And I haven't even gotten to Viola Davis, who gets two scenes and like 10 minutes of the movie, but owns the entire thing. Really, it's just unbelievable. I can't do it justice.
I'll go ahead and rail against the film for a while though - it's by no means a great movie. The direction is terrible. Terrible. Shots taken at an angle for no real reason, except to be arty. Heavy handed literal metaphors every other second. I can't stress that part enough - if you were able to go on the merits of acting and script, I would rate this among the best movies ever. As is, with the ham-fisted imagery and shot selection, it's going to drop so far down my list, I have a hard time keeping it in my top 5 this year without wincing. That's just unendingly depressing.
Still, possibly the most worthwhile viewing experience of this entire year (provided you have already gone to see Milk).
---------------
Okay, so that was a complete lie, those reviews were like the opposite of short-form. But they get the individual parts out of the way so I can ramble on about their similarities. Both come from Tony winning plays, and it's very easy to see their roots. Frost/Nixon has the ultra powerful phone call scene, Doubt has both the rainstorm confrontation and the mother vs. nun revelation scene - all amazing things that are done without a spec of action, and are basically nothing but monologues or huge intercut speeches. Not that this is a bad thing (I love great theater) but sometimes it can take you out of the natural moment of the movie. Example: Nixon's phone call soliloquy is brilliant, but even in the character of Nixon (who is prone to rambling eloquence) it seems calculated. Langella gives it his all, for sure, and it comes very close, but you could tell the audience was drawn away from immediacy of the moment, and was instead stuck on the speech. It certainly did not help that Frost's response it basically the same as ours - slack-jawed astonishment.
The whole things is uniformly better handled in Doubt, although Hoffman comes very close to blowing it with all of his yelling at the high points of conflict. The speechy-ness is mostly relegated to natural moments (obviously you're supposed to speechify in a sermon) and the real tough stage-level moments are handled brilliantly (see: Viola Davis' revelations, and one flawless tiny moment by Amy Adams and a student). Keeping stage characters is shockingly difficult (see: any high school production of Shakespeare ever) but when it's handled well, it can give you shivers.
Allow me a small moment for a digression - one of my favorite movies in the entire world is The History Boys, something that fits right into the exact same category as these two movies: brilliant plays adapted to the screen with minimal changes. Just like Frost/Nixon they even kept the original cast intact. But where these two mostly succeeded in avoiding the speech and soliloquy trap that a play naturally entails, The History Boys seemed to revel in it. Just straight-up 'let's stop for a moment because I feel like giving a speech.' And it destroys the rhythm and sense of the movie. Which kills me, because even as-is I find it a completely brilliant, funny, and real experience. Massaged and worked on long enough, it might have been an amazing film on its own right. Instead, it's terrific writing and great scenes, that combine to form a clunky, wheezing machine of a movie.
Okay, diversion mostly over.
The real question that I was trying to get to was: which movie succeeds more? Or which one was better? Yeah, I'm still not sure which question I'm trying to answer. I think in the end, Frost/Nixon is more accomplished, but less important, so it wins on both of those counts, even if it loses the battle for the one that is most compelling.
Obviously, I have issues with the direction of Doubt, which lowers it in my mind, especially in terms of success. But I also take issue with the lack of real accomplishment in Frost/Nixon. Yes, the story is endlessly interesting, but mostly because it's a retelling of a real life event. It has its drama provided for it. I can't help but think that it enjoys far too much of a built in advantage, particularly when there is no real revelation in the execution - even the brilliance that Langella teases out of Nixon isn't unexpected, just interesting. Frost and his cohorts follow the lines, fulfill their underdog role, and the movie winds down. Similarly, this is why I'm so hard on Milk as far as the movie's greatness goes - the story is so fascinating that you wonder if the movie is getting a pass because the plot it's given is enough to carry you along.
Doubt is technically the lesser movie, but has better acting, and makes you think more. I'm not sure how to rate these things into a quantifiable scale. Eh, in the end I still don't have any good answers, but I still have time to mull it over before I come to any hard conclusions. I mean, the Oscars don't happen until like March, right? Plenty of time.
Monday, August 11, 2008
There are Worse Things than Consumer Weekends
Jason Finance Watch for August
Things Bought:
And also, my bed is now so awesome, it's hard to fathom. And I did it without resorting to spending scads of money on a whole new mattress (which I also really wanted to buy).
Woo consumerism!
Things Bought:
- New wireless mouse, complete with scrollwheel and magical laser tracking
- DVDs of Cloverfield and X-2, on super sale at Best Buy
- New full size memory foam mattress pad for bed, replacing previous pad that was only for a twin (and also gross and ancient)
- New 500 thread count sheet set for bed to enhance new pad (and replace the jersey knit sheets that were suffocating me at night)
- New down comforter to enhance new sheet set
- Tickets to go see The Hush Sound at The Door tonight (!!)
- Insurance for my car for the next 6 months (also entitled: Holy Shit, Insurance is Expensive)
- New wireless keyboard to replace my still working wired one
- DVD of A Bug's Life, which was only on $5 off sale
- New pillows to go with abovementioned bed set
- New duvet cover for same
- New bedskirt to prevent clashing
- Tickets to see Ben Folds in October at the Palladium
- The oil change for my car that was scheduled for last Friday
- A dog
And also, my bed is now so awesome, it's hard to fathom. And I did it without resorting to spending scads of money on a whole new mattress (which I also really wanted to buy).
Woo consumerism!
Monday, February 25, 2008
Oscar Silence
This year marked the first time in ages that I didn't have some manner of thing going on in relation to the Oscars. For a while there I had a weird streak of dying my hair a different color at the same time as the show (that's finally over, thank goodness), and lately there's always been some manner of party, or at least people over to crack wise and mock all the fashions.
But due to a magical thing called Forgetting That the Oscars Were This Weekend, I had the whole day to myself. And you know what? It was pretty sweet. Because I found that if you watch the entire show with the sound muted while reading a book, it's a really pleasant experience. You miss none of the winners and still get to see all the fashion and the reactions, plus you don't have to listen to the horrible presenter banter or the host's stale jokes (sorry Jon Stewart, but seriously). And the most painful part of the whole night for me, the acceptance speeches, suddenly become wonderfully fascinating, in the sort of way a deranged mime might be fun to watch for a while.
I'm totally sticking with this kind of Oscars forever now, because it didn't even seem that long, since I had a good book to occupy my time.
Some general notes on the night:
But due to a magical thing called Forgetting That the Oscars Were This Weekend, I had the whole day to myself. And you know what? It was pretty sweet. Because I found that if you watch the entire show with the sound muted while reading a book, it's a really pleasant experience. You miss none of the winners and still get to see all the fashion and the reactions, plus you don't have to listen to the horrible presenter banter or the host's stale jokes (sorry Jon Stewart, but seriously). And the most painful part of the whole night for me, the acceptance speeches, suddenly become wonderfully fascinating, in the sort of way a deranged mime might be fun to watch for a while.
I'm totally sticking with this kind of Oscars forever now, because it didn't even seem that long, since I had a good book to occupy my time.
Some general notes on the night:
- There weren't any horrible dresses this year, which was ever so sad. Not even Marion Cotillard's fish dress was able to get more than a derisive scoff from me. Poor form, crazy dressmakers of the world.
- Best Moment of the Night: Tilda Swinton winning Best Supporting Actress. Meaning that, for the first time in forever, the person who I thought gave the best performance of anyone all year actually won in the their category. Seriously, I loved her performance more than anything and didn't expect her to win in the slightest.
- 2nd Best Moment of the Night: Once winning for Best Song, and the resulting two acceptance speeches. I actually turned the sound on for both of them. I couldn't be happier. And how cute were they?!
- Worst Moment of the Night: Marion Cotillard? Really? I didn't know it until they actually read the winner, but oh man I really, really wanted Ellen Page to win that award. At least she looked super cute. Although did Michael Cera just not attend? I never saw him once.
- Worst Ongoing Trend of the Night: Absolutely no love for Atonement (except for score, which: obviously) all the way through. It was expected but still ultra annoying. Totally the best movie, totally shafted. Ah well.
And that's that. Man, I feel really refreshed, and completely out of opinions. Plus I got through 260 pages in my book at the same time. It's a good day.
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Of Course there are more Year End Lists!
So I made it through the entire last 4 months of the year with exactly 3 days of illness, right up to New Year's Eve, when I was suddenly, unbelievably, violently ill. So rather than at a party with friends, I spent the last moments of the year freezing in my bathroom. I have absolutely the worst luck.
Anyways, I'm mostly recovered now. So what do we do? We write more year end lists!
First up: Critical Movie List!
Now that I've seen all the movies I plan on for 2007, I can hand out the imaginary awards in my mind. I missed several of the big award movies this year (noticeably - American Gangster, No Country for Old Men, and Charlie Wilson's War) but that doesn't slow me down a bit. Everything gets 5 nomination slots, one winner.
Best Motion Picture
Juno
Atonement
Michael Clayton
Lars and the Real Girl
Sweeney Todd
Notes: In my mind it's a three way race for #1 (Juno, Atonement, and Todd), and it was ridiculously hard to pick out the two lesser movies that made the cut on the best list. I eventually gave the bump up to the two movies with the most impressive acting. Also, it kills me that Zodiac couldn't make the cut.
Winner: In an utter battle royale, I give the win to Atonement, for sheer longlasting value. It's just amazing and it will stand the test of time, whereas I think Juno won't age quite as well, even if I would much prefer to watch Juno multiple times currently.
Best Director - Motion Picture
Tony Gilroy - Michael Clayton
David Fincher - Zodiac
Neil Jordan - The Brave One
Tim Burton - Sweeney Todd
Joe Wright - Atonement
Notes: Jordan gets in by sheer lack of impressive candidates, since I didn't see any of the big director movies this year (American Gangster, No Country, and Into the Wild). This one is more a foregone conclusion than most, although I want to go on record as saying that Joe Wright did amazing things with Atonement, particularly the long shot at Dunkirk, which in any other year would have won him the award in a heartbeat.
Winner: But I was enthralled by Sweeney Todd, and almost entirely due to the direction. Tim Burton wins in a walk, for using his style without apology in a way that utterly enhances a story that is a perfect fit for it. Almost a stacked deck, in my opinion, but it's a textbook rendition of excellent direction.
Best Actor - Motion Picture
James McAvoy - Atonement
Ryan Gosling - Lars and the Real Girl
Johnny Depp - Sweeney Todd
Joseph Gordon-Levitt - The Lookout
George Clooney - Michael Clayton
Notes: I'm allowed my vices - Joseph Gordon-Levitt was flawless in that movie and I will not hear a word against him. And I atone for the preferential treatment of him by putting Clooney in there, even though I don't like him. I recognize a good performance when I see it. But man, seriously, I really don't like him.
Winner: McAvoy appeared at the end and gave him a run for his money, but Ryan Gosling still takes it. An amazing job - I swear, the movie would have been horrible had anyone else in the world had his part.
Best Actress - Motion Picture
Kiera Knightley - Atonement
Ellen Page - Juno
Helena Bonham Carter - Sweeney Todd
Kerri Russel - Waitress
Jodie Foster - The Brave One
Notes: This was the year for women's performances I loved. I would have no problem giving this to any one of the five without a second thought. Even Kerri Russel, who seems like the odd-woman-out up there until you think about her performance in Waitress and realize that she carried a complex movie on her shoulders without making it look like work. It nearly kills me to pick just one.
Winner: Helena Bonham Carter. I can't in good conscience give it to anyone else, although Page and Knightley are so close here that they can taste it. Just an uncommonly great year. But Knightley gets a lot of help in her movie from McAvoy and all the actresses who play Briony in Atonement, so she has a lesser degree of difficultly. And Page is just the opposite - she has the toughest job of all, since her character is written with such hard to swallow dialogue that her performance is elevated just because of what she had to work with. But Carter plays her role so perfectly - she gets Depp to work against, but also has to run the gamut of emotion, humor, and singing. I feel good with her as the big winner.
Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
Tom Wilkinson - Michael Clayton
Jeremy Sisto - Waitress
Paul Schneider - Lars and the Real Girl
Alan Rickman - Sweeney Todd
Chris Cooper - Breach
Notes: Another tough one, as there are so many options (let's all take a moment to mourn Robert Downey Jr.'s exclusion for Zodiac). Sisto gets a nod for bringing untold levels of menace and character to a role that is so confusingly written, while Schneider gets one for having to play the straight man in the least comedic comedy in a long while. Both are hard roles, but for me it's a straight up dead heat between Chris Cooper and and Tom Wilkinson. Both had difficult parts that could make or break their respective movies...
Winner: But Chris Cooper gets the win in my mind, for elevating his movie from good to great based solely on his performance (Michael Clayton could stand on its own, as we'll soon see). Breach isn't winning a ton of awards by any measure, but he makes what could be an incredibly dull movie riveting, just in the character he creates.
Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
Jennifer Garner - Juno
Saoirse Ronan - Atonement
Tilda Swinton - Michael Clayton
Emily Mortimer - Lars and the Real Girl
Romola Garai - Atonement
Notes: How much did I love Briony in Atonement? Yeah, two perfect performances there, by two different people. We're just lucky Vanessa Redgrave was only onscreen for, like, 5 minutes or we would have serious issues. A quick word of sadness that Emily Mortimer won't get a second of recognition for her great work in Lars, despite how perfect she was.
Winner: Because this is a knockdown, drag-out fight between Garner and Swinton, who are both the actual best things about both of their movies. But I give it to Swinton, hands down. She just has so little to work with, but is flawless throughout the whole movie. I love her so much in this part. (Garner gets a ton of help from the screenplay in her role, just because it gives her so much to work with.)
Other Quick Ones:
Best Screenplay - A fierce but short battle between Juno and Atonement, with Juno taking it by a hair. Even though I think the dialogue is trying at times, it's hard to do comedy and characters well, and the writing there really is great. I'm glad there will be two categories at the Oscars, though, so they can both win there.
Best Original Score - Atonement. Full stop. Just great.
Best Animated Feature - Ratatouille (I mean, come on.)
Whew. Now I'm exhausted, and I haven't even gotten to TV. This list making thing really takes it out of you. We'll see if we can't get more out later on.
Anyways, I'm mostly recovered now. So what do we do? We write more year end lists!
First up: Critical Movie List!
Now that I've seen all the movies I plan on for 2007, I can hand out the imaginary awards in my mind. I missed several of the big award movies this year (noticeably - American Gangster, No Country for Old Men, and Charlie Wilson's War) but that doesn't slow me down a bit. Everything gets 5 nomination slots, one winner.
Best Motion Picture
Juno
Atonement
Michael Clayton
Lars and the Real Girl
Sweeney Todd
Notes: In my mind it's a three way race for #1 (Juno, Atonement, and Todd), and it was ridiculously hard to pick out the two lesser movies that made the cut on the best list. I eventually gave the bump up to the two movies with the most impressive acting. Also, it kills me that Zodiac couldn't make the cut.
Winner: In an utter battle royale, I give the win to Atonement, for sheer longlasting value. It's just amazing and it will stand the test of time, whereas I think Juno won't age quite as well, even if I would much prefer to watch Juno multiple times currently.
Best Director - Motion Picture
Tony Gilroy - Michael Clayton
David Fincher - Zodiac
Neil Jordan - The Brave One
Tim Burton - Sweeney Todd
Joe Wright - Atonement
Notes: Jordan gets in by sheer lack of impressive candidates, since I didn't see any of the big director movies this year (American Gangster, No Country, and Into the Wild). This one is more a foregone conclusion than most, although I want to go on record as saying that Joe Wright did amazing things with Atonement, particularly the long shot at Dunkirk, which in any other year would have won him the award in a heartbeat.
Winner: But I was enthralled by Sweeney Todd, and almost entirely due to the direction. Tim Burton wins in a walk, for using his style without apology in a way that utterly enhances a story that is a perfect fit for it. Almost a stacked deck, in my opinion, but it's a textbook rendition of excellent direction.
Best Actor - Motion Picture
James McAvoy - Atonement
Ryan Gosling - Lars and the Real Girl
Johnny Depp - Sweeney Todd
Joseph Gordon-Levitt - The Lookout
George Clooney - Michael Clayton
Notes: I'm allowed my vices - Joseph Gordon-Levitt was flawless in that movie and I will not hear a word against him. And I atone for the preferential treatment of him by putting Clooney in there, even though I don't like him. I recognize a good performance when I see it. But man, seriously, I really don't like him.
Winner: McAvoy appeared at the end and gave him a run for his money, but Ryan Gosling still takes it. An amazing job - I swear, the movie would have been horrible had anyone else in the world had his part.
Best Actress - Motion Picture
Kiera Knightley - Atonement
Ellen Page - Juno
Helena Bonham Carter - Sweeney Todd
Kerri Russel - Waitress
Jodie Foster - The Brave One
Notes: This was the year for women's performances I loved. I would have no problem giving this to any one of the five without a second thought. Even Kerri Russel, who seems like the odd-woman-out up there until you think about her performance in Waitress and realize that she carried a complex movie on her shoulders without making it look like work. It nearly kills me to pick just one.
Winner: Helena Bonham Carter. I can't in good conscience give it to anyone else, although Page and Knightley are so close here that they can taste it. Just an uncommonly great year. But Knightley gets a lot of help in her movie from McAvoy and all the actresses who play Briony in Atonement, so she has a lesser degree of difficultly. And Page is just the opposite - she has the toughest job of all, since her character is written with such hard to swallow dialogue that her performance is elevated just because of what she had to work with. But Carter plays her role so perfectly - she gets Depp to work against, but also has to run the gamut of emotion, humor, and singing. I feel good with her as the big winner.
Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
Tom Wilkinson - Michael Clayton
Jeremy Sisto - Waitress
Paul Schneider - Lars and the Real Girl
Alan Rickman - Sweeney Todd
Chris Cooper - Breach
Notes: Another tough one, as there are so many options (let's all take a moment to mourn Robert Downey Jr.'s exclusion for Zodiac). Sisto gets a nod for bringing untold levels of menace and character to a role that is so confusingly written, while Schneider gets one for having to play the straight man in the least comedic comedy in a long while. Both are hard roles, but for me it's a straight up dead heat between Chris Cooper and and Tom Wilkinson. Both had difficult parts that could make or break their respective movies...
Winner: But Chris Cooper gets the win in my mind, for elevating his movie from good to great based solely on his performance (Michael Clayton could stand on its own, as we'll soon see). Breach isn't winning a ton of awards by any measure, but he makes what could be an incredibly dull movie riveting, just in the character he creates.
Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture
Jennifer Garner - Juno
Saoirse Ronan - Atonement
Tilda Swinton - Michael Clayton
Emily Mortimer - Lars and the Real Girl
Romola Garai - Atonement
Notes: How much did I love Briony in Atonement? Yeah, two perfect performances there, by two different people. We're just lucky Vanessa Redgrave was only onscreen for, like, 5 minutes or we would have serious issues. A quick word of sadness that Emily Mortimer won't get a second of recognition for her great work in Lars, despite how perfect she was.
Winner: Because this is a knockdown, drag-out fight between Garner and Swinton, who are both the actual best things about both of their movies. But I give it to Swinton, hands down. She just has so little to work with, but is flawless throughout the whole movie. I love her so much in this part. (Garner gets a ton of help from the screenplay in her role, just because it gives her so much to work with.)
Other Quick Ones:
Best Screenplay - A fierce but short battle between Juno and Atonement, with Juno taking it by a hair. Even though I think the dialogue is trying at times, it's hard to do comedy and characters well, and the writing there really is great. I'm glad there will be two categories at the Oscars, though, so they can both win there.
Best Original Score - Atonement. Full stop. Just great.
Best Animated Feature - Ratatouille (I mean, come on.)
Whew. Now I'm exhausted, and I haven't even gotten to TV. This list making thing really takes it out of you. We'll see if we can't get more out later on.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Long Form Review - The Golden Compass
(Note: Usually movie reviews are pushed to the sidebar, but my thoughts on this movie filled up way too much of it. Which means it really needs its own entry. Vague and specific spoilers abound.)
The Golden Compass - Short Form: A good movie with above par action and acting, that is limited by its story in a very significant way. Also, armored bears! (RAWR!, etc.)
This movie is an object lesson that shows that the eternal debate on whether movies are better/worse than the books that they're based on is utterly useless. Because this movie is a near perfect retelling of the book (Or more accurately, all of the book but the ending. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.) and it is completely hamstrung as a movie because of that.
I would go so far as to say that it's one of the most faithful adaptation of a book into a movie that I've ever seen. Virtually nothing is changed, good or bad, from exactly how the entire plot is presented in the book. When the book had extended scenes of pure exposition, the movie paused the action to have some old British people yammer on for a while. When the book introduced the mythology of witches out of the utter blue without explanation or reason, so went the movie. When the book freaking rips off the jaw of an armored bear and then snaps its neck... well you see where I'm going with this. (Aside: As soon as I realized that they were following the book so closely, I could not wait for the bear fighting scene. And I was not disappointed. That was awesome.)
What I'm getting at, is that book purists should be theoretically thrilled by the adaptation. With the exception of a copy/replace job on every instance of "Church" with "Authority," very little was excised from the meat of the book. Only the flow of the movie suffers - to save time (not a long movie by any means) they often cut from pivotal scene A to pivotal scene B without resolving how they got from A to B. The director never lets the story down to save on length.
But the problem is, the story doesn't translate overly well into a movie. Yes, the action is extraordinarily well done and thrilling, but the whole story has too much of a measured pace and far too much required backstory to be super effective. The book worked because it had time to set up the idea of daemons and the rules involved, and then to build up the world and the mythology around the alternate timeline. The movie has no such luxury - resorting to condensed character traits in single lines of dialogue, clunky expository speeches in place of long conversations, and bizarre announcements of intent. It all just comes off as awkward.
The worst example of this is the entrance of the witch, who literally seems to serve no purpose to the story whatsoever except to act as a deus ex machina device for the ending. And while it sort of is in the book as well, the witches perform a larger function in the book (keying in on the prophecy - the one thing that was cut from the movie that it really could have used), which makes their use less egregious in book form. In the movie it was akin to having a wizard appear midway through your plot for no other reason than the fact that you'll need some magical reinforcements in about 20 minutes.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good movie, but it could have been much better had they took a cue from other really successful adaptations (e.g. the Lord of the Rings writers) and how they adapted the sources to fit their needs. Because really, the LotR books are a perfect example of an awesome story that would be terrible in movie form.
Follow along: In the book version of Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo's decision to leave his home and go on to Rivendale on his little ring adventure is about 8 months long, both in planning and execution, with liberal stops along the way to meet magical creatures and get eaten by old trees. It would be utterly boring to watch that play out on a screen, despite how nice a travelogue and expository device it was to set you up in the mythology.
So what did the writers do? Cut all the dithering about and made it compelling to watch: race against time to escape dark riders, picking up friends as they go along, taking up maybe a week of total time, most of which is entirely offscreen.
Similarly in the case of The Golden Compass, I think it could have easily been adapted in a similar manner. Take some liberties with the source material to make it flow better. Don't be afraid to cut a scene or two of exposition to make time for other scenes to end naturally before jumping to the next item on the list. Fill in the exposition naturally with reasonable asides in those scenes, and trust the audience not to miss things. Done properly (like in LotR) literary purists won't whine (too much) and your movie benefits by being more cohesive.
Or alternatively - since you planned on pissing off the purists anyways by ending the movie TWO CHAPTERS BEFORE THE END OF THE BOOK, why even care to follow the story so closely?
Seriously, the ending is the best part of the book! (Bear fighting excluded, obviously) You even put the goddamn foreshadowing of the end right there in the movie ("It says I'm bringing him what he needs."). It's like you're trying to purposely enrage people who read the book. Yeah, yeah, no one likes a downer ending in a kids' movie, but guess what? It's not a kids' movie any more than it is a kids' book. Mature themes abound. Stick to your guns or go home.
Grr. Don't mind me. I really did like the movie. I just hate squandered potential.
The Golden Compass - Short Form: A good movie with above par action and acting, that is limited by its story in a very significant way. Also, armored bears! (RAWR!, etc.)
This movie is an object lesson that shows that the eternal debate on whether movies are better/worse than the books that they're based on is utterly useless. Because this movie is a near perfect retelling of the book (Or more accurately, all of the book but the ending. But we're getting ahead of ourselves.) and it is completely hamstrung as a movie because of that.
I would go so far as to say that it's one of the most faithful adaptation of a book into a movie that I've ever seen. Virtually nothing is changed, good or bad, from exactly how the entire plot is presented in the book. When the book had extended scenes of pure exposition, the movie paused the action to have some old British people yammer on for a while. When the book introduced the mythology of witches out of the utter blue without explanation or reason, so went the movie. When the book freaking rips off the jaw of an armored bear and then snaps its neck... well you see where I'm going with this. (Aside: As soon as I realized that they were following the book so closely, I could not wait for the bear fighting scene. And I was not disappointed. That was awesome.)
What I'm getting at, is that book purists should be theoretically thrilled by the adaptation. With the exception of a copy/replace job on every instance of "Church" with "Authority," very little was excised from the meat of the book. Only the flow of the movie suffers - to save time (not a long movie by any means) they often cut from pivotal scene A to pivotal scene B without resolving how they got from A to B. The director never lets the story down to save on length.
But the problem is, the story doesn't translate overly well into a movie. Yes, the action is extraordinarily well done and thrilling, but the whole story has too much of a measured pace and far too much required backstory to be super effective. The book worked because it had time to set up the idea of daemons and the rules involved, and then to build up the world and the mythology around the alternate timeline. The movie has no such luxury - resorting to condensed character traits in single lines of dialogue, clunky expository speeches in place of long conversations, and bizarre announcements of intent. It all just comes off as awkward.
The worst example of this is the entrance of the witch, who literally seems to serve no purpose to the story whatsoever except to act as a deus ex machina device for the ending. And while it sort of is in the book as well, the witches perform a larger function in the book (keying in on the prophecy - the one thing that was cut from the movie that it really could have used), which makes their use less egregious in book form. In the movie it was akin to having a wizard appear midway through your plot for no other reason than the fact that you'll need some magical reinforcements in about 20 minutes.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good movie, but it could have been much better had they took a cue from other really successful adaptations (e.g. the Lord of the Rings writers) and how they adapted the sources to fit their needs. Because really, the LotR books are a perfect example of an awesome story that would be terrible in movie form.
Follow along: In the book version of Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo's decision to leave his home and go on to Rivendale on his little ring adventure is about 8 months long, both in planning and execution, with liberal stops along the way to meet magical creatures and get eaten by old trees. It would be utterly boring to watch that play out on a screen, despite how nice a travelogue and expository device it was to set you up in the mythology.
So what did the writers do? Cut all the dithering about and made it compelling to watch: race against time to escape dark riders, picking up friends as they go along, taking up maybe a week of total time, most of which is entirely offscreen.
Similarly in the case of The Golden Compass, I think it could have easily been adapted in a similar manner. Take some liberties with the source material to make it flow better. Don't be afraid to cut a scene or two of exposition to make time for other scenes to end naturally before jumping to the next item on the list. Fill in the exposition naturally with reasonable asides in those scenes, and trust the audience not to miss things. Done properly (like in LotR) literary purists won't whine (too much) and your movie benefits by being more cohesive.
Or alternatively - since you planned on pissing off the purists anyways by ending the movie TWO CHAPTERS BEFORE THE END OF THE BOOK, why even care to follow the story so closely?
Seriously, the ending is the best part of the book! (Bear fighting excluded, obviously) You even put the goddamn foreshadowing of the end right there in the movie ("It says I'm bringing him what he needs."). It's like you're trying to purposely enrage people who read the book. Yeah, yeah, no one likes a downer ending in a kids' movie, but guess what? It's not a kids' movie any more than it is a kids' book. Mature themes abound. Stick to your guns or go home.
Grr. Don't mind me. I really did like the movie. I just hate squandered potential.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Epic Movie Blog
Is it really December already? Sheesh, this year went by fast.
Okay, so every year I do a breakdown wherein I arbitrarily rank all the movies I've seen, from worst to best. The rules are really easy: it must have been released in 2007 (either straight to DVD or in theatres), and I have to have seen at least 90% of the movie.
I call it arbitrary because I can look back at my old reviews I did during the year and I've utterly hated on movies that I have under the Really Good category now, and had only good things to say about movies that are in the Dislike pile now. What can I say, I'm a very fickle person.
But man, I just did not watch any movies this year. I blame two things: the fact that I got rid of my Blockbuster pass after they took away half of my movie borrowing power while charging me the same price, and my purchase of a new car which required cutting my entertainment budget wildly, to the tune of 75%. Almost all of which was in movie tickets.
I'd say I'm at about half the number of movies that I usually see, and there's a huge emphasis on movies released the first half of the year. I'm so far behind the pop culture curve it's sad.
With all that said, let's go to the list. As always, we have 5 categories for movies: Hate, Dislike, Meh, Good, and Great.
Movies that I Actively Hate
43. The Invisible (What did we learn? Never go see a movie based solely on the hotness of the lead actor)
42. License to Wed (Office Jim, no! Mandy Moore, noooo!)
41. Spider-Man 3 (From the best superhero movie ever to utter soap opera garbage in one sequel. Impressive.)
Movies that I Only Dislike
40. The Hitcher
39. Gray Matters
38. Shrek the Third
Movies I Don't Dislike But Don't Recommend Either
37. Reno 911!: Miami
36. Because I Said So (Man, really not a good year for Mandy Moore.)
35. The Messengers
34. 300
33. Disturbia
32. The Number 23 (Biggest drop, from feelings just after watching until now.)
31. Beowulf (Needs more time to fester in my mind. Should probably be higher.)
Movies That Were Good
30. Year of the Dog (Biggest jump. This movie really grew on me over time.)
29. Blades of Glory
28. Music and Lyrics (Most bizarre placement. Did I really like this movie that much? Apparently, as I can't in good faith move it down any more.)
27. The Simpsons Movie
26. Hairspray
25. Sydney White (Amanda Bynes, why do you do this to me? Should probably be lower. In fact, I hereby reserve the right to go back and edit this down about 5 places when I come to my senses.)
24. August Rush
23. Black Snake Moan (Cinematography and a hot Christina Ricci count for a lot, apparently.)
22. 1408
21. Dan in Real Life
20. The Golden Compass
19. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
18. Knocked Up
17. Superbad (I assume. I only saw maybe 85% of it, but I laughed uncontrollably throughout what I saw. Hopefully it ended well, otherwise I'll look quite the fool.)
16. Enchanted
Movies That Were Excellent
15. Breach (So this year...)
14. Michael Clayton (I was really into...)
13. The Lookout (quiet character study movies, in a big way.)
12. The Brave One (And also, shooting punks in the face.)
11. Sweeney Todd
10. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
9. Zodiac
8. Lars and the Real Girl (So high, right? I know! It's inexplicable.)
7. Sunshine (Sci-fi and hot guys represent!)
6. Ratatouille
5. Waitress
4. Once
3. Atonement
2. Juno
1. Stardust
Sweet damn, how lopsided is that list? At first glance it looks like a really good year for movies, but far more likely is that I didn't have the luxury of renting a million and one bad movies from Blockbuster to pad out the bottom of the list. And when I did go to the theatre, it was for a movie I was pretty damn sure I would like, as I had to maximize my movie-going dollar.
The ratio will probably only get worse too, as I've come up with my Oscar-bait movie list that I need to see in the last three weeks of the year, and it's chock full of movies that are supposed to be actively amazing. Not that anyone will care, but I'll keep the list updated as the month goes on.
Gosh, where has all my cynicism gone? It's like I don't even know who I am anymore.
Okay, so every year I do a breakdown wherein I arbitrarily rank all the movies I've seen, from worst to best. The rules are really easy: it must have been released in 2007 (either straight to DVD or in theatres), and I have to have seen at least 90% of the movie.
I call it arbitrary because I can look back at my old reviews I did during the year and I've utterly hated on movies that I have under the Really Good category now, and had only good things to say about movies that are in the Dislike pile now. What can I say, I'm a very fickle person.
But man, I just did not watch any movies this year. I blame two things: the fact that I got rid of my Blockbuster pass after they took away half of my movie borrowing power while charging me the same price, and my purchase of a new car which required cutting my entertainment budget wildly, to the tune of 75%. Almost all of which was in movie tickets.
I'd say I'm at about half the number of movies that I usually see, and there's a huge emphasis on movies released the first half of the year. I'm so far behind the pop culture curve it's sad.
With all that said, let's go to the list. As always, we have 5 categories for movies: Hate, Dislike, Meh, Good, and Great.
Movies that I Actively Hate
43. The Invisible (What did we learn? Never go see a movie based solely on the hotness of the lead actor)
42. License to Wed (Office Jim, no! Mandy Moore, noooo!)
41. Spider-Man 3 (From the best superhero movie ever to utter soap opera garbage in one sequel. Impressive.)
Movies that I Only Dislike
40. The Hitcher
39. Gray Matters
38. Shrek the Third
Movies I Don't Dislike But Don't Recommend Either
37. Reno 911!: Miami
36. Because I Said So (Man, really not a good year for Mandy Moore.)
35. The Messengers
34. 300
33. Disturbia
32. The Number 23 (Biggest drop, from feelings just after watching until now.)
31. Beowulf (Needs more time to fester in my mind. Should probably be higher.)
Movies That Were Good
30. Year of the Dog (Biggest jump. This movie really grew on me over time.)
29. Blades of Glory
28. Music and Lyrics (Most bizarre placement. Did I really like this movie that much? Apparently, as I can't in good faith move it down any more.)
27. The Simpsons Movie
26. Hairspray
25. Sydney White (Amanda Bynes, why do you do this to me? Should probably be lower. In fact, I hereby reserve the right to go back and edit this down about 5 places when I come to my senses.)
24. August Rush
23. Black Snake Moan (Cinematography and a hot Christina Ricci count for a lot, apparently.)
22. 1408
21. Dan in Real Life
20. The Golden Compass
19. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
18. Knocked Up
17. Superbad (I assume. I only saw maybe 85% of it, but I laughed uncontrollably throughout what I saw. Hopefully it ended well, otherwise I'll look quite the fool.)
16. Enchanted
Movies That Were Excellent
15. Breach (So this year...)
14. Michael Clayton (I was really into...)
13. The Lookout (quiet character study movies, in a big way.)
12. The Brave One (And also, shooting punks in the face.)
11. Sweeney Todd
10. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
9. Zodiac
8. Lars and the Real Girl (So high, right? I know! It's inexplicable.)
7. Sunshine (Sci-fi and hot guys represent!)
6. Ratatouille
5. Waitress
4. Once
3. Atonement
2. Juno
1. Stardust
Sweet damn, how lopsided is that list? At first glance it looks like a really good year for movies, but far more likely is that I didn't have the luxury of renting a million and one bad movies from Blockbuster to pad out the bottom of the list. And when I did go to the theatre, it was for a movie I was pretty damn sure I would like, as I had to maximize my movie-going dollar.
The ratio will probably only get worse too, as I've come up with my Oscar-bait movie list that I need to see in the last three weeks of the year, and it's chock full of movies that are supposed to be actively amazing. Not that anyone will care, but I'll keep the list updated as the month goes on.
Gosh, where has all my cynicism gone? It's like I don't even know who I am anymore.
Monday, August 13, 2007
The Mighty Resurgence of Claire Danes
Lately, as a public service I try to keep my movie reviews over there on the sidebar, so to not completely bore my readers out of their minds with my incoherent thoughts on every damn movie that has the misfortune to flash before my eyes.That said, I loved Stardust so much that it gets its own full post. It's such a delightful, funny, and infectiously happy movie that I fully demand that everyone I know go see it. (And quickly, as based off of it's first weekend gross I don't expect it to be around in the theatres much longer).
A bare bones review to get you started, as the publicity for it has been so bad there's a good chance you've never even heard of it:
It's your traditional fairy tale turned on its ear (everyone and their brother immediately brings up The Princess Bride, but it's not really a good frame of reference). It's based off the Neil Gaiman novel, and it really shows throughout. A quick character rundown, which fills in the entire plot for you:
Claire Danes is awesome (and lets her hair do most of the emoting for her) as a star that has fallen to Earth, whom everyone wants a piece of. Michelle Pfeiffer digs right into her juicy role as the wicked witch who specifically wants the star's heart (which is apparently tasty, and allows for a kind of immortality). And Charlie Cox (who is an unknown, but is also crazy hot) is the bumblingly earnest young man (a part that is always at the center of Neil Gaiman's stories) who is pitted against all the forces of evil. You also throw in Robert De Niro, stealing the entire damn movie as a misunderstood pirate captain, along with another 15 or so additional colorful characters (and Ian McKellen narrating the whole thing!), just as icing on the cake.
It's pretty standard fare as far as fantasy movies go, but all the stock pieces stack up to one of the most enjoyable movies I've seen in ages. Plenty of humor, decent special effects, and some of the sappiest love story bits possible (which really are the best kind). Recommended so hard.
A full review follows below, but it's a bit more spoilerish, so I would ask that you refrain from reading ahead until you've gone and seen it (as you had better be doing right now).
I always enjoy a Neil Gaiman twist on a traditional story, and in this case I am fully on board with his take on a fairy tale. The love storyline is a bit rushed at first, but Danes and Cox make it work. There's a little line near the end about how 'love can look surprisingly a lot like loathing' or similar that is a nicely worded nod to that. And actually, the writing throughout is pretty uniformly well done - there is nothing so effective to me as some dry British writing.
It also helps that I am a complete sap, and will go "Awwwww" at anything cute, so that when Claire Danes actually falls in love and starts shining, I practically melted in my seat.
Also, I know I said it before, but I am completely smitten with Tristan, the main character. I mean, look at the hotness:
Again, this is probably telling more about me than the movie, but how can you not love him?
Entirely out of left field: Robert De Niro's role is completely unexpected, and really, really hilarious. I know it's mostly just playing against type, but it adds some welcome comic relief and really helps the tone of the movie even itself out. It also really helps advance the plot without too much deus ex machina. (Okay maybe a little too much.) But really, I'll take any excuse to put a transvestite pirate captain who catches lightning in a bottle and moonlights as a hairdresser into a movie, so really there's no way to go wrong there.
Overall, it's a wonderful movie, although I think it overreaches a bit with the number of characters it tries to keep up with. But that's hardly a criticism, more like an abundance of riches. You follow along with Tristan and the star, then you've got the witch and her sisters, add in all the prince-brothers, and then the pirate crew, oh and Ricky Gervais in his lovely little cameo, plus the gypsy witch and the mother... you see where I'm going with this. Even though it's 2 hours long, I'm not sure if everyone was necessary to the plot.
Anyways that's just nit-picking, it's a great, great movie that makes me smile just thinking about it. I consider it required viewing for anyone who doesn't hate joy.
You don't hate joy, do you? Go see it.
Friday, June 22, 2007
As a Way of Unestablishing My Movie Credentials
Ever look over at that Watch sidebar and think "Sweet damn, this boy has the worst taste in film I have ever seen!"?
In order to help you prove that delightfully worded supposition, allow me to provide you with some hard evidence to back it up.
I give you the list of all of AFI's Top 100 American Films that I have actually seen, along with a brief explanation that verifies why I should never be allowed to criticize film. To make it even more fair, I'm only including movies I have seen in their entirety (e.g. no 2001: A Space Odyssey, since although I've probably seen the entire thing through various clips over the ages, I've never sat and watched it straight through) and can still remember the majority of (no The French Connection, because while I've seen it (twice) before, I couldn't tell you a bit about it, except for the car chase.
Prepare to be entirely underwhelmed
In order to help you prove that delightfully worded supposition, allow me to provide you with some hard evidence to back it up.
I give you the list of all of AFI's Top 100 American Films that I have actually seen, along with a brief explanation that verifies why I should never be allowed to criticize film. To make it even more fair, I'm only including movies I have seen in their entirety (e.g. no 2001: A Space Odyssey, since although I've probably seen the entire thing through various clips over the ages, I've never sat and watched it straight through) and can still remember the majority of (no The French Connection, because while I've seen it (twice) before, I couldn't tell you a bit about it, except for the car chase.
Prepare to be entirely underwhelmed
- #2 The Godfather - Barely makes the list, since it's basically a haze in my mind. I still retain the rough shape of the movie though, even if I could barely stay awake for the required 3 hours of difficult to understand accents.
- #10 The Wizard of Oz - Gets points for reminding me of my childhood, but seriously, I can never sit through this movie anymore; it both bores and bugs the crap out of me now.
- #13 Star Wars - Yes! One that I liked and have seen enough times to quote from memory. Take that, legitimate film critics! (I bet they haven't even read the Expanded Universe novels either, the Philistines.)
- #14 Psycho - Fine, it's a classic. And pretty cool actually. I still lose points for probably not fully grasping it's importance, though.
- #17 The Graduate - Jesus, I hated this movie. And pretty much every character it contained too.
- #24 E.T. -- The Extra-Terrestrial - I refuse to watch this ever again, after it made me cry like a little girl when I was around 9 years old. Stupid movie.
- #25 To Kill a Mockingbird - Had to watch it for school, I prefer the book approximately 1,000 times more.
- #30 Apocalypse Now - Was forced to watch this by Jim, who had to watch it for school. And by "forced," I mean "was over in his dorm drinking when he was watching it and didn't want to wander across campus drunk." I'm pretty sure the only way I survived this movie without dying of boredom was my blood alcohol content.
- #34 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - Quite possibly my least favorite Disney movie ever. Nothing happens!
- #40 The Sound of Music - Okay, I will not hate on this movie. As ridiculous as a movie about escaping from Nazi's though music and pushy stage-parenting is, it still holds a place in my heart.
- #50 Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Now that's what I'm talking about. Finally we agree on something.
- #55 North by Northwest - I think I watched this with Devon? Isn't this the one where they climbed down the face of Mt. Rushmore? Maybe I shouldn't have counted this one. Still, if it's what I think it is, I really didn't like it.
- #68 Unforgiven - Another good one. Pretty much the only Western I've ever liked.
- #71 Saving Private Ryan - The first half hour is pretty sweet, in an utterly horrifying sort of way. Other than that, blah.
- #72 The Shawshank Redemption - No gripe, would probably top my own list of best movies ever, too. I have yet to successfully see this playing on cable and not watch it all the way through.
- #74 The Silence of the Lambs - Oh man, two in a row. Another of my best movies ever. Maybe my cred can be salvaged.
- #76 Forrest Gump - Wait, there it goes. My distaste for this movie is a physical thing, with the potential to move large objects. Emotionally manipulative junk.
- #81 Spartacus - I enjoy it on an entirely campy level, which I'm pretty sure is the opposite of what this list is going for.
- #83 Titanic - And here's where we reach a conundrum: Do I admit that I really like this movie and incur the wrath of a populace that hates everything that Celine Dion has ever touched, or try and retain some street cred and continue my trend of hating all movies on the list? I think I'll just refrain from saying anything here.
- #89 The Sixth Sense - Was good the first time I saw it. Gets worse on every repeat viewing.
- #92 Goodfellas - A good movie that is basically twice as long as it needs to be for me to like it.
- #94 Pulp Fiction - As much as my brother will disown me for saying it, I totally don't get this movie. It's okay, but I would never watch it on purpose.
- #99 Toy Story - At least we end on an agreeable note. Awesome movie.
So I have seen 23 of the 100 best movies ever, and I only liked 8 of them. And just one in the top 39. I'm not sure which is more damning - the fact that I've not seen even a fourth of them, or that I hate the ones I have seen.
Either way, feel free to completely discount my movie opinions from now to eternity.
(You are also free to tell me exactly how wrong I am in the comments. Or to berate me for never seeing It's a Wonderful Life. You'll still never convince me to watch it. I turned it one one time, and some old man was hitting a kid in the ear! It was horrifying.)
Monday, June 04, 2007
Hear What I'm Sayin'?
On Sunday night I had my usual 3 month ear treatment for my allergies, as is common for all people who are chronically and unendingly sick for no apparent reason. It's just a quick flush of my ears to keep them from swelling too much because of whatever allergy du jour I am suffering from.
It's nothing big, takes maybe an hour all told, but does require me to lie on the couch with my head perfectly sideways for two long stretches of time. This is not so much a hardship, seeing as that's how I spend the majority of my weekends anyway. Usually my reasoning for doing so is less defined, like "oh, I was out late last night (until 11:00!)," or "I have to go to work in a couple of days, I really should conserve my strength." Now that I had a genuine excuse, lying on the couch was an excellent, guilt-free chance at laziness.
The problem I had though, was that the treatment leaves me deaf for the duration, since while the medicine is acting my ear is totally closed off. This made watching TV an issue, as the speaking component tends to add a lot to the pretty, pretty pictures that are flashing by. And closed captioning was out of the question; since my head was at a 90 degree angle to the TV and I don't possess the mental wherewithal to read vertically.
So what is a person to do? In my case, I decided to watch the latest movie in our Blockbuster queue in complete silence, and just fill in the dialogue in my head as it went along. You would think this would be difficult, especially seeing as it was a movie I had never seen before. Until I tell you the title of the movie (The Hitcher) and you realize that if anything, the actual dialogue in the movie probably would have detracted from the overall experience.
(Note: Wildly Extensive, All Encompassing SPOILERS are upcoming for the entire film. On the bizarre chance that you actually care for a single second about the plot behind this movie and have not yet experience the (wrong-kind-of) horror of it firsthand, I would recommend skipping this post entirely. And also seriously reevaluating your priorities in life.)
Y'all, deeply and truly - there has never been a more painfully telegraphed movie since the age of silent films. I didn't hear a single word any of the cast members said, but I bet I could give you just as good a synopsis as anyone who was unfortunate enough to see and hear the whole thing without the hindrance (aid?) of ear medication.
And okay, I know that people always say that movies should "show, not tell" in order to get their message across, but at some point you reach the overkill stage. And in this movie, I'm pretty sure we reached that stage approximately 20 minutes in, when we were treated to our 5th close up of Sean Bean's face looking as menacing as possible. And then again in the 21st minute when we got our 42nd close up of Sophia Bush looking scared.
I suppose I could have potentially gotten a little confused when the protagonists stole a cop car and started what seemed to be a multi-state high speed chase (with helicopter!). But the movie helpfully cleared all that up when it had Sean Bean kill every police officer and destroy every police car (and almost the helicopter!) involved, without so much as blinking.
And then for good measure, killed off the main character hot guy (In the most awesome and ridiculous way possible. Seriously, that was the best part of the movie by a mile.). At that point, I rapidly lost interest.
Without the particular brand of attention grabbing that only a cute guy can provide, I got intensely bored and tried to take on the near insurmountable task of misinterpreting the most obvious movie ever, with the remaining 15 minutes. Was there any way Sophia Bush could be interpreted as the villain and Sean Bean the tragic anti-hero, arrested for the wrong crime, a la Harrison Ford in The Fugitive? This was my new quest and I attempted it with every fiber of my being.
Sadly, I think I failed. Primarily because immediately after my vow, Sean Bean totally ripped some guy's throat out, shot another policeman in the head, and then did the same to a third. Shortly afterwards I thought I might make a go of it when, for some unknown reason, Sophia Bush stole the last remaining policeman's gun, leaving him helpless and trapped in a crashed car to die, and released Sean Bean from the back of a locked police vehicle to finish the job for her. But in the end, even when she smoked him with a goddamn shotgun, I still didn't feel like I came anywhere near my goal. I mean, her death count was only 1. I'm pretty sure at final count Sean had at least 14, two of which were kids and one in which he literally ripped a guy in half.
Sadly, no one wins with this abomination of a movie.
On the plus side though, with or without sound, I can recommend that no one ever, ever, ever again watch this movie.
I'm glad I could be of service.
Oh, and hey, now my ears are super clear.
It's nothing big, takes maybe an hour all told, but does require me to lie on the couch with my head perfectly sideways for two long stretches of time. This is not so much a hardship, seeing as that's how I spend the majority of my weekends anyway. Usually my reasoning for doing so is less defined, like "oh, I was out late last night (until 11:00!)," or "I have to go to work in a couple of days, I really should conserve my strength." Now that I had a genuine excuse, lying on the couch was an excellent, guilt-free chance at laziness.
The problem I had though, was that the treatment leaves me deaf for the duration, since while the medicine is acting my ear is totally closed off. This made watching TV an issue, as the speaking component tends to add a lot to the pretty, pretty pictures that are flashing by. And closed captioning was out of the question; since my head was at a 90 degree angle to the TV and I don't possess the mental wherewithal to read vertically.
So what is a person to do? In my case, I decided to watch the latest movie in our Blockbuster queue in complete silence, and just fill in the dialogue in my head as it went along. You would think this would be difficult, especially seeing as it was a movie I had never seen before. Until I tell you the title of the movie (The Hitcher) and you realize that if anything, the actual dialogue in the movie probably would have detracted from the overall experience.
(Note: Wildly Extensive, All Encompassing SPOILERS are upcoming for the entire film. On the bizarre chance that you actually care for a single second about the plot behind this movie and have not yet experience the (wrong-kind-of) horror of it firsthand, I would recommend skipping this post entirely. And also seriously reevaluating your priorities in life.)
Y'all, deeply and truly - there has never been a more painfully telegraphed movie since the age of silent films. I didn't hear a single word any of the cast members said, but I bet I could give you just as good a synopsis as anyone who was unfortunate enough to see and hear the whole thing without the hindrance (aid?) of ear medication.
And okay, I know that people always say that movies should "show, not tell" in order to get their message across, but at some point you reach the overkill stage. And in this movie, I'm pretty sure we reached that stage approximately 20 minutes in, when we were treated to our 5th close up of Sean Bean's face looking as menacing as possible. And then again in the 21st minute when we got our 42nd close up of Sophia Bush looking scared.
I suppose I could have potentially gotten a little confused when the protagonists stole a cop car and started what seemed to be a multi-state high speed chase (with helicopter!). But the movie helpfully cleared all that up when it had Sean Bean kill every police officer and destroy every police car (and almost the helicopter!) involved, without so much as blinking.
And then for good measure, killed off the main character hot guy (In the most awesome and ridiculous way possible. Seriously, that was the best part of the movie by a mile.). At that point, I rapidly lost interest.
Without the particular brand of attention grabbing that only a cute guy can provide, I got intensely bored and tried to take on the near insurmountable task of misinterpreting the most obvious movie ever, with the remaining 15 minutes. Was there any way Sophia Bush could be interpreted as the villain and Sean Bean the tragic anti-hero, arrested for the wrong crime, a la Harrison Ford in The Fugitive? This was my new quest and I attempted it with every fiber of my being.
Sadly, I think I failed. Primarily because immediately after my vow, Sean Bean totally ripped some guy's throat out, shot another policeman in the head, and then did the same to a third. Shortly afterwards I thought I might make a go of it when, for some unknown reason, Sophia Bush stole the last remaining policeman's gun, leaving him helpless and trapped in a crashed car to die, and released Sean Bean from the back of a locked police vehicle to finish the job for her. But in the end, even when she smoked him with a goddamn shotgun, I still didn't feel like I came anywhere near my goal. I mean, her death count was only 1. I'm pretty sure at final count Sean had at least 14, two of which were kids and one in which he literally ripped a guy in half.
Sadly, no one wins with this abomination of a movie.
On the plus side though, with or without sound, I can recommend that no one ever, ever, ever again watch this movie.
I'm glad I could be of service.
Oh, and hey, now my ears are super clear.
Monday, March 19, 2007
Erryday is Friday
(Note: I totally started writing this on Friday, so I'm still allowed to make it a multimedia review day. So there.)
My head feels like it is fourteen times its usual size. And since I have quite possibly one of the largest heads in the known world, you can understand why this is a bad thing.
The drugs, they do nothing. I'm thinking today might need to become a real-live sick day. I haven't had one of those in over 2 years. I'm pretty sure my available balance of sick hours at work stands somewhere around 160. I could contract the Ebola and have enough paid time off work to wait it out.
Anyways, before it comes to that, various bits of reviews, notes of interest, and other things to keep my mind away from thoughts of my brain exploding directly out of my ears.
Books
Accelerando, by Charles Stross - Quick! Take every single idea you have ever thought of about technology in the future, be it good, bad, or indifferent, and write them all down in a list on a single sheet of paper. No time for punctuation! Okay done? Congratulations, you have now written one page of Accelerando. Please now repeat step one approximately 400 times, never re-using the same idea twice, add in an occasional poorly-drawn character and/or bit of plot (oh, you know readers, they just love plot) and then stir until you can't remember why you started the book in the first place. And, bam, you're done!
Yeah, we're done.
Admirable book, with admirable intentions, but reading this book was like hacking away at a redwood tree with a plastic butter knife - you might eventually finish the job, but by the end will you really care?
Book of the Dead, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - I know I must have said this several times before, but I love me some really cheesy suspense/horror. And nothing comes as close to perfection in that genre as these two authors. As a stand-alone book, this novel will not make a single lick of sense, as it is basically the second half of the already bloated Dance of Death, which was itself actually the second half of another book that I can't even remember the name of. The sum total of the trilogy is great, though. They use established characters (from a half-dozen other great genre books) so you don't have to worry about characterization because it's already built in, and instead get to work rocking out with a ridiculous series of exploits.
Yeah, the "shocking museum exhibit gala goes horribly wrong" bit is overwrought, but I got over it pretty quick. That said - Seriously, how many museum galas in this universe have ended in complete tragedy and multiple deaths? I count at least 3 or 4. And every single time the heroes warn everyone to stop, and every time the bureaucracy pushes the event through anyways. Is there no pattern recognition, people? Whatever, it was entertaining, that's all that matters.
JPod, Douglas Coupland - Several disclosures to start things off: I hated Microserfs for no real reason. Hey Nostradamus! was weird and really compelling, but still put me off. And I really hate when authors get all pretentious and do things like insert themselves into the story (see: King, Stephen) or mess around with fonts and word placement without any real reason (see: Danielewski, Mark - Only Revolutions).
Now that those are out of the way, I really dig this book. A lot. In fact, I read the entire 500 pages or so in a single day. Sometimes you just want to sit down with an incredibly quirky, completely unrealistic and improbable story and just ride it to the end. It's a really sweet (and gory) little book that just keeps ratcheting up the coincidences and jokes until it seems like the author got tired of typing. It was just fun and mindless and forgettable, and geeky enough to suck me in completely. Plus, I really tend to love books that randomly have strange lists for no other reason than the fact that lists are cool.
Movies
Breach - 1) Laura Linney is awesome and will always be awesome. 2) Chris Cooper is a really good and really underrated actor. 3) Ryan Philllllipe has got a giant knot on his forehead that might be the most distracting onscreen feature since Tom Cruise got that weird middle tooth thing corrected.
4) This movie was great, even though there was a very decided lack of action and a plethora of weird Catholic guilt all over the place. Might be a little too measured for my tastes, but in general I am way more of a fan of the thoughtful movie than the mindless one. A-.
Zodiac - And here we are again. Another really great (almost amazing) movie that pulls back from the action so hard that you're constantly left wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. I mean it's a serial killer movie and the guy directing it is the same dude who made Fight Club and Panic Room. In which several people were beaten with sledgehammers and Jared Leto was set on fire in one and had his face basically bashed in in the other. I was expecting more gore. But it is more thoughtful, more focused on how the killer affects those who are chasing him rather than his victims.
The ending really is something of a letdown, if only because the bottom just drops out of the movie. It fits well with the overall scheme - you're just waiting for a payoff that is never going to happen. Which, I guess, is what the whole movie was about, so bravo.
Whatever, Jake Gyllenhaal is so pretty and awkward and swoon.
--------------------------
So yeah, that was my Spring Break week, lots of books and a couple of movies. I blew my entire monthly entertainment budget in abotu 5 days, so look for way more discussions about household events in the coming weeks, while I store up money like a squirrel with his nuts, for the long winter that will be my house moving experience.
Wow, that was a tortured metaphor. I better get out while I still can.
My head feels like it is fourteen times its usual size. And since I have quite possibly one of the largest heads in the known world, you can understand why this is a bad thing.
The drugs, they do nothing. I'm thinking today might need to become a real-live sick day. I haven't had one of those in over 2 years. I'm pretty sure my available balance of sick hours at work stands somewhere around 160. I could contract the Ebola and have enough paid time off work to wait it out.
Anyways, before it comes to that, various bits of reviews, notes of interest, and other things to keep my mind away from thoughts of my brain exploding directly out of my ears.
Books
Accelerando, by Charles Stross - Quick! Take every single idea you have ever thought of about technology in the future, be it good, bad, or indifferent, and write them all down in a list on a single sheet of paper. No time for punctuation! Okay done? Congratulations, you have now written one page of Accelerando. Please now repeat step one approximately 400 times, never re-using the same idea twice, add in an occasional poorly-drawn character and/or bit of plot (oh, you know readers, they just love plot) and then stir until you can't remember why you started the book in the first place. And, bam, you're done!
Yeah, we're done.
Admirable book, with admirable intentions, but reading this book was like hacking away at a redwood tree with a plastic butter knife - you might eventually finish the job, but by the end will you really care?
Book of the Dead, Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - I know I must have said this several times before, but I love me some really cheesy suspense/horror. And nothing comes as close to perfection in that genre as these two authors. As a stand-alone book, this novel will not make a single lick of sense, as it is basically the second half of the already bloated Dance of Death, which was itself actually the second half of another book that I can't even remember the name of. The sum total of the trilogy is great, though. They use established characters (from a half-dozen other great genre books) so you don't have to worry about characterization because it's already built in, and instead get to work rocking out with a ridiculous series of exploits.
Yeah, the "shocking museum exhibit gala goes horribly wrong" bit is overwrought, but I got over it pretty quick. That said - Seriously, how many museum galas in this universe have ended in complete tragedy and multiple deaths? I count at least 3 or 4. And every single time the heroes warn everyone to stop, and every time the bureaucracy pushes the event through anyways. Is there no pattern recognition, people? Whatever, it was entertaining, that's all that matters.
JPod, Douglas Coupland - Several disclosures to start things off: I hated Microserfs for no real reason. Hey Nostradamus! was weird and really compelling, but still put me off. And I really hate when authors get all pretentious and do things like insert themselves into the story (see: King, Stephen) or mess around with fonts and word placement without any real reason (see: Danielewski, Mark - Only Revolutions).
Now that those are out of the way, I really dig this book. A lot. In fact, I read the entire 500 pages or so in a single day. Sometimes you just want to sit down with an incredibly quirky, completely unrealistic and improbable story and just ride it to the end. It's a really sweet (and gory) little book that just keeps ratcheting up the coincidences and jokes until it seems like the author got tired of typing. It was just fun and mindless and forgettable, and geeky enough to suck me in completely. Plus, I really tend to love books that randomly have strange lists for no other reason than the fact that lists are cool.
Movies
Breach - 1) Laura Linney is awesome and will always be awesome. 2) Chris Cooper is a really good and really underrated actor. 3) Ryan Philllllipe has got a giant knot on his forehead that might be the most distracting onscreen feature since Tom Cruise got that weird middle tooth thing corrected.
4) This movie was great, even though there was a very decided lack of action and a plethora of weird Catholic guilt all over the place. Might be a little too measured for my tastes, but in general I am way more of a fan of the thoughtful movie than the mindless one. A-.
Zodiac - And here we are again. Another really great (almost amazing) movie that pulls back from the action so hard that you're constantly left wondering when the other shoe is going to drop. I mean it's a serial killer movie and the guy directing it is the same dude who made Fight Club and Panic Room. In which several people were beaten with sledgehammers and Jared Leto was set on fire in one and had his face basically bashed in in the other. I was expecting more gore. But it is more thoughtful, more focused on how the killer affects those who are chasing him rather than his victims.
The ending really is something of a letdown, if only because the bottom just drops out of the movie. It fits well with the overall scheme - you're just waiting for a payoff that is never going to happen. Which, I guess, is what the whole movie was about, so bravo.
Whatever, Jake Gyllenhaal is so pretty and awkward and swoon.
--------------------------
So yeah, that was my Spring Break week, lots of books and a couple of movies. I blew my entire monthly entertainment budget in abotu 5 days, so look for way more discussions about household events in the coming weeks, while I store up money like a squirrel with his nuts, for the long winter that will be my house moving experience.
Wow, that was a tortured metaphor. I better get out while I still can.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Pure Brain Dump
During a discussion recently with a friend of mine, I mentioned that I didn't really have any good topics to write about at the moment, just a whole bunch of little bits of junk that were sort of floating around in my head. And she gave me some very sage advice: write about whatever you want; it's your damn blog.
So yeah, word to the max. Commencing random bits of info.
-------------------
My latest obsession: How I Met Your Mother. A TV show. Not even just a TV show, a fixed camera sitcom. I don't know what has become of my tastes. But this show is the most hilarious thing on TV that is not The Office, and it's way less cringe-inducing, which makes it a lot easier to watch. I got the first season on DVD for Christmas and by conservative estimate I have watched it all the way through at least 5 times. There is a really nice level of rapport that the cast has working, especially by the end of that first season. And the new second season has really hit its stride, to the point where I consider certain episodes at the pinnacle of good TV. (I would never have thought anything could challenge Arrested Development's Pier Pressure as the best single episode of comedy I have ever seen, but HIMYM's Slap Bet is right there.)
I also have a wicked man-crush on Neil Patrick Harris, who is almost criminally funny in the role of the crazy womanizer.
The show almost went off the rails for me in the first season with the obvious parallels to Friends and the Ross+Rachael4Life issue with the corresponding characters here, but they managed to avoid the really bad pitfalls and come up with some great TV.
And now I'm on some sort of holy quest to convert every person I know into a watcher. This is exactly like Serenity/Firefly, but I think I'm a little less crazed on this one. You should watch it, though.
-----------------------
Also for Christmas, someone (Frank) let me go wild in Borders books and I managed to pick up a nice pile of new Science Fiction, which I have been chewing through for over a month now, really enjoying some hardcore speculative future worlds. It's all from the very dense side of science fiction, the kind that normal people hate and that I absolutely love.
This is all to say that I am massively recommending the novel Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. It's the sort of book that I live for: hard science fiction with a realistic base, some really interesting ideas, and a payoff that doesn't completely suck (which is the problem I almost universally find with really ambitious science fiction). It's got a straightforwardness about the whole thing that I really respect - One day the stars disappear, the Earth is surrounded by some sort of shield that causes time on the planet to move incredibly slowly compared to the rest of the universe, and the main characters are left to deal with the fallout.
Even though it is structured in a stylized series of flashbacks, it manages it with such flair that completely forgive the trappings, where usually I would get tired after 3 chapters. And it doesn't hurt that the characters are surprisingly well written and sympathetic, something else that I tend to hate about sci-fi.
It really put me in the mind of Carl Sagan's Contact, which is pretty much the highest praise I can give to a book. It's not for everyone, but if you like this sort of thing, it's definitely the book to read.
-------------------------
I've started up the World of Warcraft again. I know, so shameful. I have no reasoning or defense, other than the relative cheapness of the entertainment. Your average video game costs at least $30.00 and only offers you limited replay value. By sticking with this one, I'm only incurring about $14.00/month and not wasting money elsewhere.
Also, the new races and areas they added in with the expansion are just great - I've got a new Blood Elf up and running and my hunter has been pulled out of retirement for the long haul up to level 70. If there are any of you out there who still play, I'm on that there server called The Scryers, character name Rohr.
--------------------------
New Musical Interest that I can't get enough of: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. I really enjoy me some up-tempo rock, and this album has it in spades. Classic exercise/running background music for me. And some of the songs are really sweet too.
I have almost nothing to add, except I really like British imports lately for some reason. I'm just a sucker for accents, I think.
(Other music related confession that ruins pretty much my entire life: I have that Daughtry CD on my iPod. And I sort of like it. A lot. I think I'm gonna go throw up now.)
--------------------------
Went and saw Pan's Labyrinth over the weekend. Completely amazing. Almost impossible to watch at times - the violence is astounding on occasion, but the movie as a whole is astonishing and immersive. The fantastic elements are almost tame compared to the realistic elements of war, and when you combine it with the amazing acting the result is deeply affecting. I don't think I've walked out of a movie that charged...possibly ever. And I include in that my recent viewing of Children of Men, which I imagined would hold the title for a very long time. I also really dug the open-endedness of the conclusion. In fact, I probably would have liked a little more - some additional shades of gray might not have hurt.
A great movie, though. Top three of last year to be sure. Actually to break it down, my real top 5 movie list in terms of best movies I saw for 2006 (say if I ran the Oscars): Children of Men, History Boys, Pan's Labyrinth, Little Miss Sunshine, and Stranger Than Fiction.
So yeah, word to the max. Commencing random bits of info.
-------------------
My latest obsession: How I Met Your Mother. A TV show. Not even just a TV show, a fixed camera sitcom. I don't know what has become of my tastes. But this show is the most hilarious thing on TV that is not The Office, and it's way less cringe-inducing, which makes it a lot easier to watch. I got the first season on DVD for Christmas and by conservative estimate I have watched it all the way through at least 5 times. There is a really nice level of rapport that the cast has working, especially by the end of that first season. And the new second season has really hit its stride, to the point where I consider certain episodes at the pinnacle of good TV. (I would never have thought anything could challenge Arrested Development's Pier Pressure as the best single episode of comedy I have ever seen, but HIMYM's Slap Bet is right there.)
I also have a wicked man-crush on Neil Patrick Harris, who is almost criminally funny in the role of the crazy womanizer.
The show almost went off the rails for me in the first season with the obvious parallels to Friends and the Ross+Rachael4Life issue with the corresponding characters here, but they managed to avoid the really bad pitfalls and come up with some great TV.
And now I'm on some sort of holy quest to convert every person I know into a watcher. This is exactly like Serenity/Firefly, but I think I'm a little less crazed on this one. You should watch it, though.
-----------------------
Also for Christmas, someone (Frank) let me go wild in Borders books and I managed to pick up a nice pile of new Science Fiction, which I have been chewing through for over a month now, really enjoying some hardcore speculative future worlds. It's all from the very dense side of science fiction, the kind that normal people hate and that I absolutely love.
This is all to say that I am massively recommending the novel Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. It's the sort of book that I live for: hard science fiction with a realistic base, some really interesting ideas, and a payoff that doesn't completely suck (which is the problem I almost universally find with really ambitious science fiction). It's got a straightforwardness about the whole thing that I really respect - One day the stars disappear, the Earth is surrounded by some sort of shield that causes time on the planet to move incredibly slowly compared to the rest of the universe, and the main characters are left to deal with the fallout.
Even though it is structured in a stylized series of flashbacks, it manages it with such flair that completely forgive the trappings, where usually I would get tired after 3 chapters. And it doesn't hurt that the characters are surprisingly well written and sympathetic, something else that I tend to hate about sci-fi.
It really put me in the mind of Carl Sagan's Contact, which is pretty much the highest praise I can give to a book. It's not for everyone, but if you like this sort of thing, it's definitely the book to read.
-------------------------
I've started up the World of Warcraft again. I know, so shameful. I have no reasoning or defense, other than the relative cheapness of the entertainment. Your average video game costs at least $30.00 and only offers you limited replay value. By sticking with this one, I'm only incurring about $14.00/month and not wasting money elsewhere.
Also, the new races and areas they added in with the expansion are just great - I've got a new Blood Elf up and running and my hunter has been pulled out of retirement for the long haul up to level 70. If there are any of you out there who still play, I'm on that there server called The Scryers, character name Rohr.
--------------------------
New Musical Interest that I can't get enough of: Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not. I really enjoy me some up-tempo rock, and this album has it in spades. Classic exercise/running background music for me. And some of the songs are really sweet too.
I have almost nothing to add, except I really like British imports lately for some reason. I'm just a sucker for accents, I think.
(Other music related confession that ruins pretty much my entire life: I have that Daughtry CD on my iPod. And I sort of like it. A lot. I think I'm gonna go throw up now.)
--------------------------
Went and saw Pan's Labyrinth over the weekend. Completely amazing. Almost impossible to watch at times - the violence is astounding on occasion, but the movie as a whole is astonishing and immersive. The fantastic elements are almost tame compared to the realistic elements of war, and when you combine it with the amazing acting the result is deeply affecting. I don't think I've walked out of a movie that charged...possibly ever. And I include in that my recent viewing of Children of Men, which I imagined would hold the title for a very long time. I also really dug the open-endedness of the conclusion. In fact, I probably would have liked a little more - some additional shades of gray might not have hurt.
A great movie, though. Top three of last year to be sure. Actually to break it down, my real top 5 movie list in terms of best movies I saw for 2006 (say if I ran the Oscars): Children of Men, History Boys, Pan's Labyrinth, Little Miss Sunshine, and Stranger Than Fiction.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)