Things we watch in the cinema or on tape, DVD, and streaming
Ooops. I should’ve written something about Morning Glory a while ago, but never got around to it before taking off for vacation. The review would’ve been awesome with lots of insight. Now, I can’t even remember the film. All I know is Rachel McAdams is in it. She hasn’t been in many films lately, but it was good to see her again.
3 of 5 stars.
Ponyo or The Princess and the Frog? Faced with this choice, my niece went with the safe comforts of the Disney production instead of the Studio Ghibli film. Who can blame her as The Princess and the Frog had a princess, and Ponyo, well, it had a creepy human faced fish. So what sets an animated movie from Japan from those produced in the United States?
Character matter? Probably not. Ponyo is derived from The Little Mermaid. There is a princess except she’s not pretty. She’s a fish with a face. She’s not an ugly duckling but a true ugly duck. You can’t make her beautiful just by removing her glasses and putting down her hair.
I just wondering if there was a difference…
Before the spooks come out, let’s put down my thoughts about Clint Eastwood’s latest cinema effort, Hereafter. Appropriately released close to Halloween, it is a movie about living with the dead that is how we, the living, approach death, dying, and the dead, and how we think about the afterlife. If we think about it at all.
I’m amazed that Eastwood played it straight. He cast no judgement against any of our beliefs be it for an afterlife or not. Even he didn’t make judgement on those who believed or didn’t believe in communicating with the dead. Straight, right? The movie states that there is something after death.
And you can talk to them. Can we? Eastwood plays it straight and let’s Damon actually communicate with the dead. Then throws us a curve and in a crucial moment, makes it seem like he didn’t. Did he? Hmm.
It was an alright movie. Not creepy. But nice to know. It’s a pragmatic film about what could happen after death.
3 of 5 stars.
Last year's race for Best Picture was considered a two picture race between Avatar and The Hurt Locker even though the category had ten nominees. What's it gonna be like for this year's show?If this New York Times article is accurate (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/movies/06oscar.html), it should be wide open. The race is heating up, but should start getting good real soon. Besides The Social Network, Inception, and perhaps Scorcese's Shutter Island, I think the Oscar-worthy pictures aren't bound to show up in theatres until winter, their usual schedule slot. I haven't heard much about some of the films mentioned in the article. I've only just seen the Coen's True Grit trailer, and even then it does nothing for me. This year has been the suck for movies. I wonder if they're as terrible as last year. Anyway, this post should also be a Link of the Day because embedded in the NYTimes article is a nice site, http://incontention.com/, that tries to handicap the Oscar race. I read a few posts there and it reads very cool. Looks to be a great resource in the next BrowserMetrics' Oscar Pool.
The Social Network purports to describe the rise of Facebook. You’ll wonder how much is real and how much is made up in order to expedite telling the story. Then you’ll wonder at the digital technology that made one person into two — Lindsay Lohan eat your heart out.
The Social Network starts off with pure Aaron Sorkin dialogue. The banter between Mark Zuckerberg (not Michael Cera) and his soon to be ex-girlfriend would give clues to why he builds Facebook. They talk in multiple threads, and if you aren’t quick enough you’ll get lost in which they are talking about. She hates it, so do I. Eventually, I start to understand what they’re talking about, and what’s happening. It sets up the break up which as the movie unwinds is what ultimately was the impetus: LOVE and women.
He’s a social misfit. Awkward when he interacts because he’s in his own world. He can program a website, but he can’t make friends. Ironic that he created the one website wherein friending is the unit of exchange. Then the true psychopath shows up in Shawn Parker. Paranoid and fast talker he pushes to the max being a social misfit. Parties and girls. Girls and parties. Trouble follows him. I recognize these type of geeks. Driven by their own ambition but can’t really express it.
I was pretty geeked out when they did the geek stuff. I also recognized some of the old high-flying dot com days from my own days of yore.
4 of 5 stars.
In honor of Orioles playing the Red Sux, here’s my thoughts and/or review of Ben Affleck’s The Town.
Here’s the plot: Heat in Boston. It absolutely follows the plot of Michael Mann’s film. Super efficient, highly competent bank robbers (Affleck, Remmer and crew) hunted by a go for broke law enforcement man (that guy with the jaw from AMC’s Mad Men). There is the girl with the baby and the girl who may or may not be dropped in thirty seconds or less. There are heists and double crosses and one last big score with all this heat on them. Yup. If you’ve seen Heat, you’ve seen this one.
Heat by the way is one of my all time favorite movies. Top 5.
The Town isn’t so bad. It’s competently directed by Affleck starring a competent Affleck. Rebecca Hall is a beauty. Pretty. I would watch the movie again to stare at that face for another 2 hours. She’s just my type.
Jeremy Remmer always makes me nervous. His nonchalant demeanor always comes across as reckless whether as a bomb squad member or as a member of Affleck’s bank robbing crew. You’re always waiting for him to do something off the wall that’ll make your palms sweat. Here he takes the last big score. “I ain’t ever going back [to prison],” he says and you know that it’s a death wish.
The last heist was cool. Taking on the Red Sox. Let’s hope the Orioles bring down the house on the Red Sox just as the cops take it to the robbers.
3 of 5 stars.
Easy A is the 2010’s Mean Girls. Emma Stone is Lindsay Lohan — same chubbiness, same red hair, same throaty voice. Let’s hope she doesn’t flush her career down the tubes with drinking and drugs. If she looses 15 lbs, it’s the first sign of impending celebrity implosion.
The movie’s plot centers around Stone’s character, Olive, as she makes herself out to be the school skank after a lie she told was warped by the grapevine. This riles up the geeks to hit her up for some of that lying action. She does and they gain some notoriety. Then the school prayer group takes it upon themselves to get her kicked out school. Then the school mascot was always in love with her. Then the school guidance counselor, the school’s coolest teacher, and a weird hairy chrisitan showed up to add another plot thread. This is just to say that there were a lot of plotlines in this movie.
The writers of the movie played a lot off of 80s teen comedies: Say Anything, Can’t Buy Me Love, The Breakfast Club. It tries to bring all those into play. So it was quite something with all these plotlines. It should’ve just settled itself as Mean Girls.
2 of 5 stars.
Sadly, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World came in 5th place in the box office with approximately $10 million. It was Scott Pilgrim versus The Expendables, but turned out to be no contest. Mr. Pilgrm got his but kicked by several old action movie stars. This dismal performance shouldn’t stop you from catching a very, unique movie. If you see it before it leaves your local cinema, you’ll be treated to whimsical tale of love and music and video games.
Ahh, the video game. Scott Pilgrim must fight his way through the seven exes of Romona Flowers before he wins her heart. Just like a video game each is a battle. But these aren’t the video games of today with their super awesome graphics, 64 fps, first person shooter, it’s your Sega Genesis side scroller Double Dragon, Virtua Fighter. Low res man.
But at heart is the love story. It’s sweet and tender, seemingly emo. Plus, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and her big eyes was suitably cast as the girl. Michael Cera wasn’t, IMHO. He’s too whiny for this part. I would’ve loved to have seen someone else play Scott Pilgrim. I keep seeing Futurama’s Phillip J Fry as the guy. Someone who’s slack but burly, a Joseph Gordon-Levitt type. I guess I’m tired of Michael Cera being the go to emo slacker dude.
This movie as I had tweeted will end up being great to watch on DVD just like Speed Racer. Whimsical.
4 of 5 stars.
I really don’t have much to say about the latest DVD I received in the mail from NetFlix, Fantastic Mr. Fox, but I need to. The movie is good. It is a Wes Anderson movie through and through. The triptychs, the kid, the heists, the plans: it’s all Wes Anderson.
Why I decided to write a post about the movie is that Roald Dahl wrote the book was married to Patricia Neal who sadly died over the past weekend. Very coincidental if I do say so myself. She acted in The Day the Earth Stood Still and A Face In the Crowd. Watch those movies, because I liked them myself.
I really wanted to say this in my Inception review, but forgot before I hit the post button.
This movie will remind you that Nolan’s best film was the playfully, inventive Memento.
I got a vibe of Jacob’s Ladder — where and when is all this happening.
I also got a vibe of Flatliners — they come back.
Nolan likes to work with Cillian Murphy.
He also loves Michael Caine, but then again who doesn’t?
Seeing Ellen Page made me wonder about my car being ticketed.
I thought Ellen Page was gonna be the new Neo.
Why couldn’t Ellen Page have constructed awesome things on the fly?
How come Ellen Page was dramatically underused? Or was she overvalued?
Was that The Pin?
“I am a cypher, a cypher wrapped in an enigma… smothered in secret sauce.”
The movie caps a funny week of weird, strange dreams — earthquake!
