The High Price of Expecations

Shifting a bit away from politics for a while, though this topic could easily be placed in that realm, too, but as we get closer and closer to the release of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, I am watching as my nerd friends start to noticeably quiver in anticipation.  Being a fellow nerd, I too share in the excitement, but as I have discovered over the course of the past year or so, I am much more excited for the DC Universe movies, like Batman V. Superman, Wonder Woman, Suicide Squad etc.  This is not because I truly believe Warner Bros./DC will manage to reach the heights of quality and consistency that Disney/Marvel has been able to do, but it just really comes down to how I like my superheros, which is more on the "super" side that just everyday folks with skills.  For instance, I am much more a fan of The Flash TV show over Arrow, even though Stephen Amell could have his way with me any day of the week.  The more out there and fantastic it is, the more likely I am to geek out.

So, my overall anticipation of Ultron is pretty muted.  I suppose part of it could be Ultron himself. Since I am not a big comic book nerd, I really had no idea about Ultron and his history with the Avengers.  He is not really a household name like, say, The Joker or Loki from the previous films, and without that cache, the whole character is a bit of cipher to me.  Also, the story of a sentient robot who evolves and rebels against it's creator is certainly well trod in the science fiction universe.  I fully realize that the vast majority of the story has not been spoiled in the trailers, but everything so far, while being of obvious quality, has left me pretty cold.

My friend, Ed, however is like a 5 year old on December 1st.  The anticipation for Christmas is real, and he just cannot wait for it to get here.  He is a Marvel true believer, and I cannot begrudge him his excitement.  However, it has made me wonder if the movie could every possibly live up to his hype for it.  The first Avenger's movie was less of a sure thing than we remember.  While Marvel had done the next to impossible by launching individual movies for Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor, I think everyone was unsure whether they could pull of the epic team up, and while Joss Whedon was not exactly an unknown quantity, insomuch as his writing and some directorial credits, he had never taken on a movie of that size before.  The number of directors that have been chewed up and spit out by giant Hollywood movies is pretty legion, but when The Avengers actually worked and worked wonderfully, all of those doubts dissipated into the the dustbin.

I suppose part of me is waiting for the fall.  We have certainly never really seen a hit machine like Marvel in the history of Hollywood.  To have all of these movies be a hits in addition to it being a shared universe is truly something pretty exceptional, and perhaps they have every chance of keeping the cash cow mooing for years to come.  Word began to leak last night of the first internet critic's viewing of Ultron, and once again, the word is shock and surprise that they were able to pull it off. I suppose at some point there will be a failure. Ant Man certainly had enough trials and tribulations coming to the screen to end up being a mess, but the likelihood is that they will once again pull something from nothing, like they did with Guardians of the Galaxy. The bottom line is that for the nerds this is a Golden Age, and while we still continue to have extremely high quality, the superhero movie genre will continue to meet or exceed our expectations.

Oscar Apathy, Part 2

Well, I survived Oscar weekend, which was filled with baking for a party I co-hosted with friends.  The show itself is pretty much a blur, but I consider it to be an above average undertaking, though I think Neil Patrick Harris got swallowed by awesome stage design.  There were some very high notes, and I missed most of the jokes that died.  The big headlines however are that the ratings were at a six year low.  Why is that?

After quite a few years of hiatus, I re-entered and won the Oscar pool.  This is mostly due to the fact that I am still an avid reader of awards websites, not because I have seen all the movies.  My friends who tried to compete with me came at the Oscar ballot at an extreme disadvantage, because while American Sniper is an outright blockbuster, the rest of the nominees from Best Picture on down (save Animated Feature and the industry awards) are all middle of the road money makers, even though The Grand Budapest Hotel is Wes Anderson's top grossing movie. Wes Anderson is no Steven Spielberg.

I really do not believe that the glut of awards shows is the problem, either, because I do not believe most people even care outside of the Golden Globes, which is really just watched to see if some drunken celebrity will do something stupid.  Unfortunately, I think the Academy is more likely to assume "awards fatigue" is the problem instead of truly looking inward at themselves.  Here are some of the issues I see:

- Art vs. Entertainment

I cannot begrudge the Academy for wanting to honor those movies that strive to be art, but unfortunately, it is rare that those movies end up being popular with the general population.  Sure, there are quite a few Best Picture winners that have scored over $100 million (it would be interesting to see how much nominations and wins effected that earning), but there are only three since 1990 who have achieved more than $200 million - 2003 LOTR: The Return of the King, 1994 Forrest Gump, and of course, 1997 Titanic.  Of course, the great argument is whether these blockbusters were actually the "Best" movies of the year, but it is a pretty subjective question anyway.  However, if you're going to look at just ratings of the telecasts, the highest ratings of all time was the year Titanic won, and the highest ratings since 2000 was the year of The Return of the King.  So you see, the ratings have nothing to do with who is hosting or who is singing what, it has everything to do with the general populace buying into the horse race with enough passion to want to tune in to see if their favorite won.

Of course, I would never want to see a Best Picture race comprised of the top ten grossing films of the year, because, obviously, popularity does not connote quality, but if year in and year out we are going to bemoan the falling ratings of the telecast, then the Oscars really need to figure out a way to celebrate movies that reach the cultural zeitgeist as well as those that are the pinnacle of the craft.

Source: Box Office Mojo & WikiPedia

- The Show Itself

I have already established the connection between popular nominees and ratings.  It certainly was not Neil Patrick Harris' fault that this year's show tanked.  However, the show itself is a bloated mess and a joke in and of itself.  Everyone already knows that it will run long, but they keep adding in more and more in the hopes of keeping people engaged.  I really think the whole things needs to be scrapped and start from scratch, with nothing sacred even the current category structure.  Of course, this will never happen because of the structure of the Academy itself, and it would be a slippery slope to say that you'll just include Writing, Supporting Actor/Actress, Actor/Actress, Director, and Picture. Best Original Song at least brings something to the proceedings, though the rules are so arcane it makes for odd choices.  However, despite the artistry, no one really cares about Documentaries, Shorts, Foreign Language Film, and the majority of the tech categories (except maybe for special effects).

With that being said, their could be MORE categories, too.  Each of the shows that have popped up seem to have at least one innovative category.  The Golden Globes split Drama & Comedy (usually not well), the Screen Actor's Guild honors Best Ensemble, etc.  There should be something for stunt people, too.

- Eliminate the Host

I decided to break this one out on it's own from the one above.  No offense to everyone who has come before, but being the Oscar host has to be the single most thankless job in entertainment.  Jesus Christ herself could get up there, and someone would still complain.  The reality of the matter is that outside of the opening, there really is no need for one.  It's better to just get out of the way and start the show.

I am sure I could armchair quarterback this some more, and I know I do not fully comprehend the pressure the producers are under to make the show the same every year.  However, something needs to change, and I have not even gone into the nuts and bolts of this whitest Oscars in many years.  I just hope they have a real conversation about it.  Things need to change.

Oscar Apathy

When I first started messing around with websites back in the 1994 (ughhhh), my first Geocities site was a movie related page called Binky's Movie Hut.  My nickname in college, was inexplicably, Binky, and it all just rolled together with my love of movies.  I had a pretty full list of movie reviews and the like, which I wish I had backed up somewhere.  I mean, I wasn't going to threaten Roger Ebert, but I was pretty happy with my writing at that time.  

As the '90s progressed and my skills became better, I morphed my site into Awards Avenue, and it became much more focused on the awards show circuit.  I covered music, television, theater, and of course, the Road to the Oscars, which became quite a very busy time between November-March.  I was really in on the ground floor of what became a cottage industry of prognosticators orbiting around movie awards.  Theater also got me a lot of hits, because there really were not a lot of people covering it, but the big focus was the Oscars.  I got a lot of hits for a fan site, and if I had not given it up because it was beginning to interfere with my real job, I really think something good might have come out of it.  My crowning achievement was my super inclusive calendar of Oscar precursors (critic and guild awards) being quotes by leading Oscar site OscarWatch, which is now AwardsDaily.com due to the Academy being stingy with their copywrites.  Years later, I am friends on Facebook with Awards Daily diva, Sasha Stone, and I think I comment enough on her stuff that she knows who I am.  It is the little things, but I digress.

During this time, I also held my annual Oscar Party, which started out as something at my apartment and grew bigger into my friend, Melissa's, house.  It then outgrew itself into a fundraiser for a local organization called Indiana Still Cares, which was my first tip toe into the Indianapolis gay community.  I got on the radar of Gary Brackett, who was also President of Indy Pride at that point, and I think you can see where this is going.  I owe a lot to my love of the Oscars, which is why my apathy for the show is a little disconcerting.

The Oscars have not changed with the times, and even though they seem to add more and more diversity every year, the decisions made for winners still seems to be stuck in the fuddy duddy white voters.  The fact that there is not one person of color nominated in any of the major categories or a woman director is just abysmal, and that is not to say that every nominee is not deserving.  It is just unfortunate that the wealth cannot be spread.

There is a lot more wrong with the system than I care to get into here, but the fact that I have only seen two of the nominated Best Pictures is pretty indicative that the Oscars are not in line with my tastes.  I am really hoping that piece of jingoist propaganda, American Sniper, does not win Best Picture on Sunday, because that might just be the final nail for me.

Movie Maddness: Mockingjay

I have to admit that I had a lot of trepidation about Mockingjay, and it wasn't really because they decided to split it into two movies.  My issues really stemmed from my dissatisfaction with the book itself, especially after loving Catching Fire, which is still my favorite book of The Hunger Games trilogy.  While I wasn't really upset with the book being different from the pattern created in the two books (emotional buildup until we hit the arena), I just felt that the book was rushing to get us to the end, and even though the acts of the finale were a shock, what felt effortless in the first two books, seemed hurried and labored in the third.

****It should go without saying that there are spoilers in the rest of this post.  I will attempt to keep things clean of what will transpire in Mockingjay, Part 2, but you've been warned.****

To be completely honest, I began this blog last Monday, November 24th, but due to work and the holiday, I haven't been able to finish it.  So, I am picking this up a week later after marinating on it some more, and I would like to go see it again, which is the best recommendation I can give.  I've also bandied about re-reading the book just to see how close things jibe to the adaptation, and if I do, I will probably to an follow up.  However, I am still pleased with the movie, and I believe the changes truly enhanced the narrative.

While the first two novels were enhanced by Katniss as the first person narrator, Mockingjay really
suffers from it.  There is so much going on in the background while Katniss is dealing with the horrors of the Games, that moving to a true third person narrative for the film really corrects some of the problems I had with it.  Plus, you're able to see District 13 through your own eyes and not just through the PTSD addled view of Katniss.  For instance, President Alma Coin is a much more fully realized character in the movie, which will make the ending of the Part 2 all the more intense.  You are also given a lot more time to learn about Gale and Prim, who have been nothing more than ciphers.  All of this is very important to the end of Part 2, and I could not happier with how they are portrayed.

I am a bit infuriated with the number of people that I have heard say, "Nothing Happened!"  The fact that the creative team took their time to develop characters in Part 1 should be commended. Everyone needed to take a beat and witness the spreading fire from the second film.  The scenes from the Districts 5 and 7 showing the rebellion were absolutely necessary to show, and the raid on the Capitol, which wasn't much in the book because Katniss was still in District 13, was a great set piece to bring the movie to a close.  Not to mention the hospital scene and "The Hanging Tree," were just powerful ways to show Katniss coming to terms with her role in this whole thing.

If I have one complaint, it is that I think the movie should have ended with a true cliffhanger, at least for people who haven't read the book.   In interviews, I've heard this referred to as the Breaking Bad ending, because it was so bleak and people might have been angry.  **Heavy Spoilers**  I think once Peeta attacks Katniss, and she starts to black out.  The movie should have faded to black and rolled the credits.  It just seemed a bit lame to go through the explanation, and I also absolutely don't think Alma Coin would have monologued the plan for the second movie in a broadcast that could have been intercepted by anyone!

This was a very fine addition to The Hunger Games universe, and I would like to close with two other stray observations.  Bringing Effie Trinket into the movie was just brilliant, because she gives quite a bit of comic relief.  Also, since the rest of Effie's team really wasn't that developed in the previous movies as they were in the books, it just made sense to not introduce unnecessary characters.  Secondly, Natalie Dormer as Cressida is a major standout to me, and if she doesn't get cast as a Marvel Superhero soon (Captain Marvel, for instance), there is no justice in the world!

Movie Madness: Interstellar

I am a big fan of Christopher Nolan, even though I do not always agree with some of the moves he makes in his movies (hello, ego -- like my opinion matters), but as someone who enjoys movies from strong directors, I really cannot think of many others in this current generation that can be mentioned in the same breath as Kubrick or Wells.  Of course, trying to compare Intersteller with 2001 is really the easy way out, and I don't even plan on mentioning that movie again in this post.

Anyway, I have been looking forward to Interstellar since it was announced.  Only Nolan would have the audacity to take a scientific text by physicist Kip Thorne and build a story around it.  Steven Spielberg attempted to do it with Nolan's brother, Jonathan, but it never came to fruition. I'm not sure if there has been any stories written about what remained from the original Spielberg adaptation, but I would be interested in that information.

As is typical with Nolan, very little was known about the plot of the movie.  Of course, we knew the casting, that something catastrophic was happening to Earth, and that it takes us to space and through wormholes, but we didn't really know what the crux of the story was or where it was going to take us.

Being a bit of a space junky, I was excited to see Interstellar, and I really loved the first two hours of this movie. The depiction of space travel was amazing, and when they are around Saturn and navigating into the wormhole to close proximity of Gargantua, the black hole (pictured), my mouth was either agape or in a stupid grin the whole time.  I totally bought into the reasoning for leaving earth, and while I wasn't nearly as emotional as some, I definitely understood the sense of abandonment that Murph (Mackenzie Foy) felt as well as to why Coop (Matthew McConaughey) needed to leave her.  I even was okay with the "ghost" concept, though I certainly didn't see where they were going with it.

I would give this movie a recommendation on the space exploration alone.  It is intense, and if I may be gauche, it is pretty edge of your seat.  I do need to point out that there were times I felt nauseous in this movie.  I get motion sickness pretty easily, but after getting through Gravity without any issue, I though I would be fine.  It is not a spoiler to say that they way they get gravity on their ship is because it spins, and there are times when you see the spinning out the window in the background.

Unfortunately, there is one aspect of the movie that is sticking with me for all the wrong reasons, and it almost derails the whole thing for me.

*****Beyond This Point; Thar Be Spoilers*****

As I said, I was buying pretty much everything Nolan was selling.  Of course, I knew that things were going too well for our crew.  If by "going well" you have one death (Doyle - Wes Bently) on Miller's water planet and Romilly (David Gyasi) aging 23 years, while a few hours pass for those on the planet.  I was honestly okay if they just continued the exploration aspect, even if they ended up stranded.  However, Nolan went down a path that really just annoyed me to the point that I was completely taken out of the story, and what should have been the emotional impact of the ending, really ended up doing nothing for me. When Matt Damon is introduced as Dr. Mann, I just felt the story take a very easy turn into melodramatics. Yes, it is understandable that a man left alone for 10 years on a icy planet would totally crack under the strain of the loneliness.  Unfortunately, from the crying jag upon his awakening from suspended animation to the dismissive way he explained the dismantlement of his robot, it just became very obvious that space madness was going to be the next dramatic turn, and it seemed like Nolan took nearly every opportunity to telegraph it to the audience.  In fact, I am pretty sure Helen Keller would have figured out that Mann was up to no good.  Let's talk about his name, too.  I get the fact that Nolan wanted us to understand that our own worst enemy is man itself, but to name the character Mann was like hitting us over the head with a brick.  It didn't help that the whole sequence just seemed like it was an entirely different movie.

There could have been a number of ways that Nolan could have moved the story along and still arrived at the intended ending.  I am pretty sure they could have omitted the entire Damon section. The team could have landed on the ice planet with the team discovering his death and false claims about the planet with it being too late for them to use Plan B.  Romilly could still have died in an explosion at the base, and the Endurance module could have been damaged in orbit by any number of interstellar anomalies. The stories on Earth could have happened without alteration, with Murph (Jessica Chastain) finding out the truth on Professor Brand's (Michael Caine) deathbed and transmitted it to an unknowing Dr. Brand (Anne Hathaway).  Of course, you wouldn't have Mann there to corroborate the depth of the subterfuge, but I don't think that really changes much in the story.

It just seems so tone deaf. This is a mistake I do not expect from someone as tightly wound as Nolan. I fully expected there to be some sort of complication, but this one made me angry and took me out of the story completely.  While some may have problems with the ending, having loved movies such as Cloud Atlas and Contact, I am more than willing to accept some mysticism with my science fiction, and I could probably write an entire blog about how the denouement on the space station could easily be a post-death experience for Cooper. However, I cannot seem to get past this misstep. The greatest recommendation I can make is that I would purchase a movie for my home collection, and at this point, I cannot say that I can do that for Interstellar.  I am motivated to watch it again, but what I was hoping was going to be a glorious three hours, turned into something incredibly mixed.

The Hobbit: A Defense of High Frame Rate 3D

Happy New Year!  I promise this will be my last Hobbit related post, but I did warn you!

I was in Chicago over the weekend, and being in the bigger city, I took the opportunity to go see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in the new High Frame Rate 3D (HFR), the way that Peter Jackson intended us to view it, and in Dolby ATMOS, which is Dolby's brand spanking new sound technology.  While Indianapolis did end up having one theater showing HFR, I opted to wait until I was in Chicago to experience this new technology.  A giant shout out to the Kerasotes ICON Theater at the Roosevelt Collection, which is where I saw the movie.  It is the nicest, cleanest movie theater I have been in very long time.  In fact, it is the best since AMC bought out Kerasotes here in Indianapolis.  I miss them!

A lot of you may not have heard of HFR before, but for us movie and Tolkien geeks, we've been aware of it from the production diaries that Peter Jackson has been kind enough to video for us.  The basic information is that since the advent of sound films in the 20s films have been shot at 24 frames per second (fps), so that the sound can sync with the image.  If it was faster or slower, the ear would pick up the change.  As the technology improved over the course of the next 80 years, there have been attempts at raising the frame rate, but Peter Jackson's use of HFR 3D, which is shot at 48 fps, is by far the largest risk taken by Hollywood to change the format.  Of course, the risk was mitigated because not every theater was capable of showing it, and even though the other two movies in the trilogy will be released in HFR and James Cameron has stated the sequels to Avatar will be to, there is no guarantee this technology will ever fully take off.  The good news is that with a lot of movie theaters already going through the shift to digital projection over film it is really a matter of doing a software upgrade to the projector, but obviously, the theater companies would rather not have to pay for something that isn't going to be used, which puts us in a bit of a holding pattern.

When Jackson first showed some of the footage from the movie, there was a decidedly mixed reaction, and after seeing it, I can understand why.  We are used to what movies "look" like, which means a certain amount of flicker from the film projector, which has been reproduced in digital forms, and a motion blur that just isn't present in real life.  Filming in 48 fps changes this.  Everything is brighter and more realistic, and brightness is very important to 3D, where you already have dark glasses on, which mute the colors.  From the moment the movie began, I felt like I was in the scene.  Never have seen such amazing use of 3D, and I am not talking about things popping out at you.  Even though I had already seen the movie, I watched the first 12 minutes with my mouth open.  It changed the experience for me so much, that the first hour, which I've already said drags a little like it does in the book, did not bother me in the least.

This is not to say the technology is perfected.  It is not.  There were times where the "realness" of the action took me out of movie a little, but this is only to be expected.  Look how long it took to make CGI actually work well in films.  Yeah, Slimer from Ghostbusters was cool but look at it now.  I remember the scene in Titanic, when the ship first reaches the open ocean and the camera pans from stem to stern.  Yes, the ship looked beautiful, but the CGI people on the deck sputtered around like they were drunk or their computer was dying trying to process everything.  Even in The Fellowship of the Ring, when they are fleeing Moria across the Bridge, you see the moment it stops being human and becomes not quite human CGI movement, and this is amongst some of the best CGI work ever.  So, I don't think anyone can expect perfection.  I cannot wait to see how it advances over the course of the next two movies, and I will not see The Desolation of Smaug or There And Back Again any other way.

Before I close out, I do want to point out some things that worked and some that didn't:

• 3D in General - It is quite possible that the IMAX theater that I saw The Hobbit in originally doesn't do 3D well, because in the Kerasotes theater, even the trailers for Man of Steel, Oz: The Great and Powerful, and Jack the Giant Slayer, popped a lot more than they did at IMAX.  I wasn't sold on Man of Steel needing to be 3D after the first time I saw the trailer, but seeing it here, I am all in.
• ATMOS - I am not an audiophile.  I have a little bit of deafness in my left year.  So, for me, quality audio just means I can hear everything.  Dolby ATMOS, however, is amazing.  In the Bag End scene, you could hear the separation so well, you could tell when a dwarf was speaking off screen either to the right or left of you.  Star Trek Into Darkness and Pacific Rim are both being mastered in ATMOS.  I would go to Chicago to see them for that alone.
• Eye Strain & Head Movement - One problem I have always had with 3D is that I move my head - a lot, and in traditional 3D, I felt like I needed to keep my head from moving, otherwise you started to see the separation of frames.  I did quite a few test, even turning my head so that my eyes were perpendicular to the screen, and I am happy to say that I saw the 3D perfectly.  When you throw in just how bright the image was, this was 3D perfected to me.
• Warg and Radagast Battle - Some of the places where the higher frame rate made the image suffer were in places where CGI interacted with real world elements.  Nowhere was this more prevalent than during the chase of Radagast by Orcs on Wargs over the plain near Rivendell.  I don't know why Jackson's folks have such a problem with the Wargs, large wolves are certainly not something that is way out there in the fantastical parts of the trilogy, but the Wargs kinda sucked in LOTR and they do here, too.  In this chase, it was SO obvious that these elements were not part of the scene.  
• Eye Adjustment to a No Blur World - We are so used to how movies look.  We are accustomed to a high amount of blur when the action moves fast.  This is really a part of what makes a movie a "movie" to people.  So, I can totally understand why some people didn't like it.  It became very, well, clear during the fights.  Where you would normally see blurs of movement, you were able to see nearly every detail.  Of course, this is a good and bad thing.  It was much easier to keep track of the fight in HFR 3D, especially the Goblin fight at the end, but being able to see so much detail, meant you saw flaws that would normally be blurred over.  Is it a big deal?  No, I loved this, but I it may be a dealbreaker for some.
• Gollum and Eagles - I cannot get over how amazing both of these were in 3D.

Well, I have dragged this out long enough.   To say the least, I was impressed.  I hope this experiment was successful enough to keep going with it.   It really was that eye opening.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - A Review from A Reasonible TolkienFan -- Pt. 2 - SPOILERS

If you are interested in a non-spoiler review, please check out my previous post here.  I will be discussing plot points and changes from the book, including stuff that might not show up until the third movie of the trilogy.  So, go back now if you don't want to read them.


Still here?

You shall not pass!


Okay...Here we go...


The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Spoiler Review

I am going to cheat here, and instead of constructing a flowing narrative, I am going to do a simple the Good, the Middling, and the Bad, with bullet points.  The non-spoiler review is much more of a narrative, and between the two, I think you get a pretty good grasp of my thoughts.  I also want to point out that I did not spell check this, because with all the Tolkien terminology, it would have taken two hours!  I also cheated a little by utilizing The Complete Guide to Middle Earth by Robert Foster to help me with some of my more "foggy" knowledge.

The Good

• The Framing Device:  Peter Jackson brought back Ian Holm to play Bilbo on the eve of his 111st birthday, which is where we start The Fellowship of the Ring (post-prologue).  While I think it could be argued that Martin Freeman in no way looks like Holm 60 years later, especially with the slower aging caused by the Ring, it is still a great way to point people in the right direction.  You also get some Frodo and talk of the Sackville-Baggins. Bilbo brings out the Red Book of Westmarch (The Hobbit or There and  Back Again to you non-nerd types), and he takes you through a prologue and then begins with the iconic, "In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit..."
• The Prologue: This was nerd service to the Nth degree.  It put into sight everything that had only been referenced in The Hobbit about the rise of the dwarves in Erebor, Dale, the Arkenstone, and eventually the fall caused by the coming of Smaug.  It is not quite as epic as the prologue in The Fellowship of the Ring, but I had a stupid grin during the whole thing.  It was a great way to set up the lineage of Thror, Thrain, and Thorin, and it also gave you a taste of the power of Smaug, who will be seen in the next movie.
• Actors:  It was great to see Ian McKellen back as Gandalf.  It would have truly been a crime to have anyone else portray this iconic role.  Gandalf the Grey is certainly a lot more fun that Gandalf the White, and McKellen plays him powerfully with a glint of mischief in his eye.  Even though Galadriel was not in The Hobbit, Cate Blanchett was at her regal best.  I dare say she was even better here than in LOTR.  As for the rest of the actors, Andy Serkis' Gollum is just as amazing as always, and while we do not get to "meet" a lot of the dwarves, Richard Armitage as Thorin is a standout.  Even though I had to look up his name, Ken Stott as Balin is great, too, but Balin has always been my favorite dwarf going back to the Rankin/Bass cartoon.  A beloved character who's death in Moria hit hard the first time I read it.
• The White Council & Necromancer: Outside of the Prologue, the additions surrounding the Necromancer moving into Dol Guldur and the meeting of The White Council are the meatiest and most meaningful to connecting The Hobbit to the The Lord of the Rings.  Having Radagast the Brown (more on him in a minute), who by the way is the only other Istari (re: Wizard) even mentioned in the works of Tolkien outside of Gandalf and Saruman, visit Dol Guldor and to return with the sword of the Witch King of Angmar, the very same sword that eventually stabs Frodo in The Fellowship of the Ring, was a very good touch.  At some point, the Necromancer will be revealed to be none other than Sauron, and Saruman will eventually be convinced to send The White Council to fight.  I am unsure whether this will be integrated into the forthcoming story, or if it will be some sort of Epilogue that will bridge the end of The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings, but regardless to how they do it, it does mean we'll get to see Elrond, Saruman, and Galadriel again at some point in the next two movies.
• Howard Shore: I have been listening to the score nonstop since it became available last week.  Shore's work is just as important to bridging the trilogies as everything else.  If you love film music, then you need to go out and get the 32 track/2 hours worth of soundtrack goodness!

The Middling

• Azog the Accursed: Much as Jackson & Co. opted to create a focal point "leader" of the Uruk Hai in The Fellowship of the Ring and a General for the Moria Orcs in The Return of the King, they brought forward Azog the Accursed into The Hobbit.  It is a bit of a fudge.  The flashback to the epic Battle of Azanulbizar was pretty intense, and it gave us a bit of Moria and an explanation of how Thorin became "Oakenshield," but for the real nerds, Azog actually did die in that battle at the hands of Dain II, who we get to meet in the epic Battle of Five Armies in the third movie.  The addition of Azog certainly gave a bit more impetus and fear to the journey to Rivendell, and again, it was nice to see Azog and the Wargs at Weathertop, another allusion to LOTR.  Okay, you're probably wondering why this isn't in the "Good" section, and it really comes down to presentation. Manu Bennet is a hot hot man, and it really should have been him in make-up rather than a total motion captured entity like Gollum.  It didn't work for me.  It didn't seem real, and I have to imagine it will look even worse in HFR 3D.  Sure, the good outweighs the bad, but I wish Jackson had chosen to make him more like the Uruks.
• Wargs & Eagles: There is certainly a dearth of talking animals in Jackson's Middle Earth. While Gandalf and Radagast are both shown talking to beasts, the Wargs, which are hierarchical and have a language of their own in the book, are relegated to steads.  Also, as in LOTR, the Wargs do not look remotely real, which is either our eyes or  brains telling us so or just bad CGI work.  Also, while it is still possible to pick up some time with the Eagles in the second movie, they talked and had a king in the book.  I just find it odd that in a world where things are so fantastical, Jackson has veered away from this aspect.
• Radagast the Brown: I am seriously going back and forth on this one.  Unfortunately, it is between Middling and Bad.  It is fine to make Gandalf the Grey out as a more fun loving version of Gandalf the White, but Radagast is pretty much a buffoon.   The jokes about Gandalf and his love of the "Halfling Leaf" are pretty funny, but then we make Radagast out to me a mushroom freak.  Are the Istari, save for Saruman, hippies?  Of all of the additions to The Hobbit, this was the one that is most incongruous.   Plus, the Bunny Sled was just damn weird.

The Bad

• The First Hour: Yes, the Framing Device and Prologue are great, but until the Company reaches Rivendell, the first hour is a bit of a slog.  As I mentioned in the non-spoiler review this is a problem that is inherent in the book, too.  Jackson did his best to liven it up, but it was borderline boring for me.  Granted, this might be the midnight showing talking, but I do not think my feelings will change on subsequent viewings.
• The Great Goblin: I am very sad to say this didn't work for me.  As much as I wanted to like Barry Humphries' (Dame Edna) portrayal of the Great Goblin , I just couldn't.  I totally get why people think his chin looks like a scrotum, but beyond that, it was just the lightness, the comic relief of it all that left me cold.  His voice didn't seem like it would be coming from a 300 pound goblin, and for someone that could kill Thorin & Company, I just wasn't convinced.  Dare I say it, the Rankin/Bass cartoon did a better version (above).

Okay, there you have it.  I did like The Hobbit, and while some of my ill feelings may have been due to the general discomfort of having sat in a theater for 5 hours, I do consider it a worthy addition to Jackson's Middle Earth.  It is a bit of an understatement to say that  I am worried as to how they will stretch the story to fit two more movies.  With Beorn, Mirkwood, Laketown, and the Desolation of Smaug, the second movie is shaping up to probably have the most action, but I just really do not know what they will do for the final movie in the trilogy.  Three hours of the Battle of Five Armies will not be a good thing.  All in all, I am looking forward to seeing what the fuss is all about with the HFR 3D, and I am sure I will own the Extended Editions.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey -- A Review from A Reasonable Tolkien Fan, Pt. 1

First off, pardon me if this doesn't entirely make sense.  I'm a 37.5 year old man, and I went to the midnight showing of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which meant getting there around 9:30 pm, waiting in line, rushing to my desired seat (back row middle...in an IMAX theater), and then sitting for two hours.  When you add in all the trailers, including the 9 minutes of Star Trek Into Darkness, I wasn't home in bed until 4 am, didn't really fall asleep until 5 (too much caffeine), and I was to work by 8:37 am.   Add in the fact that I am still trying to get over a bad cold, the bottom line is that you should cut me some slack.

Before I do dig into the movie, I want to talk about the trailers a minute.

• Oz: The Great and Powerful:  I wasn't sold on this from the online trailers.  I still have ill will towards Sam Raimi from Spiderman, and I am not a big fan of James Franco.  Anyway, seeing the trailer in 3D made a huge difference in my interest level.  I am not sure if it is a "must see" yet, but if I do, it will be in 3D.
• Jack the Giant Slayer:  This is a movie that has a troubled history.  It was supposed to be released earlier in 2012, but it kept getting pushed back until it eventually got bumped to March.  That is never a good sign.  A twist on the Jack and the Bean Stalk fairytail, my take away was during a battle, Ewan McGregor's character actually said "Let's cut them down to size."  *groan*
• Man of Steel: I was blown away by the trailer online, and while I cannot say 3D added much to it, I am still cautiously optimistic about this.  Of course, Zack Snyder has cut an awesome trailer before (re: Watchmen, Sucker Punch, even 300), only to have the movie not live up to that presentation.  I am hoping that Christopher Nolan has a good influence on him here, even though I count among the group that doesn't really need another origin story.  Henry Cavill in a body hugging costume is enough for me to see it! ;-)
• Star Trek Into Darkness:  I loved loved loved JJ Abrams' take on Star Trek.  So, I was all in before seeing a frame of footage.  We still do not know who the villain is, but my notion from the 9 minutes is that there is definitely a connection to the Genesis project from the original Star Trek: Wrath of Khan.  I still do not think we are dealing with Khan, but JJ also likes to play with us.  This comes out on my birthday.  So, it might be another midnight trip!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - Non-Spoiler Review

I wanted to start out with a non-spoiler review before I dig into major spoilers from both the books and the movie.  I tremendously enjoyed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  Did it touch and move me like Cloud Atlas? No, but that was never Tolkien's intent.  The Hobbit was merely a fun story he wrote for his children that eventually spawned The Lord of the Rings.  It is a slighter, less serious, and whole lot funnier book, and anyone who is expecting LOTR level of drama is going to be sadly disappointed, which I think is why there are a lot of negative reviews.

While I am not going to make arguments for or against making The Hobbit into three movies, the main issue with An Unexpected Journey is also a problem with the novel -- not a lot happens until Thorin & Company reach Rivendell.  So, you are faced with a first part of the movie that seems a little forced.  Sure, it gives you ample time to meet the dwarves (Balin is still my favorite from both book and screen) and establish Bilbo as a character, but since we all know Bilbo is going to go on the journey, it is a bit anticlimactic.

The framing device that sets up the story is pretty awesome, and the prologue explaining how The Lonely Mountain (Erebor) fell is better than this Tolkien geek could have ever wanted.  It is on par with the prologue in The Fellowship of the Ring.  The iconic introduction to Gollum is also everything I could have hoped, though I still have a bit of a problem with the audience finding him a more comic than tragic character.  Some of the additions the creative team made, specifically Dol Guldor and The White Council, add a lot to the overall story, but others fall pretty flat.  A couple I would consider creative missteps, but your mileage may vary.  I will be going into more detail with those in the spoiler filled review.

Overall, I would recommend The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey for everyone who loved the books or is just familiar with the LOTR movies.  In a lot of ways, it is more faithful to the written word than LOTR, but in this case, it might also be considered a slight debit.  If your only experience is with the previous movies, then you just need to prepare yourself for the fact that this is a rather lighthearted movie.  There are many laugh out loud moments.  The rest of the technical aspects are beyond reproach, though there are a few choices made to be total CGI that would have benefited from being an actual actor in makeup.  Howard Shore's score is tremendous, too.   If you are wondering whether to see it in 3D or digital, I will have a final verdict after I see it in the 48 frame HFR 3D over New Years, but in IMAX 3D, I do not believe there was a lot added to the proceedings.  Though I did get a nifty series of exclusive posters for my two extra dollars spent.

All in all, I loved it, but I don't think anyone really expected me to hate it.

Crappy Week, but..... 15 Day Countdown to The Hobbit

This was one of those weeks where everything seemed to go a little sideways. After 15 years of IT work, I know an awful lot about computers and networks, but there is also a lot I do not know. Anyway, on to more fun things...

(This is my first time writing this blog on my iPad. So, if there are weird autocorrections, sue me ☺)

I am a gigantic nerd for the works of JRR Tolkien, and I don't mean I am just an avid watcher of the movies, though they are my go to most of the time. My first experience was with that somewhat awful, yet charming, Rankin Bass cartoon of The Hobbit from the 80s. While it has not withstood the test of time, I still get chills from the scenes with Bilbo and Smaug. The cartoon was my gateway drug to the works of Tolkien, and while I do love The Lord of the Rings, though the Frodo and Sam portion of The Two Towers kills me (not in a good way), I far and away love The Hobbit the most. The book is just a lot less serious, no worlds ending here, though you see the mounting evil around the fringes that ultimately lead Tolkien to his magnum opus. Granted, when he devised The Hobbit in the trenches of World War I, he had no plan other than to entertain his children. So, in a lot ways, The Hobbit is only a prelude due to some character overlap and a bit about a ring. Anyway, I lived and breathed these stories and all of the ancillary materials that Christopher Tolkien shepherded to publication, though I never was able to penetrate the creation stories and epic poems of The Silmarillion. My senior year in high school, when I was president of speech team, I developed the confrontation of Bilbo and Smaug into a prose presentation piece. It was the best I ever did in that event. Then my freshman year in college I took a Tolkien & Medieval Lit course. Needless to say, it was amazing!

Soooo.... I have the Tolkien bona fides. Obviously, I am excited for the movie. While I wish it wasn't being stretched out over three movies and years, I trust in Peter Jackson and his team that they were able to cull enough material to make it so. I will warn you now that his blog with be counting the days. Brace yourself!

Movie Roundup - Part 3 - Cloud Atlas

Part 1 - Breaking Dawn & Skyfall here 
Part 2 - Lincoln here

So, I had intended on writing out reviews for these four movies all in one post, but the monster of my general verboseness got the better of me.  Here goes the final bit...

Cloud Atlas

I really have a hard time expressing my love for Cloud Atlas.  By all rights, this movie should not have worked, but it does, beautifully.  I have only read a part of the first chapter of the novel, but it is very dense.  Plus, it has six, interwoven stories that not only span hundreds of years but also literary genres from historical to sci-fi and everything in between.  Throw in a truly large cast of characters, and you get the idea that this novel is in the category of "unfilmable."  There must be something about unfilmable novels that I love because my earliest recollection of a book being called that was in 1996 when I read about a movie called The English Patient, which I ended up seeing 5 times in the movie theater and it went on to win Best Picture.  I fell in love with that movie, and to this day, I am still in awe of how beautifully written and directed it was by the sadly missed Anthony Minghella.

If you want to boil down the main theme of Cloud Atlas, it can be encapsulated in the idea of a soul's journey through space and time.  That while our physical being may perish, the soul continues on and inhabits new bodies.  In broader terms, what's good stays good, and what's bad gets worse, though on the rare occasions, a conflicted soul might improve its esteem through sacrifice.  If you are able to read this description and not crinkle your nose, then you are more than likely going to like the movie.  However, if you are incredulous, then it is probably not for you.

The wonderful way that the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer, who co-wrote and directed, solved the riddle of making Cloud Atlas was to have a core group of actors perform all the major roles across the six story lines.  While this might put a finer point on the notion of souls traveling than the novel may have done, it certainly makes sense in a film adaption plus it makes it a lot cheaper to film!  Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Jim Sturgess, Doona Bae, Hugh Grant and Ben Whishaw do the heavy lifting here with all of them playing multiple parts that span age, race, and gender.   The makeup work, while not always completely successful (I'm thinking the Caucasian to Asian transformations and vice versa), but it is never really that much of a distraction to me, at least.  I've honestly never been a huge fan of Tom Hanks in dramatic roles.  I suppose I still look back to when he was in drag in Bosom Buddies, and that negates any amount of seriousness I can take from him. Plus, I hated Forrest Gump  with a passion.  He does some pretty great work here, and really, all of the actors are their usual reliable selves.  For me, the biggest surprise is Hugh Grant.  He's always been such a fluff actor, but he shows such great acting chops here.  I am surprised he hasn't challenged himself more in his career.  Here's to hoping he does.

The most meaningful notion in all of this is the story of Lana Wachowski herself.  For those that do not know, Lana used to Larry, and she is now the most high profile transgender woman in Hollywood.  To watch the movie through the prism of that knowledge is to see why she would be attracted to a story of souls transcending age, race, and especially gender.  Lana gave an amazing speech before the Human Rights Campaign, and I encourage all of you to watch it.  It will give you a great appreciation for her and for the movie itself.

I really run out of superlatives for Cloud Atlas.  It has been a long time since a movie has moved me this much, and I am truly saddened that the mainstream critics did not give it better reviews.  A few of them got it, but I am afraid that coupled with just the unknown of it led a lot of people to not see it.   I hope it picks up some viewers once it is out on video, which I will own.  I also want to say this is the first time in a long time I have purchased a movie soundtrack, and I am listening to it right now.  Please see this movie, and please go in with an open mind.  It is rare we see Hollywood put this much passion and heart into something.  Let it wash over you...  You won't regret it.

"Our lives are not our own. From womb to tomb, we are bound to others. Past and present. And by each crime, and every kindness, we birth our future." - Sonmi-451

Movie Roundup - Part 2 - Lincoln

You can read Part 1 - Breaking Dawn & Skyfall here

I had a bit of a movie marathon on Sunday.  I kicked it off with Skyfall, then watched Breaking Dawn, and then I went to see Lincoln.

Lincoln

I went into Lincoln with a bit of trepidation.  I have followed the development of it for many years, and I was very much disappointed when Liam Neeson dropped out of the lead role. I never had any doubts that Daniel Day Lewis would do a great job, and certainly, when the first image of him as Lincoln was released, it was amazing how much he looked like him.  However, when the first trailer came out, there was one thing that stuck out to me that could possibly ruin it all, and that was the voice that Day Lewis chose to for the part. Granted, he has never been one with a booming basso voice, but the thin, reedy voice heard in the trailer just didn't sit well with me.  I know that no one really knows exactly how Lincoln sounded, but I think we all want to imbue our historical figures with a gravitas that might, in reality, not be the case.  Knowing that Daniel Day Lewis is a consummate actor who immerses himself completely, I can accept at this point that this is how Lincoln sounded, and frankly, I think I just saw a reincarnated Lincoln for two and half hours.

To be blunt, Daniel Day Lewis and nearly every single supporting actor from Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, James Spader on down to the rogues gallery of character actors, Lincoln is a master class in acting, and for some people that would be enough.  However, this is Steven Spielberg at his most restrained, Tony Kushner at his most regal, Janus Kaminski at his most egalitarian, and John Williams orchestrations that are some of the most subtle of his career.  Lincoln is amazing!

I could go on and on about Lewis' portrayal, but you truly do forget that he is even there.  You think it is Lincoln.  We all know the public persona, but I am pretty sure most of us didn't know that Lincoln was prone to somewhat profane jokes (at least by 1860s standards).  Of course, you take for granted that Daniel Day Lewis is always going to be amazing. For me, the real stand outs were Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones, and James Spader.  Sally Field has been playing "Sally Field" for so long, you really do not realize how great of an actress she can be.  The same can be said for Tommy Lee Jones.  You don't hire Jones to be the delicate lover spouting Shakespeare.  You hire him to be a gruff intimidator, and while it could be said that his Thaddeus Stevens is exactly that, the gravitas and humor that he brings to the role is just a sight to behold.  He will be nominated, and could possibly win, Best Supporting Actor (again).  James Spader is basically comic relief, but it is very well done.  It really is the most loose and funny he's been in many many years.

There is really nothing I can say that can do justice to Tony Kushner's screenplay, which was mostly inspired by Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals.  Who could expect any less from the writer of Angels in America?  The sheer poetry of the words makes me wish Spielberg had filmed the original 500 page script he initially submitted.  I honestly would pay to see more of this repertory troupe film more instances of Lincoln's life beyond the last three months or so than this movie shows.

I have written a lot here.  I have written enough that I am now throwing Cloud Atlas into it's own post.  I really do not want to belabor the point, but if you are a lover of history, appreciate great acting, direction, and writing, then you owe it to yourself to go see Lincoln. It is absolutely history come to life

Movie Roundup - Part 1 - Breaking Dawn & Skyfall

In another life, I ran a fairly well visited website that followed the awards show circuit.  I compiled all the critic's and guild awards leading up to the Academy Awards.  It was a fun time in my life and an industry that I still follow, but I am kind of happy to not be doing all that work.

One thing I became very good at was predicting who would win the Oscars, and a lot of times, I would do that without having seen the movies themselves.  After looking at patterns and reading the tea leaves, you get a good idea of what movies will be a hit with the aging Academy.  It is rather fascinating in a not world altering way, but I digress.

The movies this fall and holiday season seem to be a bit better than the slate we have had in previous years.  There are a lot of quality movies, even best of representations of well worn franchises, and I have been trying my best to get to the movies and see more of them.  Of course, I already have tickets to the midnight showing of The Hobbit.  I've seen four moves over the past few weeks.  Once I saw twice, and three I crammed into a marathon session yesterday.   I'm going to do a quick review of each for ya'll. I'm putting this in order of preference -- least to most.

Breaking Dawn, Part 2

I have a love and mostly hate relationship with Twilight.  I went to see the first movie to see what all the hype was about, and honestly, I enjoyed it a lot.  Catherine Hardwicke is a great director, and I thought she had some amazing shots and interesting viewpoint.  If you got past the teenage girl navel gazing  it actually was a pretty good movie.  I own it, and I do watch it occasionally.  This is not to say it is a great movie, but it doesn't offend me.

Then I read the books, or rather, I read the first three. They are TERRIBLE.  Whomever told Stephanie Meyer that she could write needs to be smacked.  At least JK Rowling, the author she is often compared to, improved quite a bit over the course of the Harry Potter series, but Meyer remained stagnant through all three books that I read.  Having them written in the first person was the first mistake, especially because I kind of wished Bella died, and not really having a good grasp on the English language (or apparently owning a thesaurus) was the second.  By the time it came for me to embark on the 800 pages of Breaking Dawn, I just couldn't do it.

Breaking Dawn, Part 1, despite the pedigree of Bill Condon (Dreamgirls), was not that great.  Even the vaunted vampire sex scene was boring, and so much of it was spent on the fairy tale, teenage girl masturbatory wedding fantasy, it just really didn't go anywhere until the very end, when Bella becomes a vampire after bearing an improbable hybrid child. Part 2 picks up right where the first ended, and you get the awkward first steps of a new vampire and all the navel gazing that goes along with it.  I will hand it to Kristen Stewart, who I actually like as an actress, she was definitely transformed by the change to a vampire, and she showed more life as an undead being as she did as a human being though the rest of the series.

Without going into any grand details, I actually did enjoy the movie.  It wasn't earth-shattering  and it was fun to see the different tribes of vampires and the different powers they had.  It was much more a sci-fi fantasy movie than the previous, and there is an all out vampire war that was pretty thrilling, although it ended up being a giant red herring.  If the producers had stuck to their guns, this would have been one of the better series ending movies I have seen.  Unfortunately, they decided to go the happily ever after route, which was rather insulting.

All in all, very passable  and it is the best movie of the series after the original movie, though that is damning with faint praise.

The biggest complaint about the Twilight Saga for me is that at it's root there is a good story there.  Unfortunately, the writer, much like George Lucas and Star Wars, in not capable of fleshing it out so that it is not a major mess.  Maybe in 20 years (who am I kidding 5) a reboot ... nevermind!

Skyfall

The superlatives you have heard are all true.  After the pretty disappointing Quantum of Solace, this is definitely a return to form, which I think I might actually like more than Casino Royale, though I really do need to go back and watch that one again before I can say for sure.

I really never got in to the Brosnan era Bonds, and I was happy to rekindle my love for the franchise with Daniel Craig.  He is very good here.  Whereas he was pretty much the blunt instrument M accused him of being in Casino, in Skyfall, we see a much more wry and human Bond.

It is a testament to how well the story was constructed by John Logan and directed by Sam Mendes that the main villain played by Javiar Bardem isn't introduced until very late in the movie, and Bardem's Mr. Silver is one of the best Bond villains in a very long time.  Bardem plays him as a playful, omnisexual megalomaniac, and if he hadn't just won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, I would say he was one the road to another.

Unfortunately, a blabber mouth co-worker spoiled the ending for me, and while I could smack him, all it really did was confirm my intuition about a plot point.  Knowing how the Hollywood Press works, I knew something was up with a certain character.

Even with knowing the eventual outcome, I would still give this high marks and a recommendation.  This is the Bond we know and love, and I hope they can keep it up for the next few Craig movies.

Next post:  Lincoln and Cloud Atlas

Monday, December 22nd - Milk

Incredibly busy weekend, but I want to talk about the movie that I saw on Saturday night, Milk.

I would like to preface with the fact that I've never been a big Sean Penn fan, Gus Van Sant hasn't made a good movie since Good Will Hunting, and I've count very few "gay" movies as my all time favorites (not even Brokeback Mountain made it into my DVD collection). So, I went into this movie with a bit of trepidation and a slightest amount of knowledge of who Harvey Milk was, and I have to say, unequivocally, this was a tremendous movie. Sean Penn disappears so much into this part, and even though he didn't really bear that much of a resemblance to the real person, when he is sitting in the dark towards the end, with his face partially illuminated, it really was like the real Harvey Milk was staring out at us. It was very spooky.

This movie really made me regret not knowing more about Harvey. The fact that issues that he dealt with in the late 70's are still very much the same issues we deal with today is just pretty astounding, and the fact that he was able to mobilize the defeat of Prop 6 (a law that would have prevented homosexuals from being teachers), just makes me realize all the more how much the whole "No to Prop 8" movement botched the job. If Harvery had not been assassinated, he would have been right there, fighting the bigots.

It was very interesting for me to see Harvey's point of view. I've always felt that by not being "in your face" about my homosexuality that I was doing more for our acceptance than the antagonizes that just seem to wave the proverbial red flag in front of the far right's face. I honestly can see both sides of the coin on this one, but Harvey was right to fight back the way he did. If he hadn't, if people like me had been in charge of the movement, we would not have come so far, so fast. The fact that gays were routinely rounded up at the bars in the early 70s in San Francisco and the fact that I can go to any number of gay in the heartland of Indianapolis just proves this fact even more.

If nothing else, I gained more respect for the activist wing of the movement. I may not always agree with the tactics, but you certainly cannot argue with the results. Of course, there is no guarantee that a living Harvey Milk in 2008 could have mobilized the masses to defeat Prop 8, but after seeing this movie, I certainly think they could have learned a thing or two. Before seeing the movie, I was a bit frustrated that the powers the be did not decide to rush the post production and get this movie out in October. After seeing the film, I am even more disgruntled. I really do think it would have helped things in California.

Ah well...coulda, woulda, shoulda. Go see the movie. I think Sean Penn will be picking up his second Oscar for this, mainly because he did the impossible...he effectively looked happy most of the time. :)

Tuesday, December 2nd - Yes, I Can Blog About More than Twilight

But not quite yet...

I finished up the book (and the first chapter of New Moon) last night before I went to bed, and no, I didn't hop up and hit a 24 hour megalomart to go get the next book. I will get New Moon, but I also have Christmas shopping to do. So, I may just halt cold turkey (right).

Anyway, as expected, the climax of the book was pretty rushed. I really wish they had introduced the character of James before he went all huntery. Once again, I wish I'd be able to find out more about the vampires instead of all the teenage navel gazing. I think this might be the first time ever that I have been hypercritical of an author's use of voice. I certainly have no problem with first person books, especially Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone mysteries and Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum. However, I think Stephenie Meyer would have been better served to have written these books in third person omniscient. Without giving away the reason why, when Edward is sitting on a plane from Seattle to Phoenix, I would REALLY love to know how a rabid vampire, stuck in a flying metal tube, didn't just go apeshit and eat everyone. Sure, I know why he didn't, but I would love to hear the struggle of the character.

Ah well, we'll see how New Moon goes. I cannot say I was overwhelmed by the prologue and the first chapter, but at least the Volturi are mentioned in the first chapter (I assume they're the big bad's of the book since Entertainment Weekly was talking about who should play them yesterday...I already know Jacob has a larger role). So anyway...we'll see. I'm enjoying the story as a whole, but there is certainly a lot I feel like I'm missing out on. We'll see if Stephenie Meyer can keep my interest.

Anyway, I did do other stuff this weekend. I actually ended up seeing another movie on Saturday. So, here are my capsule reviews of what I saw Friday and Saturday:

Role Models: I love Paul Rudd, and Sean William Scott is hot from the neck down...especially when he doesn't speak. I had read good things about the movie, and I was in the mood for a comedy. So, I made this the first of my triple feature on Saturday. Yes, it is raunchy, but it is so damned funny. Seriously, the last 30 minutes or so is a role playing, medieval battle royale! The central conceit of two losers who find themselves while being "Bigs" to a couple of younger boys is pretty standard stuff, but I is just very well done. I may actually get this on DVD when it comes out. A special shout out to Jane Lynch and her bagel dog!

Quantum of Solace: It had been a while since I had seen Casino Royale. So, when it was referrenced a couple of times, I was a little bit at a loss. It wasn't really all that important, and I do not think you'd be missing out on too much if you haven't seen it at all. Quantum of Solace is a very brutal movie. There really isn't any wonder that Daniel Craig has been injured a few times during filming. The fight sequences are excellently choreographed, and they have gone a long way in recapturing the "cool" of James Bond. My two complaints are that they have lost the fun aspect of the franchise. I don't expect them to go back to the flippant Roger Moore days, but it wouldn't hurt Bond to lighten up just tad. Also, outside of Craig's Bond and Judi Dench's M, none of the other characters really registered for me.

Bolt: This is a very cute movie, and it certainly had a lot to offer an adult. It is pretty much your standard "Incredible Journey" type story, but it really doesn't kick into gear until Rhino, the fan boy hamster, comes on the scene. He's pretty much comedy gold, and I'd recommend the flick just to see him. Also, even though I didn't see it this way, I would say go see it in Disney 3-D if you get a chance. This is the first movie by Disney to be completely optimized for 3-D, instead of just having a few scenes that utilize it, and especially during the long action scenes, I felt like I was missing out on some of the fun. I might go see it again in 3-D. All in all, it is very solid, but Disney has a lot to learn from Pixar.

So, there ya have it folks. I'm going to try to see more movies, especially since we're getting into Oscar season.

Saturday, November 29th - Midnight Sun

So after waking up on the couch after a night of drinking, post-Thanksgiving and of course, dealing with a work issue that I slept through the call for, I decided that I was going to go to the movies. The Mean Girls have been talking for a while (just talking...not doing, mind you) about going to a movie, and since there were plenty out currently that I had a passing interest in, I decided to do something I hadn't done in a very long while - hop around theaters. Now, growing up in a small town, I never really had the opportunity to go to a big megaplex of theaters, which makes this practice imminently easy to do, and I can recall the absurd joy I got when I did it for the first time, a double feature of The Matrix and Analyze This. To add even more to the fact that I am going to hell, I did my first theatrical sin on Good Friday.

Anyway, back to today... I suppose I was feeling even more sinful, because instead of just making it a double feature, I mapped out the heretofore unattainable goal of a TRIPLE feature, and the fact that I did it with flying colors (and NO popcorn with "buttery" topping), makes me think that a quad-feature is not impossible. We shall see! I took in three very different movies: Role Models, Twilight, and Quantum of Solace. I am happy to say I enjoyed all of them for different reasons, and I'll do reviews of the rest in a later post. However, I want to focus on the current teen craze/popular culture zeitgeist of Twilight.

(While I hate people who spoil movies and I do not plan to reveal too much here, I will say if you have any plans to watch Twilight and want to remain untainted, you'll probably want to stop reading here.)

I like to consider myself pretty much on the cutting edge of pop culture. I keep up to speed on celebrity news/gossip, Billboard charts, subscription to Entertainment Weekly, etc, and even if I'm not well versed in stuff, I at least feel like I have a grasp on what is "big" out there. Well, the whole tsunami surrounding Stephanie Meyer's creation really completely flew under my radar. I do recall when the Twilight the book came out, because I read the review in EW calling it the next great teen series in the same vein (ha) as Harry Potter, inasmuch as there is plenty for adults to like about the series, but instead of running out and reading it then, I just swept it under my mental rug. It wasn't until this year and the unavoidable hype surrounding the (poorly received) 4th book, Breaking Dawn, and the movie adaptation of Twilight, that I began to get mildly interested. Of course, there was Harry Potter connection of Robert Pattinson, the dreamy Edward, having played the doomed Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire. Even with that, the hype, and the pretty good reviews of the movie, I still have to say it wasn't something I felt necessarily compelled to go see in the theater, which all changed when I saw it fit well in my triple feature plans.

A lot of people who know me would probably be shocked that I am a pretty big romantic at heart. Truly, I'd say most of my relationships have ended because I have more of a high schooler's idea of what a relationship should be, which is perfection personified. The fact is relationships are tough, and they're rarely the meadows full of wild flowers and blue skies as far as the eye can see that we imagine them to be. However, from a celluloid area, I am a sucker for a good romance. Indeed, The English Patient, while certainly not a wild flowers story, is by far my favorite movie of all time. When I watched that movie with my parents so long ago, my mother said "There is no way you can love that movie and not be a romantic," which was probably the clearest look I have ever given my parents into my soul. So, knowing that Twilight looks at love from a youthful perspective, I knew that I would likely fall helplessly in love with the story of Bella Swan and Edward Cullin. I did...mostly.

The movie itself was well constructed and acted. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson have a great chemistry, which is absolutely necessary if you're going to believe a story like this. It takes a lot to make a viewer believe in love at first sight (or scent...), and I certainly believed it this time. However, I came out of the movie wanting to read the book, just because I felt like I was missing a lot of the subtext. This is probably one of the very first times I'll have watched an adaptation without having read the book first, and I suppose I now have greater appreciation for those who didn't quite "get" The Lord of the Rings because they hadn't read and memorized everything like I did.

While I believed the central romance of the movie, I found myself rather bored with the character of Bella Swan, and it really has nothing to do with the story or the actress. For her part, the angsty teen, in love with someone she knows is dangerous is probably one of the most threadbare, movie cliches out there. Sure, she is dealing with the love for the undead, but she pales (ha) in comparison to the much more interesting story of Edward. For the record, I do not want you to think I find Edward interesting because I'm gay and he's a hot guy. No, I'd actually say I find Robert Pattinson to be less than "the hottest guy in school" that Edward is supposed to be. Sure, I would love it if a guy ever looked at me the way Edward looks at Bella, but there is just a lot more depth inherent to Edward. The character arc of the vampire, the predator, who has to fight at every moment the bloodlust to kill Bella is just so damn interesting, and yes, I know this has already sort of been done by Buffy and Angel. The fact that the Cullen clan has been around for at least a century and chooses to be "vegan" -- they do not feed on humans just animals -- makes their whole story a lot more interesting. Indeed, since I was thwarted in my meager effort to purchase Twilight to read tonight, I went online to find out more about Midnight Sun, which is Stephanie Meyer's retelling of the story of Twilight with Edward as the narrator. Something tells me that I'm going to enjoy inhabiting the thoughts of Edward more than Bella, and I'm going to have to resist the urge to read the unpublished manuscript for Midnight Sun, because I'd rather wait until she releases the book on her terms, not because some idiot released it to the wrong person, who subsequently released it to the internet (I'm already one chapter in though....so, um..yeah, probably going to read the rest of it).

Since I do not know how much of the back story you get in the subsequent books, I would hope that Meyer decides to write a prequel series, because I think there is a lot of interesting ideas to be mined about Carlisle Cullen and how the rest of his "family" came into being. That story I would read from day one. Until that happens, I would recommend Twilight to anyone who likes a good romance, and especially, if you're willing to check your adult brain at the door. This story doesn't exist in the reality of relationships, and if someone as jaded as me can get swept up into the story, then I think almost anyone can enjoy Twilight.

November 20th - Movie Roundup

I've mentioned quite a few times that I used to run an awards show website with a bent for movies, which was really born out of my love of the Oscars and my subsequent Oscar parties. I was really obsessive compulsive about everything, pouring over website after website getting all the information I could. Subsequently, I was a fount of worthless information, even about movies I have never seen nor plan to see. So, I had a reputation as a movie guy. The big secret is that I didn't really go and see too many of them. I just knew everything about them. It was akin to my love of "politics." Sure, I can talk about policy, and I certainly have a degree in Political Science. However, I was fascinated by the game aspect of it all -- the behind the scenes machinations. Policy is the byproduct of the real "politics."

As an example: I find it terribly more interesting that Tom Daschles' experience as Senate Majority/Minority Leader is much more of a signal of how the Obama administration is going to do a full court press for health care, than any sort of impact (or lack there of) he's going to have as Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Anyway, the point of all this is movies. I really only saw one movie in the theater this summer and that was The Dark Knight. So, recently I have made a concerted effort to rent some of the movies I missed this summer. I know. I should have a Netflix account, but I really have to make time to watch movies. Paying $20 a month just doesn't seem practical at the moment. Until I have some more disposable income (cross your fingers), I'm just going to rent movies occasionally.

Iron Man: I really had every intention to go see this in the theater, but for whatever reason, I never did. I certainly like pretty much all of the talent involved, though I have to say, I'm not exactly upset that Terrance Howard isn't going to be in the sequel. He's just kind of douchy. I've always enjoyed Robert Downey, Jr., and his story of redemption in Hollywood is the type that will eventually get him an Oscar for a role that probably won't deserve it (for instance, he's getting buzz for Tropic Thunder). While I was basically familiar with the Iron Man story, I do have to say the character of Tony Stark is a pretty refreshing change for superhero movies. In most movies like this, you'd rather they get to the suited up action, but I was actually intrigued by Stark and Pepper Potts (god, what a great name, and welcome back, Gwyneth!). I would highly recommend this...though I'm sure everyone has already seen it.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall: I really didn't set out going to the video store to rent this one. Sure, I love Kristen Bell, but I didn't really have a compelling need to see it. I haven't bought into the current comedy crop from the Judd Apatow band of misfits. It was really just a situation that it was there, and I was in the mood for a comedy. I was pleasantly surprised, though I could have done without the full frontal male nudity. I've said it before, and I'll say it again...there is NOTHING attractive about a flaccid penis. Anyway :) I think I was most impressed by Mila Kunis, because the only thing I had seen her in was "That 70's Show" back in the day, and I think she will have a reasonably good career in comedy.

Get Smart: As a child, I was addicted to old television shows. I would watch them in the afternoon and on Nick at Night, and Get Smart was one that I particularly enjoyed. So, when I heard they were making a movie, I was intrigued as to how they were going to do it. I am happy to say that they did a pretty good job of referencing the source material. Anne Hathaway was the real revelation here, and I am looking forward to the sequal. Oh, and any movie with Terrance Stamp in it is fine by me. Though, as bitchy as he was, I half expected him to be in a wig and prance around like Bernedette from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army: I wasn't really familiar with Hellboy when I dragged my then boyfriend to it when it came out, but I was impressed by the movie and the storytelling as a whole. Since then (sans the douchebag bf), I have become a big fan of Guillermo del Toro. Everyone needs to go out and see Pan's Labyrinth. I was happy to see with Hellboy II, the powers that be let Guillermo unleash his imagination. Honestly, while watching this movie, I couldn't help but become even more excited (if possible) at him directing The Hobbit. God, if I only had a time machine. Hellboy II is just a great sci-fi/fantasy movie, and if that is your cup of tea, then you need to rent it. For the other nerds out there: Didn't Princess Nuada remind you of Kira from The Dark Crystal?


So there you have it. I'll probably catch some more movies through the holidays, especially since a lot of my tv shows will be in reruns.

Tuesday, September 30th - Movie Day!

I've said on a few occasions that I used to be a proprietor of a awards show website before I whittled down my online focus to the distracted musings you are reading now.  I still kind of miss the daily grind of updating that site, especially now that we are getting down into the nitty gritty of movie awards season.  Yes, there is a season.  Around Thanksgiving, you'll start to see all the critic's groups out there release their nominations and/or awards, groups like the Broadcast Film Critics, New York Film Critics, LA Film Critics, Hollywood Foreign Press (Golden Globes), etc, and then once the first of the year rolls around, you'll start seeing the nominations for the various guilds out there, like Producers Guild, Writers Guild, Screen Actors Guild, Costume Designers Guild, etc, with all of these leading up into a strange fashion to the Academy Awards, which may or may not follow the trends laid down in the previous awards.  It is an interestingly political type system, with backbiting, behind the scenes drama, and extreme ego.  In short...I LOVE IT!

So, as we move further down the pike, I will be doing some periodic movie stuff on here.  I would say at this point in the year, there is only one movie that appears to be a lock for a Best Picture nomination, and if the Academy had any sense in their heads and an eye on their steadily dropping ratings, then they will pile on the nominations for The Dark Knight, and I do mean everything from acting, writing, directing, music, and costume design.  They will be doing a disservice to a modern masterpiece if they relegate it to the ghetto of the technical awards.

I'm hopeful that the Oscar show will be better this year, too.  They've already named the creative team behind Dreamgirls to be the producers of this year show, so at least they know the gays are an important part of their audience.   Here's to hoping!

With that being said, here are 5 obvious Oscar-bait movies that I am looking forward to seeing (no particular order):

• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - It has Cate Blanchette in it.  So, I'll see it just for that.  Throw in an intriguing story of Benjamin Button (Brad Pitt) being born an old man and aging backwards, and I think you definitely have a recipe for something interesting.  My fear is that it might be too big of a concept for David Fincher, but hey, all is forgiven for Alien 3, right? right? (Okay, to his credit he also has Seven, Panic Room, and Zodiac to cleanse that pallet)
• The Changeling - Angelina Jolie in a Clint Eastwood directed picture?  I'm so there.
• Revolutionary Road - Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, and directed by Kate's husband, Sam Medes (American Beauty, Road to Perdition), and well, I think this has Oscar written all over it.  Plus, it is based on the quintessential book about life in the constipated 1950s, which boasts brawls the likes we haven't seen since Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?...well, this might just be the feel bad movie of the year!
• Doubt - Based on the acclaimed play, this movie has Meryl Streep as a disapproving nun.  Oh hell yes!
• Australia - Baz Luhrmann returns to the screen after Moulin Rouge with this Nicole Kidman/Hugh Jackman fronted drama taking place in, well duh, Australia.  From the trailers and commercials, it strikes me like an African Queen-type movie with Kidman, like Hepburn, as the uptight woman who learns to live from the hardscrabble Jackman (playing the Bogart role).  I think this is one has the best (or worst) chances of being a bloated mess that makes zero money, but we'll see.

Another movie that I really do not want to place on my list, though there is a definite possibility you might see some of the actors getting nominated.  The movie is W, the story of George W. Bush being written and directed by Oliver Stone.  It has been a while since Stone has been firing on all cylinders, and everything I have seen about it has made me cautiously optimistic.  Though, frankly, I can't imagine this making a lot of money.  Here's a trailer: